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jonroxton · 4 years ago

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can you talk about chlark beyond chloe? personally i think it's weird that the writers kept adding kisses and weird romantic moments without any pay off. i don't know much about the fandom back then but i think the writers were baiting fans since clark/chloe seems to be the second most popular ship after clex. second i personally think chloe would never be happy with clark or anyone tbh and she doesn't seem like the type of person who would have kids so the finale was weird to me.

this got looooong :)

0. it WAS weird, and the choice to never not once go for it with them was to the story's detriment. I'll get into it a little later on in this post.

Re: shipping in sv fandom. there was definitely drama (clana was HUGE when the show was airing and every ship was basically derailed by it lol) but I stayed in my clois lane with a small circle of fandom friends much like I do now. a good measure of clois fans were fans of lois and clark from other mediums, come to sv just for lois and clark, myself included. we were pretty insulated as a fandom even back then. I do remember seeing more Chlark after the S5 finale (when Chloe kisses him goodbye), but those dropped off after Jimmy was introduced right away in S6. The most drama I encountered was with Chloisers: Chloe fans who believed wholeheartedly that Chloe was Lois. They hated SV!Lois and were convinced she would die so Chloe could take her name and job and place by Clark's side, thus a Chlark endgame. this was a popular theory amongst that fandom even into s9, when the clois ball started to roll for true.

bait and switch

a lot of Chlark is rooted in this notion that chloe WOULD be the best thing for Clark, the ideal Lois, the true best friend, the human hand guiding him through Earth's troubles. she would be could be the BEST possible lois archetype for Clark. it's not a wrong interpretation. she was specifically written as a lois-and-lana-proxy (teenage lana is a reporter in some AUs and even some as an adult as a tv correspondent) and she's given many lois-ish traits (tenacious, secretly crushing on clark and in denial), but this interpretation is deeply flawed. first, because lois does eventually enter into the picture and she has her own defining traits that, when compared to chloe, make chloe seem much shallower than realized. secondly, within the complete context of the story, her position in the greater narrative is not as ~the one who got away, the way it did very early on in S1-S4, but one who clark tolerates.

they're friends because clark is forgiving and chloe has staying power. their friendship is riddled with insecurities and unknowns the characters create for themselves. their dynamic is defined by conflict, not resolutions. this is not made easy by the fact that chloe is such a strangely written character, but ultimately she is positioned as a counter to clark achieving his happiness. not a thematic narrative foil but an obstacle clark eventually relents to.

2. and it has been so from the get-go

S1 is the best season for them and the single season which actually considers Clark's side in this dynamic. everything about them later on can be explained with how they are in this season. and that's the problem. when they're 14 it's nice teen angst drama and works perfectly to establish the dynamic. when they're 24 it's at best a pattern, at worst regression. we expect certain behaviors, dismiss them too, when it's children, at least I do. clark and chloe never move beyond the dynamic they establish in s1 and early s2. in essence, clark and chloe remain children around each other. they have many discussions in the later seasons that make at least one appear petulant.

so S1 clark has just been told the greatest secret of his existence and he imprints on lana hard that same night (right AFTER jonathan tells him, he meets lana at the graveyard and talks to her for the first time EVER, a lot of childhood imprinting going on in SV). all of s1 follows clark's heartache over lana, watching her from afar and figuring out a way to be near her. this pain is exacerbated by the fact that he believes he caused her her greatest grief: the death of her parents via the meteor shower which he arrived in.

here the first beat of the chlark dynamic is established: chloe's job and passion – the wall of weird and her pursuing the meteor infected oddities of SV - directly affects clark in a negative way (he's suicidal for much of s1-s3). so her crush on him is countered with her unknowingly causing him great grief. om top of that: clark becomes part of this passion of hers and she eventually begins to pursue him as a story to be uncovered, very superman yes. here tho, it causes nothing but strife for them and paints chloe in an awful light (and clark too, highlighting his refusal to open up). I personally enjoy this aspect of them in s1. bc they're so young I give em a free pass and it's a good conflict playing around with old superman tropes, but it makes for a fraught friendship.

3. the second beat

is that neither chloe's crush on clark, nor his asking her to stop pursuing his truth, do anything to stay her. her tenaciousness becomes intrusiveness and inconsideration (many of her accomplishments irt the daily planet are directly bc she betrays clark). she simply will not listen to her friend and does not believe his livelihood and autonomy is worth losing a story over. this is literally the opposite of comics/live action lois lane, who in various versions drops the clark reveal story to protect him. this passion turns vindictive pretty early for chloe, who eventually pursues stories about clark out of jealousy and entitlement (against lana also).

4. the third beat

is that clark doesn't ever see chloe as romantic prospect except this time in s1. the tornado trapping lana pulls him away from any solidifying of the clark/chloe dynamic, and that's that. but we know clark was willing to go for it in early s2 when he apologizes to chloe about running off on her. it's chloe who decides not to go on with the relationship. clark is visibly confused, but also 15 so he can't see that chloe is putting on a brave front to protect herself from clark running off again. I liked this too as it's another play on superman tropes, but my sympathy for them stops here.

5. and stays here

these beats are the entirety of this dynamic. everything about chlark can be distilled down to their childhood. it's why I don't hate them completely, bc I have a lot of love for kids who hurt in such a way and that time is never easy. in s8 (I think its s8) when we get a flashback to when they meet as kids (more imprinting!). little tenacious cute chloe kisses insecure clark bc of the funny awkward tension, acknowledging it, and then immediately takes it back because they're better as friends. (also they’re like 11 lol)

every single romantic moment with them is undercut either by chloe herself, or by the presence of other storylines/romances the writers wanted to pursue. the lack of integrity in chloe and the lack of interest in clark, regardless of how sincere their connection or how messed up, is a central part of their dynamic that needs to be reconciled with their friendship. and its exhausting bc there is never a point they are ever truly comfortable around each other.

6. to a fault

knowing the secret doesn't change chloe's methods. it doesn't make chloe clark's great confidante. if anything, it complicates matters for both because their relationship then becomes about the greater good and clark's great destiny. everything chloe does becomes about that, which in theory sounds awesome, but is executed much the same way as s1!chlark: by reiterating behaviors that highlight the negative aspects of that loyalty and the negative aspects of their characters.

the single time they do actively examine what this loyalty means and how chloe's hero complex complicates things for chlark is with s8 and davis. she protects davis with the skills of subterfuge and secrecy she developed as clark's friend. and it costs her jimmy and a lot of her personal integrity as a character. tho ironically it makes chloe the strongest she's been as a character. this is the first time clark is forced to view chloe as an enemy and he never quite recovers from discovering the dark depths she’s willing to go to.

it's an arc dealing with the established beats: how far chloe is willing to go for a kryptonian (very far), how much she's willing to do for him (A LOT and all of it illegal), and what it costs her (jimmy). it deals with her jealousy (always second choice) and her motivations (uncovering the truth). this great want that she struggled with for years is turned on its head and examined, revealing just how weird and dark her hero complex is because obviously davis is not clark. davis/chloe served to highlight more than any other arc how it's really too bad that clark never saw her that way, because she has so much love to give and when channeled, it's a great force. only it's a great force for evil. clark has to confront that it’s not just lex but his other closest friend who is willing to go so far. they backtrack hard in s9 and s10 but they keep this underlying wariness in clark towards Chloe throughout. it’s not anything new, but it’s no longer subtext that clark doesn’t fully trust chloe.

7. And that's the rub

in the end. chloe and clark have many storylines they're in together and chloe's important.... to develop clark and as a counter to clark. clark never instigates anything, not once, for 9 years! when the show did give us Moments TM, clark is reacting, not actively making choices to connect to her. if anything, clark is incredibly awkward about chloe when they become intimate. he doesn't seem to know what to do with her crushing on him (the elevator scene is a great one to show just how awkward chloe makes him feel). more than that. clark never tells her his secret. and later on, chloe doesn't tell him half the crazy wild shit she does to protect him bc she knows he would disapprove. I still hold that the only reason they work is bc clark is a forgiving character and would give her chance after chance after chance. that's the watsonian explanation, but the doylist explanation is that the writers just never cared to explore them beyond this point.

8. and what was beyond that point?

they would've been a great counter to lexana in S6 and early clana (clark finally having a gf who knows). it’s playing the clark/Chloe as a straight lois/clark proxy before actually pursuing lois and clark. it could’ve been the precursor to davis and caused an even more personal conflict! the kiss at the end of s5 was their chance. they could've written chlark devolving much the same way lexana did in s6 (or not). but again. the writers never went that far and clearly never wanted to. it kept chlark forever in this stage of childhood friendship always on the brink of collapsing, tittering either way. it's also tough to speculate bc clark's just not into her. in fact he becomes more and more wary of her, to the point where he believes she can do horrible things, and he's right. the stories continually make their methods complete opposite.

they go out of their way to show chloe realizing how happy clark is with lois. and even play a joke on the fandom by literally turning her into lois and seeing the sparks between her friends. it's almost... cruel but it does serve to show how clark is when he's smitten and he's never looked at chloe that way except during the dance when they were kids. other unrequited dynamics have at least some spark from the desired, but nil from clark. clark is into chloe in late s1, but she shuts him down, and when he seems to be into her again (damn that s5 kiss was a good one lol), she shuts him down again. it's just a weird writing choice all around, and that they kept nuggets of it throughout the show is the thing I cringe at most whenever I rewatch.

9. bait and switch 2

with hindsight it is definitely ship baiting and that sucks for that dynamic bc without it their friendship would’ve been the stronger, or at least not full of so much negativity. all it did was remind everyone that chloe’s been duped since she was a kid and that clark is both stupid and strange for never noticing and letting her get away with shit just bc she’s the most loyal. I don’t ship them and even I get frustrated lol

#mystuff #smallville #superman #anti chlark #sayruq #my meta

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jade4813 · 4 years ago

Text

Like Moths to a Flame, Chapter 5

Fandom: North and South

Title: Like Moths to a Flame

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: John/Margaret

Synopsis: “I hope you realize that any foolish passion for you on my part is entirely over.“ Margaret decides to confront John about his unjust judgment of her character, but the two have always been drawn to each other, and things quickly get out of hand. In the aftermath, she agrees to marry him to satisfy propriety, but she cannot forget how ready he was to believe the worst of her. Can love survive without trust, or will the two find a way to work through the misunderstandings that have plagued their relationship from the start?

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Never had the hours moved so slowly as it did that evening, the passage of time marked only by the steady beat of Margaret’s heart. In the morning, Mr Thornton would come to her in anticipation of her response. In the morning, she would agree to marry him. Due to the confluence of honor and respectability, her life would be irrevocably changed, with no hope, even, for a long engagement in order to grow accustomed to the idea. The possibility of a child forced Mr Thornton’s hand as much as her own, and they would have to marry as soon as was practical, but not so quickly as to invite further comment and speculation.

She would leave her father’s house. She would become John’s wife – his property in the eyes of the law, although her nature rebelled against the notion of belonging to anyone other than herself – with no recourse to either of them, should regret ever become the natural conclusion to their marriage.

Miss Margaret Hale. Mrs John Thornton. Mrs Thornton. Margaret Thornton. Over and over, she played her future moniker in her mind, attempting to grow accustomed to the weight and feel of it. Margaret Thornton. Margaret Thornton. Margaret Thornton.

What an unlikely pairing. What an odd collection of syllables. His name had long since inspired the comfort of familiarity, the warmth that came at the reminder of a dear – if complicated – friendship. The full force of emotion evoked by the joining of their names together was too complex for her to interpret and too frightening for her to consider for long.

Mrs John Thornton. Mrs Thornton. Margaret Thornton. It would not happen immediately, but this would soon be the name she would carry for the rest of her life. Mrs John Thornton. I am soon to be Mrs John Thornton. Margaret Thornton. Please, God, do not let him come to hate me for it.

And so her thoughts occupied the hours as sleep eluded her, until the grey light of dawn breaking through her bedroom window compelled her to arise and prepare for the day. Mrs John Thornton, she reiterated one final time as she gazed at her reflection in grave contemplation. Her features were pale and drawn, the deep shadows under her eyes testament to her sleepless night, but she otherwise appeared respectable enough. Today is the day I agree to become John’s wife.

It was futile to expect that Mr Thornton would arrive late to their engagement, or that he would shirk his duty entirely, but she allowed herself to entertain such hope nevertheless as she ate her meager breakfast in resigned silence. Her father failed to notice her preoccupation, engrossed as he was in his own ecclesiastical ruminations. For her part, Dixon appeared to suspect that something was amiss, but she seemed content to keep her own counsel, demonstrating an uncharacteristic lack of both curiosity and opinion about Margaret’s lowered spirits.

Once the breakfast things were put away, Margaret attempted to lose herself in the day’s chores, though her mind remained fixated on the upcoming visit. In her distraction, she accomplished several tasks, but none of them well, until Dixon shooed her out of her precious kitchen and directed her to take her inattention elsewhere. So she returned to her room to gather Mr Thornton’s things and await his arrival.

It came all too soon, his rap upon the front door traveling to her from the ground below, and she attempted to rise to her feet only to find them too weak to support her. Brushing her palms along the heavy fabric of her skirt, she tried again, this time with greater success. Clutching his things in her arms, she swept out the door and down the stairs, this time without pausing to check her reflection in the glass. She knew she was unlikely to look her best at the present moment, but her future husband would have to take her as she was, regardless.

Dixon had showed John into the drawing room, to await her company. Fixing a smile upon her face, she tried to be brave as she prepared to engage in the interview that would change her life, but then she saw John, Mr Thornton, her future husband standing by the window, his back to the room. At the sight of him, she felt her knees give way, and she had to grab for the threshold to avoid falling upon the floor and making a fool of herself.

He turned at the sound. “Miss Hale,” he greeted her, giving her nothing to reproach in either his expression or his voice.

��Mr Thornton,” she responded in return, gratified when her voice sounded more confident than she felt. After a momentary hesitation, she turned to close the door, regretting the impulse that had compelled her to leave his abandoned items on the table in the entryway, for him to retrieve before his exit. If she still carried them, it would give her hands something to do, other than to tremble and be useless. Hiding them in her skirts, she stepped further into the room, her gaze falling – as it so often seemed to do as of late – to his chest.

“You’ve thought about my offer?” he asked with a forthrightness that she had often admired in the past but which caused her a measure of dismay now. If she’d had her way, they might have occupied the next several minutes in idle chatter, avoiding the subject that remained unspoken between them, although such avoidance could only be temporary in nature. But perhaps it was for the best that they address the topic right away, affixing her future with a sense of permanence in her own mind.

“I have,” she agreed, even as her mind went blank. Were there words that were customary to offer in such a situation as the agreement to a proposal issued in honorable obligation? Surely there were, but she could not for the life of her imagine what they might be. If only she had spent some time mulling over the words of her acceptance, rather than merely upon its outcome! “I – I thank you for your offer and would be—” she hesitated, searching for the proper word. She could not claim in good conscience to be pleased (at least under the current circumstances), but neither did honored seem an appropriate term, as it had been her own dishonorable behavior that had led to her present predicament.

She tried again. “I am grateful for your kindness, and I accept your offer.” As the words left her mouth, her throat stung with the bitterness of unshed tears. With such tepid words, she had accepted his proposal and changed the course of her life! Were their lives together truly to begin on a note of such indifference?

“I don’t want your gratitude,” he snapped, sounding cold and impatient, seemingly as disgusted by her reply as she found herself to be, and she winced.

He hadn’t moved, and so she gave into the impulse to step toward him and take his hand in hers. It had once been inconceivable that she might take any man’s hand in such a manner, her aversion causing great offense early in their acquaintance. She had yet to grow entirely accustomed to the ways of the North, each time having to overcome her own natural aversion to shaking any man’s hand but his. Though they shook hands rarely, John’s touch was hardly unfamiliar to her now.

Marveling in the weight and the strength of his palm, she trembled as she lifted it to press her cheek against the back of his hand. “No,” she breathed in acknowledgement. “I’m sorry. I’m not – I’ve never learned how to accept – to accept an offer such as – such as yours.”

“I’ve never learned to make such an offer. At least, I’ve never learned how to do it well,” he replied in return, his voice low and soft. It swept around her like a caress, making her long to lean into him. He turned his hand in hers, cupping her cheek in his palm. His thumb brushed along her lips, and she closed her eyes with a sigh.

“John, I—” she began, lifting her gaze to his face, where the blue of his eyes stole both her breath and her reason. Before she could continue, a sound carried through the closed door.

“Is John here? Margaret said he would call on me today—” Her father’s voice trailed off, out of hearing, but that brief reminder was sufficient to cause her to drop his hand and step away.

“My father is waiting for you,” she breathed, pulling out of his reach. Turning toward the window, she waited until she heard him leave, and then she whispered into the silence, “Margaret Thornton. Mrs John Thornton…”

There had once been a time – before age, disappointment, and regret had instilled within her breast a degree of measured practicality, and before the upheaval of her entire life to an unfamiliar town in the North – that Margaret had entertained more romantic sensibilities than she indulged today. She had once considered her future married life with eager anticipation, although her life’s partner was yet unknown. In her more romantic musings, she had wondered if her eventual engagement would have such a profound impact upon her person, her heart, and her future that it would slowly overtake the world around her, like ripples in a pond. In her very most romantic contemplations, she imagined that an engagement would impress upon her with such importance that reality itself would be fundamentally altered, and all would know at a glance of her good fortune and supreme confidence in her future contentment.

As it turned out, her engagement to John did not have such an immediate cataclysmic impact upon her life. Her father had received the news of her engagement to his friend with a combination of joy at her good fortune in capturing the devotion of such a man and astonishment that they two were anything more than indifferent acquaintances. He had never anticipated a forming attachment on either side, convinced as he was by her initial dislike of the rugged industrialist. For a brief moment, Margaret had hoped that Dixon might be on her side in sharing reservations about her future marriage, but even she abandoned Margaret to her misgivings, having been moved by Mr Thornton’s kindness towards her mistress during her final decline.

So Margaret bore her apprehension in silence as she accepted congratulations both reticent (most notably from Nicholas, who still carried an intense distrust of the Master of Marlborough Mill and – soon enough – of her life) and heartfelt. She hid her misgivings as she wrote to her family to inform them of the news, feigning an excitement she didn’t feel to Frederick, in particular, lest he worry over her in her present course.

She didn’t dare write the truth of her feelings even to her dear Edith, who graced her missive with a quick reply.

My darling Margaret,

I was so pleased to receive your most recent letter, but imagine my astonishment to read of your engagement! Although I am certain I will not be the first, allow me to congratulate you on your upcoming nuptials. I hope you will not be too cross with me when I confess that I had begun to wonder if you might have formed an attachment to your Mr Thornton. Your attitude toward him had undergone such a marked changed in recent letters, although I had no thought that your heart might be so engaged! I know you’ll think it very silly of me, but I had hoped that you might reconsider Henry’s suit, as I already love you quite as a sister. But, no. I suppose it was not to be. No matter. You had written before of Mr Thornton’s severity and harshness, but if you have formed an attachment to him, he must be the most worthy of gentlemen. I can only hope that – if you haven’t yet! – you may one day develop genuine affection for him, as I have for my own dear Colonel.

As much as I hope for your future happiness, I was surprised to learn that your wedding would be so soon! Could you not convince your beau to give you a little more time? Surely his regard for you would allow you sufficient time to travel to London to purchase your trousseau. Sadly, I fear it would be impossible for us to travel to Milton to attend your wedding as is. The weather has grown colder, and poor Sholto has been out of sorts…

Margaret folded the letter and put it aside, letting her gaze drift out the window as she lost herself in her thoughts. Reconsider Henry’s suit? She’d never dreamed her cousin entertained such hopes, or she would have gently disabused her of such a notion. He was a good man, but she had known from their first meeting that they would never be more than friends. She could only pray that Henry was as ignorant of Edith’s intentions as she had been, and that her defection would not cause him undue pain.

The thought of Henry set aside, she turned her attention to the more pressing (and, perhaps, distressing) part of her cousin’s missive: her speculation that Margaret had developed real feelings for Mr Thornton. What was it in Margaret’s letters that had given rise to such an idea? Was she to be plagued by suspicion that she had secret designs to trap him into marriage as far away as London?

With a huff of dismay, Margaret rose to her feet and walked briskly to the hall to gather her things. The hour was growing late, and she had agreed to meet Mrs Thornton to discuss plans for the wedding breakfast. Whatever she had once imagined her life to be upon her engagement, the reality was less like a sudden, cataclysmic shift and more like a boulder rolling down a hill – moving slowly, at first, but gradually gaining in steam until it carried on entirely out of her control. Plans were made, dresses discussed, menus debated. Margaret approached each decision with feigned enthusiasm, pretending more interest in the details than she truly felt, more for her father’s sake than for the sake of anyone in the Thornton family. She had no illusions regarding their eagerness for the match, though both ladies treated her politely enough – or, rather, as politely as they were ever likely to do.

As was her nature, Mrs Thornton tackled each task like a general amassing her troops, relentlessly attending to each detail until it was resolved to her satisfaction, if not to Margaret’s preference. She remained polite, if distant, although Margaret could not help but recognize that the Thornton matriarch was disappointed in her son’s choice of bride, considering it (perhaps rightly) a slight against her family and her son that Margaret did not more keenly feel the honor that was being bestowed upon her.

Less concerned with familial honor, Fanny approached the task of wedding planning with greater enthusiasm, although she also could not entirely hide her disappointment in the recipient of her attentions. Her tongue was less guarded than the other members of her family, so she let slip more than once that she had hoped a certain Miss Latimer would stand in Margaret’s place – but, no, it was not to be, and she would somehow forebear. Margaret tried not to let these barbs shake her composure, as she told herself the pain they left in their wake was caused by injury to her pride and not her heart.

And so it was that the three women danced around the subject of the engagement and the animosity that lingered between them, until the afternoon that Margaret received Edith’s letter. Distracted by the accusation of genuine attachment for the man she assured herself had touched her body but not her heart, she was inattentive to his mother’s conversation until even the Dragon’s patience was at an end.

Tossing the proposed guest list onto the table between them, Mrs Thornton made a sound of disgust as she gazed upon her future daughter with all the hauteur that was hers to command. “I promised my son I would be polite, but I must speak my mind,” she declared, her tone more than her words catching Margaret’s attention, pulling her mind away from her more distressing ruminations.

With the same blunt honesty that had marked all of their interactions to date, Mrs Thornton said, “I’ve won’t pretend to have ever liked you.” Though the two women had never spoken on that particular topic, Margaret couldn’t pretend to be surprised by the admission. Nor could she feign astonishment when Mrs Thornton continued, “I certainly don’t think you’re good enough for my son. But if you think you can make him happy, that’s good enough for me.”

It was not much of a capitulation, but it was more than Margaret had ever expected to receive, so she was contemplating how to gracefully respond when she realized that the older woman was waging some form of silent internal battle. It seemed prudent to hold her tongue until she learned which inner demon would be the victor, and she was unsurprised when her patience was rewarded with insult.

“I only ask that you consider your feelings. If you truly love this other man of yours, if you think you might one day wish that you had married him instead…as a mother, I ask that you be honest with John and release him from this engagement. He’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve a lifetime of misery.”

Margaret’s first inclination was to rail against this affront, to demand apology for yet another slight against her character. However, she struggled to bite back her initial response, reminding herself that she would soon marry into this family – a circumstance that would require a period of adjustment for all parties involved. In as civil a tone as she could manage, she replied, “I understand your position, although I am cannot think why I should owe you an explanation for why I agreed to marry your son. As for the man in question, rest assured that I need no additional time to examine my feelings for him. I do love him – very much – but I will never come to regret him, at least not in the manner you imply.”

Her answer failed to placate the Dragon; far from it, in fact. Rearing back, Mrs Thornton snapped, “You are an arrogant, unfeeling woman, with no thought to—”

“Mother.”

Both woman jumped at the sound of the single word, no matter that it was softly spoken, and Margaret turned to find her fiancé in the doorway, staring at the pair of them. She had understood that responsibilities at work were keeping him increasingly occupied, making it unlikely that she would see him at all that day. Her heart leapt at the sight, even as she recoiled slightly from the anger in his eyes.

For all his ire, he spoke politely to his mother as he continued in mild rebuke, “You promised that you would treat Miss Hale with respect.”

Mrs Thornton raised her chin, ready to defend herself and her actions, but Margaret didn’t give her the chance. Rising to her feet, she replied hurriedly, “She hasn’t offended me. She’s only spoken her mind, which is a sign of respect in itself, and I’m afraid I’ve spoken to her far more harshly in the past. I appreciate her honesty, as it allows us to come to terms with each other without risk of misunderstanding.”

She was babbling, speaking for too quickly for the situation as she felt mortification scorch her cheeks. Had he heard her admission that she loved Frederick but would never marry him? The rage banked behind his eyes gave nothing away, whether it arose solely from his mother’s uncharitable words or if a portion of his anger was caused by her own foolish tongue.

Since their engagement, Margaret had treated Mr Thornton with trepidation – not for the sake of his person but in recognition that he was the reason why her life would soon irrevocably change. In her haste to smooth over the lingering tension, however, she acted without thinking, approaching him quickly to rest a soothing hand upon his arm.

The move, insignificant as it was to her own mind, captured his attention, and she watched as he bowed his head to stare at the hand in question. Margaret found her gaze following his own, and she marveled at the paleness of her skin against the harsh black of his frock coat. Her hand trembled under his regard, but she did not pull it away, and she saw that the anger had ebbed from behind his eyes when he lifted his gaze once more to hers.

Ever since his second proposal, Margaret had found it difficult to meet his gaze as unflinchingly as she had once done. Too overwhelmed by her own shame, her uncertainty, the fear of what he might see in her face as much as she was confused about what she longed to see in his, it had been easier to keep her face averted, her eyes downcast. In her aversion, she had forgotten how hypnotizing his eyes could be, how they captured her and refused to let her go. Staring into them now, she felt her breath catch and hold as he overwhelmed her with the desire to learn more about the man she was to marry. To understand the emotion flickering behind the eyes that captivated her so. To fully comprehend the inner workings of his mind and of his heart.

Behind her, Mrs Thornton answered her son’s charge, but she might not have spoken for all either of them seemed to mark her words. Margaret heard nothing but the steady rise and fall of his breathing, in marked contrast to her own irregular breath. She told herself she should pull away from him, but she did not as she said in a low voice, for only his ears to hear, “I didn’t think I would see you today.”

Something flickered behind his eyes, though what emotion it was, she couldn’t say. “There’s much to do at the mill,” he replied. Then, after a moment, he asked, “Did you wish to see me? I’d have come sooner, if I’d known.”

“Yes,” answered unthinkingly. Then, realizing the answer betrayed an eagerness for his company that was at best improper and at worst misleading, she tried again. “No. I – the plans for our wedding – there’s so much to do.” The list of decisions that still required her attention seemed insurmountable, never mind that theirs would not be as grand an affair as Fanny’s wedding had been. Although John had told her to make such plans as would make her happy, without the presence of her extended family and in light of both the need for expediency and the lack of sentiment that had led to their engagement, she had opted for a simpler affair.

His hand covered her own, trapping it against his arm when she might have realized it had lingered there for too long and pulled it away. “I have some time before I must return to the mill. Will you spend the afternoon with me?”

The last time they had spent such time together had landed them in their current situation, and the peevish part of her that railed against their forced engagement whispered that she should refuse him. He would have the authority to lay claim to her attention soon enough. But she found she could not resist him when he looked at her as he did now.

To her surprise every bit as much as it was to his, she found herself nodding in reply. “Yes.” An inexplicable swell of happiness swelled within her breast, causing her to smile up at him in unfeigned joy. Before she could question the cause for her improved spirits, she laughed and gave herself over to the urge to tease him lightly. “But only if you promise that we will speak of anything other than wedding plans.”

John’s face, handsome even in severity, was truly transformed by his smile, slight as it was. “I can deny you nothing,” he responded in kind. “Certainly not a request as simple as that.” Leading her into the hall, he paused long enough to assist her with her outerwear, and then he threw open the door and led her outside.

It would be several minutes before Margaret realized she had left without wishing Mrs. Thornton goodbye.

#like moths to a flame #fanfiction #my fanfiction #north and south #john thornton #margaret hale #john x margaret

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 6 years ago

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Episode 93: Alone at Sea

“But why would a fish ever bite a hook?”

Something I don’t believe I’ve mentioned here before is that both of my parents are ministers. I myself am not religious (not because of trauma or anything, my folks are great), but I was raised in the Presbyterian Church by a mom and dad who often saw things through a “hey, that could be in a sermon!” lens, and that tends to rub off on a kid. Not to oversell the value of these posts, but it’s not lost on me that I ended up writing something to share with people every Sunday. I can think of worse people to emulate.

So it’s hard for someone like me not to notice that Gems take crucial steps towards becoming Crystal Gems through some pretty baptismal circumstances. I’m not saying the symbolism is intentional, because neither aquatic rituals nor the show’s crew are uniquely Christian—Rebecca Sugar, for instance, comes from a Jewish background—but we’ve yet to see a Gem fall in love with Earth without being reborn through water. Peridot first bonds with Steven in the rain. Ruby and Sapphire land on solid ground together in the rain. Pink Diamond and Pearl first realize they need to rebel as a storm brews.

And then there’s Lapis Lazuli.

Lapis literally entered the series because Steven broke a mirror, so it’s no wonder she’s misfortune personified. Bad things happen to Lapis. Bad things happen because of Lapis. And sure enough, she might control the same waters that herald rebirth for other Gems, but she’s also consumed by them. Her old life can’t get washed away because she’s still submerged. So an episode about Steven trying to reconnect her with water is bound to be a bit more complex than a joyous scene in the rain.

Alone at Sea takes us to a dark place for Steven Universe, even compared to its preceding episode, the harrowing Monster Reunion. Plenty of bad things have happened to our characters, but for the first time since the Week of Sardonyx we must confront that one of our characters has herself intentionally done a bad thing. Not day-to-day meanness or misguided acts of loyalty to Homeworld, but something truly awful. Almost as if we’re priming for some big reveal about a core character’s moral ambiguity at the end of the season.

This isn’t to say that Lapis, who also entered the series by stealing the ocean and battling the Crystal Gems, is a stranger to doing bad things. But there’s a gulf of difference between seeing magic antagonist stuff and the learning that she was abusive to her ex. Not many kids are gonna cause marine catastrophes, but way too many kids are gonna have to deal with abusive relationships one day, so Alone at Sea can’t help but feel more raw.

The first moments of the episode show that Lapis is more than her suffering; she’s capable of having genuine fun, especially with Steven. She hints at her deeper issues by insisting she doesn’t deserve to be treated nicely, but she’s just as quick to snort with laughter. And even after boarding the rechristened Li’l Lappy, she’s willing to give happiness a shot. While she’s uncomfortable about dipping her toe in the water, she still finds moments of joy (particularly when it comes to horns). But more often than not, this positive outlook is hindered by her crewmates.

Greg, bless him, hurts more than he helps. He introduces himself as the guy whose leg Lapis broke, his discomfort around her water powers stifles her floundering self-confidence, and he bores her to death with regular fishing. Likewise, while Steven means well, he’s overbearing in his attempts to make Lapis happy. As awkward as it is, I’m glad the show acknowledges how easy it can be to mess up when trying to cheer up a friend in the dumps. Despite Steven’s apology about pushing too hard, we don’t get an explicit lesson about paying attention to how your friends are feeling instead of steamrolling them with fun. This isn’t a criticism: it’s okay to not get explicit lessons all the time, and it’s a nice change of pace from the show’s recent string of episodes that outright tell us the moral, even though these morals are sound.

Everything comes to a head when the rudder is thrown off, veering Li’l Lappy and her namesake off course. Steven gives that apology, but Lapis reiterates that she doesn’t deserve his help, and this time we learn why: as brutal and bullying as Jasper is, in some twisted sense Lapis learned to love their toxic relationship, using it to take all her grief and rage out on Jasper. We saw a hint of her aggression in Chille Tid, but in Jennifer Paz’s best delivery of the episode, Lapis reveals that she misses Malachite. And right on cue, the opportunity to fuse with Jasper again reveals itself.

Jasper’s last lines that weren’t just shouting “YOU!” at Steven were all the way back in Jailbreak, but Kimberly Brooks is worth the wait. Her hungry correction that she was “looking for you” instead of the crew as a whole is perfect (the woman knows her way around second person pronouns), and she manages to become even scarier when she transitions from menacing to begging. All at once we see that Jasper is still monstrous, but has been changed by Lapis. Not in the way she’s saying when trying to convince Lapis to fuse again—there’s little indication that Malachite would be any healthier if she came back—but in the way this massive warrior is on her knees pleading to essentially be made a prisoner again.

From her debut, Lapis has been the most powerful being on Earth by a country mile thanks to her mastery of its most abundant resource. She effortlessly bested the Crystal Gems in Ocean Gem, and had the mental fortitude to overcome Jasper’s iron will and wrest control of Malachite. But only now, in Jasper’s pleas, does a character finally acknowledge Lapis’s power. It speaks volumes to their relationship, because it’s not just about control and manipulation: at some level, beneath all the toxicity, Jasper understands Lapis in a way others don’t. It’s not enough to make them a functional couple, but it shows that there’s an uncomfortable level of nuance even in relationships that are obviously bad. It would be much easier to write either Jasper or Lapis off as totally rotten, but Malachite wouldn’t work without a hint, however small, of real affection.

Malachite made both Jasper and Lapis feel stronger, but they weren’t strong in the real way: they were suffering, and instead of trying to fix this problem, they each learned to like the suffering. And it might be easy to place more blame on Jasper than Lapis, because even here we see how manipulative and violent she can be, but Alone at Sea doesn’t shy away from Lapis’s complicity even when presenting her in a more heroic light. Steven doesn’t call her out on her behavior, but he doesn’t exactly correct her when she reveals how terrible she’s been.

Back in It Could’ve Been Great and Message Received, we got a taste of uncertainty in terms of Peridot’s future. Sure, a promo spoiled that she was staying with the Crystal Gems, but otherwise there was no telling whether she was a temporary addition. Lapis has the same quality, but amplified to a thrilling degree due to her rockier stance with the Crystal Gems. When I first watched Alone at Sea, I legitimately didn’t know what would happen next. Lapis was such a new and tenuous ally and had so much baggage with Jasper that it wouldn’t have shocked me if she had gone back to being Malachite, especially considering how underused Malachite ended up being. It gives the episode way higher stakes than, say, the Week of Sardonyx, where despite the turmoil you could pretty much guarantee that the Crystal Gems would come out of it okay. Lapis is fundamentally not okay, so anything could happen.

And that actual chance of returning to Jasper makes Lapis’s rejection so much more triumphant. She seems to sincerely consider Jasper’s offer, even when she sounds sickened by the prospect, but when given a true choice she’s able to see past her longing for that life. Malachite began with Jasper’s forceful “Just say yes,” and she can’t come back if Lapis says no. It might be alluring, but unlike Jasper, Lapis refuses to take the bait.

I haven’t gushed about Aivi and Surasshu for a while, have I? I’ll be honest, a big part of that is that with the release of Steven Universe’s first soundtrack, the composers stopped releasing background tracks on the internet, and only several years later have these tracks finally popped up again. Access to their music got scarcer and scarcer, but I’m so glad that before it dried up, we got the instrumentation of this final sequence, because it’s really something.

As the clouds gather and she talks about her time fused with Jasper, we hear the buildup of Lapis’s darker theme, and the moment she reveals that she misses being Malachite, the fusion’s ominous two-note motif clangs just once. The track is soon overtaken by Jasper’s synth drum war march, with only hints of Lapis’s celesta leaking in (just like in The Return), but as Jasper begs to fuse again we get the very first quiet version Malachite’s motif (at 1:49, it’s so easy to miss); the fusion’s theme is no longer a force of nature, but a desperate plea.

A piano rendition of Lapis’s theme drowns out Jasper as she considers her options. Strings build to the same fever pitch that we got when Lapis first agreed to dance, but they fade to a quiet conclusion as she refuses to go back to Malachite. Jasper’s drums make one last appearance as she lashes out at Steven, but Lapis’s counterattack is as musically calm as her rejection. Lapis could have gotten loud, dramatic variants of her theme for her one-two punch defending herself and then Steven, and it would have sounded awesome, but instead both big moments show that she’s shunning loudness for peace. Tying all these musical themes together is impressive enough, but that restraint ties the whole scene together.

Jasper is about to dominate the final arc of the season in a story that has nothing to do with Lapis, but everything to do with Lapis. It’s safe to say Jasper doesn’t handle their breakup well, and her collection of Corrupted Gems is less a matter of a soldier raising an army and more a jilted lover looking for acceptance after being abandoned for what’s likely the first time in her very long life. This is the first in a string of blows that knock Jasper down more than her fight with Garnet ever did: it’s one thing to lose, but it’s another to be rejected, and until Jasper learns to make a change, rejection is the only future she’s got.

Lapis goes right back to being an angsty teen after this, despite getting more comfortable around Peridot. But Alone at Sea makes me appreciate her eventual abandonment of Earth when the going gets tough again, because while it’s not the right thing to do, it makes sense that a character with massive unresolved trauma would follow the most defensive instincts possible to avoid further pain. I’m not huge on the show just saying Lapis did something awful and not following it up with much soul-searching, but she does plenty of work outside of Jasper and perhaps it’s for the best that she focused on less toxic parts of her life for self-improvement.

The big bummer of Lapis and Jasper’s story is that it never really resolves: even when Jasper halfway reforms, she and Lapis will never share a screen again, let alone have a conversation. I’m not saying I want a reconciliation, but apology is good for the soul, so I hope that someday Little Homeworld sees a moment where Lapis says she’s sorry for her part in Malachite’s agony, even if Jasper was worse.

Still, seeing Lapis refuse to re-fuse still works as a resolution to the episode, if not the arc. And she does work on her issues in other ways, even if Jasper doesn’t. But even though this is their last interaction in the series, admitting your mistakes and choosing not to repeat them is itself a noble step.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

She’s not even in the episode, but Pearl and her swim cap are the winner of this entry. Does nobody else care about their hair?

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

This is our second excellent feel-bad episode in a row. We may not ever get an acknowledgement about the abusive nature of Lars and Sadie’s relationship in Island Adventure, but at least we have this episode addressing the issue.

(Bear in mind I’m not champing at the bit for more abusive relationships in children’s media, but if you’re going to have them, I just think it’s irresponsible not to use them as an educational tool, is all.)

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

No Thanks!

5. Horror Club 4. Fusion Cuisine 3. House Guest 2. Sadie’s Song 1. Island Adventure

#alone at sea #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

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hollywayblog · 6 years ago

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How “The Umbrella Academy” Surprised Me

In many ways, good and bad.

This is a spoiler-free review of season one of The Umbrella Academy

I remember when The Umbrella Academy comics came out. It was 2007 and I was a broke thirteen-year-old living in suburban Australia (a cultural wasteland!) so I never actually read them, but as a rabidly obsessed My Chemical Romance/Gerard Way fan, I managed to fold The Umbrella Academy into my identity anyway. I’m not sure exactly how that works, but hey. Adolescents are powerful creatures.

As a distinguished almost-twenty-five-year-old (I’d like to acknowledge that I took a small break here to have an existential crisis) my walls are free of band posters and my eyes are no longer encircled with that thick black eyeliner that always managed to look three days old and slept in, but I still got kind of a thrill when I learned that The Umbrella Academy was being adapted into a Netflix show. It was something I had always assumed I would end up reading, back in the depths of my emo phase (which is probably more accurately defined as a My Chemical Romance phase) but then just kind of forgot about. So, great, I’m simultaneously being reminded that this thing exists, and freed of the nostalgic obligation to go seek out the comic and read it. As much as I love reading, comics have just never been my thing.

Then the trailer came out. Honestly, it kind of killed my enthusiasm. It just looked kind of generic. Apocalypse. Superpowers. Bold characters. Lots of action. My takeaway was a big ol’ “Meh.” Frankly, without my pre-existing attachment to Gerard Way and the very idea of The Umbrella Academy, I highly doubt I would have given it a chance - not because it looked inherently bad, but just because I’m a hard sell on the kind of show it appeared to be.

But it’s Gerard Way, man. I had to watch at least one episode.

The Umbrella Academy centres around the famous-yet-mysterious Hargreeves family. The seven children - six of whom have special powers - were adopted by Reginald Hargreeves, a cold and severe patriarch who didn’t even deign to name them. He made them into “The Umbrella Adademy,” a crime-fighting squad of tiny children who would later dissolve after a tragic incident. Now they’re grown up, and Dad’s dead. His spare and tense memorial is what brings the adult Umbrella Academy back together, and this is where the show kicks off.

We’re treated to a rather clumsy beginning; a gripping opening scene followed by an unimaginative montage. We get a glimpse of each of the Hargreeves’ regular lives, leading up to and including them learning of their father’s death. It’s a heavy-handed introductory roll-call, complete with on-screen name cards. It’s a baffling waste of time, considering we don’t learn anything in this montage that isn’t later reiterated through dialogue or behaviour. We don’t need to see Klaus leaving rehab to know he’s an addict. We don’t need to see Allison on the red carpet to know she’s a movie star. It dragged, even on a first watch not knowing that the whole thing would be ultimately pointless, and I’m surprised no one thought to cut it and let us go in cold with everyone arriving at the mansion for the memorial - an opening that would have both set the tone and let us get to know the characters much more naturally. Maybe it feels like I’m focusing too much on this, and that’s only because it gave me a bad first impression - and I want anyone who reacts the same way I did to stick with it. It really does get better.

The further we got from the montage the less gimmicky it felt, and I started to sense some sort of something that I liked about this show. Stylistically it was interesting, and there seemed to be an underlying depth; room for these characters to be more than brooding ex-vigilantes with daddy issues. I was intrigued enough by the end of episode one to keep watching, and was gratified as the series went on and truly delved into those depths. There was a memorable turning point for me around episode five, where Klaus (the wonderful Robert Sheehan) was given space in the runtime to visibly, viscerally feel the effects of something he had just been through. It sounds so obvious, and so simple, but it’s something that is frustratingly glossed over so often in fiction. You know. Fallout. Feelings.

It wasn’t just that moment, though. Prior episodes laid the groundwork, developing not just Klaus but all the Hargreeves. Each character feels real and grounded, each of them uniquely good, uniquely bad, uniquely damaged by their upbringing. It’s this last point I particularly appreciate, this subtle realism in the show’s execution of abused characters. We see how siblings growing up with the same parents does not necessarily mean they got the same childhood, endured the same abuse, or that their trauma will manifest in the same ways. And certainly, it’s important to see the different coping mechanisms each of them have developed. Furthermore, there is a lot more to each of these characters than just their trauma. There are seven distinct personalities going on, and I have to applaud the writers for this commitment to character. It was largely this that kept me hooked (I’m such a sucker for good characters), and to my own surprise very invested in the way things unfolded.

I love the tone, which found a cool rhythm after the pilot. The pacing was decent and the character development balanced well against the plot. I like the little quirks that remind you of the show’s comic book roots, like Pogo, the talking ape and Five, the grouchy old man in a teenager’s body.

Weirdly, I like the apocalypse stuff, which they managed to put their own spin on despite it being such a played-out trope at this point. I like that the show found small ways to go in unexpected directions, even if the overarching plot and big twists weren’t all that surprising. And most of all I love that in a world saturated with forgettable media, I woke up today still thinking about this show.

Even if not all of my thoughts were so generous.

See, for everything I love about this show, there are also quite a few things that rubbed me up the wrong way. I can’t list them all without going into spoilers, but I think it needs to be said that there are like, a fair few problematic elements in this show. I couldn’t help but notice that while women and people of colour are the minority in this cast, they also seem to cop the worst abuse. Only two of the Hargreeves siblings are female. One of them has no powers and the other’s power is influence (a non-physical power). Their “Mom” is literally a robot created for the sole purpose of caregiving; she dresses and acts like the epitome of a submissive 50s housewife. The Hargreeves sisters are also the ones most likely to be left out or ignored when it comes to making decisions, with one of them even literally losing her voice at one point (yikes!). Beyond that we have some truly disturbing imagery of violence being inflicted on women of colour almost exclusively by white men, and the fact that the only asian character is um… well, he’s literally dead. Before the show even starts.

Overall the problem is not just insufficient diversity, with white men taking up most of the screen time, dialogue and leadership actions, but the way that the few female and non-white characters are depicted.

These are all depictions that, in a vacuum, would be innocuous. I mean, just looking at the root of many of the show’s problems exemplifies that - the root being that all of these characters were white in the source material (uh, a problem in itself, obviously). It wasn’t a problem, for example, when Dead Ben was not the only Asian character but just another white Hargreeves sibling. And wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a world where you could race or gender-swap any character and have everything mean - or not mean - the same thing. But life is more complicated than that. Art is more complicated than that.

Honestly, I’m not sure if we should give props to the developers of The Umbrella Academy for diversifying their cast when the fact is they did so - and I say this gently - ignorantly and lazily. Race-swapping willy-nilly and leaving it at that ignores a lot of complex issues surrounding the nuances of portraying minorities in fiction, and leaves room for these kinds of harmful and hurtful tropes to carelessly manifest. So many storytellers don’t want to hear it, but let me tell you writer to writer that it does matter if the person being choked is white or black, male or female, trans or cis. It does matter who’s doing the choking. Camera angles matter. Dialogue matters. It’s all a language that conveys a message - about power and dominance and vulnerability in the real world. Because art doesn’t exist inside a vacuum, as inconvenient as that might be. Having the empathy to recognise that will actually make us better storytellers.

In shedding light on these issues, I am not dragging this show. I am not condemning it. And although it is problematic in itself, I’m not even saying it’s problematic to enjoy it. I’m pulling apart the lasagne, looking at the layers, poking and prodding at the individual ingredients and saying, “Hey, the chef probably should have known better than to put pineapple in here. Maybe let’s not do that next time.” I’m also saying, “When I get a mouthful with pineapple in it, I don’t enjoy that. It’s jarring and unpleasant. But it doesn’t ruin the whole meal for me.”

I’m getting better at allowing myself to dislike something on the basis of its shitty themes. To not have to justify myself when something is problematic in a way that just makes it too uncomfortable for me to watch. That wasn’t the case here. I won’t lie; the bad stuff was no afterthought for me. That kind of thing really gets to me. It does ruin a lot for me. But in this case, the show redeemed itself in other ways; mostly by just being a compelling story with characters I liked. I’m trying not to justify that too hard either.

So I liked The Umbrella Academy, and I hope it gets a second season. I also hope that the creators will listen to people like me who want to be able to enjoy their show even more and create more consciously in the future.

And please let Vanya be a lesbian.

The Umbrella Academy is out now on Netflix

Watch this show if you like: witty characters, iconic characters, complex characters, mysteries, dark themes, superpowers, vigilantes, comics, dark humour, epic stories, shows about families, stylistic TV shows, ensemble casts, character dynamics, dramedies

Possible triggers (don’t read if you care about spoilers): suicide, child abuse, claustrophobia, addiction, violence, violence against women, violence against women of colour, death, torture, incest, self-harm, pregnancy/childbirth, kidnapping/abduction, blood, mental illness, medication/themes of medication necessity, blood, manipulation/gaslighting, homicide, forced captivity, guns, hospitalisation, medical procedures, needles, PTSD, prison rape reference (1).

Please feel free to message me if I failed to include a relevant trigger warning and I’ll include it.

#the umbrella academy #review #tropes #diversity #representation

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simaethae · 6 years ago

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quendi and eldar

so i finally got around to reading the Quendi and Eldar section of HoME XI and it was interesting enough that I felt like it was worthwhile writing up notes! no particular coherency or structure here, I’m just pulling out bits I like (but sparing you guys the sections on the evolution of various dialects from Primitive Quendian/Common Eldarin since it doesn’t extract well) ^_^

Hence Hekelmar and Hekeldamar [“Home of the Forsaken”], the name in the languages of the loremasters of Aman for Beleriand. It was thought of as a long shoreland beside the sea (cf. Eglamar under Sindarin below).

This is weird. Surely the Noldor…. remember crossing Beleriand? I can only think that maybe “thought of” means like, “in the popular imagination, the Elves left behind in Beleriand are always staring sadly out from the western shore, singing sad songs” or something like that?

As a prefix the form usually used was ava-, the force of which can be observed in avaquétima ‘not to be said, that must not be said’, avanyárima ‘not to be told or related’ as contrasted with úquétima ‘unspeakable’, that is, ‘impossible to say, put into words, or unpronounceable’, únyárima ‘impossible to recount’, sc. because all the facts are not known, or the tale is too long. Compare also Avamanyar ‘those who did not go to Aman, because they would not’ (an equivalent of Avari) with Úamanyar ‘those who did not in the event reach Aman’ (an equivalent of Hekeldi).

Mostly I just think this is neat. I’m enjoying all these careful distinctions between Amanyar and Umanyar and Avari, though.

In the use of the Exiles Quenya naturally came to mean the language of the Ñoldor, developed in Aman, as distinct from other tongues, whether Elvish or not. But the Ñoldor did not forget its connexion with the old word Quendi, and still regarded the name as implying ‘Elvish’, that is the chief Elvish tongue, the noblest, and the one most nearly preserving the ancient character of Elvish speech.

Of course not.

The Teleri had little interest in linguistic lore, which they left to the Ñoldor. They did not regard their language as a ‘dialect’ of Quenya, but called it Lindarin or Lindalambe.

I’m really enjoying how much the Teleri just keep Doing Their Own Thing.

The Elves of Beleriand were isolated, without contact with any other people, Elvish or of other kind; and they were all of one clan and language: Telerin (or Lindarin). Their own language was the only one they ever heard, and they needed no word to distinguish it, nor to distinguish themselves.

[…] By the Sindar anyone dwelling outside Beleriand, or entering their realm from outside, was called a Morben [“Dark-elf”, “Dark-person”]….The Avari thus remained the chief examples of Moerbin. Any individual Avar who joined with or was admitted among the Sindar (it rarely happened) became a Calben [“Light-elf”]; but the Avari in general remained secretive, hostile to the Eldar, and untrustworthy; and they dwelt in hidden places in the deeper woods, or in caves.

Sindarin isolationist paranoia is so charmingly fucked-up. <3 “We’re not going to let you into Doriath, stay away from us,” “the Avari are so secretive and hostile wow”. Wowwww.

But the form Golodh seems to have been phonetically unpleasant to the Ñoldor. The name was, moreover, chiefly used by those who wished to mark the difference between the Ñoldor and the Sindar, and to ignore the dwelling of the Ñoldor in Aman which might give them a claim to superiority.

I’m not copying out the purely linguistic bits but this whole section is basically a 50:50 ratio of linguistics to terse notes about Elves sneering at each other. This is turning out to be a really worthwhile read.

The Ñoldor indeed asserted that most of the ‘Teleri’ were at heart Avari, and that only the Eglain [Círdan’s people] really regretted being left in Beleriand.

Love you Noldor never stop <3

The first Avari that the Eldar met again in Beleriand seem to have claimed to be Tatyar, who acknowledged their kinship with the Exiles, though there is no record of their actually using the name Ñoldo in any recognizable Avarin form. They were actually unfriendly to the Ñoldor, and jealous of their more exalted kin, whom they accused of arrogance.

1. That’s super interesting that the Avari in Beleriand were more closely related to the Noldor than the Sindar! I love an excuse for some nice complicated cultural tensions.

2. Wait, this implies Eöl’s one of the Tatyarin Avari. Eöl is obviously Tatyar. Godddd.

This ill-feeling descended in part from the bitterness of the Debate before the March of the Eldar began, and was no doubt later increased by the machinations of Morgoth; but it also throws some light upon the temperament of the Ñoldor in general, and Fëanor in particular. Indeed the Teleri on their side asserted that most of the Ñoldor in Aman itself were in heart Avari, and returned to Middle-earth when they discovered their mistake; they needed room to quarrel in.

a;fn;gngn <333333

For in contrast the Lindarin elements in the western Avari were friendly to the Eldar, and willing to learn from them; and so close was the feeling of kinship between the remnants of the Sindar, the Nandor, and the Lindarin Avari, that later in Eriador and the Vale of Anduin they often became merged together.

Lothlórien!! Okay, not just Lothlorien, but it’s so interesting and logical for Galadriel to end up there – someone both Lindarin and Noldorin (and I wonder if that would have been read at all as Tatyarin? but then she’s a little Vanyarin too) married to a Sindarin husband. But I always love seeing reiterated that – okay, they mingle, but the Umanyar are not homogenous any more than the Amanyar <3

In [Sindarin] the word gûl (equivalent of Q ñóle) had less laudatory associations, being used mostly of secret knowledge, especially such as possessed by artificers who made wonderful things; and the word became further darkened by its frequent use in the compound morgul ‘black arts’, applied to the delusory or perilous arts and knowledge derived from Morgoth. Those indeed among the Sindar who were unfriendly to the Ñoldor attributed their supremacy in the arts and lore to their learning from Melkor-Morgoth.

I love this kind of free-associatory etymological slander. Also as always the double-edged and dangerous nature of technology and lore.

This name they first applied to the Nandor that came into Eastern Beleriand; but this people still called themselves by the old clan-name *Lindai, which had at that time taken the form Lindi in their tongue….These names were however later replaced among the Sindar by the name ‘Green-elves’, at least as far as the inhabitants of Ossiriand were concerned; for they withdrew themselves and took as little part in the strife with Morgoth as they could.

Just noting this to help me keep track of the whole Teleri-Lindai / Nandor-Lindi-Laegrim…. thing.

The Valar, therefore, learned Quenya by their own choice, for pleasure as well as for communication; and it seems clear that they preferred that the Eldar should make new words of their own style, or should translate the meanings of names into fair Eldarin forms, rather than [that] they should retain the Valarin words or adapt them to Quenya (a process that in most cases did justice to neither tongue).

I’d actually like to know more about Valarin but this is still really cute.

No Elf of any kind ever sided with Morgoth of free will, though under torture or the stress of great fear, or deluded by lies, they might obey his commands…The ‘Dark-elves’, however, often were hostile, and even treacherous, in their dealings with the Sindar and Ñoldor; and if they fought, as they did when themselves assailed by the Orcs, they never took any open part in the war on the side of the Celbin. They were, it seems, filled with an inherited bitterness against the Eldar, whom they regarded as deserters of their kin, and in Beleriand this feeling was increased by envy (especially of the Amanyar) and by resentment of their lordliness.

I normally try not to take the “unreliable narrator” thing too far but I have to wonder from whose perspective this is being written. The “deserters of their kin” thing is an interesting snippet of the Avari’s own perspective, though.

Eöl was a Mornedhel, and is said to have belonged to the Second Clan

CALLED IT.

It is said also that the folk of the North were clad much in grey, especially after the return of Morgoth when secrecy became needed; and the Mithrim had an art of weaving a grey cloth that made its wearers almost invisible in shadowy places or in a stony land.

The Elven-cloaks Galadriel weaves for the Fellowship! I wonder if she learned it directly from the Mithrim or if it was a more indirect transmission?

#silmarillion #noldor #sindar #teleri #avari #languages #quenya #sindarin #telerin #valarin #eol #galadriel #histories of middle earth #canon #or more accurately #deuterocanon

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natasha-cole · 7 years ago

Text

What Happens in Vegas Part 9

Rob Benedict x Reader

Chapter Summary: It’s time for Reader and Rob to face the fact that they’re not the only ones who are caught up in their mess. How they choose to handle dealing with those around them who aren’t clued in to the ruse is something they have to figure out together. Also, it might be a good idea for them to actually get to know each other.

Word Count: 3702

Warnings: swearing? mild angst, nothing really

Notes:

Catch Up: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Rob’s POV

Rob certainly didn’t expect anyone to warm up to the idea that he and Y/N were definitely going through with this, not after a little over a week. He did hope that his friends would at least accept their decision. He thought that the entire joke of everyone placing bets on how long they would last had actually been a joke that had lost its appeal by the time the Seattle convention happened. He learned rather quickly that he was wrong.

“Just so you know, Rich is out of the betting pool,” Steven explained as the band set up to rehearse that morning.

“What?”

“He gave you a week. Obviously it’s going better than he thought.”

“That’s nice,” Rob mumbled in return. “Glad to know my suffering is still amusing.”

“So, you are suffering?” Billy asked curiously. “Is she really that bad? She seems nice.”

“What did you bet on?”

“I can’t say,” Billy replied.

“Just for the record, she’s not… bad. She’s actually fairly pleasant when she wants to be. But, I guess she’s more unpleasant because of the fact that I’ve ruined her life.”

“You’ve ruined each other’s lives,” Mike cut in. “This has been one bad idea after another.”

“I know,” Rob acknowledged. “But staying married is the choice we made, and we really think it’s the best decision. We just gotta make it through long enough to make it believable.”

“You ever consider maybe trying an actual relationship?” Billy mused. “I mean, you’re married anyway. Obviously neither of you want a failed marriage…”

“Are you suggesting I try to make things work with my wife?”

“This is a weird conversation,” Steven mumbled as he shook his head.

“Just so you know, I’ve considered that. I actually liked her. It’s sort of tough to make things work with someone who hates my guts though.”

“She can’t hate you that much,” Billy argued. “We all saw how she was all over you that night.”

“She was drunk.”

“Well, yeah. But even before that, she was staring at you that entire day.”

“Look, I messed up any chance I had with her the minute I put a ring on her finger,” Rob replied with a sigh. “I thought that she could be someone that I could be interested in, maybe someone I could start dating… someone who could help me move on after my divorce. Now, I’m just someone else’s mistake and I’ll be divorced again before the year is over.”

“I’m just sayin,” Billy shrugged in return, obviously uncomfortable by where the conversation had gone. “It doesn’t hurt to still try to see if maybe she’s that someone you were hoping she was.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just sayin,” Rob added, “it sounds nice and all, but it’s not easy when she hates me.”

“I don’t think she hates you at all,” Mike said. “The situation maybe; but maybe she just needs to warm up to you. Remember, she doesn’t know you at all. She knows nothing about you. All she does know is that you’re the guy who somehow convinced her to marry him.”

“I know,” Rob mumbled in return. “This is all really fucked up. But, I’m trying.”

“Just- go slow with her. Make this easier on her.”

“I’m trying,” he reiterated. “I go out of my way to be nice and thoughtful, but everything I do pisses her off.”

“Well, stop pissing her off,” Mike continued. “Be even more nice and even more thoughtful. Buy her a gift or something.”

“Why are you being so pushy?” Rob asked as he glared at his friend.

“Yeah Borja,” Billy cut in. “What did you bet on anyway?”

“I’m not telling,” he replied. “I will say, it would really help me out if you at least tried to stay married for as long as possible though.”

Rob shook his head in disgust. He didn’t know what was worse at this point; that he had a wife who hated him, or that he had every friend of his betting on this mistake.

In between panels and autographs and photo ops; Rob made a point of seeking Y/N out when he could. He knew that they weren’t necessarily on great terms; but the morning had been surprisingly pleasant and they engaged in nice conversations throughout the day that didn’t end in her yelling at him or storming out. He wanted to enjoy that while he could, so he made sure to check in on her occasionally. He was also taking a cue from Mike in that maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to make sure she was doing okay. He didn’t care about what anyone had bet on, he just knew that he wanted to make this work for as long as possible if it meant he could avoid another divorce. Overall, that was a bad way to think about it, he knew that. There was no way she was going to stay married to him; but he held on to the thought that anything could happen at this point.

Not only did he actually want to be around her because of his still present crush on her, but he knew that it also helped this whole thing look a lot more real. He hoped throughout the day that maybe others who weren’t in the loop about the entire thing would look at them and take note of how affectionate they seemed; or more accurately, he hoped that people would look at him as an amazing husband. That way, if and when this marriage ended, maybe he wouldn’t be the one to look like the jerk.

He found her later in the afternoon again; most of their interactions had been quick hellos and forced kisses on the cheek to keep up appearances, but now she was sitting on the couch and scrolling through her phone with a frown.

“What are you doing?” He asked cautiously. He wanted to take the advice of his friends and at least try to get along with her better. Most of the time though, he was just unsure of how she’d react to his questions. Today had gone well so far, so he wanted to avoid pushing any buttons.

“I’m still looking at apartments,” she frowned. “This is harder than I thought it would be. I’m going to end up in a hotel when I get back.”

“I mean, I offered you my place,” Rob reminded her. “That’s still on the table.”

She sighed and put her phone down, looking right at him as she pondered.

“Wouldn’t that be weird? Me staying at your place?”

Rob shrugged in return.

“I don’t think it would be. It’s just a friend helping out a friend.”

“Are we friends?”

“I’d like to think so. I’m friends with everyone here. I know we kinda seriously skipped the basics of friendship… but I’d still like to be your friend.”

“You know I don’t hate you, right?”

“Sure,” he chuckled in return. She had a funny way of showing how much she didn’t hate him.

“Really, I don’t. I’ve spent the past week or so blaming you and I shouldn’t. We both got us in this mess, I admit that.”

“Okay.”

“So, yes. We can be friends. You’re not as annoying as I act like you are.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“So, the whole… staying at your place thing? Would that complicate things?”

“How could this get any more complicated?” He laughed.

“I just, don’t want to step on your toes or be in your way.”

“You won’t be. Besides, I already said that you living with me even for a short amount of time can actually help us if we still want to make this marriage look real.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“So, anyway, I’ve got an extra room, you’re welcome to it. For as long as you need.”

“Thank you. I’ll think about it. Maybe if the two of us sharing a room this weekend goes well, I’ll be more comfortable with that idea.”

“No problem,” he replied with a smile. The conversation between them was still going well and it helped him to relax a little bit. “I just- I know this is difficult, and I know I fucked up. Staying married was mostly my idea, so I want to make things easier for you if I can.”

“I appreciate it.”

She gave him a warm smile in return. Not the usual forced smile that she had been giving him since the accidental wedding, but an honest smile. For once, Rob thought that this entire thing might not continue to be miserable for both of them.

“So, think about it,” he continued.

“I will.”

“You ready to show off our acting chops this weekend?”

“I am,” she replied. She stood up to join Rob now that the rest of the band and Rich were heading out the door. It was her cue to follow them as she would be the first panelist of the day. She reached out a hand, a lot less hesitantly than usual, and Rob grasped onto it. Still, even after everything and after the way she had been treating him, the contact with her made his heart beat a little faster. He always assumed that the longer she treated him badly, the easier it would be to get over his crush on her; but right now he knew that it hadn’t worked. The best he could do at this point was make it all look like an act. He could easily pretend to be in love with her regardless of the fact that she was his wife that really didn’t want to be his wife. He could play along because he still felt that rush when she looked at him or smiled at him or touched him.

They walked out of the room together, hand in hand, and Rob wondered how bad it could really be if he might actually really like his accidental wife.

Reader’s POV

“Why did I not consider the possibility that this entire thing was going to affect other parts of my life?” You said out loud, mostly to yourself. Briana and Kim were sitting close by and they perked up in interest as you spoke. When you realized you had someone’s attention, you used that opportunity to vent to them.

“I mean, obviously my family found out about it. I got phone calls and texts the next day. I mostly ignored a lot of it until I got home. It’s still a thing.”

“What did you tell them?” Briana asked curiously.

“I told just told them what we’ve been telling everyone. Rob and I fell in love and eloped. Most of them don’t buy it.”

“Why didn’t you just tell them the truth?” Kim asked. “They are your family.”

“I panicked,” you said with a nervous laugh. “Besides, based on the disappointment that they are expressing over my marriage, I assume the disappointment of finding out how and why it happened would be even worse.”

“They’re not supportive, I assume.”

“Not at all. My mom is mostly text yelling at me annul it.” You breathed out as you set your phone down, not wanting to deal with it anymore.

“What did you say about that?” Briana asked.

“I told her that wasn’t happening. Then I asked if she and everyone else wanted to meet him.” You cradled your face in your hands, overwhelmed at your own behavior, and actually surprised at how upset your mother was over this. You thought she’d at least support you, maybe even want to meet the man that you married on a whim. There was none of that though, and you began to feel even more disconnected from your family than usual. “She basically told me to stay away until I got myself right.”

“I’m sorry,” Kim added. “That’s rough.”

“It’s okay,” you replied. “Can’t please everyone. Besides, I’m sure Rob’s family is just as upset with him.”

As if you speaking his name had cued him, Rob walked into the greenroom, followed by the band.

“Hey, Rob,” Briana shouted to him. He made his way toward the three of you, a questioning look on his face as he approached. “So, we have to ask, how has your family reacted by the news that you’ve eloped?”

“What?” He asked. “Why is this even a topic of conversation?”

“Because my family is still pretty pissed off by the entire thing,” you replied. “It’s been over a week and my mom is still insisting that I made a mistake and I need to annul this. Obviously, she’s right… but that’s beside the point.”

“Oh,” Rob replied, eyes growing wide as he too realized that the two of you hadn’t actually talked about this. “Um, my family has actually been pretty great about it.”

“Really?” You asked in disbelief.

“Yeah. My mom and my sister have really been bugging me about introducing you to them. I know that’s awkward and still a touchy subject, so I’ve just been trying to avoid it.”

“You never said anything.”

“No. I know. I just didn’t want to pressure you into that. That’s a big deal.”

“Rob, yes this is a big deal. Neither of us have even told our families what really happened.”

“I- I couldn’t do that to them,” he replied softly. “Not after everything with my ex. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I understand. But, you should have told me that they’ve been wanting to meet me.”

“I didn’t want to put that on you.”

“Wow,” Kim laughed. “The communication between you two is impeccable.”

You eyed her, unamused at her amusement over your situation. She was right though. You and Rob might be caught up in a lie at the moment, but even fake marriages should have some sort of plan. Maybe it was time for the two of you to actually take a moment to sit down and figure things out before they got any more out of control.

“Haha,” Rob mumbled in return. “Why don’t you try to make a marriage work with someone you don’t know?”

“No thanks,” she laughed as she stood up and walked away. Briana stood as well, glancing back and forth between you and Rob as she silently judged you for a moment.

“She’s right, you know. It wouldn’t hurt the two of you to maybe at least get to know each other and talk about things.”

You watched her leave, letting her words sink in. When the two women were out of earshot, you focused on Rob.

“Hey, you going to karaoke tonight?” You asked.

“Hadn’t planned on it.”

“Good. Because I think it would be a good idea for us to actually try to get on the same page about the details of this whole thing.”

At the end of the day, you and Rob decided to head out to dinner together. Normally, it was a thing for everyone at the cons to share meals as a group, but you knew that the two of you had more to worry about. Not only were you blissfully unaware of the fact that Rob’s family definitely knew about this marriage; but you also didn’t realize that they seemed to be eager to meet you. It was a completely different situation on your end, and you chose to ignore that part for now.

But, you were very much aware of the fact that this accident didn’t affect only you and Rob. You both had friend and families who were suddenly also involved. In the moments after the wedding, you never even stopped to consider that this could affect anyone but you. Right now, you understood completely just how serious this entire thing was.

You sat across from him when you arrived at the restaurant together. You took note of how he chose to dress up slightly by adding a waistcoat over his button up. He had also decided to wear his glasses, which you didn’t even know he needed. For some reason, you felt as if you couldn’t take your eyes off of him. He was generally an attractive man. Your attraction to him was a big part of the reason you were in this mess. Right now though, it was a bit harder to breathe as you took in the sight of him like this.

“I didn't know you wore glasses,” you said, trying to start the conversation.

“Yeah, sometimes. I need them more often than not really.”

“I like them. It makes you look… I don't know, sophisticated.”

“Thanks,” he smiled. You couldn’t help but to smile at his smile. It always seemed to warm and inviting.

“So,” you began, knowing that the more serious stuff needed to be discussed. “We need to figure out this whole family thing.”

“Look,” he replied. “I can just make up excuses for them not to formally meet you. It might get a little suspicious after a while, but I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“No, Rob. We can’t do that. This is a mess. This is a huge mess that we got ourselves into.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“We’ve inadvertently involved a lot of people in this,” you pointed out. “We have co-workers, friends who never wanted to be a part of this. We have fans that we never even considered. Now, we have our own families who are thrown into it. I’m not saying that we should just be honest at this point; but if we’re going to keep going with this, we have to make it easier on everyone else that we’ve involved.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” you paused for a moment, wondering if what you had been thinking about all say was even a good idea. “Set up something with your family. I’ll meet them.”

“Really? You would actually do that?”

“Yes,” you replied, a little more sure of yourself. “They think you’re married to someone that you purposely married. I can’t be the person who makes this worse for them.”

“You don’t have to-”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

Rob stayed quiet for a moment as he thought about how to react. You could tell that he was struggling with really wanting to ease his families minds but not upset you in the process. All you could do was reassure him that it was okay.

“Hey,” you asked suddenly, breaking him from his thoughts. He glanced up at you with those blue eyes that looked a bit more confused than usual. “Are we in this together?”

“I hope so. I don’t think it would work if we weren’t.”

“Alright, let’s make a deal,” you began as you reached your hand across the table, waiting for him to react. He did hesitate, but met you at your offer. He took your hand and held it there, waiting for your to finish. “We are going through with this. Together. We have six months that we have to make it through. I’ll do what I can to make this easier for you, if you’ll do the same for me.”

“Really? You’re not yelling at me about what an idiot I was anymore?”

You shook your head in response, “No. I’m done being mad at you. Being mad at you isn’t going to make this easier.”

“Okay,” he replied. “I can do that. If you need anything, I’m here. But, you really don’t have to make a thing out of meeting my family. I’m never going to ask you to do something that makes you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine Rob,” you smiled. “At no point right now or in the future does anyone have to know what this really was. I mean, as long as our friends don’t open their mouths and let it slip. I can be your pretend wife if it helps to keep your family happy.”

“I would really appreciate that,” he smiled in return. Something like relief washed over his face and you felt better just seeing that.

“Good,” you grinned as you slowly slipped your hand from his. You sat back in your chair and let out a relieved sigh; the two of you smiling at each other as you realized you very suddenly had a sense of understanding of what the situation was. You had the basics of a plan, even if there was a whole lot more to work out as time went on. “Since I’m doing something nice for you, I would appreciate it if you let me stay with you when we get back home. Just until the renovations are done.”

“Well, I already offered-”

“I know,” you cut in. “I feel better taking advantage of your offer if I’m giving something in return. So, please, let me meet your family.”

“Well, they’re your family too, honey,” he said jokingly.

At any other given moment, you would have hated him for that comment. Right now though, you sort of found him endearing. He was trying a lot harder than you had been to make this work, and you acknowledged that.

The fact that you still had a crush on him had finally caught up to you. You had been using that feeling to lash out at him; mostly angry with yourself at the fact that you had played a major role in messing up any sort of relationship that could have been there had the two of you not done something so stupid. Now, you figured you could use your crush on him to your advantage. It would be a lot easier to get through this with everyone around you actually believing it if you just showed that you liked the guy. In the end, you were the only one who had to know that it wasn’t a complete act. He seemed to be willing to play along, much more than you had been.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” you added. “If we want to get through this with our dignity intact, I think we need a better plan that just- let’s pretend we’re happily married.”

“Yeah. What do you have in mind?”

“Maybe we should get to know each other.”

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#what happens in vegas #rob benedict x reader #rob benedict rpf #supernatural rpf

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georgeavillart · 6 years ago

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Making Histories

Bernard Buffet

Buffet’s portraits have always been hugely prevalent in my discipline; his signature exaggerated dark eyebrows and eyelashes are consistently translated into my paintings, lino prints and photography. The solemn aura consistent in each of his paintings is something that also always resonated with my own work which is often based around mental illness and a sense of confusion or lack of ownership of self. Buffet is undoubtably the first painter that I ever really connected with and the undeniable impact his work has had on my own will likely always remain.

Suzanne Césaire

In addition to her important literary essays, her role as editor of Tropiques can be regarded as an equally significant (if often overlooked) contribution to Caribbean literature. Tropiques was the most influential francophone Caribbean journal of its time and is widely acknowledged for the foundational role it played in the development of Martiniquan literature. Césaire played both an intellectual and administrative role in the journal’s success, the journal established a dialogue with surrealism both as a means of cultural liberation and as a means to obscure political messages for the censors. In her contributions, Suzanne Césaire heavily reappropriated colonial stereotypes such as the ‘cannibal’ and the ‘lazy negro’ as provocations for both coloniser and colonised to re-examine deeply internalised (self)perceptions.

Leonor Fini

Alike Césaire, Fini has been frequently forgotten in mainstream education despite her large contribution associated with the Surrealist movement. Fini’s self-portraits and mythological paintings focused on eroticism and dreams; “Paintings, like dreams, have a life of their own and I have always painted very much the way I dream,” she once said. Fini’s eccentric lifestyle of cross dressing, carrying on homosexual relationships, and eating dinner with her 23 cats, continued throughout the decades. She notably designed the costumes for Federico Fellini’s film 8 ½ in 1963, and was the subject of many photographs and poems during her lifetime.

Der Blaue Reiter

Der Blaue Reiter was a German expressionist group originating in Munich in 1909. A number of avant-garde artists living in Munich had founded the ‘Neue Kunstler Vereiningung’, or New Artist Association. The most important of these were Wassily Kandinsky Franz Marc. In 1911 Kandinsky and Marc broke with the rest of the Neue Kunstler Vereiningung and in December that year held in Munich the first exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter. This particular painting by Kandinsky relates to my work through the use of colour, to him, copying from nature stifled artistic expression. Kandinsky's thoughts on colour were similar to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's belief that different colours can convey certain emotions. The warm colours - red, yellow, and orange - are usually considered lively colours that can sometimes be harsh. The cool colours - green, blue, and purple - are considered more peaceful and subdued. Kandinsky was especially fond of blue. In my paintings the ‘subdued’ and ‘harsh’ connotations of colour are parallel to each other, suggesting a conflict in technique where Kandinsky’s piece’s between 1914-1921 embody the large scale turmoil as Germany declared war on Russia.

Sigmar polke

The painting “Modern Art”, an angst-stripped remake of Ab-Ex, both amuses and unsettles. In terms of style it includes every standard ingredient of abstract painting — vigorous gestures, contemplated shapes, a splash of deep texture, a spiralled flourish — but absent of all the conceptual substance of any self-respecting abstraction. Though aesthetically pleasing in style, it could be argued that the artist hardly needed to have added the white margin and caption at the bottom; it’s already pure textbook material. The same critiquing could become apparent in my own work, have I been subtle enough in my comparisons and challengings? The concept of challenging contemporary techniques are common themes in our work and influenced some of my preconceived ‘abstract mark making’. However, with its nod to 20th century abstraction seeming at once nostalgic and sarcastic, the influence of the Nazi reign where all forms of abstraction were deemed degenerate could be being commentated on. This puts my work in a very different, much lighter angle.

Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat is prominently remembered as the pioneer of the Neo-Impressionist technique commonly known as Divisionism, or Pointillism, an approach associated with a softly flickering surface of small dots or strokes of colour. Seurat combined a traditional approach, based on his academic training, with a study of modern techniques, such as Impressionism. His work also derived from contemporary ideas of quasi-scientific theories about colour and expression. Seurat was inspired by a desire to abandon Impressionism's preoccupation with the fleeting moment, and instead to render what he regarded as the essential and unchanging in life. Nevertheless, he borrowed many of his approaches from Impressionism, from his love of modern subject matter and scenes of urban leisure, to his desire to avoid depicting only the apparent colour of depicted objects and instead to try to capture all the colours that interacted to produce their appearance.

Patrick Caulfield

Patrick Caulfield was an English painter and printmaker associated with the Pop Art movement, known for bold images created in a strikingly graphic style. Employing references to Photorealism, his paintings are characterized by their flat planes of colour and cartoonish black outlines, creating an uncomfortable ambiguity between the real and the illusionary. At the Tate I was predominantly drawn to Patrick Caulfield’s work; his paintings explore alternative ways of picturing the world. ‘After Lunch’ was one of his earliest works to combine different styles of representation. In this case, what appears to be a photomural of the ‘Château de Chillon’ hanging in a restaurant is depicted with high-focus realism, contrasting with the cartoon-like black-outlined imagery and fields of saturated colour of its surroundings. Caulfield deliberately makes the relationship between these varying representational methods uneasy and ambiguous, so that the picture appears more real than the everyday world around it.

Harris Glenn Milstead

Milstead "the most beautiful woman in the world, almost" is better known by his stage name ‘Divine’ and is an icon amongst the LGBT community, Divine has always been a prevalent influence in my life as a gay woman but is currently influencing my artwork more than ever. Divine, was an American actor, singer, and drag queen closely associated with the independent filmmaker John Waters usually performed female roles in cinematic and theatrical productions, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career. The characters Divine portrayed present femininity in a way that’s powerful and vulgar in contrast to the frequent connotations of sex with absolutely no depth of character. This possessive vulgarity being the centre piece of artwork is what my photomontage pieces are heavily focussed on.

Erich Heckel

Erich Heckel was a German artist and founding member of the influential German Expressionist group Die Brücke. His angular woodcuts and paintings described both the chromatic world and the inner emotions of the artist. In Die Brücke’s studies toward a modern, expressionistic art, the group regularly sketched, painted, and printed images of two young neighborhood girls they used as models, one of whom, "Franzi," Erich Heckel depicts here. The artists' desire for freedom of expression was mirrored in the free movement and relative lack of inhibition of their young muses. In Heckel's woodcut Seated Nude (Fränzi), Franzi's pose and slight grin indicate a lack of shame about her nakedness, while her small, immature body provides a visual analog for the artist's angularity and simplification of form. Rendered in stark, unmodulated white, her nudity contrasts with the red and green background tones. Not only has Heckel’s simplified technique inspired my own mark making when regarding lino prints, the representation of women in his work provided an alternate depiction that intrigued me with its candid nature.

Robert Mapplethorpe

Mapplethorpe is one of the many brilliant creative minds that were lost in the 80’s due to complication with Aids, the American photographer’s work altered perceptions and pushed boundaries in relation to the male gaze upon the male body. Charting his personal involvement in New York’s gay scene, Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs demonstrated a compelling perspective on the underground queer culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Mapplethorpe speculated that if he had been born in an earlier era, he might have been a sculptor rather than a photographer. In his chosen medium, he underscored the powerful physical presence of his models. With an obsessive attention to detail, he choreographed their statuesque poses and used studio lights to trace the contours of their bodies. His subjects are shot through with dramatic tension and eroticism no matter how benign the scene. A body is never just a body; even so, the classical sensibility that structures these scenes is tempered by a palpable sexual intensity and with the same attention to detail as his most seemingly tame images of tulips. Mapplethorpe is important to me as an LGBT icon but also as a large influencer over my desire to depict vulgarity in droll domestic scenes, the sense of ownership of self is so prevalent in his images serving a subtle commentary on the lack of control these figures really had; a message I want to remind viewers of.

#year1fineart #makinghistories

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secretlystephaniebrown · 8 years ago

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The Bitter Taste of Graveyard Dirt

Wow it has been a long time since I have gone back to this universe. And man did I miss it.

This fic is dedicated to everyone who has waited patiently for more of this universe, thanks everybody for still believing in me! (If you’re in the mood, prompts are still open right now, so go right on ahead and throw me something if you’ve got an idea for me!)

Prompt: @oopstheregoesmysoul asked for; “Can you please do your Red Hood Stephanie begrudgingly having to come to terms with Bruce following his return from the dead?”

A Mouth Full of Blood A Soul Full of Sorrow A Face Full of Scars A Different Game ‘verse

Stephanie Brown was a killer, and she wore it like a brand on her face and carried it like a knot in her chest.

Redemption was a bitter word on her tongue. She was not redeemed, she was not forgiven. There was no balancing of the scales. Her sins were too many, the blood on her hands had seeped into her very skin, letting the whole world know what she was and the things she had done.

She was a killer, a monster, a criminal, an outcast, and she knew it. Everyone knew it. She lived on their fringes, avoiding most of them, tolerated only because she set aside her guns and stopped killing at the request of Cassandra Cain and a dead man.

Bruce Wayne had died, and in his own way, that had let her live again.

She spent her days patrolling Gotham and re-learning how not to kill, beating down criminals with her fists and crude weapons, not seeing the attraction of the fancy gadgets the others used, refusing to brand herself with the symbol of the bat again. She coordinated with Oracle, and carried a communicator in her helmet that allowed her to call for back up—or, far more commonly, to be summoned as backup. She avoided Tim Drake and was avoided by Dick Grayson and Jason Todd.

Cass was the only one who sought her out, and in many ways it was a reversal of their youth. Every time she returned to Gotham she showed up on Steph’s doorstep or in Steph’s room, having broken open the window, smiling in that way of hers that was a promise.

It was a promise of change, of hope for the future, a statement that Steph was not as dark and ugly and twisted as she knew herself to be, but Cass refused to believe or acknowledge. Stephanie Brown knew she was unforgivable, was too far gone to be saved, but Cassandra Cain was never one to believe that. She still saw Spoiler and Robin when she looked at the Red Hood, and sometimes it was a heavy burden, but most days it was… inspiring.

It made Steph want to be that again.

Bruce had offered her a way out, when she died. He had offered her a pass, a clean slate, a new life. Far away from Gotham.

But she had stayed. Gotham was in her very bones; this city which she had died for, where she was reborn, was so tangled in her very self that to leave it and never return would be like to cut out a part of her very being.

She had stayed.

She had stayed for her mother, she had stayed for Nell—now her foster daughter thanks to Barbara Gordon’s machinations—she had stayed for Cassandra Cain, and she had stayed to prove Bruce Wayne right when he said he believed that she could do better, be better, that she could still be a hero despite years of death and destruction left behind in her wake.

Bruce Wayne had died, and only then had Stephanie Brown found herself able to forgive him for all that he had done, and what he had failed to do. Only then had she managed to cut through the complicated web of hatred and been able to remember those moments of kindness and affection, to remember that she had once looked up to him and separate that admiration from the bitter taste of graveyard dirt.

So it was unsurprising that when she saw him standing on her doorstep, the entire world stopped spinning on its axis.

Her first thought was a dream, but she knew better, knew better than maybe anyone that death was not always permanent, and she struggled to breathe, staring at him, standing so innocuously, waiting for her to say something.

“Steph?” Nell called from behind her. “What is it? Who’s at the door?”

There were ashes on Steph’s tongue and fire in her veins. “No one,” she said calmly, knowing her protégé would not be fooled for an instant. “I’m going out.” She stepped into the hallway and walked right past Bruce Wayne, heading for the roof.

“Stephanie,” he said.

“Not here,” she bit out. “Not where she can hear.” There was no scenario that he didn’t know about Nell; didn’t know about Scarlet, the sidekick of a criminal, the girl who would have been Robin. He’d know about Nell’s mother, in the hospital, her bills paid for out of Steph’s own pocket, he’d have seen Nell’s transcripts and paperwork and probably even knew the color of the paint chips she had selected to paint her room.

Fear rose in her throat, suddenly, that he would take Nell, sweep her up into his world the way that he had once swept a little girl with a purple cape, but she reprimanded herself. She had gone in willingly, her heart too large and her fists at the ready, happy to help and wanting to be a part of something.

Nell Little was a part of something already. She had a friend in Damian and a place at Steph’s side, and there was no force in the multiverse that could pry Nell away from Steph, not as long as Nell’s mother remained in the hospital in that deep and dreamless sleep.

She led Bruce up to the rooftops, and turned her face to the sky, where the Batsignal lit up the clouds. She closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath, trying not to feel like it was that night when she had clawed her way through satin and wood and six inches of dirty to finally find fresh air.

There were questions she should ask, apologies she should make, but she said nothing. She just breathed, her chest heaving like she was fresh out of the grave again, with bloody hands and her throat hoarse from screaming, and waited for him to speak.

Steph knew what she was—she was a patchwork of her own mistakes as well as the hurts he had caused. She had taken all of her own pain and lashed outwards; sometimes at the undeserving but just as often at people who had done nothing to earn her ire or her violence. All the codes she had followed while operating as a crime lord, all the rules she had laid down for herself... it changed nothing.

Spoiler and Robin would have not recognized the Red Hood. Or maybe they would. And that thought hurt even more. The idea that everything she was, was hurtling towards this path, that she was born to be a killer. Only with blood on her hands had she gained what she had wanted her whole life; acceptance, respect, a place in the world.

She was the Red Hood. She was Nell's mentor and Cass's best friend and the black sheep of the black sheep of superheroes. She was feared and respected, if not loved or admired. Her killer still roamed Gotham and her name silenced rooms.

But her heart ached the way it always had, looking at Bruce Wayne, and hoping beyond hopes that he could tell how hard she was trying to fix this—herself, her mistakes, the city even. Failing him was still a terrifying thought, a far worse nightmare than coffins and Lazarus Pits could craft.

“You look better,” Bruce finally said, and Steph felt like she was about to be split in two as her old hatred resurged, but so did everything she had felt since they had lost him. How, after all this time, could he still affect her like this? She was no longer a child—she’d had one child of her own, had given it away, and now had another child depending on her, looking up to her—but still he made her this vulnerable, this small.

She looked at him, and saw… Bruce. Comfortable in casual clothing that blended in with the area. He looked the same as he had the last time she had seen him outside of costume.

The last time he had seen her, however, was a whole different story.

She forced herself to speak. “I feel better.” She was still angry, she was still violent, her nightmares were still filled with screams, but there was a peace lodged somewhere in the midst of it all; maybe because of her mother, maybe Nell, maybe Cass, but it was there, and it hung like certainty in the air around her.

They stood there, looking at each other for a long, long time. There was too much to say, and yet not enough words. How could they spill out years of history onto this rooftop? These wounds were ancient; some healed, some scabbed over, others still fresh and infected, but Steph was struck by the irrevocable fear that saying anything at all would only rip it all open again, throw her back to those darkest days, push her back to that person she had been.

You can change, Cass’s voice reiterated in her ear. You have changed.

What did he see when he looked at her? She wondered, as she met his gaze. His own failures?

“I saw the videos of your protégé,” Bruce said, instead of any of the other things she might have expected him to. “She’s very good.”

Pride swelled in Steph’s chest, and she realized what he was trying to do. Common ground, maybe, or even just perhaps sticking to safe topics, never mind that Nell had once been her accomplice, no matter how far Steph had kept her from major criminal activity.

“She is,” Steph said, instead of calling him out on it. The tension hummed in the air, but neither of them acknowledged it—neither of them wanted to. Both of them knew that there were so many ways that this conversation could go, and most of those conversations took them down paths that were littered with even more regrets. There was too much history there, Steph thought. To ask even the most innocuous of her burning questions would only open the door to the rest of it—her death, her killings, her return, the Black Mask. She was sure it was the same for him. They were alike in that, neither of them willing to shatter this moment, to shatter this fragile peace.

Steph wasn’t even sure if the peace that would shatter would be the peace between the two of them on that rooftop, or the peace that Steph had fought so hard to create with the others.

“When did you get back?” Steph asked softly, instead. “I know Tim—he was saying—”

She had ignored him, as she had ignored Tim Drake for so, so long. She had nearly beaten him to death in her own rage, and she had no right to speak to him, and while he felt differently, he avoided her in turn, the two of them staying so far apart, when once they had been so close. The thought burned in her mind.

“Today,” he said, surprising her. “I… I wasn’t sure if you would have stayed. I’m glad you did.”

The acknowledgement of his farewell to her took the breath from her lungs. “Gotham is my home,” she said.

He smiled at her. “I know. It suits us both.”

The comparison of the two of them to him nearly broke her, nearly destroyed every ounce of her self-control. But she did not want to fight, or scream. All she wished to do was cry. She had mourned him, she had buried him, she had gone his funeral and ranted at his tombstone. She had died with his secrets scalding her tongue and belief that he was coming for her in her heart, and she had screamed his name as she had clawed her way out of her own grave. He had not come for her either time.

But he had not known, could not have known, and she’s managed to make her peace with that part.

And he had come this time.

“Suits all of us,” Steph said, avoiding the implications he had made. He can’t ever understand her, not really. She doesn’t want him to. To understand her was to be her, to have murdered her teachers for their numerous crimes, to have emerged from the Lazarus Pit with liquid fire in her blood, to have died with her eyes wide open.

She would not with that on anyone.

“Cassandra is flying in tonight,” he said. “You should come by.”

He won’t ask her to come for him—maybe he knew he had lost that right, to ask her for anything, but she had also lost the right to ask him for anything, so perhaps, in that, they were even.

“I—I’d like that,” she whispered.

I was a child, she didn’t say. I trusted you. She had idealized him, believed in him, trusted him, followed him. And she had died under his care, wearing his uniform, fighting in his name, and they both knew that.

He nodded at her. “Nell is probably worried.”

She wanted to call him out for leaving so soon, but she wanted to escape as much as he did. The weight of it all was too much. She could see the Black Mask’s face every time she closed her eyes, and the questions were fighting her, demanding to be spoken, demanding to be asked.

She would not be the one to break the peace, she thought, biting her tongue. Not tonight. Maybe later.

“She will be,” she said. She walked towards the door back to her apartment. She did not look back, knowing he would already be gone, vanished into the night. But she would see him again later, and she knew she would get her answers eventually.

#Stephanie Brown #Bruce Wayne #A Different Game Verse #DC #Bat Family #Steph Writes #Steph vs Prompts

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pomegranate-salad · 8 years ago

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This is what I see, welcome to reality

I wrote this on perversion in books and wicdiv to cope with today. As one does. I want to state that this is a topic that is in my sense underexplored outside of individual examples, meaning everything I’m saying here comes from my own thoughts and not any literary theory, so give it the credit you see fit. Mention of Deadly Class spoilers, abuse, and hope, maybe.

As usual, let’s start with a bit of oversharing. When I was I prep school, I had a math teacher who was an honest-to-god pervert. I’m not talking about a mean teacher, or a creep, I am talking about a pervert in the clinical sense. Every Wednesday, for four hours in a row, students would have to get to the board one by one, and remain there to be demeaned and humiliated over a problem they couldn’t solve, sometimes standing there for half an hour, until they were sent to their seat crying. Then, at lunch break, our teacher would seek the student still crying in the hallway. Not to console them, to tell them they could do it, or to apologize ; no, it was to tell them that thanks to him, they would manage to get better.

One of my friends was driven close to suicide by his verbal abuse. Yet, when she had to redo a year and had to choose whether or not to switch schools, she decided to stay because “our teacher is just so good at pushing students”. She was not the only one. I spent the year pointing out the obvious abuse to my fellow students, yet gradually, it was as if they were losing the ability to see or acknowledge it. People who were revolted by his way of speech at the beginning of the year were eating in his hand a few months later. But in these few months, any standard of acceptable behaviour was removed to be replaced by a unique reference, a unique basis. Soon, my fellow students started complaining that the other teachers weren’t hard enough on us, that to be the best of the bests you had to be under constant pressure. How could we complain that he was being mean to us ? Could we pass our entrance exam without him ? Of course not. We needed him. Without him, we were nothing.

This is what a pervert does : cause pain, destroy a person’s self-esteem, trust and hope, and then replace it all with dependence to him. A pervert is not satisfied with making someone suffer : this person has to fall on their knees and say thank you. A pervert will lock you up and make you say they’re your way out.

But doing so doesn’t only involve destroying anything in your life that could help you get out, it also involves destroying the very idea of getting out. Why pretend you’re a good teacher despite abusing your students when you can convince everyone a good teacher is necessarily an abusive one ? A pervert goes after your values. The abstractions you believe in, without even realizing it, forming a net ready to catch you when you fall. When life gets hard, when relationships become complicated, when you fail, then you still have hope, friendship, self-love. Even when life is messy and you feel lost, you still know that truth exists. Values and principles bigger than you are still there even when you don’t see them around you.

But these abstract concepts are fleeting. They need reinforcing. Most of the time, a turn of the wheel is enough ; you were doubting, but then something comes along that makes you trust yourself again.

But when a pervert comes along, they will surround you with their presence, and they’ll start choking those values until there is no standard to refer yourself to, no principle to go by, to value to aspire to. You can lose friends and still believe in friendship ; when a demanding partner refuses you see your friends for months and months, tells you they don’t really like you anyway, when your friends start attacking you out of frustration for your blindness, it becomes harder to believe in friendship. You can be lied to and still know the truth exists ; when someone starts lying to your face, makes you doubt everything you hear, it becomes harder to believe there even is a truth. Systematically, one after the other, every benchmark erodes, until you have no scale, no basis to your judgement, no way to determine what is normal anymore. And when this happens, then the only lighthouse in your life will be the towering tyrant holding the keys to your world, because they built the bars themself.

The subject of perversion has been on my mind a lot lately, for obvious reasons. But just like any psychological subject, it also exists in the media we consume. The way a pervert acts has been seized by countless pieces of media, not just to showcase it but to use it within their very foundation. Every book, movie, comic, builds a rapport with its reader. This rapport can be made of trust or doubt, fascination or disdain. Social and moral values are decisive when consuming a piece of media, because we are trained to expect positive consequences to acting according to principles, and negative ones when we break a social standard. Our normality when entering a story is one built by social values : get rewarded or get punished by acting within or outside their norm. Every creator has to play with these expectations in order to make a point about whatever values society holds. It’s not rare for a piece of media to try and get the reader out of their comfort zone, to deconstruct values the reader might take for granted. But what I call a perverse piece of media – with no implication that the author is themself a pervert – is one that has no other goal than to systematically destroy every established value the reader might have, to take away their sense of normality when approaching the story. There is of course no comparing a real-life abuser to what a book might do to its reader. But it can be enlightening to interpret the way certain books toy with and wreck their audience’s principles to the point where none of them has any relevance to the story.

A classic example would be Emile Zola’s towering saga The Rougon-Macquart : over the course of 20 books, any principled character sees themself degraded, every display of humanity is immediately punished, while the dregs of humanity gets what they want. Again, it’s nothing unusual for books to feature unfairness, to reward the absence of principles. But what makes this series not only cruel, but perverse in my sense, is the way it rams at higher values until they’re proven not only feeble, but completely vain. It’s not enough that Gervaise from the Dram Shop should fall into alcoholism despite having grown up with an alcoholic and trying her damnedest to stay away from the danger ; first it must be demonstrated that her efforts make absolutely no difference. First her entire world must fall apart because of alcoholism, then she is shown giving in to it. This is to me what perversion in a text looks like : acknowledge a value the readership holds – resisting degradation – and then destroy any impact this value might have on the character’s fate until the reader is just as convinced as Gervaise that there was no way she could escape her family’s stain. The menace has become our only key of comprehension of the character. The book replaces our values with its reality, a reality in which the only normality is the one it dictates. The same way a pervert isolates their victim from society until all standard is lost, a perverse book isolates its reader from the world they hold as real and drags them into a reality with no value, no other verity than the one it conjures at every page turn.

I’ve found this kind of world-building through merciless deconstruction of real-life values again recently in a comic : Deadly Class. Every arc in Deadly class takes on one specific moral value and then goes on to demonstrate its futility in the world it created. Maria’s bravery, Marcus’ aspirations of freedom, Willie’s kindness, Saya’s devotion to her friends, they all come not to support them but to hinder them in their quest for survival. Every noble impulse leads to death, any selfless move is the wrong one. It’s the prisoner’s dilemma with every inmate ratting on you. In the current arc, when master Lin tells Saya her nobility puts her in danger, you might not believe him, but you believe him more than at the beginning of the series. Every moral value was put on display to be proven futile ; every character’s death has buried their highest quality with them. Again, here lies the difference between a cruel book and a perverse one : a cruel book makes its character suffer for their actions but doesn’t question the higher values that led them here, a perverse one is after the principle ; the character is only the demonstration. By the end of arc 4, the reader knows no good deed is ever a guarantee of good results. If anything, any positive gesture is received with suspicion, as we know it will be used against a character later in the story. Deadly class has completely inverted the code of values with which we interpret the world : it dictates its own laws with every page, with every unjust death, with every treason, and each time our grip on our own normality gets a bit looser. The only thing to do now is to turn another page and wait for the story to provide us with reality, a reality that can no longer be compared or judged, but only accepted.

To reiterate, I am not accusing Emile Zola, Rick Remender and Wes Craig of being perverts. I am not accusing the Rougon-Macquart or Deadly Class of being bad books. The Dram shop is a masterpiece and Zola, if you don’t know, was assassinated for taking a public stance against the tide of antisemitism. Deadly Class is a gorgeously drawn, impeccably oiled story, the same way a military parade is impeccably oiled. There is much to be said for works that manage to drag you so deep inside their world you cannot grasp at your own reality anymore. Much to be learnt from them too. But in days like today, there is just as much to be said for works that stubbornly refuse to let themselves become perverse.

The Wicked + the Divine is not a perverse book. In many ways, it is the opposite of a perverse book. It has become comically hard to praise something for daring to have ideals. Cynicism is an epidemic ; the marketing of a caricature of moral values so removed from reality they have lost any meaning, from feel-good anthems to Manichean summer blockbusters, has caused the knee-jerk reaction to any “inspirational” piece to be disdain and mockery. Optimists are deemed popcorn creators, pawns of the establishment. Great art comes from demolition.

But here’s the reality : swinging a fist at someone’s principles is damn easy. Rebuilding them afterwards, and rebuilding them better, is another story. For some reason it has become a sign of naïveté to still be harboring values while the world becomes a shitshow. I don’t know many steps of human progress that have been made out of cynicism. I know a bunch of them that were taken out of higher aspirations.

Wicdiv is not a faux-inspirational work. It doesn’t shy away from the increasing inadequacy between higher standards and the ruthlessness of reality. And yet it aggressively clings to these higher standards, refuses to pervert them to establish its own world where values don’t matter and you are free to impose the reality you want to your readers. And yet it would have been so easy for wicdiv to do so. The news Ananke delivers to Luci in issue #4 has taken another meaning in light of current political events : the fact that she must remain in prison despite claiming her innocence is not just unfair, it also means the pantheon implicitly accepts her culpability as the reality. Did she do it ? It doesn’t matter, as long as the story works for the greater good. Truth is the last thing anyone cares about. And when Luci breaks out, it is not to claim her innocence, but out of desperation, and in a sense, ready to accept the imposed reality as the only reality. If wicdiv had stopped there then we would have learned the futility of truth within its world.

But then you have Laura, seventeen years old, standing for what she has seen and heard. A woman who has decided to trust herself instead of the most powerful and adored people in the world. Through Laura, Luci and the readership hear the same thing : the truth does matter. And the story will not rest until it has been uncovered. There is a touch of sublime in that moment, in the way it seems to restore balance, in an instant, to a crumbling world. Why should we care about the truth ? Because the story cares.

A similar moment happens in issue #20, when after seeing Persephone’s story, Cass tells her she is sorry. It’s a small gesture, but has anyone cared to make it before or after her ? Why should we assume that human decency still exists in this world if no one ever displays it ? Kindness, empathy, the simple acknowledgement of grief and pain, should never be taken for granted. They are not a primal impulse, but a socially crafted behaviour that must be enforced to keep existing. Despite the gods and x-men fighting, this is still our world, and these people are still human.

Even more impressively, wicdiv doesn’t hesitate to showcase how easily these values can be weakened. After Ananke's death, Tara’s description reads : “killed by Ananke in assisted suicide to frame Baphomet. No one buys it now.” And just like that, the story of a murder becomes the story of another one, once again a crude caricature of a complex reality, turning with the wind as the louder voice demands it. Yes, it would be easy to leave it there. But I have no doubt that wicdiv will eventually make it right by the truth. And it’s not something that I can say about a lot of works. Just like there aren’t a lot of works I can read knowing that behind the injustice, the hardships and even the cruelty, there is a world still standing for me to climb on. No matter how much our characters keep failing, they will not take down what is really important with them. Friendship matters. Love matters. Truth matters. Kindness matters. It makes a difference. We can make a difference.

Maybe I sound naïve. But maybe this is a mantra we will all need in the years to come, as the most powerful pervert on earth and everyone acting alongside him will come after these principles, one after the other, and will sully them until it looks like none of them even exists out of fairy tales. During these times, I don’t expect wicdiv, or any work, to save us. But if we’re in for years of gaslighting, then we should be thankful for any work that still dares to tell us that yes, the lights are indeed flickering. So thank you, Kieron Gillen, Jamie Mckelvie, Matt Wilson, Clayton Cowles, Chrissy Williams, and everyone else involved in making Wicdiv. Thank you, Wicdiv fandom, for providing me for beautiful, touching, funny posts, and making the comic live. What you do matters. And that is the truth.

#wicdiv #deadly class #thinkpiece time #well writing as a coping mecanism time would be more accurate

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notexactlywhatitsaysonthering · 7 years ago

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‘I Do’ing it a second time

Four months have flown by since I wrote my last blog post. I am sorry to those who have asked or emailed about when a new post was coming. I have no excuse other than time seemed to evaporate over the summer, the mayhem of the school holidays with the children, juggling work and the fact that life has taken yet another unexpected plot twist for me.

‘I do’ing it a second time.

My last blog post detailed that over a year ago Mr. T entered our lives. As our relationship grew, he surprised me by breaking down the impenetrable brick wall that I had built around myself. I spoke of life adapting, yet again, to another emotional change and the balancing act that is navigating life amidst a blended family.

This July, on our first summer holiday as a family of four, Mr. T got down on one knee in the swimming pool, (yes he disappeared below the surface) holding his hand above the water to present an open ring box. I laughed. I cried. I was lost for words (that rarely happens to me) and without any doubts, I said ‘yes’.

I said yes to ‘I do’ing it again.

For any of you who have followed this blog from the beginning you will know that over four years ago, my life was very different. That woman back then would never have imagined that she would be writing this blog post. She was determined that the experience of her husband’s affair and subsequent abandonment, had shattered all hope of future happiness. I never thought I could get past that overwhelming heartache but if I can be the proof that anyone needs, here I am. Life never stays the same. Life keeps moving forward and it is so important that you choose to move with it.

But what does marriage look like a second time round? To be brutally honest, it looks much the same as it did the first time. Two people, very much in love, who want to build a life together and have all the hope and passion to drive that dream forward. All the foundations are there but this time around there are subtle differences. Subtle differences that may help or hinder, depending on what you choose to draw from your life experience.

My ex-husband was loyal and unbelievably loving for thirteen years and then something changed. We had been a strong and adoring couple, husband and wife, and then parents, and we rarely, if ever, argued. At the very moment he lost his way, he also lost his fight. He, or we for that matter, failed to see that conflict is an inevitable part of any relationship.

I could see my ex-husband felt his affair was too big a hurdle to overcome. He didn’t want to have to work or fight to keep our family together. He gave up and saw the alternative ‘affair partner’ as a more alluring option as opposed to the hard work of resolving our conflict and moving forwards as a family.

I could lay all the blame in his court and see remarrying as easy for me because, I didn’t choose an affair and I didn’t leave my family, but that would be foolish on my part. I look back on my marriage and if anything I want to learn from the inexperienced expectation that I had of my future at that time.

There is no one perfect partner. It is unlikely that you will find yourself in a long-term relationship in which you will never argue or never see opposing sides of the same coin. Indulging in the illusion that finding the right partner will ultimately lead to a perfect, conflict-free relationship, is simply delusional. Having realistic expectations for relationships and for marriage, if you choose to take that step, could help you to avoid failure.

This time I have my eyes open. I have felt loss. I have felt the turmoil of someone breaking apart my family and that intense feeling of not knowing what the future holds. I have felt the agony of feeling devastatingly let down by someone I loved. I am entering marriage for a second time with the understanding that there may be hurdles to overcome. No, there WILL be hurdles to overcome. Life is, by its very nature, unpredictable and often hard.

Difficulties, of any kind, are not a signal for one or other partner to bail out and give up. Overcoming problems and facing them together allows for a relationship to evolve and the people within that relationship to grow. I am not saying remarriage is going to be easy. It follows divorce and with that comes the understandable vulnerability that something didn’t work out well in the past. In our case, we are both divorced. I felt it was so important that we lay our cards on the table. I wanted us to honestly and openly discuss our past history, our past failures and our regrets in order for us to both understand the pressures that will inhabit our present and future lives.

Remarrying, especially when children are involved, is a tough choice and unsurprisingly more complicated than first time around. There are far more people in the marriage than simply the two exchanging vows. I come as a package deal with my two children. They are my priority. But I have to make sure that my partner feels represented and a part of that, already existing, unit. The influences of exes are ever present and do not just wither with the choice to marry again. Exes live on in both our lives through memories and, in my case actual contact, through our children. Accepting each other’s past and acknowledging it is vitally important for the success of any future.

As I said in my last post, it is not simply a matter of making life in one home work but it also involves making life between two houses work. It is not simply life between two houses but, more crucially, with two couples sharing an involvement in how the whole plot thickens.

‘I do’ing it a second time is not necessarily an easy choice but then again marriage should not be viewed as ‘easy’ in the first instance. I cannot reiterate enough that life always keeps moving forward and it is so important that you choose to move forward with it. Try not to let a negative from your past stop you from having a positive future. Wherever you are on your journey, please know that there is a next chapter around the corner even if you can’t begin to imagine it now.

As the saying goes, nothing worth having comes easy...Mr. T you are testament to that.

#blendedfamily #divorce #affair #life after divorce #life after loss #family

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