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earnestly-endlessly · 3 years

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Cherik angst!

Ooooh the angst!! The cherik fandom has an abundance of angst fics and I could probably make a list of hundred fics to recommend, but these are some of my favourite angsty cherik fics. I should warn you though, some of these require tissues.

Cherik Angst

Everyday Love in Stockholm – tahariel

Summary: Magneto is the ruler of the posthuman world.

His only secret? Charles Xavier, the human he's kept locked in his bedroom ever since his right-hand woman, Mystique, came to him pleading for mercy for her stepbrother, who accepted her mutant form and protected her as a child. The human he started fucking after Mystique was killed in battle, despite the guilt he feels at contaminating even this last promise to the woman who was integral to his life's work and happiness.

Boden’s Mate – kaydeefalls

Summary: "Shaw has information that we need, and we need him alive to extract it," Moira says, and there it is: the job is on the table. Extraction.

XMFC/Inception fusion AU. Erik is an extractor, Alex is his point man. They're assembling a team to go after the most dangerous mind in dreamsharing: Sebastian Shaw. But unless Alex and the team can keep him in check, Erik's desire for vengeance might just rip the whole job apart around them -- and then there's the shade that haunts his dreams...

Ritual Self-Torture – TurtleTotem

Summary: Shaw is King, Charles is his royal consort and Erik is a Knight/Lord. Shaw is sterile but his kingdom can't find out, so he asks Erik to impregnate Charles.

He doesn't know Erik and Charles are in love.

The Winter of Banked Fires – Yahtzee

Summary: Charles Xavier has returned from the dead -- but is lost within his own mind. Rogue has cast aside her own power and doesn't know where she fits in the world any longer. The production of synthetic Cure means mutantkind itself is newly at risk. And Magneto, turned human against his will, is in despair until the day he feels a familiar consciousness tugging at his own

Us – Pangea

Summary: “Charles,” Erik says, and if his voice hits a pleading note then who can really blame him, “Charles, it’s me.”

It takes several longer moments before Charles musters up the strength to answer, breath stuttering horribly as he tries to breathe. He’s shaking, entire body trembling.

“Erik,” Charles says, his voice cracking, “Erik, I want to die.”

Enigma – Yahtzee

Summary: Erik dies, or finds a reversey-time mutant, or a magical time travelling device, and wakes up in the past. This time, though, it's before he ever met Charles - in fact, it's before his mother died.

He can save his mother that one time (thanks to his mastery over powers carrying back), but what does Erik do after that? Does he stick around, or escape and run to find Charles again (and hope everything doesn't go wrong)?

By Faint Indirections – kianspo

Summary: Erik is in his ~50s, and lonely and bitter. He survived the Holocaust and was only ~14 when the war ended; and even ~40 years later, living in a country that helped to end WW2 and the Third Reich, homosexuality is still a taboo topic. Then one day, he stumbles over Charles, who is young(early 20s) and bright and smart and cheeky and full of energy and beautiful. And moving in the same street where Erik lives.

Lonesome on the Shelf – ikeracity

Summary: After three years of marriage, Charles has to admit that his relationship with Erik has significantly cooled off. These days, they're barely ever home at the same time and it seems like every conversation they have turns into an argument. Charles misses the way they used to be, misses the spontaneous dinner parties and the surprise morning sex and the wake up calls in the early mornings to catch the sunrise. But it's going to take two of them to fix this marriage, and some days, it seems as if all Erik wants is to be rid of him.

A fic about rekindling marriage.

When the Spell Breaks – kianspo

Summary: Erik, a high-profile lawyer with a successful career, meets a 21-year-old grad student in a bar, and within a few short months marries him. He and Charles are blissfully happy, until Erik's boss runs a background check on Charles and discovers he's been cheating on Erik. Charles denies everything, as there was no affair, but Erik doesn't believe him and throws him out. As Charles tries to figure out how to survive and stay at school that he can no longer afford and makes a lot of bad if not plain dangerous choices, Erik has to fight his own battle of discovering the truth and winning Charles back.

The Tower and the Hurricane – dreamlittleyo

Summary:(Post-movie AU.) Five years after Shaw's death, Erik's predictions prove painfully accurate. Violence rages on both sides of the human/mutant conflict. In a world ravaged by war, it doesn't really matter who's more at fault. Charles struggles to teach his students a better way, but what choices will he make when peace really isn't an option?

The Attempt – Yahtzee

Summary: Charles knows everything about Erik, knows how obsessive and self-destructive he is, how Erik would do anything, give anything, in his quest for vengeance against Shaw. But he also knows that Erik loves him in ways that aren't exactly platonic.

I'd like to see a completely straight!Charles, out of pure love and care of Erik, initiate a romantic relationship with him. It can be because he wishes to give Erik something positive in his life or because he thinks it might help change Erik's mind about Shaw, the reason is up to author. Also, while Charles finds intimacy with Erik strange and awkward, he does enjoy the new, non-romantic layers that have developed in their relationship.

Apple Seeds – pprfaith

Summary: Charles, Erik, apple seeds and Shakespearean love affairs.

Ashes, Ashes – winterhill

Summary: Post-apocalyptic AU — When the bombs fall, and mutually assured destruction occurs, it turns out that Shaw was right and radiation does enhance mutant powers. Snapshots of the XMFC main ensemble in the time after the bombs: Erik decides to stay, Moira thinks she might be the only human left, Raven is having trouble sleeping, and Charles is losing his mind.

Warnings: nuclear holocaust: death (death in general, not a specific character), cancer, burns, medical procedure, mutant powers gone awry

Five Bullet Points – Sperare

Summary: It was supposed to be Erik locked away in a prison one hundred stories below the ground.

Charles was never supposed to be there with him.

Tequila on a spaceship – faerie_ground

Summary: In 2014, Charles Xavier gets brutally murdered and Erik Lehnsherr spends the rest of his life mourning his death.

In 3014, Captain Lehnsherr and CMO Dr Xavier are colleagues, best friends and maybe a little more besides that aboard the Magneto I.

The Tower and the Hurricane – dreamlittleyo

Summary: Post-movie AU.) Five years after Shaw's death, Erik's predictions prove painfully accurate. Violence rages on both sides of the human/mutant conflict. In a world ravaged by war, it doesn't really matter who's more at fault. Charles struggles to teach his students a better way, but what choices will he make when peace really isn't an option?

Simple and Uncomplicated – Pookaseraph

Summary: Erik and Charles had been fuck buddies for some, but when Charles is in an accident he figured their relationship would be over. Erik's visit to his bedside in the hospital changes his assumptions even as he has trouble believing Erik is sincere.

Lazarus – Clocks

Summary: Erik is 19 when he says ‘I love you’ for the first time.

It would take five long years before Charles says it back.

Broken Eternity – CractasticDispatches

Sumnmary: It starts with being alone. It shouldn’t, perhaps, but it does because, of course, alone is what no one ever wishes to be.

Shout it Out Loud – dreamlittleyo

Summary: (Movie-Concurrent AU.) When Charles forges a telepathic link between himself and Erik, the two men find themselves bound together by more than just destiny. With the world on the brink of war, Charles and Erik struggle to cope with a psychic connection that may well be permanent.

Call Me By His Name – sinuous_curve

Summary: Charles wakes from the absence of noise.

There is an empty space in his room, beside his bed. Not quiet as in an abandoned room, but utterly, featurelessly blank. Like a box made of unblemished, impenetrable metal and Charles knows before he opens his eyes.

The Longest Word – septicwheelbarrow

Summary: "I'm Charles Xavier," he says, smiling from ear to ear. Then he gestures to his wheelchair. "Terminal spinal osteoblastoma, reaper due to collect in a year."

After some time, the man gestures at himself with a sardonic smile. "Same, one year. Lung." And then, reluctant, as if trying to keep his name to himself, "Erik."

I reject your reality and substitute my own. Doesn't really work that way, both ways.

Copy – chantefable

Summary: Charles wakes up without his memory. His sole caretaker, Erik, claims to be his husband, and tells him he's recovering from a car accident on their honeymoon.

Slowly falling for Erik again, Charles begins to regain his memories. He starts to notice strange things about his body, Erik, and their secluded mansion.

Myosotis – SomeCoolName

Summary: When Charles got back from Cuba, he lost the two things which made him stand: his legs and the love of his life, Erik Lehnsherr. Charles can get used to the wheelchair but he won't ever be able to get pass the loss of Erik.

"I wish I never met him" is something Charles says one night, maybe a bit drunk, absolutely wrecked for sure. It's a bit silly but Charles figures out his only solution is to use his own powers to erase Erik from his mind, progressively.

Except one day Erik comes back to the Xavier mansion to win him back. And even if Charles doesn't want to stop forgetting about him, Erik will do anything he can to convince him otherwise.

Das Haus am See – sareyen

Summary: The Lake House AU:

Erik is an estate planning lawyer who takes some time off to get away from the big city after his marriage fell apart. He lives in a picturesque lake house by Chautauqua Lake for almost two years, before moving back to New York City. This is in 2019.

Charles is a famous but very private author stuck in a creative rut, and moves to his lakeside estate for a short while to try and find a reason to write again. This is in 2017.

By magic or fate, Charles and Erik discover that the letter box at the lake house has the ability to send letters through time, between Charles in 2017 and Erik in 2019. Through letters that transcend the barriers of time, Charles and Erik fall in love. Charles vows to find Erik two years in his future, and Erik promises to wait for him. Two years - just two, meagre years.

But, fate is fickle, and time waits for no one.

Appropriate Boundaries – Yahtzee

Summary: Charles has been having serious problems with back cramps in the year and a half since he's been in a wheelchair. His doctor prescribes massage therapy. But when Charles meets his masseur, Erik, in some ways they begin to heal each other. So how do you cross the boundaries between professional touch -- and the personal?

Unbound – Cesare, helens78

Summary: Thousands of miles apart, Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier form a soulbond. But when that bond is severed five years later, they have to spend the next ten years trying to rebuild their lives alone.

Do You Love Me – cgf_kat

Summary: Charles and Erik have been married for 25 years, thrown together by a mandatory post-apocalyptic pairing system attempting to increase and strengthen the population. They have seven children. They have never spoken of love, but change is on the horizon.

A Quiet Riot – cloudstroke (aQuired)

Summary: Erik can't stand the fact that his father has brought home a boy less than half his age.

But mostly because he's madly in love with Charles Xavier himself.

#cherik #cherik fic recs #fic recs #angst #asks #earnestly answers

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asagimeta · 3 years

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The time has come again to remind everyone that good queer representation does not necessarily equal morally good queer characters

I’ve heard that apparently there’s a renaissance of anti-Hannibal going on lately? And that + the rise in popularity of media like Helluva Boss and Killing Eve, and the addition of more openly queer charectors in existing media- from comic book based media to long-running shows like American Horror Story- I feel like this needs to be said again- not necessarily by me but I posted about it way back when Hannibal originally aired it’s finale so I figure, what the hell

Good representation =/= morally good characters

You can have both, absolutely, but you can also have them separate, and you can have all combinations of the reverse too

Ofcourse, to be clear right in the beginning, what counts as “good” representation vs “bad” reputation is going to vary from person to person, everything from life experiences to media exposure to personal opinions will dictate where you land on the sliding scale of “good” or “bad”, someone who’s consumed quite alot of queer-focused media, for example, is going to have a very different opinion than someone who’s only seen one background gay in a TV show that one time, and someone who’s a really huge fan of horror is going to have a much different opinion than someone who’s only a fan of lighter-hearted fair

With that said, in my personal opinion, the measure of good vs bad representation relies less on the character and more on the presentation of said character- less, not entirely

To get what I mean, here’s the best example I can think of:

Castiel from Supernatural is, objectively, a good charactor- if nothing else he’s morally good by most standards, certainly by the time season 15 rolls around, but his canonically queer presentation is just.... horrible, horrible representation and I’ve only met literally one person myself who disagreed with that

Cas is presented as being a really tragic figure right from the start of his coming out- the one thing in the world that would make him truly happy for even a single moment is confessing that he’s in love with Dean, even if Dean rejects him, just saying it is enough, that is..... sad

If it had been framed differently, it actually could have been very good representation, in a “I don’t need you to validate me, I’m being honest about who I am for the first time in my life and that’s enough, I’m enough” way, but it wasn’t, it was framed as pining, as “Even if you don’t love me, my acknowledging openly that I love you is enough to make me happy”, and again that could have worked if framed differently but.... it’s followed up by the infamous “Gay angels go to Super Mega Turbo Hell” thing and like.... no....

Cas is a good character who is queer, he is not a good queer character, because his existence as a queer character lasted less than five minutes and was immediately followed by literally going to what’s worse than hell for expressing his queerness

There is no way I can express the amount of levels of Bad that is, to say nothing of how Dean treats the entire experience for like.... ever... from there on out

But now let’s look at Hannibal, who is objectively a pretty bad character morally- he’s stupendously written but yeah I mean look the dude eats people there’s just no getting around that

But I would argue that he’s excellent queer representation because of how he was presented

Hannibal’s sexuality is never defined, for starters, there’s never a “very special episode” moment where he has some long-winded coming out speech, in fact we don’t quite know how he identifies but because he’s written so artfully we don’t really need to, his exact sexuality doesn’t feel like it needs to be known because, frankly, not much personal information is known about Hannibal anyway, and sexuality feels like one of those arbitrary things that he wouldn’t really care about defining

And that’s the other thing- he’s far from sexless and yet he places no emphasis on sex, he isn’t hypersexualized but he also isn’t being kept as a Ken doll to preserve the message of gay purity (because I don’t know apparently there’s a Thing some people have about how gay people aren’t allowed to be sexual???) he’s just... a person

And that’s really what it comes down to that makes him great, he’s a person first and queer second... or third.... or fourth or fifth.... it never defines who he is, it’s just part of who he is, and regardless of your opinion on Hannibal specifically, I think that is something most queer people strive for in representation

It’s great to have stories that are focused on queerness but it’s equally exhausting to only be able to have characters who’s lives revolve around their sexualities, it’s nice to go into media and go “Oh that character that I already like for these reasons is also queer, that’s so cool!”

Hannibal also skillfully side-steps stereotypes, despite falling into the category of being “polite, thin, and neat”, despite loving fine wine and fine art and fine culture, he never feels like a flamboyant theater kid with a decoration-diploma, wich is how alot of queer characters in this category can feel

His story is about alot of things and his relationship with Will is at the center of much of it, but that relationship didn’t become explicitly queer until the show was almost over- not because it was sudden or poorly written but because it was a slow build up, wich is also refreshing, as alot of times it feels like queer characters are made as explicitly queer as they’re allowed to be as quickly as they’re able to be on screen so that the show can grab those important Representation Brownie Points from episode one and either introduce a Manwhore or a Uhaul Lesbian right away and just kind of leave them in that trope until “someone comes along and changes that” or whatever, I don’t even know what straight writers do half the time, but Hannibal- as a show and a charactor- doesn’t do that, he’s just allowed to exist and tell his story, and THAT is good representation

With the heavy-handed example over with though, I want to tackle the biggest part of this entire “debate” that makes me interested in it:

Queer people are allowed to be bad people

Queer people are allowed to be lazy and unattractive and non-political and angry and jealous and yes, “bad” and evil too

Wile I DEFINITELY prefer to have morally good characters- especially after literally a century of rarely getting more than The Evil Homosexual stereotype and all it’s kin- I also don’t like the direction some people are taking this where queer people are only “allowed” to be 100% morally flawless and good and righteous at all times because it’s just so unrealistic, and because it does the exact same thing that the opposite stereotype does: Puts queer people in a box, makes us a decoration for the straight cast so that the creators get Representation Brownie Points and can’t get yelled at on Twitter, and treats us like we’re some other species (and not in the cool way like werewolves but more like... well, decorations, as I’ve said before)

And if you’re worried about the way straight-cis people perceive us due to seeing evil queer characters, you should be equally worried about how they perceive us seeing nothing but morally flawless ones

I could get into An Entire Thing about the history of Straights trying to turn queer people into what they want us to be and present an inaccurate depiction of us to their brethren for their own benefit but I’ll make it relatively simple

The old way of keeping The Queers away from their Innocent Straight Children was to turn us into villains so that we would be ashamed of who we really are and hide ourselves and pretend to be The Good Christian Folk nextdoor and not get overly political or loud or different

The new way of keeping The Queers away from their Innocent Straight Children is to turn us into sexless Ken & Barbie stereotypes so we can be ashamed of who we really are and pretend to be The Good Christian Folk nextdoor and not get overly political or loud or different

By sterilizing queerness into something they find more “acceptable”, they’re doing the same thing they used to, but now through a lens of “Aren’t you happy you get what you want? You can get married now! You can hold hands in public! Just make sure not to do any of that other crazy stuff you people get up to and you can stay at the Civil Rights Table :)”, we’re still not “allowed” to be sexual human beings, it’s just framed in a way that makes us feel like the people shunning us are on our side wile those same people are still in the corner going “Just don’t kiss in public ok?”

And I could go On about this for some time but let’s get back to the point-

Queer people are three-dimensional people and we should be allowed to be so, we should be allowed to have characterization outside of The Gay Love Interest and The Gay BFF and The Gay Butler and so on, outside of the stereotypes being imposed on us

That’s one of the main reasons I love Yuri On Ice so much, and love Batwoman so much.... and one of the main reasons I love Hannibal and Harley Quinn and Helluva Boss and Killing Eve so much, all of these things star queer characters and queer relationships to different degrees (Batwoman, for example, makes a MUCH larger point and political stance about queerness than, say, Hannibal) and they’re all about something other than queerness too, the charecters are three-dimensional and they’re not built around their sexualities or side peices for straight people

And none of them are PUNISHED for their sexualities either

Going back to Castiel earlier, stereotypes are hardly the worst of our worries when Burry Your Gays, Gayngst Induced Suicide, and Gay Guy Dies First are still alive and well- among others

From Frank N’ Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show to Tara in Buffy The Vampire Slayer to, oh look, it’s Supernatural again with not just Cas, but also Charlie, and even arguably Dean (but that’s a much longer story for a much different time) and many many more... sometimes just having any gay charecter live through a franchise is enough on it’s own- setting the bar awfully low there but it’s still hard for a shamefully large amount of franchises to step over

In some cases like Tara, it can be pretty decently argued that the death has little- if anything- to do with queerness, but in examples like Cas and Frank, it’s pretty blatantly obvious, especially when the other queer characters in their respective franchises didn’t exactly fair well either....

Matt Baume put it best when he said that until recently, you had to choose if you wanted your only source of representation to be dead or evil, and most people chose evil

Now-a-days that’s clearly not the case as much but there’s still a heavy enough flavor of it there- and villains are just part of gay culture, dating all the way back to prohibition, queer people identified as outlaws because we literally were, so pirates and cowboys and other anti-heros and villains became a staple of the culture that’s still very much alive to this day, thus leading to another point: Identification

Straight people can identify with pretty much whoever they want- from superheros to princesses to any and every kind of villain

Tony Soprano is a horrible, horrible person but is notorious for being beloved among straight white males because he’s a projection of who they want to be- powerfull (and wealthy)

Stolas from Helluva Boss actually presents a pretty similar power fantasy, he’s part of a family who lives outside the larger part of the law, he can kill (nearly) anyone he pleases, he’s physically and socially powerfull, he’s wealthy, he has a nuclear family, he gets to screw around with whoever he wants with the only one taking issue being his wife, the only real difference is that Stolas is queer (and much more fashionable... and pleasant)

Queer people should be allowed to have those power fantasies as much as straight people are

Speaking as a bisexual female myself, I absolutely ADORE Villanelle from Killing Eve, I really don’t care that she’s a bitch or has killed an uncountable amount of people, it’s fun to project on her, and seeing a very flawed woman fall in love and be vulnerable and open herself up to a relationship and get that relationship with another woman is AMAZING to me, that doesn’t make the relationship it’s self healthy or good, but it’s still fun to watch and plays further into that identification

I love Korra and Asami from Legend Of Korra, they’re a sweet, wholesome relationship between two sweet, wholesome characters and I adore them... but I’m allowed to adore Eve and Villanelle too, even if the relationship is toxic and the characters have baggage and Villanelle is literally a serial killer

Ofcourse enjoying something doesn’t make it “good”, I enjoy alot of trash B rated (and C rated) horror movies too, it doesn’t mean I think they deserve Oscars (if that’s really the measuring stick we’re going to use), but I think when it comes to representation, it’s important to distinguish the difference between good queer character and a moral queer character, they just... aren’t the same

Light Yagami from Death Note, Bill from Kill Bill, and Joker from Batman are all just... horrible, horrible people, there’s no doubting that, they are morally terrible... but my god are they fantastic charecters- they’re interesting, they’re three dimensional (even if only occasionally in the Joker’s case), they’re well written and complex, there’s a reason why they’re iconic and why they’re still talked about decades after their introduction into the world, they are GREAT characters who are morally bad, and characters like Hannibal and Villlanelle are in that boat too, they just so happen to be queer- and there’s what it all boils down to

People being queer, not queer people

Some of the most beloved examples above like Yuri On Ice and Legend Of Korra are praised for being about people who are queer, people who have stories focused on other things and are just allowed to exist without their sexualities defining them, and the same should be said and appreciated for villains who are queer too

In an age where so much queer-focused media is about tragedy (the period lesbian dramas and Gayngst teen media for example), and so much of it is focused on the same exact aspects of queer life (coming out, dating around, getting or being married, but mostly coming out), it’s great to have characters who just so happen to be queer without those things being the center of their storylines- and without them being canon fodder or the Gay BFF, or being a terrible stereotype from the 90s that just won’t die...

And that by no means is to say you have to like these characters- not at all, there are PLENTY of objectively good/well-written queer characters who I don’t like for whatever reason- but to call them bad representation just because they’re bad people is sweeping ALOT under the rug

And I know I’ve harped alot on avoiding queer-centered storylines like coming out stories and relationship dramas, but those are fine, they have their place just like everything else, really, they just don’t need to have the only place- that does a disservice to so many other types of queer stories- for the heroes and the villains, because morality and goodness have nothing to do with one’s sexuality, just like one’s sexuality has nothing to do with morality and goodness

#other #lgbtq

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watchinglikeafangirl · 3 years

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The way they handled Type’s trauma

I thought I would never come to the taste of thinking about TharnType ever again but here we are. Whose fault is that? The peaceful nature’s. How dare it let my thoughts wander and why bring up TharnType all of a sudden, brain?

I think I don’t have to tell anyone here what a f***ed up show TharnType was and why I mainly wanted to forget about it, but we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into one of the aspects that made this show so unlogical and showed its inconcistency: the way Type’s childhood trauma was handled. The inconsistency concerning that aspect mostly shows during the second season because that’s when it all went down to sh*t. I still think - though I’m not proud to say this - TharnType season one was a guilty pleasure. Yes, they are toxic and the end fight was really something else, but I somehow found it enjoyable enough to keep at it. I was at least a bit invested and I have to give Tee (the director) all the credits for that because I believe it’s totally on him that the show was watchable. The story was garbage from the very beginning but at least he made it work. It didn’t look that bad any more - not until you sat down and reminisced about the plot, but that’s not his fault. Tee totally nailed it with “Lovely Writer”, so yes, directors have a lot to say and when they changed directors for season two, the endproduct made me wanna run away from my phone. I don’t even know why I kept watching. I guess because it was an internet joke to do so. Just like the people still watching Riverdale: because it’s so bad, it’s nearly not funny any more but somehow compelling.

season one

This season starts off with a very important piece of information of Type: he is homophobic. We don’t get a real reason for a long time because he didn’t really bring up arguments against homosexuality. He was just against queer people, period. It takes a while before Type opens up to Tharn about why he is so afraid of homosexual men explicitly. Until then, there’s a lot of weird, uncomfortable sexual tension between them with Tharn basically dragging Type against a wall or something, so he can’t escape him. Yeah, this toxicness of their relationship is a different topic...

To be honest, I didn’t expect Type’s reason to be that shocking. I had tears in my eyes when he talked about being molested as a child because this is just something one doesn’t expect. It’s such an aweful action and experience, I can’t imagine. So, yeah, the reason for his fear of gay men comes from this childhood trauma and it literally explains everything.

He had nightmares of that day. He was obviously scared of his feelings because in his head that would mean being like his molester. And he didn’t want to be the center of someone’s attention again since his family pressed charges after he was molested. Actually, the reason why Type was so violent the whole time was to make others stay away from him, so he won’t ever be the talk of town again. If you’re untouchable nobody dares to try, so you live isolated from the world. It’s some sort of self-protection. It goes that far that he rejects gay men to have anything to do with him. He only met one homosexual up until this point at that meeting was traumatizing, so it makes sense for his character to be scared, to be hauted by that fear. But since Tharn is pretty needy, Type can’t escape him. His self-protection still kicks in because later, he refuses to define himself as gay. Being gay would mean being like his molester or at least, share something with him which is a terrifying thought.

The scene when Type tells Tharn about his horrible life experience, it was probably the most touching scene of the whole show and no other scene follows on this list. No, their break-up doesn’t count for me because I giggled the whole time because of the acting lmao. Sorry but no. Anyway, that scene indeed was touching and I was really shocked. The way Tharn then stops Type from telling any more felt realistic and this whole situation was very private. Just two people getting to know each other deeper. And all the ugly things included.

But - there’s always a but with TharnType - after the confession, nobody seems to care any more. It’s like letting the audience know was the missio here and it’s accomplished now, so let’s move on. Let’s not discuss how much it still affects Type. In fact, let him look like a total a**hole and a bully. Tharn is not more gentle with Type, pushes him even more into telling others though Type needs to sort his struggles out alone first. But then, Type doesn’t give a damn as well and they don’t talk about this topic again. Then, their relationship is more important.

Later this season, Type’s dad even nealy makes a joke about the whole trauma and I find that a bit disturbing. But again, Type is not touched by it. It seems like he doesn’t remember it, like this information was never given to us. It’s very odd but okay. The fight with Llong took more time though it was played out in a very boring way.

season two

Okay, season one was fine compared to this aweful masterpiece called “TharnType: 7 years of love”. It’s been seven years and the relationship didn’t make ANY progress. Type still hasn’t outed himself to the world and they are still jealous of women. So much inconsistency, it hurts. But let me just continue talking only about Type’s trauma because season two just walked over it.

In the beginning, Type’s behavior still mirrors that trauma. It is still visible because he doesn’t tell anyone about his boss keeping an eye on him. Why is that? Because he is again the victim of harassment and is too afraid to admit it, even to himself, because that would mean casting attention onto him. He can’t let this fear of events repeating go, he can’t shake it off. It’s again his self-protection to not let bad memories get ahead of him and mess with his thoughts. Labeling something as harassment might cause his nightmares to return because a trauma doesn’t leave your mind entirely. The bad night and days turn into bad moments but it still returns to you over and over again, but Tharn seems to have forgotten that. He seems to have forgotten his partner he shares a bed with gets heavy nightmares whenever he feels pressured. Tharn continues pushing Type to marriage and talking more about the stress at work. He doesn’t care because Tharn is selfish just like Type. The trust issues surrounding their relationship are ridicolous. Seven years for god’s sake!

Well that is that. I just wanted to point out Type’s trauma is still visibly sticking to him. But this season turns around completely with the whole Fiat kidnapping. That’s the moment when things stop to make sense entirely because Type seems to have forgotten everything about his trauma. He comes up with the plan to kidnap Fiat, forcing someone with a boyfriend to flirt with him, lets Leo watch all of this whilst feeling like the smartest person in the room. But man, did you forget you’re making Fiat the victim of abusement, just like you are one?! Why the hell did he do that? To punish Fiat? It freaking looks like he’s about to r*pe him! Shouldn’t Type know from personal experience how much such events affect a person? Fiat must’ve felt weak, scared - more like terrified - and helpless. It leaves a scar Type can tell a story about but he forgot. He forgot that with doing this, he’s not much better than his molester which would’ve originally been a no-go for him but I guess, he reached his lowest point here and there's no turning back. He doesn't seem to regret it anytime later because he doesn't even tell Tharn...

conclusion

It's is obvious the card of the trauma is only played when they have no other idea of explaining situations. The characters constantly forget about it until it's important again which shows exactly, the writers didn't care enough. Or MAME didn't care enough which she would set me on fire for but teh inconsistency is undenieable. It seems like it wasn't the original plan to give Type a tragic background but the story was too boring without it but some scenes wouldn't've worked normally because of the trauma. Type would never have kidnapped Fiat! But who am I telling this? You already know...

Yeah well, I guess we can agree season one at least knew what it was and tried to work with that and season two just totally lost its purpose.

#just know i read summaries to write this #it gave me a headache lmao #the story is so bad #i can't #tharntype #mewgulf

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starship-imzadi · 3 years

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S5 E17 The Outcast

Androgyny is defined as having both male and female characteristics so that a specific gender cannot be determined.

Jonathan Frakes has reportedly gone on record to express his belief that Soren should have been cast with a male actor as it would have sent a stronger message. And I absolutely agree.

As it is, Soren identifies as a woman and is played by a woman which is just reestablishing a heteronormative status quo. In fact, all of the credited cast who portray the J'naii are women.

I have a problem with this. Often times the dichotomy of western heterosexual gendering is seen as "the haves and the have nots". E.g. men have body hair, women do not (which is absolutely untrue). Women are emotional, men are not (also absolutely untrue). Women as "the weaker sex" are often seen as "without" and androgyny is sometimes construed as being more "without" because it's supposed to be lacking the characteristics that give definition or.... features that are identifiable as a certain gender. Casting all women to be androgynous is, in a way, sexist for this reason. Though the non speaking and background J'naii are far enough away they seem less defined and more androgynous (some might be cast with men but it's not possible to tell...which is the way it should be).

Okay...so, Riker gets a bad rap for his struggle with pronouns and misgendering BUT what he's doing is actually incredibly important and valuable. Riker is canonically an American, heterosexual, cis gendered, Caucasian, male. He is the character that the most privileged, and most represented demographic will see themselves in and relate to. He is put in a position where he doesn't understand the experience of the person opposite him, he's trying his best and he makes mistakes, but he's also demonstrating that he's open to learning.

I've also seen some small uproar, especially from younger viewers (I'm looking at anyone born after the year 2000) over the writers not using they/them pronouns "I do not think there is really a translation". It is true that "they" as a pronoun to refer to a non specific person in common speech has been in use since the time of Shakespeare. Up until women's suffrage in legal context the pronoun used was "he" without specifically meaning a man. I.e. those pronouns were place holders for an unknown person regardless of gender or sex. Non masculine or feminine pronouns used to refer to a known individual is a slightly different story. There have been many different pronouns developed and used to greater or lesser extent through the entire 20th century (e.g. Hir or Xe) However, none of them really caught on for regular use across the entire language. "They" has been adopted most successfully because it is already in the language but its prominent use and acceptance wasn't until between approximately 2013 and 2015. This episode aired in 1992.

I really like that early on Soren and Riker are given an established shared interest. Too often on this show two people are put together....and it's not clear why they like each other. In such a short span of time it's tough to establish a believable new relationship, but this is a good first step.

They've known each other two days? It is reminiscent of "The Masterpiece Society" just a few episodes ago where Troi started to fall in love after five days. (Maybe they're both just very loving people.)

Also, in the midst of the misgendering, I'm pleased that the writers (or whoever) chose for Riker to use "he" because it plays against this species that's supposed to be androgynous but... Have a tendency to look feminine.

Riker's dad had a recipe for split pea soup...I wonder when he ever cooked it though. Riker mentions that it's good for cold Alaskan nights and it's the second episode in recent memory of his mentioning that he's from Alaska (the other was "Conundrum") I can't actually remember it being mentioned prior to that episode.... though there's a good chance it was established in the "Icarus Factor" and i know it's mentioned again in "Lower Decks"

A lot of the focus on this episode from fans seems to be on Soren being transgender but the J"aii are also homosexual. Riker and Soren have two different paradigms that are represented as neither worse nor better nor even given a moral label, they're just different. (Although, the J'naii's insistence that Soren cannot be male or female in gender or sex, is clearly meant to be the reciprocal of any insistence by humans that we can only be male or female in gender and sex.)

"I like one who's intelligent, sure of herself, who I can talk with and get something back. But the most important thing of all, she has to laugh at my jokes."

This conversation has a great sub text: different men like different things in women (and vis versa) so for someone to even identify as "heterosexual" doesn't mean every member of a different sex is attractive to them. And it begs the question: why are so many people with different qualities all under the same gender "umbrella"?

I've seen screen caps of Soren asking about human male genitals but they only show Riker's surprise. Really he deserves more credit because he handles the question really well. The way he handles everything very kindly and graciously, and the fact that Soren continues to ask questions, is a real testament to the safe place that he makes for discussion and curiosity.

There's some... dark humour in how Star Trek talks about misogyny and sexism. It's one of the notable hypocrisies and failings in star trek: to talk about a better future, while still operating on damaging ideals, and without any real idea of the journey it would actually take for society to reach "better". Both Gate and Marina had struggles with how they and their characters were treated compared to the men.

Oh boy. Worf's sexism fluctuates a lot, but when they need someone to be a misogynist, Worf is the go to and it's always painful. And Data asks the innocent, child-like questions. With a scene like this there are unfortunate reflection on some of the characters BUT the main purpose of the scene is, a slightly heavy handed, means of proposing different view points for representation and comparison. It's not really about the characters at all.

I'll say just from experience with that long hours spent working together will create some sort of bond for pretty much any two people. Love or other wise.

This scene is clearly about Soren coming out to Riker. And he takes it as kindly as he has everything else so far.

Geordi has a beard! (LeVar apparently grew it for his wedding)

"good hunting commander"

"thank you sir. See you for dinner." Do Riker and Picard have dinner together? (I love a good found family shared meal).

I really like this scene between Will and Deanna.

"well this one looks like you" with the teddy bear absolutely gets me every time. And Deanna's side look! I love their friendship and comfort together.

"You're my friend and I thought... I don't know, i thought I should tell you."

"I'm glad you did"

"Nothing will change between us, will it?"

"Of course it will. All relationships are constantly changing. But we'll still be friends, maybe better friends. You're a part of my life, and I'm a part of yours. That much will always be true."

This really hits home. Regardless of the label for their relationship, regardless of the details of the boundaries of their relationship, Troi is affirming for Riker that they are important enough to each other, that he is important enough to her, that she will stay in his life and keep him in hers. In a way this touches on what was established way back "Haven". The characterizations were still being sorted out to a large extent, but when Troi was due to be married Riker thought he was losing her and Troi ask him "i am no longer imzadi to you?" But even as much as they love each other, Riker isn't taking for granted that Troi will stay in his life once he becomes involved with someone. Troi is assuring him, promising to him, that she will stay. And the fact that Riker went to her, to tell her about him and Soren, was his way of demonstrating to Troi that she is still important to him, and that he wants to keep her in his life too.

Props to Riker for protecting Soren. Not only did he keep her secret he tried to help her preserve it.

This is a really good and impassioned speech that, even though its clearly about legislation against homosexuality, doesn't feel over the top like a lot of star trek speeches can. It's probably one of the better speeches not given by Picard.

This is the second episode in a row Riker has gone to Picard for guidance...kind of.

It's kind of sweet that Worf offers as a friend to help Riker jeopardize his career, for the sake of someone important to him, even though he doesn't like or understand the J'naii.

In the end, the Enterprise must maintain its status quo, so much like "The Host", there had to be a reason then love interest cannot stay. Even if the reason is honestly so disheartening and sad. I genuinely believe Riker cared for Soren, and this is so devastating. This was probably the best single episode relationship in terms of development.

Picard is so gentle and subtle with Riker.

Engage (!)

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thevindicativevordan · 4 years

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Terra-Man

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#superman #dc comics #terra-man #revamp

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myrrheart · 5 years

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RICHARD WAS GAY, CAMILLA WASN’T MEANT TO DESERVE BETTER, CHANGE MY MIND: THE DISSERTATION

Hi. I finished The Secret History in October. Here’s the radioactive take I’ve been sitting on for two months.

In keeping and facilitating any discussion of representation (or lackthereof) in The Secret History, it's important to note that Donna intentionally wrote it to closely mimick the upper echelons of elite collegiate academia within the United States: an overtly white, heterosexual, and wealthy pocket of young adults attempting to parade as and/or speak on behalf of those who aren't.

[spoilers under the cut]

That being said, an all-white lead cast is not only appropriate but necessary, as it allows the reader to familiarize themselves with the intimacies of a setting and social crowd made previously foreign, either by circumstance or the deliberate smoke-and-screen thrown up by academic elitists in order to shield their near-archaic world and ensuing social norms from the broader, less-white, less-straight, less- wealthy public. All this is to say: The Secret History is written entirely from the first-person limited perspective of a straight white cis male and therein lies the social commentary. Richard, although to his begrudging credit as having been arguably one of the most moral characters in the entire novel, is still at fault for falling prey to The Mortifying Ordeal of Being A Man. He stays silent in the wake of Bunny's flagrantly homophobic, racist, sexist, and antisemitic tirades -- even when the brunt of this is revealed to Richard on their first evening out together. He regards Judy as simple-minded and coked-out and calls upon her only when it benefits him or furthers the plot arch in which he himself is almost too aware that he stars. He thumbs through the catalogue of women at parties like they're kitchen appliances, and when he's confronted on a notable occasion that he's stolen someone else's, he matter-of-factly evades responsibility, blame, and the kitchen itself. And, most notably, Camilla. For a novel so cleverly crafted from nuance and innuendo, a cliche like love at first sight seems almost insincere. And you'd be right in that assumption. Caustic, anxious, pessimistic, emotionally-detached Richard has no business pining after Camilla the moment he lays eyes on her -- especially not after allocating a measly half-paragraph to her physical appearance upon first glance. And ESPECIALLY not when the prior page was near entirely dedicated to Mr. Abernathy (but we'll get to this). If you really pay attention... All Richard ever comes to appreciate about Camilla is her outward makeup -- specifically the clot of honey-colored hair at her temples that he references several times. The closest he ever comes to introspection and empathy is when he laments over how "difficult" it must be to exist in a "boy's club." (DIRECT quotes.) When Camilla shows up at his bedroom door and reaches out to him about the sexual, emotional, and physical abuse she's endured at the hands of her brother, his gut instinct is to doubt her. When she shows him the evidence, it's anger. When she refuses to move back in with him at his insistence, it's to kick her out back onto the campus where Charles is scouring after her. Richard regards Camilla as little more than something pretty to look at, and the only reason he's attracted to her and values her beyond the likes of the Judy Pooveys of Bennington is because Camilla is in the classics program; Camilla recites ancient Greek in perfect memory; Camilla wears Tweed and comes from money and embodies the peak of the class struggle that Richard has been traumatized by since birth -- and she's neatly packaged into a petite fair-haired girl his age, just to top it all off. There is a reason why Camilla is the main character we know least about. We aren't meant to care. We are Richard, and Richard doesn't care. He wants and lusts and yearns after what she is -- not who she is. To him, she embodies everything he is supposed to want in life: wealth, intellect, status -- all things he's been shown to chase after to near ridiculous lengths. It almost wouldn't matter if she wasn't even a girl ooOH WAIT CUT THE MUSIC [record scratch] [freeze frame] Let's introduce Francis! Out of the Murder Gang, Francis is the one Richard spends the most time devoted to describing, most memorably on that very first day he catalogued them all walking across the lawn. And not only is Richard most preoccupied by him -- of all the things Francis possesses (good style, great taste in fashion, a dry, bland sort of humor that compliments Richards own brand near perfectly) Richard is obsessed with Francis's homosexuality. Richard is so hyperfixated on Francis's homosexuality that he vividly remembers the day , time, and place of when he'd rejected Francis's infinisemal advances, and then mulls over it for months in detail and is able to bring it forth at at the drop of a hat when faced with the HINT of another advancement from Francis. For an unreliable narrator, Richard sure is able to recall gay panic. In staggering detail. Richard is SO hyperfixated on Francis that upon receiving his suicide note, he BOOKS A FLIGHT ACROSS THE COUNTRY IMMEDIATELY. After having held no serious, steady contact with him after they'd committed a murder together. Richard not only drops everything to fly from CA to NY overnight, he also bears witness to Francis's (basically) arranged marriage and immediately following the blatant explanation and display of Francis's family's homophobia, ASKS CAMILLA TO MARRY HIM. In a last-ditch effort to save face, to bury his homosexual urges that have resurfaced after years of self-inflicted suppression, to convince himself that if Francis can stomach it (albeit barely) then so can he -- all of these interpretations are left up to the reader. One thing is for certain, though: his spontaneous proposal to Camilla comes right off the tail end of his visiting Francis in-person for the last time in the novel. Perhaps the reader expects there to be a revelation or a sudden spark of insight into Camilla's character which we have never before gleaned -- but there isn’t. And if that isn't a direct confirmation of Camilla's role not as a character, but as a plot device, then I would politely redirect your attention to how even her denial of Richard is soft-spoken, gentle, and ultimately kind; what woman do you know would save that kind of otherworldly grace for a man who'd repeatedly scorned her, advanced on her without her consent, and asked her to marry him in the middle of a crowded train station? Camilla is the male fantasy and the physical representation of what Richard should want for himself. Francis (along with Literally Every Other Male Character His Age In This Novel) represent a call to something darker, something taboo, something ultimately detrimental; Cloke and his drugs; Charles and his drinking; Henry and his penchant for murder (and sociopathy and control issues and... Yeah); Bunny and his lying; Francis and his... It's not so much that Francis is the sole symbol of sin and indulgence to Richard: it's that Francis is the only one remotely attainable, because Francis is the only one that would feasibly sleep with him, because Francis is a homosexual and... is that why Richard spends paragraphs upon pages upon chapters mulling over Francis's sex life? Is that why 'homosexual' is one of the first things we learn about Francis? Is that why Richard doesn't even do a good job at convincing himself, let alone the reader, that he doesn't want to hook up with Francis -- a handful of lines before they get as far as second (and arguably third) base? In conclusion: the alternative title of The Secret History should be whatever the ancient Greek equivalent is of the colloquialism "no homo." But the Greeks sure did love their gays, didn't they...? :-)

#the secret history #dark academia #donna tartt #richard papen #francis abernathy #camilla macaulay #charles macaulay #henry winter #bunny the secret history #tsh #tsh spoilers #mine #my writing #judy poovey #cloke rayburn

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minervahopebeyond · 4 years

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Blood Petals.

Hello!! I hope you like this one!! Tell me in the comments what you thought! It’s so fun to read them 💕

Ps. I’ve checked but sorry if you find any errors in this one (grammar or vocabulary)

Chapter 19: The charade.

The firsts weeks back at Hogwarts were difficult. Potter had adopted this attitude with him that Draco did not like.

He nearly hadn’t talked to the green-eyed boy since New Year’s Eve. Potter only spoke to him if necessary, and would (deliberately) find excuses to not spend time with the Golden Trio if the Slytherins were there.

He found himself in a dilemma. If he told the truth, Potter would talk to him again (which was a good thing), but strategically speaking... Weasley thinking that Draco was in love with Theo was the best thing that could ever happen to him. The redhead had stopped writing in that stupid notebook and if Draco didn’t keep up the charade, he was bound to start his little investigation again.

Draco had to admit that Theodore was the most logical choice to explain the Hanahaki. If he denied Weasley’s theory, eventually his friend would put two and two together and Draco’s life would be over. Well... He was already dying, but at least he could die with dignity.

He didn’t have a chance with Potter; his only comfort was being close to him, in the way he had been this last couple of months. And Weasley said that he would come around eventually... So Draco just went with it.

He always had this thing for Theo. It was really insignificant compared to what he felt for Potter, but it was there. He just really hated to admit it. The blond boy always thought that the brunette was beautiful, Pansy even used to tease him for staring from time to time.

There was also something about the way he treated Draco... and no, he didn’t mean when somebody was watching them, because Theo would get really defensive and say stupid shit all the time. He meant the way he was when they were alone, the gifts he gave to him on his birthday when everyone was sleep, the way that he would crawl into Draco’s bed when he had a nightmare, and things like what he did for him at the hospital... Looking for solutions, breaking rules just to see him safe; even if they were in this limbo of friendship right now.

Draco always had his doubts with Theo. What he said on the Hogsmade weekend was true: homophobic bastards tended to be just scare little boys still in the closet. The brunette made really clear ,everyday, that he was disgusted by homosexuality and he only liked girls. But then, he would treat him like that... he didn’t care if Draco hugged him in his sleep and honestly, he just couldn’t understand how someone that homophobic could be so comfortable with the affection of his gay best friend. This were all the his reasons to put him on the list with the question marks; he truly didn’t know.

Weeks turned into a month and a half and Valentine’s Day was here. Potter was still avoiding him. He didn’t treat him badly if he saw him, but... Draco noticed the difference with before; he didn’t smile warmly at him anymore and he didn’t reach out to him if he had a problem, not even to talk about Ginevra. The blond boy couldn’t understand how he got to a moment of his life where he wished that scarhead would tell him about his stupid crush on Weasley’s sister.

He was with the weasel outside, the disgusting lovey-dovey thing that was happening on the Great Hall was just too much.

“Are you sending him something?” The redhead asked curiously. He looked at him like he had lost his mind. “I just think that maybe you could approach him anonymously, at least.” Draco snorted.

“He would know it’s me.” And that just put a smug smile on Weasley’s face.

“Yes, because you have this weird connection that only you two can understand.”

And Draco almost cried because that applied to Potter as well. He coughed a few times right next to Weasley.

—————

Ron’s birthday came and Draco looked like shit. His coughs were more regular because Potter was putting this distance between them.

He checked himself on the mirror one last time. The make up almost covered the dark circles around his eyes, he still looked kind of tired but he could say that he had stayed studying the night before. He grabbed Weasley’s present and went to meet everyone at the Great Hall.

Blaise and Pansy were already at the Gryffindor table with the Golden Trio and some of the other Gryffindors. It was kind of bizarre to see them with green ties in a sea of Red and golden.

He walked to where they were, and sat right between Weasley and Potter. He knew it was a desperate thing to do, but he couldn’t help it; the daffodils were moving inside of him, begging him to be close to the boy. He could feel Potter shifting in his seat, uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, I know you don’t want me around but I think I might just die if we keep this up.’

He put the little box in front of Weasley. The redhead smiled at him as he opened it, then, he stared at it confused.

“This is a necklace, ferret.” Draco snorted.

“How observant, weasel.”

Then he heard Hermione hissing at the redhead.

“Ronald! Don’t be ungrateful! Say thank you.” And the poor weasel was looking at him, trying to lie and thank him for the jewelry but he couldn’t. Draco laughed and showed him the little note inside the box. Weasley started to read it.

Happy Birthday, weasel.

The necklace has a drop of my blood inside of it (yes, I know it’s gross).

For whatever shit that you and the other two idiots are planning... I wanted to have a way of knowing that you were alive.

-Ferret.

Suddenly Ron was pulling him into a bone crushing hug, Draco widened his eyes before returning the hug.

“This is brilliant. Thank you.” Then he let the blond boy, to put on the necklace and hide it inside his shirt. Draco smiled.

Pansy and Blaise already knew what it was, but the rest of the Gryffindors were all asking about the gift. Weasley said that it was confidential and as the birthday boy he was demanding the subject to be dropped entirely, so they could enjoy the rest of the breakfast. After all, this was the only moment in the day where the Slytherins could be there since they didn’t share classes on Mondays.

Potter didn’t talk to him, not even once. Draco thought that being Weasley’s birthday he would be a little kinder but the boy seemed to be even more distant with him. He was almost getting used to the awful feeling inside of his lungs, to the petals burning them constantly. He just wished he didn’t have to.

————————-

The next day, Draco was called by Severus to his office. He thought that maybe it was his weekly report on his mother... He couldn’t have been any more wrong.

“The Weasley boy is unconscious at the infirmary. Apparently last night he drank something that was poisoned. I’m giving you the first two periods to visit him. I’ll ask Miss Parkinson and Mister Zabini to take notes for you.”

Draco just stood there. Trying to process what Severus just told him.

“Is he alright...? I mean-“ He asked in a strangled voice.

“He is stable. He was with Potter and Professor Slughorn. Horace says that Harry gave him a bezoar right on time, honestly I’m shocked that Potter even knows what a bezoar is.”

Draco glared at his godfather.

“It’s first year level, Severus. He is not stupid.” The man didn’t even raise his eyes from what he was writing.

“Yes, Draco. I’ll be careful not to insult our savior in front of you.” Draco rolled his eyes and exited the office.

When he got to the infirmary, Potter and Granger were the only ones there, right next to Weasley’s bed. The boy had his eyes closed, if Draco forgot about the bad news, he could imagine that the redhead was just sleeping.

He got closer to look at him. Poor Weasley, on his birthday of all things.

“You can thank your one true love for this.” Potter hissed behind him. Granger reacted faster than Draco, the only thing he could do was coughed because of the boy’s tone.

“Don’t, Harry. This wasn’t Draco’s fault.” Then, the dark-haired boy went from not talking to him, to yell at him, really fast.

“I don’t even have doubts that he was the one who poisoned the Mead. It was a present for Dumbledore, you know?” His green eyes were livid, he was so angry with him. The petals were hurting the blond boy, and he couldn’t help but to cough again. That only seemed to make things worst. “Nott is trying to murder a person, Ron got poisoned in the process and what do you do?? You just cough those fucking flowers.”

The tears started to form on Draco’s eyes. The air was not getting in. Potter always thought that the Hanahaki was a poetic thing, something that spoke deeply about the blond boy’s love. Now, he was looking at him like he was disgusted of the petals that fell from his mouth.

He couldn’t speak. His lungs were burning, the familiar feeling of the daffodils cutting the walls that were keeping them in. He tried to breath but it was impossible.

And he didn’t want to be a burden to Potter. He knew that this was the most ridiculous disease ever, that nobody needed him coughing all over the place. He knew that the petals were ugly when they were covered with his blood. Draco was extremely aware of it all and he didn’t need the love of his life saying that he found him disgusting.

The tears were flowing from his eyes he didn’t know if they were from sadness or from the incredible pain he was experiencing. Draco turned around and coughed his way out of the hospital wing, trying to find somewhere where he could have the bloody coughing fit in peace.

He didn’t get too far, just the nearest bathroom, and soon enough Granger appeared. She casted some privacy spells around them, before sitting with him on the floor. Draco was surprise that she didn’t even care that this was the boys’ bathroom.

She waited for the blond boy to stop coughing; maybe between the coughs, she would vanish the petals that were lying on the floor.

“Are you better? Do you need your potions?” Draco shook his head, he hated those, they made him nauseous.

“I’m okay.” His voice came out rough. “You can go back to Ron, Granger.”

“Hermione.” The girl answered. “I call you Draco, you should call me by my name too.”

He understood why Weasley loved her. She was passionate about things and about the people she cared about... It was amazing that the blond boy was now one of those people.

“I’m sorry.” The girl looked at him with confused eyes. “For calling you that word. I’m sorry.” He said in a low voice.

Then, the girl smiled at him, kind eyes on her face.

“I don’t care anymore, Draco... But thank you for apologizing, I appreciate it.” He did a short nod and looked away.

They kept sitting there in silence for a while until the girl spoke again.

“I’m sure Ron already told you... But sometimes Harry just gets like this. I know it’s hard to see it now because you two are fighting, but really, you shouldn’t feel responsible for his own anger: that’s on him.” Draco looked at her curious, waiting for her to keep talking. “In third year Sirius sent him a Firebolt and we didn’t know that he was innocent yet. I was worried so I gave the broom to McGonagall... I think we didn’t talk for like two months or so. Maybe more, I don’t even want to remember.” Draco chuckled until he saw the girl’s face.

“You are not kidding...”

“No.” Draco snorted.

“What a prat, Merlin.” This time it was Hermione the one who laughed.

“Indeed.” She said as he looked at him. “So, believe us when we say that this will pass.”

Draco could only nod again.

————————

He was having an internal debate about if he should confront Theodore or not. He had been acting really weird this couple of weeks and Draco just couldn’t forget what Potter had said.

He checked if the rest of the boys were sleep before going to the brunette’s bed. Draco opened the curtains to let himself in and shut them quickly behind him.

“What do you think you are doing?” The boy hissed as he took his wand to cast a muffliato. Draco only glared at him.

“Was it you?”

“I don’t even know what you are talking about, Malfoy.” The blond boy grabbed his arm to get his attention.

“Don’t do that. I asked you a question, Theodore.”

The hazel eyed boy looked at him, intensely; eyes full of mixed emotions. He removed his arm from Draco’s grip and slowly began to roll up his sleeve.

And there it was. The dark mark clashed with his white skin. Theodore’s arm looked corrupted and Draco wanted to cry from the impotence he felt. He looked at the hazel-eyed again.

“Why would you do this to yourself?Don’t you see? The Dark Lord is going to loose in the long run, and you are going to live the life that our fathers lived. Your children will be called the same disgusting things that they called us.”

He knew that Theo would be get angry but he didn’t care. He needed to understand.

“Not everyone can just runaway like you or your precious cousin. It’s just my father and me, what was I supposed to do?” And Draco lost his cool at that.

“<cite> Maybe</cite> you could try not to poison my friend in a lousy attempt to kill the headmaster.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “Do you realize that killing someone is going to change you forever? You will remember it for the rest of your life. Its’s not a fucking game, Theo.”

And that just made him really angry.

“I sure fucking hope that Potter remembers for the rest of his life that he killed you, so yes. I’m fucking aware of what is going to happen, Draco.”

The tears started to form in his eyes.

“Don’t fucking blame him for this.”

“Why the fuck not? I hate him. He doesn’t even deserves half of what you have done for him.” The boy hissed.

“He doesn’t know. No one does.” Theo looked confused, he raised one eyebrow.

“Who do they think it is?” Draco looked away, uncomfortable. He didn’t know how the brunette would react.

“You.” He said in a low voice.

There was a moment of silence, the blond boy was too scare of looking at him. Then he heard Theodore’s laughter.

“My my, how the tables have turn. Let me guess, he is fucking pissed about it.” The hazel-eyed boy asked with a smirk. Draco blushed and rolled his eyes.

“We were talking about something that’s actually important, Theodore.”

And the boy just looked at him with pained eyes.

“There is little that I wouldn’t do for you.” The boy sighed and laid on his bed. “Sadly, this is one of them.”

Draco felt so fucking sad, he knew that Theodore would regret this. He felt the brunette grabbing his hand, guiding him to lie next to him. The blond boy followed and put his head on the pillow, looking at him.

“I’m sorry about Weasley. He seems decent, makes you laugh.” Draco nodded and smiled at him.

They stayed in silence for a while. Theodore rolled down his sleeve and then he said:

“Can we forget about this shit just for a while?... I missed this.”

And how could Draco say no to him? His hazel eyes looking right at him, begging for at least some peace in the middle of this martyrdom...

“Yes. Now shut up and let me sleep, Theo.

—————

The next morning, when Draco gather all his courage to go see Ron at the infirmary, he was already awake and beaming when the blond boy crossed the door. Potter and Granger were beside him, like the day before. The Gryffindor girl looked quite happy too... Potter on the other hand looked even angrier than the day before.

He walked towards them, smiling at Weasley.

“It’s good to see you awake. How are you feeling?” He asked.

“Oh, Who cares?? I mean I’m fine. But how are you feeling?” The redhead answered with an excited face. Draco frowned.

“Ron, shut the hell up.” Potter hissed at him, and the weasel rolled his eyes.

“What? I’m just asking.”

“I don’t think I’m following, weasel. You are the one at the hospital-“ But his friend interrupted him.

“But you spent the night with Nott!”

Draco blushed instantly, frowning at Weasley. Then, he turned to look at the rest of the golden trio; Potter was glaring at Ron and Hermione was looking at him, waiting for an answer. He stuttered a response.

“Ho-How the fuck do you know that?? And I- It wasn’t like that, I just was talking with him about something and fell sleep.”

“After he put Ron in the fucking hospital?” Potter hissed at him. He fought to keep the petals down.

“You have no proof of that, Oh Chosen One. Besides: it’s my life. I don’t know how the hell you spied on me, but back off. You can’t ignore my existence and then do this shit.” The green-eyed boy crossed his arms and lowered his gaze to the floor as he responded.

“Zabini told us. He was here before you got here.” The blond boy snorted.

He even had the audacity of lying to him. Did he think that Draco was stupid?

“You might try to lie to me a little better, Potty. Blaise had never batted an eyelash about me spending the night with Theodore. And he would most definitely not tell you about it, after the way you been treating me lately.”

The dark-haired boy was staring at him, dumbfounded. His eyes were a little angry, maybe he was pissed off about Draco catching him in his lies. Then he turned to look at the other two thirds of the Golden Trio.

“So? Is somebody going to tell me the truth?” He asked in annoyance. The three of them kept silent. “Fine, whatever.”

And he left the infirmary, fucking livid.

#drarry #fanfic #fanfiction #prongsfoot

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whitehotharlots · 5 years

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Castle of Delusion: The theft of the 2020 caucus and the liberal worship of failure

I attended Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2000, 2004, 2008, and then 2020. I’ll spare you the narrative details, but immediately after Monday’s caucus I remarked about how smoothly the new system ran. The cumbersome head count voting process of past years was replaced with an easily grasped card system that allowed supporters of viable candidates to leave after casting their fist vote (previously, they’d have to stay through re-alignment and a second head count, a process that took us about 3 hours in 2008). So cards were easier, clearer, and came with the added bonus of a paper trail. Things seemed great.

In my precinct, Sanders tied delegate-wise with Pete and Biden. This precinct was, even by Iowa’s august standards, incredibly old and incredibly white, so a tie for Bernie boded very well. Everyone was convivial. Aside from the Yang supporters being unable to perform basic arithmetic after the initial vote, there were no delays or hitches. Sure, no one knew how the reporting app was going to work—information regarding as much had never materialized, in spite of repeated promises that they’d be on top of it—but it was figured that the county chair would simply report the votes via telephone, as had been the process as far back as everyone could remember.

Post-caucus, my stomach was shot and I was as emotionally drained as I’d ever been, so I got back to my parent’s house and commenced playing video games—staying away from social media and cable news until I could be certain the results had been called. Come midnight, I saw what everyone else saw: something bad had happened, something no one could quite describe, and so they weren’t going to release votes that night. Rachel Maddow’s weird gross skeleton face was beaming with relief: this is great news for the party, she said, because it was great news for Michael Bloomberg. I commenced to get blackout drunk and post threats on social media.

At first, I went against my personal experience (and intuition, and common sense) and blamed the failure on run-of-the-mill incompetence. We are now, however, more than 40 hours past the point when most votes were cast, and 24 hours past the Polk County chair confirming that his results—in one of Iowa’s largest districts, where Sanders was projected to dominate—had been submitted. The state party is simply refusing to count votes. They are rigging their own election, disenfranchising their own voters.

I’m not going to speculate on the strategic thinking of the mental defectives who have risen to leadership positions with state and national Democratic parties. Maybe they’ll never count the Polk County votes. Maybe they’ll only do so weeks from now, so as to deny Sanders any momentum and allow that rat-faced piece of shit Mayor Pete to continue to falsely claim victory. Maybe this is meant to protect the Biden campaign from total collapse. Maybe it’s meant to boost Bloomberg. Who knows, who cares. The point is, these people are cheating in plain sight. They are doing so brazenly. They are literally refusing to count the votes of members of their own party so as to squelch an election result they find unfavorable.

Partisan corruption is nothing new, and certainly not exclusive to the contemporary Democratic party. What’s striking about this, however, is the nakedness of both its machinations and the disdain the party is showing to its own voters. Yes, Mayor Daley most likely destroyed Nixon votes to shore up Illinois for Kennedy. Yes, the Bush campaign ginned up astroturf protests to prevent a full recount in Florida. Yes, the AP called the entire primary for Hillary the day before California was set to vote, so as to depress turn out. All of these acts were disgusting, the sort of raw cynicism that destroys the few remaining vestiges of legitimacy of this awful and broken country of ours. But all of these were done to seize power. They all contained some element of deniability, some sense of awareness of the need to control public perception, to not so obviously telegraph the actors’ hatred toward democracy.

The theft of the 2020 Iowa Caucus is, in short, an act so proudly and openly corrupt that it has no fair parallel in modern American history. No reasonable observer can conclude anything other than that the Democratic party is run by some of the stupidest and most corrupt people alive. And the fact that the party does not seem to realize this is a profound indictment of how deeply our few remaining liberal institutions are in the grip of a sort of suicidal delusion, a form of illiberal madness that worships its own destruction.

The only reasonable question is how? How did the Democratic party and its media allies come to be dominated by idiots who derive psychological gratification from failure, people whose hubris and self-certainty is so strong they think everyone else is dumb enough to not see that they’re cheating in plain sight?

Like many other of the most malignant aspects of contemporary liberalism, this suicidal delusion was born in the darkest corners of academe. The thrust of the last few decades of cultural studies has been to demand that people reject understandings of the world that are traditional, intuitive, and commonsensical—even when these understandings aren’t materially malignant, and especially when they are backed up through empirical measurements.

Sometimes this has led to what most decent people would consider progress. It’s good, for example, that we’ve destigmatized homosexuality. But many more assertions—particularly those that have been argued for the most viciously throughout the last decade or so—are either objectively untrue or so far divorced from the lived reality of most people that very few of us actually believe them. Most people don’t believe that there exist no biological differences between men and women, for example, or that fatness doesn’t come with health consequences and/or isn’t correlated with diet and exercise. We don’t honestly believe that whiteness is a metaphysical force that is the true cause of all the world’s problems, nor that an implicit bias test is a fair measurement of anything, nor that person’s worth is more a matter of their collective identity markers than of their beliefs and actions. These assertions are all incredibly fringe, despicable to anyone who cares about empirical reality or possesses a moral compass that’s not founded entirely in self-serving relativism.

There exists a small caste of delusionists, however, who have forged careers from making these and other assertions. They are very prominent within their own, closed circles, and they receive no material pushback for their beliefs, even from the vast majority of people who have not been initiated into their cult. This is due to the solipsistic validation mechanisms of contemporary cultural studies, a milieu which suggests, simply, that its purveyors are right, everyone who doesn’t defer to them is some variety of fascist, and the fact that disagreement exists is fundamental proof of the righteousness of their claims. To members of this caste, delusion isn’t merely a virtue; it’s a currency. The more they anger and confuse outsiders, the more correct and admirable they become, and the higher their position of prominence within liberal institutions.

This is the lesson of the “Sokal Squared” hoax, in which a team of authors managed to get several nonsense articles past peer reviewers at cultural studies journals, making arguments which ranged from incredibly offensive to beyond the realm of plausibility. Or, if you’ve fallen for the woke apologia and believe these works to be unworthy of consideration, let’s look at a more earnest piece, in which an author argues that drone bombing “queers” warfare. It’s reductive to merely call these arguments stupid. They are delusional. They are absurd and offensive in manner that’s all but guaranteed to confuse and anger a large majority of people. They go against basic common sense and decency and can in most cases be disproven empirically—and that’s exactly why they got through peer review so easily. The value here isn’t in attempting to adjudicate reality or even morality; it’s instead found in giving its purveyors a chance to revel in one another’s unboundedness to reality. Radicalism can no longer be differentiated from simple stupidity. The point is to announce one’s membership in the delusional caste. It’s good to be insane. It’s good to be revolting. It’s good to fail, because then you know you’re good.

The caste’s members eventually reach a plane of delusion so all-encompassing that they begin to disdain those of us who still possess a desire to engage with the world in honest or rational terms. These people—the hoard, the uninitiated, the rubes—they only exist to confirm the righteousness of the insiders. What they think they see therefore doesn’t matter. Their opinions don’t matter. Their votes, especially, do not matter. We’ll tell them what to think. We’ll tell them how the world exists. And if they disagree, well, that’s just evidence of how wrong they are...

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timeless-hollywood-classics · 4 years

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Mae West (born Mary Jane West; August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, singer, playwright, screenwriter, comedian and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades. She was known for her lighthearted, bawdy double entendres and breezy sexual independence, and often used a husky contralto voice. She was active in vaudeville and on stage in New York City before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the film industry.

West was one of the most controversial movie stars of her day; she encountered many problems, especially censorship. She once quipped, "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it." She bucked the system by making comedy out of conventional mores, and the Depression-era audience admired her for it. When her film career ended, she wrote books and plays, and continued to perform in Las Vegas and the United Kingdom, on radio and television, and recorded rock 'n roll albums. In 1999, the American Film Institute posthumously voted West the 15th greatest female screen legend of classic American cinema.

Mary Jane West was born on August 17, 1893, in Brooklyn (either Greenpoint or Bushwick, before New York City was consolidated in 1898). She was delivered at home by an aunt who was a midwife. She was the eldest surviving child of John Patrick West and Mathilde "Tillie" (later Matilda) Delker (originally Doelger; later Americanized to "Delker" or "Dilker"). Tillie and her five siblings emigrated with their parents, Jakob (1835–1902) and Christiana (1838–1901; née Brüning) Doelger from Bavaria in 1886. West's parents married on January 18, 1889, in Brooklyn, to the pleasure of the groom's parents and the displeasure of the bride's parents and raised their children as Protestants, although John West was of mixed Catholic–Protestant descent.

West's father was a prizefighter known as "Battlin' Jack West" who later worked as a "special policeman" and later had his own private investigations agency. Her mother was a former corset and fashion model. Her paternal grandmother, Mary Jane (née Copley), for whom she was named, was of Irish Catholic descent and West's paternal grandfather, John Edwin West, was of English–Scots descent and a ship's rigger.

Her eldest sibling, Katie, died in infancy. Her other siblings were Mildred Katherine West, later known as Beverly (December 8, 1898 – March 12, 1982), and John Edwin West II (sometimes inaccurately called "John Edwin West, Jr."; February 11, 1900 – October 12, 1964). During her childhood, West's family moved to various parts of Woodhaven, as well as the Williamsburg and Greenpoint neighborhoods of Brooklyn. In Woodhaven, at Neir's Social Hall (which opened in 1829 and is still extant), West supposedly first performed professionally.

West was five when she first entertained a crowd at a church social, and she started appearing in amateur shows at the age of seven. She often won prizes at local talent contests. She began performing professionally in vaudeville in the Hal Clarendon Stock Company in 1907 at the age of 14. West first performed under the stage name "Baby Mae", and tried various personas, including a male impersonator.

She used the alias "Jane Mast" early in her career. Her trademark walk was said to have been inspired or influenced by female impersonators Bert Savoy and Julian Eltinge, who were famous during the Pansy Craze. Her first appearance in a Broadway show was in a 1911 revue A La Broadway put on by her former dancing teacher, Ned Wayburn. The show folded after eight performances, but at age 18, West was singled out and discovered by The New York Times. The Times reviewer wrote that a "girl named Mae West, hitherto unknown, pleased by her grotesquerie and snappy way of singing and dancing". West next appeared in a show called Vera Violetta, whose cast featured Al Jolson. In 1912, she appeared in the opening performance of A Winsome Widow as a "baby vamp" named La Petite Daffy.

She was encouraged as a performer by her mother, who, according to West, always thought that anything Mae did was fantastic. Other family members were less encouraging, including an aunt and her paternal grandmother. They are all reported as having disapproved of her career and her choices. In 1918, after exiting several high-profile revues, West finally got her break in the Shubert Brothers revue Sometime, opposite Ed Wynn. Her character Mayme danced the shimmy and her photograph appeared on an edition of the sheet music for the popular number "Ev'rybody Shimmies Now".

Eventually, she began writing her own risqué plays using the pen name Jane Mast. Her first starring role on Broadway was in a 1926 play she entitled Sex, which she wrote, produced, and directed. Although conservative critics panned the show, ticket sales were strong. The production did not go over well with city officials, who had received complaints from some religious groups, and the theater was raided, with West arrested along with the cast. She was taken to the Jefferson Market Court House, (now Jefferson Market Library), where she was prosecuted on morals charges, and on April 19, 1927, was sentenced to 10 days for "corrupting the morals of youth". Though West could have paid a fine and been let off, she chose the jail sentence for the publicity it would garner. While incarcerated on Welfare Island (now known as Roosevelt Island), she dined with the warden and his wife; she told reporters that she had worn her silk panties while serving time, in lieu of the "burlap" the other girls had to wear. West got great mileage from this jail stint. She served eight days with two days off for "good behavior". Media attention surrounding the incident enhanced her career, by crowning her the darling "bad girl" who "had climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong".

Her next play, The Drag, dealt with homosexuality, and was what West called one of her "comedy-dramas of life". After a series of try-outs in Connecticut and New Jersey, West announced she would open the play in New York. However, The Drag never opened on Broadway due to efforts by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to ban any attempt by West to stage it. West explained, "The city fathers begged me not to bring the show to New York because they were not equipped to handle the commotion it would cause." West was an early supporter of the women's liberation movement, but said she was not a "burn your bra" type feminist. Since the 1920s, she was also an early supporter of gay rights, and publicly declared against police brutality that gay men experienced. She adopted a then "modern" psychological explanation that gay men were women's souls in men's bodies, and hitting a gay man was akin to hitting a woman. In her 1959 autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It, West strongly objected to hypocrisy while, for surprising and unexplained reasons, also disparaging homosexuality: "In many ways homosexuality is a danger to the entire social system of Western civilization. Certainly a nation should be made aware of its presence — without moral mottoes — and its effects on children recruited to it in their innocence. I had no objection to it as a cult of jaded inverts... involved only with themselves. It was its secret, anti-social aspects I wanted to bring into the sun. As a private pressure group it could, and has, infected whole nations." This perspective, never elaborated upon by Mae West in other books or interviews seems inconsistent with the Mae West persona. In her 1975 book Sex, Health, and ESP, Mae West writes on page 43, "I believe that the world owes male and female homosexuals more understanding than we've given them. Live and let live is my philosophy on the subject, and I believe everybody has the right to do his or her own thing or somebody else's -- as long as they do it all in private!"

West continued to write plays, including The Wicked Age, Pleasure Man and The Constant Sinner. Her productions aroused controversy, which ensured that she stayed in the news, which also often resulted in packed houses at her performances. Her 1928 play, Diamond Lil, about a racy, easygoing, and ultimately very smart lady of the 1890s, became a Broadway hit and cemented West's image in the public's eye. This show had an enduring popularity and West successfully revived it many times throughout the course of her career. With Diamond Lil being a hit show, Hollywood naturally came courting.

In 1932, West was offered a contract by Paramount Pictures despite being close to 40. This was an unusually late age to begin a film career, especially for women, but she was not playing an ingénue. She nonetheless managed to keep her age ambiguous for some time. She made her film debut in Night After Night (1932) starring George Raft, who suggested West for the role. At first she did not like her small role in Night After Night, but was appeased when she was allowed to rewrite her scenes.[45] In West's first scene, a hat-check girl exclaims, "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds", and West replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie." Reflecting on the overall result of her rewritten scenes, Raft is said to have remarked, "She stole everything but the cameras."

She brought her Diamond Lil character, now renamed "Lady Lou", to the screen in She Done Him Wrong (1933). The film was one of Cary Grant's first major roles, which boosted his career. West claimed she spotted Grant at the studio and insisted that he be cast as the male lead. She claimed to have told a Paramount director, "If he can talk, I'll take him!". The film was a box office hit and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. The success of the film saved Paramount from bankruptcy, grossing over $2 million, the equivalent of $140 million today. Paramount recognizes that debt of gratitude today, with a building on the lot named after West.

Her next release, I'm No Angel (1933), teamed her with Grant again. I'm No Angel was also a box office hit and was the most successful of her entire film career. In the months that followed the release of this film, reference to West could be found almost anywhere, from the song lyrics of Cole Porter, to a Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural of San Francisco's newly built Coit Tower, to She Done Him Right, a Betty Boop cartoon, to "My Dress Hangs There", a painting by Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Kahlo's husband, Diego Rivera, paid his own tribute: "West is the most wonderful machine for living I have ever known – unfortunately on the screen only." To F. Scott Fitzgerald, West was especially unique: "The only Hollywood actress with both an ironic edge and a comic spark." As Variety put it, "Mae West's films have made her the biggest conversation-provoker, free-space grabber, and all-around box office bet in the country. She's as hot an issue as Hitler."

By 1933, West was one of the largest box office draws in the United States and, by 1935, West was also the highest paid woman and the second-highest paid person in the United States (after William Randolph Hearst). Hearst invited West to San Simeon, California. "I could'a married him", West explained, "but I got no time for parties. I don't like those big crowds." On July 1, 1934, the censorship of the film Production Code began to be seriously and meticulously enforced, and West's scripts were heavily edited. She would intentionally place extremely risqué lines in her scripts, knowing they would be cut by the censors. She hoped they would then not object as much to her other less suggestive lines. Her next film was Belle of the Nineties (1934). The original title, It Ain't No Sin, was changed due to the censors' objections. Despite Paramount's early objections regarding costs, West insisted the studio to hire Duke Ellington and his orchestra to accompany her in the film's musical numbers. Their collaboration was a success; the classic "My Old Flame" (recorded by Duke Ellington) was introduced in this film. Her next film, Goin' to Town (1935), received mixed reviews, as censorship continued to take its toll in eroding West's best lines.

Her following effort, Klondike Annie (1936) dealt, as best it could given the heavy censorship, with religion and hypocrisy. Some critics called the film her magnum opus, but not everyone felt the same way. Press baron and film mogul William Randolph Hearst, ostensibly offended by an off-handed remark West made about his mistress, Marion Davies, sent a private memo to all his editors stating, "That Mae West picture Klondike Annie is a filthy picture... We should have editorials roasting that picture, Mae West, and Paramount... DO NOT ACCEPT ANY ADVERTISING OF THIS PICTURE." At one point, Hearst asked aloud, "Isn't it time Congress did something about the Mae West menace?" Paramount executives felt they had to tone down the West characterization or face further recrimination. This may be surprising by today's standards, as West's films contained no nudity, no profanity, and very little violence. Though raised in an era when women held second-place roles in society, West portrayed confident women who were not afraid to use their sexual wiles to get what they wanted. "I was the first liberated woman, you know. No guy was going to get the best of me. That's what I wrote all my scripts about."

Around the same time, West played opposite Randolph Scott in Go West, Young Man (1936). In this film, she adapted Lawrence Riley's Broadway hit Personal Appearance into a screenplay. Directed by Henry Hathaway, Go West, Young Man is considered one of West's weaker films of the era, due to the censor's cuts.

West next starred in Every Day's a Holiday (1937) for Paramount before their association came to an end. Again, due to censor cuts, the film performed below its goal. Censorship had made West's sexually suggestive brand of humor impossible for the studios to distribute. West, along with other stellar performers, was put on a list of actors called "Box Office Poison" by Harry Brandt on behalf of the Independent Theatre Owners Association. Others on the list were Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire, Dolores del Río, Katharine Hepburn and Kay Francis. The attack was published as a paid advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter, and was taken seriously by the fearful studio executives. The association argued that these stars' high salaries and extreme public popularity did not affect their ticket sales, thus hurt the exhibitors. This did not stop producer David O. Selznick, who next offered West the role of the sage madam, Belle Watling, the only woman ever to truly understand Rhett Butler, in Gone with the Wind, after Tallulah Bankhead turned him down. West also turned down the part, claiming that as it was, it was too small for an established star, and that she would need to rewrite her lines to suit her own persona. The role eventually went to Ona Munson.

In 1939, Universal Studios approached West to star in a film opposite W. C. Fields. The studio was eager to duplicate the success of Destry Rides Again starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart, with a comic vehicle starring West and Fields. Having left Paramount 18 months earlier and looking for a new film, West accepted the role of Flower Belle Lee in the film My Little Chickadee (1940). Despite the stars' intense mutual dislike, Fields's very real drinking problems and fights over the screenplay, My Little Chickadee was a box office hit, outgrossing Fields's previous film, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939) and the later The Bank Dick (1940). Despite this, religious leaders condemned West as a negative role model, taking offense at lines such as "Between two evils, I like to pick the one I haven't tried before" and "Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"

West's next film was Columbia's The Heat's On (1943). She initially did not want to do the film, but after actor, director and friend Gregory Ratoff (producer Max Fabian in All About Eve) pleaded with her and claimed he would go bankrupt if she could not help, West relented as a personal favor. Censors by now, though, had curtailed the sexual burlesque of the West characterization. The studio had orders to raise the neck lines and clean up the double entendres. This was the only film for which West was virtually not allowed to write her own dialogue and, as a result, the film suffered.

Perhaps the most critical challenge facing West in her career was censorship of her dialogue. As on Broadway a decade before, by the mid-1930s, her risqué and ribald dialogue could no longer be allowed to pass. The Heat's On opened to poor reviews and weak performance at the box office. West was so distraught after the experience and by her years of struggling with the strict Hays censorship office, that she would not attempt another film role for the next quarter-century. Instead, West pursued a successful and record-breaking career in top nightclubs, Las Vegas, nationally in theater and on Broadway, where she was allowed, even welcomed, to be herself.

After appearing in The Heat's On in 1943, West returned to a very active career on stage and in swank clubs. Among her popular new stage performances was the title role in Catherine Was Great (1944) on Broadway, in which she penned a spoof on the story of Catherine the Great of Russia, surrounding herself with an "imperial guard" of tall, muscular young actors. The play was produced by theater and film impresario Mike Todd (Around The World in 80 Days) and ran for 191 performances and then went on tour.

When Mae West revived her 1928 play Diamond Lil, bringing it back to Broadway in 1949, The New York Times labeled her an "American Institution – as beloved and indestructible as Donald Duck. Like Chinatown, and Grant's Tomb, Mae West should be seen at least once." In the 1950s, West starred in her own Las Vegas stage show at the newly opened Sahara Hotel, singing while surrounded by bodybuilders. The show stood Las Vegas on its head. "Men come to see me, but I also give the women something to see: wall to wall men!" West explained. Jayne Mansfield met and later married one of West's muscle men, a former Mr. Universe, Mickey Hargitay.

When casting about for the role of Norma Desmond for the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder offered West the role. Still smarting from the censorship debacle of The Heat's On, and the constraints placed on her characterization, she declined. The theme of the Wilder film, she noted, was pure pathos, while her brand of comedy was always "about uplifting the audience". Mae West had a unique comic character that was timeless, in the same way Charlie Chaplin did. After Mary Pickford also declined the role, Gloria Swanson was cast.

In subsequent years, West was offered the role of Vera Simpson, opposite Marlon Brando, in the 1957 film adaptation of Pal Joey, which she turned down, with the role going to Rita Hayworth. In 1964, West was offered a leading role in Roustabout, starring Elvis Presley. She turned the role down, and Barbara Stanwyck was cast in her place. West was also approached for roles in Frederico Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits and Satyricon, but rejected both offers.

In 1958, West appeared at the live televised Academy Awards and performed the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Rock Hudson, which brought a standing ovation. In 1959, she released an autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It, which became a best seller and was reprinted with a new chapter in 1970. West guest-starred on television, including The Dean Martin Show in 1959 and The Red Skelton Show in 1960, to promote her autobiography, and a lengthy interview on Person to Person with Charles Collingwood, which was censored by CBS in 1959, and never aired. CBS executives felt members of the television audience were not ready to see a nude marble statue of West, which rested on her piano. In 1964, she made a guest appearance on the sitcom Mister Ed. Much later, in 1976, she was interviewed by Dick Cavett and sang two songs on his "Back Lot U.S.A." special on CBS.

West's recording career started in the early 1930s with releases of her film songs on shellac 78 rpm records. Most of her film songs were released as 78s, as well as sheet music. In 1955, she recorded her first album, The Fabulous Mae West. In 1965, she recorded two songs, "Am I Too Young" and "He's Good For Me", for a 45 rpm record released by Plaza Records. She recorded several tongue-in-cheek songs, including "Santa, Come Up to See Me", on the album Wild Christmas, which was released in 1966 and reissued as Mae in December in 1980. Demonstrating her willingness to keep in touch with the contemporary scene, in 1966 she recorded Way Out West, the first of her two rock-and-roll albums. The second, released in 1972 on MGM Records and titled Great Balls of Fire, covered songs by The Doors, among others, and had songs written for West by English songwriter-producer Ian Whitcomb.

After a 27-year absence from motion pictures, West appeared as Leticia Van Allen in Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1970) with Raquel Welch, Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett, and Tom Selleck in a small part. The movie was intended to be deliberately campy sex change comedy, but had serious production problems, resulting in a botched film that was both a box-office and critical failure. Author Vidal, at great odds with inexperienced and self-styled "art film" director Michael Sarne, later called the film "an awful joke". Though Mae West was given star billing to attract ticket buyers, her scenes were truncated by the inexperienced film editor, and her songs were filmed as though they were merely side acts. Mae West's counterculture appeal (she was dubbed "the queen of camp"), included the young and hip, and by 1971, the student body of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) voted Mae West "Woman of the Century" in honor of her relevance as a pioneering advocate of sexual frankness and courageous crusader against censorship.

In 1975, West released her book Sex, Health, and ESP (William Allen & Sons, publisher), and Pleasure Man (Dell publishers) based on her 1928 play of the same name. Her autobiography, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It, was also updated and republished in the 1970s.

Mae West was a shrewd investor, produced her own stage acts, and invested her money in large tracts of land in Van Nuys, a thriving suburb of Los Angeles. With her considerable fortune, she could afford to do as she liked. In 1976, she appeared on Back Lot U.S.A. on CBS, where she was interviewed by Dick Cavett and sang "Frankie and Johnny" along with "After You've Gone." That same year, she began work on her final film, Sextette (1978). Adapted from a 1959 script written by West, the film's daily revisions and production disagreements hampered production from the beginning. Due to the near-endless last-minute script changes and tiring production schedule, West agreed to have her lines signaled to her through a speaker concealed in her hair piece. Despite the daily problems, West was, according to Sextette director Ken Hughes, determined to see the film through. At 84, her now-failing eyesight made navigating around the set difficult, but she made it through the filming, a tribute to her self-confidence, remarkable endurance, and stature as a self-created star 67 years after her Broadway debut in 1911 at the age of 18. Time magazine wrote an article on the indomitable star entitled "At 84, Mae West Is Still Mae West".

Upon its release, Sextette was not a critical or commercial success, but has a diverse cast. The cast included some of West's first co-stars such as George Raft (Night After Night, 1932), silver screen stars such as Walter Pidgeon and Tony Curtis, and more contemporary pop stars such as The Beatles' Ringo Starr and Alice Cooper, and television favorites such as Dom DeLuise and gossip queen Rona Barrett. It also included cameos of some of her musclemen from her 1950s Las Vegas show, such as the still remarkably fit Reg Lewis. Sextette also reunited Mae West with Edith Head, her costume designer from 1933 in She Done Him Wrong.

West was married on April 11, 1911 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Frank Szatkus (1892–1966), whose stage name was Frank Wallace, a fellow vaudevillian whom she met in 1909. She was 17. She kept the marriage a secret, but a filing clerk discovered the marriage certificate in 1935 and alerted the press. The clerk also uncovered an affidavit in which she had declared herself married, made during the Sex trial in 1927.

In August 1913, she met Guido Deiro (1886–1950), an Italian-born vaudeville headliner and star of the piano-accordion. Her affair, and possible 1914 marriage to him, as alleged by Diero's son Guido Roberto Deiro in his 2019 book Mae West and The Count, went "very deep, hittin' on all the emotions". West later said, "Marriage is a great institution. I'm not ready for an institution yet."

In 1916, when she was a vaudeville actress, West had a relationship with James Timony (1884–1954), an attorney nine years her senior. Timony was also her manager. By the time that she was an established movie actress in the mid-1930s, they were no longer a couple. West and Timony remained extremely close, living in the same building, working together, and providing support for each other until Timony's death in 1954.

West remained close to her family throughout her life and was devastated by her mother's death in 1930. In 1930, she moved to Hollywood and into the penthouse at The Ravenswood apartment building where she lived until her death in 1980. Her sister, brother, and father followed her to Hollywood where she provided them with nearby homes, jobs, and sometimes financial support. Among her boyfriends was boxing champion William Jones, nicknamed Gorilla Jones (1906–1982). The management at her Ravenswood apartment building barred the African American boxer from entering the premises; West solved the problem by buying the building and lifting the ban.

She became romantically involved at age 61 with Chester Rybinski (1923–1999), one of the muscle men in her Las Vegas stage show – a wrestler, former Mr. California, and former merchant sailor. He was 30 years younger than she, and later changed his name to Paul Novak. He moved in with her, and their romance continued until her death in 1980 at age 87. Novak once commented, "I believe I was put on this Earth to take care of Mae West." West was a Presbyterian.

In August 1980, West tripped while getting out of bed. After the fall she was unable to speak and was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, where tests revealed that she had suffered a stroke. She died on November 22, 1980, at the age of 87.

A private service was held at the church in Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, on November 25, 1980; (the church is a replica of Boston's Old North Church.) Bishop Andre Penachio, a friend, officiated at the entombment in the family mausoleum at Cypress Hills Abbey, Brooklyn, purchased in 1930 when her mother died. Her father and brother were also entombed there before her, and her younger sister, Beverly, was laid to rest in the last of the five crypts less than 18 months after West's death.

For her contribution to the film industry, Mae West has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street in Hollywood. For her contributions as a stage actor in the theater world, she has been inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Mae West among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

#mae west #golden age of hollywood #classic hollywood #classic cinema

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little-purple-thundercloud · 4 years

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A bit about L’yhta Mahre

PLACE IN SOCIETY

✖ FINANCIAL – wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

L’yhta is quite well-off thanks to her inheritance from her mentors, the sale of items she finds during adventures, and the rewards from levequests. That said, she has essentially no control over her finances, which are handled by the Tower’s majordomo, Volkido, nor does she particularly desire grand luxury. As such, she doesn’t typically have access to, nor employs, these assets, and instead lives a lifestyle of moderate means.

✖ MEDICAL – fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged / deceased

L’yhta naturally has a very fast metabolism, and she’s also a professional adventurer; as such, she gets a lot of exercise that keeps her quite fit. She also tends to run around a lot, even when she could just as easily walk.

✖ CLASS OR CASTE – upper / lower / middle / working / unsure

“I’m used to being feared and. Having people keep away from me.” Powerful practicing thaumaturges can parley their status into considerable class if they want to do; she has no interest in such things (and indeed tends to find class structures abhorrent due to what they’ve done to people she cares about), so in practice, she ends up being an anomaly that those who care about social class aren’t quite sure what to do about.

✖ EDUCATION – qualified / unqualified / studying

An arguably abusive training regimen, followed by the fact that magic is effectively her entire life, has given this woman broad-spanning knowledge across a variety of topics.

FAMILY

✖ MARITAL STATUS – married, happily / married, unhappily / engaged / partnered / divorced / widow or widower / separated / single / it’s complicated

"My personal life is a, what do they call it? A trash fire, you know?” L’yhta’s current romantic situation is as a member of a poly pod, though she isn’t romantically involved with everyone in it. However, she also holds a flame for the auri girlfriend she rarely sees and the miqo’te bard that she’s not entirely sure how she feels about (and never has been). She was also briefly married, but that relationship fell apart due to disputes over her polyamorous inclinations.

✖ CHILDREN – has children / no children / wants children / adopted children

L’yhta doesn’t currently want children. Beyond the fact that she feels awkward around them, she feels children are incompatible with the life of an adventurer. She is also increasingly of the opinion that she’s incapable of having children at all, due to an ill-advised experiment in magic years ago.

✖ FAMILY – close with sibling / not close with siblings / has no siblings / siblings are deceased / it’s complicated

As she came from a tribal background, she has several siblings -- five sisters and a brother. Her brother is currently the nunh of that tribe; her sisters view her with anything from naked contempt for abandoning the tribe to benign distaste for "not being useful.” That her skill in magic obviates the need to be skilled at hunting with a bow or chopping down trees is lost on them, or perhaps they’re just jealous.

✖ AFFILIATION – orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by both parents / other

L’yhta was raised within a tribe, and she looked up her father with considerable hero worship. Unfortunately, he died shortly after the Calamity (at the hands of her older brother, no less), and her mother perished a few years later. She’s collected father figures since then -- most notably her mentor in magic, Robert Fletcher, and the Voice of the Tower, Eamont Desormaux.

TRAITS & TENDENCIES

✖ disorganized / organised / in between

Her lab area and notes, and indeed anything involving magic, are meticulously organized. As for the rest of her world -- well, there’s a reason Volkido has a maid clean her apartment daily, and as of yet her partners have yet to complain too vociferously about smallclothes and plates lying in random places around the house.

✖ close-minded / open-minded / in between

L’yhta can be extremely close-minded about certain things (religious zealotry, nobility, class structures, and harming others), but outside of those areas, she’s quite open-minded and accepting of other approaches and ways of life.

✖ cautious / reckless / in between

If there’s a ruin to be scaled or a cave to be plumbed, she’ll already be up or down it before anyone can voice opposition. She does show caution in some instances, in which case you know she’s pretty scared.

✖ patient / impatient / in between

The longer she has to wait for people to plan a course of action, the more fidgety she gets. This is a mage who thrives on action and doesn’t want to wait! She can be patient when it comes to things that require patience (such as alchemy), but she’ll be jumping to something else to stay occupied while the time passes.

✖ outspoken / reserved / in between

While she’s gotten better at holding her tongue over the years, L’yhta is a Big, Open Personality who largely isn’t afraid to speak her mind (unless she’s afraid it’ll wreck one of her relationships).

✖ leader / follower / in between

As much as she proclaims that she’s a terrible leader and she should never be followed, her knowledge combined with her personality put her at the forefront of most situations, and she’s always ready to take charge.

✖ sympathetic / unsympathetic / in between

“Ever since I have known you, you have never lived for yourself.” One could say that L’yhta suffers the Curse of Empathy -- she cares deeply about everyone’s feelings, even that of the world as a whole, and will readily shove any issues she has aside to take care of others.

✖ optimistic / pessimistic / in between

L’yhta is optimistic about the world as a whole; she truly believes that Good will ultimately triumph over Evil, that there will always be Lights in the Darkness, and that Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love will win the day. That said, she’s deeply pessimistic about herself and her life, largely feeling like she’s a walking disaster that ruins everything she’s near and that she’s never strong enough, never smart enough, never fast enough, and never wise enough to be a positive in others’ lives.

✖ hardworking / lazy / in between

Throwing herself into her work is one of L’yhta’s primary coping mechanisms for stress and her constant depression and inferiority complex, but even outside of that, she’s driven to improve the state of the Art.

✖ cultured / uncultured / in between

"Oh! And I’m her uncultured ijin girlfriend, you know? It’s great to meet you!” L’yhta has never found much value in “high culture.” This is not the miqo’te to ask about which spoon to use or how best to greet a Hingan noble.

✖ loyal / disloyal / in between

When she feels she has let someone down, L’yhta beats herself up about it. She’s tremendously loyal to everyone she knows, or at least tries to be; when she fails to live up to that ideal in any way, she tends to spiral into self-hatred.

✖ faithful / unfaithful / in between

Romantically, L’yhta has been unfaithful before, and it’s a sore spot that she flagellates herself now and then. She takes great pains now to be exceedingly careful about anything that might even be perceived as being unfaithful, to the extent that her partners sometimes think she’s too cautious.

Religiously, she has a deep devotion to her conception of the Mothercrystal, which to her represents the source of the Lifestream and all aether in the world. For her, protecting the children of the Crystal is a duty -- one she takes on gladly.

SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION

✖ SEXUALITY – heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual / omnisexual / demisexual

L’yhta identifies as bisexual, but in reality, she’s closer to polysexual.

✖ SEX – sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable

✖ ROMANCE – romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable

✖ SEXUALLY – sexually adventurous / sex experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious / uninterested

L’yhta really enjoys sex, yes, but she also heavily compartmentalizes. As such, if her mind isn’t on fooling around, she typically will appear entirely uninterested and not even pick up on innuendo. More than once she’s been talking about magic theory and entirely ignoring the obvious Fuck Me Eyes she’s getting.

ABILITIES

✖ COMBAT SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

While she’s not especially dangerous in melee, L’yhta is an extremely talented and experienced combat mage and adventurer with a keen eye for small group tactics.

✖ LITERACY SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

L’yhta will be the first to say that she’s not especially talented at linguistics, despite being conversationally capable in Hingan, Doman, Belah’dian, and Mhachi; being able to read Nymian and Amdaporian; and being marginally skilled at translating Allagan. It’s probably more fair to say that outside of learning languages well enough to be able to use them for magic or singing, her linguistic skills are iffy at best, and that’s mostly because she’s easily distracted from exercising them.

✖ ARTISTIC SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

L’yhta can sing and dance (ballet and ballroom) with reasonable amateur competency. She can also draw circles and other arcane geometries freehand, though she doesn’t consider this an artistic skill so much as a magickal one that every arcanist or esoterica researcher must be able to do.

✖ TECHNICAL SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

Within the area of magic, L’yhta has incredibly advanced technical skills that enable her to create new spells and cheat reality (and the Reaper). Outside of that area, her skills are laughably poor. She can barely turn on magitek devices, can only cook a few simple dishes, and doesn’t really understand the principles of teknology.

Tagged by: @mercermachines, thank you! :)

Tagging: Anyone who wants to do it! I’m late to this particular party, I know.

#ooc #meme #character bio

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academicatheism · 5 years

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Bad Reasoning on Display

logan-smarter-than-you-sanders:

Okay listen, it’s really not, I don’t know what Christains you are talking to, but clearly not very many. This is a HEAVILY overgeneralized my dude, majority of Christians, their end game is to love people, while there are plenty of them who take the Bible and God’s word and use it in a twisted and corrupt way, but those who don’t, God calls us to love thy neighbor as thy self, whereas, it is human greed and selfishness that wants the control. Don’t try and shove that solely on christains.

Every human ever created has sinned at least once. It is inevitable, we are flawed creatures. But to say that Christians only want control and power, that is an overstatement and honestly kind of hypocritical. You cannot look someone in the eyes and tell them honestly you have never, not once in your life, taken control or wanted to take control of someone or their actions.

Here Logan is saying he’s smarter than “you,” which I take to mean pretty much everyone, but his reasoning betrays his hubris. This is a clear case of Dunning-Kruger Effect. His entire first paragraph is a No True Scotsman. Apparently he thinks the “love thy neighbor” sort of Christian outweighs the Christians that have killed non-Christians throughout the centuries. He thinks there are more “love thy neighbor” Christians than Christians in the United States who hate immigrants, homosexuals, atheists, and anyone who practices another religion. If they don’t “love thy neighbor,” then they’re not a real Christian. Unfortunately for smart Logan here, Christianity has been the religion of hate since the Dark Ages. I think Galileo put it best:

Christians suppressed and silenced their adversaries by murdering them. In the US, now that it’s against the law to do that, they try to do so by foisting their conservatism into politics. Christians are the primary reason why women haven’t secured full reproductive rights in this country. The fetus, to the Christian’s mind, has more rights; that is, right up till it’s born because after that, the Christian doesn’t give a damn about it. The Christian’s pro-life stance perpetuates poverty the world over, so when women die because they don’t have access to safe and legal abortion procedures, the blood is on the Christian’s hands. So it looks like Christians throughout history in countries like the US, Brazil, Chile, England, Northern Ireland, The Republic of Ireland, Argentina, and so on, weren’t really Christians because “love thy neighbor” didn’t extend to poor women who needed abortions.

I don’t believe in “sin.” It’s a nonsense Christian concept. Yet here’s another example of smart Logan’s egregious reasoning: tu quoque. He’s basically saying “yeah, it’s wrong to want to control other people, but you’ve probably done it and other people have done it too.” Two wrongs don’t make a right! Also and more importantly, it’s one thing to want to control someone when you know for a fact they’re making a terrible decision(s). When you care about someone, you want the best for them, so when you see someone’s decision(s) hurting them in the long-run, you want to step in. That’s not what Christians do! Think again of abortion.

Christians basically tell poor women to stay pregnant and give birth. In doing so, they’ve perpetuated the cycle of poverty for centuries. Abortion is a quality-of-life issue. In most cases, the woman in question can’t afford to have children or she’s in a toxic relationship that isn’t conducive to her raising children. If Christians “loved thy neighbor,” they would be concerned about the role of domestic violence in the decision to have an abortion; they would be concerned about physically, mentally, and sexually abusive partners who not only abuse the women, but sometimes the children in the household! Yet Christians have overlooked pedophilia in their ranks for years! Catholics defend their priests and nuns and Protestants wave their hands in satisfaction because to their minds there are no such scandals in Protestant churches. Yet they ignore Pastors who abuse underage girls. They ignore the thousands of stories of sexually perverted congregants who sexually abuse their own family members even....

So at what point do you realize that, from the Christian point of view (!), someone’s capacity to sin doesn’t disqualify them from being a Christian? In fact, smart Logan is far off from the Christian message, which I think is best captured in Jesus drawing the line in the sand. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone! Just because someone molests underage congregants or tortures or murders or lies or steals doesn’t disqualify them from being a real Christian! The issue is in Christianity. The issue is that Christians are shameful people. Christians confuse guilt for shame, so that’s why they “repent of their sins,” but there’s no corresponding change in their immoral behavior. A lot of them think it’s enough to ask for forgiveness and not change their behavior. It’s a cycle of shame. Never mind the role of sexual repression, especially in Catholic and Jewish circles. I can go on, but smart Logan here has no grasp of the tenets of his own religion and even less of a grip of logical reasoning and the history of his religion. In a nutshell, if it’s too much for smart Logan to read, this is what I intend to say:

A lot, dare I say, most, Christians are terrible people who do repulsive, unspeakable things! According to the Bible, that doesn’t disqualify them from being Christians. All a serial rapist or murderer has to do is convert on their death bed and they’re forgiven! The very idea of vicarious redemption is what makes Christianity such an ugly religion! That’s why so many Christians are ugly people and they are as real as smart Logan here claims to be. Not so smart from what I gather.

#atheism #christianity #apologetics #abortion #polemics #logic #philosophy

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seadwelliz · 5 years

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Is “She-Ra” really a bait?

I’ve stumbled upon a cutting-to-the-core article about DreamWorks’ deceptive marketing that I quite recommend reading: https://geekdad.com/2020/01/baitworks-how-dreamworks-engaged-in-predatory-marketing-towards-lgbt-fans/ It explains the magnitude of the disaster of Voltron: Legendary Defender’s finale and makes a rather gloomy prophecy about future of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

Who am I to argue with truth? DreamWorks does have shitty policy and most likely we won’t see a queer relationship between major characters bloom onscreen in this show. Yet there are numerous reasons why She-Ra can’t be put at the same level of queerbait with Voltron.

The major difference is between the showrunners. While VLD creators were clueless and ignorant, She-Ra’s creator is queer herself and she fully well knew what hardships she and the show’s crew had to endure and what concessions had to be made for her work to see the light.

A little off-topic about VLD: while I’m not defending the showrunners, the catastrophe that was Season 8 was very likely... not completely their own decision. There are lots of useful meta on Tumblr about the Season 8 having major last-minute changes - things that have solid proof in the season itself. A major character was erased from the season, other characters’ arcs were mutilated and sewn together anew, so it became indigestible both plotwise and character-wise. Sadly we will never know the true reasons behind these changes, but most likely they were not entirely the showrunners’ fault. What definitely was their fault, however, was marrying Shiro off to a stranger and having the audacity to boast their being “progressive” for it. Most likely, the story went like this: Shiro had his usual share of development and interactions in the initial Season 8 (we know for sure the moment with Zethrid holding Keith hostage went differently and involved more action from Shiro than just gaping into the void) - changes to the plot happen (for whatever reasons) - away go all the scenes involving Shiro except for him barking orders - the showrunners go oops. Didn’t we boast having a heroic character that is also gay. Welp, nothing heroic about him now, so we definitely need to throw a bone at lgbt+ community - how about we have a gay wedding! It will be so charming, such a win-win, lgbt+ audience is gonna looove it! ...Well, what could possibly go wrong.

Trying to salvage the season’s remnants, they destroyed their only gay character’s arc trying to pass it off as representation, killed off their only woman of color in the main cast trying to pass it off as a dramatic turn of events, then stood in the enormous pile of fuck-up they made preaching about how it’s okay if not all the viewers’ expectations are met. Ew. Real gross.

Noelle Stevenson, however, is nothing like that. She knew the limits of what she could do from the start, so she’s been subtly preparing everything since the show’s beginning. I’m quite sure that She-Ra’s finale is not going to be nearly as disastrous as VLD finale. Moreover, all the show’s seasons were finished (and confirmed) beforehand, so they are not getting last-minute changes.

Most importantly, Noelle made sure that all the relationships between characters are treated equally, be they f/f, m/m of m/f. There are literally three canon couples in the show, all of them are secondary characters, there is one m/f couple (Micah&Angella), one m/m couple (Lance&George) and one f/f couple (Spinnerella&Netossa). There are no relationships in the main cast that are stated as romantic in-canon. No homosexual relationships between major characters are allowed? Well, there will be no heterosexual ones either! All romance becomes subtext, all of it. Painfully obvious crushes (Seahawk’s on Mermista, Hordak’s on Entrapta, Scorpia’s on Catra) are repeatedly named “friendship”. There is literally nothing that could prevent the hetero crushes from becoming text, yet they stay subtext, because the lesbian crush stays subtext.

Text is always better than subtext, yet subtext is better than nothing - if treated with due respect and care. She-Ra is wonderful representation-wise: it has a world full of diversity and devoid of xenophobia, an amazing cast of female characters with well-written personalities and interactions and diverse body types, a major non-binary character, portrayal of healthy happy homosexual relationships (although between secondary characters), thought-out and dramatic queer dynamic between major characters (although kept subtextual).

The article above states that Steven Universe, unlike She-Ra, treats its lgbt+ audience with respect. But, while SU is an amazing show with breathtaking canon lesbian relationships, it still uses an excuse to bypass censorship: the “rocks from space” are officially sexless. Sadly, She-Ra can’t have such an excuse.

In She-Ra’s case DreamWorks are to blame for censorship, not the author. I’m sure that Catradora is going to get the best subtextual confirmation that can be done in these circumstances.

Though the end of She-Ra is going to be a bit sad (Catradora and other queer ships getting no i-love-you and no wedding onscreen), it will definitely not be as devastating as Voltron’s ending.

While we hope for a better future where queer characters and relationships are treated fairly in all media, we can still enjoy She-Ra and what Noelle managed to do for representation - which is quite a lot, especially in comparison with other popular kids’ animated shows.

#spop #catradora #vld #vld season 8 #vld shiro #dreamworks #scorptra #seadwelliz rants

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skruttet · 5 years

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Ikr! Although what worries me is that the cast & crew focus a lot on the tragedy of their romance; how snufkin is always leaving every year and Moomintroll misses him. This kind of romantic relationship didn’t work out for Tove but just because the fiction is inspired by real life, doesn’t mean it has to follow it to a T, it’s still fiction after all (if it followed that logic then Moomintroll would end up with Massive Lesbian Too-ticky lmao). But still, they could use this as the reason for them just staying friends in the series, although like I said in that bark boat post, I think Moomintroll has become more accepting of the inevitability of Snufkin’s absence and likewise snufkin has recognised that he can upset his friend’s feelings (snufkin & the Park Keeper) and is opening up to him more (bark boat). This gives me hope that they can in fact make a romance work between them.

But then I have to remind myself that this is a cute family prime time series - it’s not gonna be gay, at least not explicitly. Hell, they didn’t even make it explicit that Misabel is trans or non binary, at least in the English version. They’re currently still working on selling the series to other countries, countries that are a lot less tolerant of LGBT+ themes (although they could always censor certain episodes like what happened to shows like Steven Universe, but I think they’d rather just hint at it). They clearly have strived to carry through the subtlety of Tove’s work into moominvalley, which I absolutely love for the most part, but when it comes to LGBT+ stuff? Tove had to be subtle with that because homosexuality was illegal at the time!! It’s 2019 now (2020 when season 2 comes out), surely we can have at least a morsel of explicit LGBT+ themes in a family show, two of the main themes of which are love and tolerance?

I’d love for this to be in the form of Snufmin, or at the very least a bisexual Moomintroll, but I have very little faith for that. There is some hope that they’ll possibly include Thingumy and Bob in a season 2 episode and make it explicit that their relationship is gay, although they’d have to change their story quite a bit as I don’t think they’d include the Hobgoblin (imo the series has established that no such magic exists in this version of moominvalley, literally opening the entire show with Moomintroll just dreaming about flying on a cloud, so with thingumy and bob’s story they’d have to focus more on the Groke, I suppose). I just feel so strongly about this because I never had positive representation of my sexuality growing up so I understand how important it can be for families to see it in an idyllic positive series like this.

But with the ageing of the characters and the focus on Moomintroll “writing his own story”, I do wonder where the series will take him. Will he continue to call snorkmaiden “my love” or will he realise that he no longer wishes to play that childish game with her? Will he realise he has feelings for snufkin or will the creators continue to hint at it without getting the homophobes mad which is really stupid for a series that preaches tolerance?

Will snufkin wear a goddamn flower crown finally!? Will season 2 also have a boppin soundtrack bc I really hope so also will I ever write anything remotely coherent the answer is no

#it’s 2am i should sleep #everytime i write stuff like this i always worry after that i’ve said something wrong #have i said something wrong?????#moominvalley

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ashtray-girl · 5 years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then, on the next page:

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

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

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

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

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

It then goes on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mean, he even said so himself:

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

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

The chapter ends with this sentence:

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

Which kinda reminds me of that part in Rusholme Ruffians:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The chapter opens with the line:

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

This vaguely reminds me once again of Late Night…

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

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

This paragraph makes me think of Ask:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It takes strength to be gentle and kind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well I wonder Do you hear me when you sleep?

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

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

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

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

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