#valcour

[bigmfrat]

saw a shirt that Val would 100% have dude is a regular at every single thrift store in town and if he finds a shirt with a goofy slogan it's going home with him to immediately get the sleeves cut off and added to his closet.

[jareckiworld]

Hans Bellmer (1902-1975)—Aline et Valcour [etching, aquatint, 1968]

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Hanns Ewers - BLOOD - Valcour & Krueger - 1977 (cover illustration by Steve Garris)

[harveyspictures]

Valcour Island July 4 2022 Wildflowers

[seeingteacupsindragons]

25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

In the spirit of "Damn I really miss him," have a bit from Ambrose's book. It took forever to pick something because I just like so much of it.

[queeringclassiclit]

Some Fun Statistics

Characters who are not beating the gay allegations (highest 'yes' vote):

Dorian Gray - 93.6%

Sherlock Holmes - 89.5%

Grantaire - 87.8%

Characters with an unblemished record of heterosexuality (highest 'no' vote):

Anne Shirley - 74.1%

Jane Eyre - 44.6%

Matthew Cuthbert - 36.9%

Pairings who are definitely making out sloppy style (highest 'yes, they at least kissed' vote)

Achilles & Patroclus - 89.2%

Carmilla & Laura - 84.6%

Gilgamesh & Enkidu - 79.4%

Pairings who are sitting 5 feet apart cos they're not gay (highest 'no, they're not queer' vote)

Anne & Diana - 71.3%

Emma & Harriet - 20.2%

Macbeth & Banquo - 18.4%

Most controversial (most even split between 'yes', 'maybe' and 'no')

Lady Macbeth

Bertha Mason

Guy Montag

Most niche (highest 'I don't know these characters' vote)

Valcour & Francisco de Paola - 68.8%

Sue Bridehead - 68.3%

Emily Grierson - 61.8%

[disease]

MAN RAY— "UNTITLED" | 1926 "ALINE AND VALCOUR" | 1950

[the-cricket-chirps]

Man Ray, Aline et Valcour, 1950

[sydney-the-faithful]

Hi, Sydney. I’ve read a little bit of de Sade, mostly out of curiosity, so I figured I could try to provide some context? I’ve not read Aline and Valcour specifically, but I did do a little reading on it.

I’m always pretty strongly in favour of reading books people have tried to ban and have burned or otherwise censored personally, so Marquis de Sade was uh. On that list for sure. He was imprisoned for rather quite a lot of pretty horrific sex crimes (as well as the blasphemy and pornography), though? So. Yeah. I’m glad I read it to draw my own conclusions, but it does still leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. (I think he actually wrote Aline and Valcour while imprisoned about them?)

Basically, Aline and Valcour is a lot of things apparently, but a lot of that is sort of social commentary. It focuses on a cannibalistic, religious dystopia in opposition to a philosophical utopia (de Sade was pretty loudly atheistic. Which is… I don’t know. I think it’s an interesting insight, considering it was the 17/1800s.) The main characters are ‘virtuous people’ whose lives are disrupted by ‘turbulence, turpitude, evil schemes and incestuous designs’ being worked upon them. I’m assuming some form of corruption or downfall. Also a bit of abduction, apparently, that’s fun.

It’s supposedly quite a bit less… Graphic than some of his other work, but de Sade will still be de Sade. Father of Sadism, etc. Apparently it has some pretty interesting social commentary on the time and the characters are pretty in depth and nuanced. It doesn’t sound like a bad read, but I’m still unable to help but side-eye some of the themes. You know. In the context of de Sade being the person he was… All of the torture, assault and real life abduction.

Hopefully that’s helpful??? Doesn't seem wholly like your thing, but. Info. Yeah.

~@crimson--phantom

Oh!!! Oh my goodness. That's... Oh, that's a lot. Thank you for letting me know, Clara! ^^'

Yeah, um... I don't think it sounds like my thing. Of course, ah, reading literature from people with differing views is wise and can give you a lot of insight into the world/other people's minds but I don't think de Sade sounds like someone I'm comfortable doing that with, considering everything... you told me.

In general, the concept of taking virtuous people and corrupting them doesn't sound like anything I want to be reading ^^'

Thank you again for looking out for me! <3

[executionersghost]

I know I’m like…musing into the void here at the moment, but I’ve got all these thoughts and I need to put a few of them somewhere so-

Milady is def my new favorite of Eva’s characters, and MMMM even tho she doesn’t look like Meca this time around, (save for her Isabelle De Valcour Court disguise lol) the Vibes are impeccable. Esp for smth like ER Meca where it’s the situation of a woman who’s been deeply hurt by all the men and monsters around her, yet still resorting to doing their bidding while nipping at opportunities for revenge when they arise. ”My life has been their life. My death will be my death.”

Like…man…

[bigmfrat]

ooH lil baby man (47 year old) has a new Temp ref with his new designnnnn

Now I just gotta "re-"write his backstory and then I get to redo Remus and Tipper from scratch... yay...

[rfsnyder]

Man Ray - Aline et Valcour

[oldsardens]

Man Ray - Aline Et Valcour

[harveyspictures]

Valcour Island Sunrise July 4 2022

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Thinking about this again, so I pulled up the last query letter I sent out, to see what the "stakes" were there, since it did very well at the time.

It's this:

If the magic Ambrose relies on won’t come to his call, maybe something else will. Something Ambrose was charged with keeping under lock, key, and ward four years ago: wild, parasitic magic that could spark Witchhunts affecting more than a teenager desperate to save himself.

This is not an "or else" claim. Nothing about this is actually tied to Ambrose failing at what he's trying to do. In fact, it's actually indicating, "If he does this thing he's trying to do, terrible things could happen actually."

This is actually me going to potential readers like, "Hey, hey, look at the cost of success."

It's actually me going to readers and, "Look what my character has to struggle with."

I couldn’t sleep last night, but desperately needed to try because I had an early morning today, which sent my brain down various useless rabbit holes, one of which was: Story Stakes.

Generally, this is something very important to communicate in your queries/blurbs/pitches/cover copies. People need to know why anything in the story matters. But a lot of people interpret stakes as, “What are the costs if they fail?” and that just seems too limited to me. It’s always an “They Win, Or Else.”

And it feels fake. You can write “Or they’ll all die,” or “The rebellion will be quashed forever,” or, “The galaxy will explode,” as much as you want, but very, very few stories actually follow through on that. To me, it doesn’t hit me with much impact, because I know it’s not a real option or risk. This is a story. Stories almost never end that way, and many of those would be hard to actually accomplish.

So maybe they’re stakes for your character. But they’re not stakes for a reader. My emotional investment in the story isn’t going to be tied to fear they might explode the damn galaxy.

I have rarely written characters who were motivated by what would happen if they failed, or had them think often about the costs of failure. Most often, I write characters who are pursuing something more and think about what they might miss out on gaining. I write characters who are going to be emotionally destroyed if they cannot succeed because they weren’t good enough/didn’t try hard enough/made mistakes.

And to me, that’s much more engaging. Will the character lose much but time and an opportunity? Maybe not. But how do you go back to the status quo when you were a fingertip away from something better?

The status quo is losing. Remaining how things were is the price of failure. You don’t have to backslide from the book’s opening for the characters to have lost. I don’t have to write an Or Else.

And I think it’s also much more likely as an ending than horrific catastrophic failure. A character losing out on something they wanted and having to emotionally confront that and move forward is actually reasonably common. A story with a bittersweet ending where things are in some ways better and some ways worse but not what the characters were hoping for are reasonably common—and they often hurt a reader worse than watching everything fall apart does.

I give characters hope and desire and if the reader doesn’t truly believe they won’t really get what they wanted, they’re at least likely to follow along for the emotional catharsis of seeing them win instead of for fear that they lose.

I’m still tired and still haven’t slept. Maybe this doesn’t make sense to anyone but me. But I prefer to lead with carrots and not sticks, especially for readers who don’t have to invest.

[queeringclassiclit]

Masterlist of Previous Polls

And Then There Were None - Philip Lombard

Anne of Green Gables series Anne Shirley Anne & Diana

Arthurian Legend Lancelot du Lac Arthur & Lancelot Morgan le Fay Guinevere & Morgan Gawain The Green Knight

As You Like It - Rosalind & Celia

Beowulf - Beowulf

Breakfast at Tiffany's - Holly Golightly

Brideshead Revisited - Charles & Sebastian

Carmilla - Carmilla & Laura

The Catcher in the Rye - Holden Caulfield

The Chronicles of Narnia - Edmund Pevensie

The Count of Monte Cristo - Eugenie & Louise

Crime and Punishment - Raskolnikov & Razumikhin

Dracula Count Dracula Jonathan Harker Mina & Lucy

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Jekyll/Hyde

The Divine Comedy - Dante & Virgil

Emma Emma Woodhouse Emma & Harriet

The Enchanted Island of Yew - Prince Marvel

The Epic of Gilgamesh - Gilgamesh & Enkidu

Eugene Onegin - Onegin & Lensky

Fahrenheit 451 - Guy Montag

The Famous Five series - George Kirrin

The Fate of the Crown - Valcour & Francisco de Paola

Frankenstein Victor Frankenstein Victor & Henry Captain Walton

The Great Gatsby Nick Carraway Nick & Gatsby Jordan Baker Daisy & Jordan

Hamlet Hamlet & Horatio Rosencrantz & Guildenstern

The Haunting of Hill House - Eleanor & Theodora

Herbert West–Reanimator - Herbert West

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Huckleberry Finn

The Idiot Myshkin Rogozhin

The Iliad - Achilles & Patroclus

The Invisible Man - Jack Griffin

In Memoriam A. H. H. - Alfred Tennyson & Arthur Hallam

Jane Eyre - Jane Eyre

Jasper Jones - Charlie & Jasper

Jeeves and Wooster series - Jeeves & Wooster

Jude the Obscure - Sue Bridehead

Julius Caesar - Brutus & Cassius

Les Misérables Enjolras Enjolras & Grantaire Javert

Little Women Jo March Laurie Lawrence

Lord of the Flies - Piggy

The Lord of the Rings series Frodo & Sam Galadriel Boromir Fingon & Maedhros (The Silmarillion)

Macbeth - Lady Macbeth

Mansfield Park - Fanny & Mary

The Merchant of Venice - Antonio

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Puck

Moby Dick - Ishmael

The Most Dangerous Game - General Zaroff

Mrs Dalloway - Clarissa

Much Ado About Nothing Benedict Beatrice

Oliver Twist - Oliver Twist

Orlando - Orlando

Othello - Iago

The Outsiders Ponyboy Curtis Johnny & Dally

Peter Pan - Peter Pan

The Picture of Dorian Gray Dorian Gray Dorian & Basil Henry Wotton

Pride and Prejudice - Charlotte Lucas

Richard II - Richard II

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Rosencrantz & Guildenstern

Romeo and Juliet - Mercutio

The Secret History - Richard Papen

A Separate Peace - Gene & Finneas

Sherlock Holmes Series Sherlock Holmes Sherlock & John James Moriarty which adaptation is the most queer?

The Talented Mr Ripley Tom Ripley Tom & Dickie

The Tempest - Ariel

To Kill a Mockingbird - Scout Finch

Twelfth Night Viola Corsino Olivia

Ulster Cycle (Celtic Mythology) - Cú Chulainn

Waiting for Godot - Vladimir & Estragon

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Dorothy Gale