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whocaresstillthelouvre · 1 month

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Golden Walkway

Pairing: Jackson Joel Miller x Female Reader (Reader is a teacher in Jackson, has long hair.) Rating: Explicit. 18+ (Minors DNI) Summary: It’s your birthday, Joel takes you out to the Tipsy Bison, kisses (and does more to) you in the rain, and takes you home to give you a gift (it's sex, the gift is sex). Also, the thought of Joel spitting whiskey in someone's mouth happened and I had to write it out. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Warnings: smut, drinking, consent first, degradation second, followed by so much praise, hair pulling, spitting, Joel calls you a slut, fingering against a brick wall, F receiving oral, I watched that doggy style Narcos gif (for research) a lot, unprotected p in v, apocalypse birth control (pulling out), Joel’s canon age, Reader’s in her 30’s. Words: 4,300 A/N: Hi! Welcome to my first published fic. I'm currently working on a grander scale fic with these two, I hope to have the first chapter out within the next couple of weeks. I just really wanted to get this out there! Thanks for reading and a big thank you to @ohheypedrito for all of her help and also to our phones for not overheating when I send 40 texts at once with ideas for fics. Hope you enjoy, can't even blame the feralness of this on the full moon.

Edit: I posted the Masterlist for Elks, my work these two are included in.

***

“Was turning 21 as fun as they’d show in movies back then?” You’re cuddled in next to Joel on his couch sketching in your notebook while Joel reads a book about Native Americans that you found him. You always do this, a random question or thought to break the comfortable silence.

“Not for me, bought a 12 pack of Bud Light and split it on my porch with Tommy. Sarah was only a toddler then and I had work in the morning. Didn’t have the money or the time to go to a bar. ‘Course I don’t think a lotta people did anything the way they’d show in the movies.”

“I always wanted to have my 21st birthday at a bar, ya’ know? Wait until the clock strikes midnight and order a weird named shot.”

“Well, I reckon we could do that at the Bison tomorrow night. Might not be your 21st but I’ll get you whatever you want to drink, and the best part is you can drink before midnight.” Joel pulls you in closer and kisses your forehead, “What do you say, let me take you out for your birthday sweetheart.”

“Yes, please,” you sigh into his shoulder, “sounds amazing.”

“Wear that little blue dress I know you have hanging in your closet.”

The drinks flowing through you making you downright giddy, alcohol making you bolder, your body and your inhibitions becoming looser, your hands becoming addicted to touching Joel, first his leg, then his thigh, now his lower stomach, right at his waistband. You haven’t been this tipsy in a long time, your face feeling flushed and red more from your desire than any drink you’ve had tonight.

“You better knock that off before I take you outside in the rain and fuck you against the building, darling,” Joel huffs into your ear. His fiery warning massaging your neck causing your heart rate cooled by your inebriation to pick up.

“Sooo, keep going?” You slur back.

“If that’s what you really want,” Joel puts a forceful squeeze on your upper thigh, a layer of your dress laying between his skin and your skin. If you weren’t both sitting at the bar, and maybe in one of the more darker corners of the saloon you’d surely hike your skirt up and let him learn just how bad you want him.

It feels so good to let go with him, to giggle openly at his jokes, stare at his profile as he talks with a friend or two who stop by to say hello, or place your hand on his broad back just because you want to touch his soft blue denim shirt.

You watch as his tongue darts out and licks the leftover whiskey off his top lip, Joel’s movements becoming a little slower thanks to the amber liquid he’s been drinking all night. Some droplets glisten on his mustache, you fight every urge inside yourself to not lean over and lick them up.

“It’s what I want,” you respond as you move your hand back and forth across his waistband.

“Jesus Christ, I’m about ready to throw you over my shoulder and run home,” Joel says as he takes your hand into his and pulls it away.

“Not so fast. You told me you’d fuck me in the rain, that’s what I want for my birthday,” you whisper into his ear with a breathy giggle.

“Can’t fuck you out here in public. Small town ‘n all, but I’ll make you feel good,” Joel takes a last swig of his drink, puts the glass down and knocks his fist on the bar to let the bartender know you two are leaving. He leans forward and drawls into your ear, “Now finish your drink if you want me to show you just how happy of a birthday I can give you.”

You nod and gulp your drink down. You’re so wet, you don’t know if you’ve ever been this turned on before. Joel grabs your arm with the perfect amount of pressure, you’ve never been so happy to get outside into the pouring rain.

——

It’s absolutely storming outside, your footsteps sloshing in the puddles on the ground. The rain pelting your’s and Joel’s bodies as you walk through late night Jackson. It feels like you’re the only two people in the whole town as you make your way farther away from the bar. The bulbs of the string lights reflecting off the water gathering on the sidewalks making your path towards Joel’s house golden. You don’t rush, the two of you not scared away by the downpour, the drops cooling your burning skin. Joel turns down the street before his, pulling you behind one of the storage buildings, it’s darker back here, practically pitch black thanks to the rain clouds blocking the moon and the nearest light source being three buildings down. You’re pushed up against the brick, Joel’s hand gently cradling your head to block it from hitting the wall, he’s such a gentleman.

“Happy birthday baby, I need you to tell me you want this, ‘n you’re okay with this, I have plans for you and I need you to tell me you want it.” Joel instructs you, all you can see is his eyes and the faint lines of his facial hair, the rest of him camouflaged by the darkness surrounding the two of you.

“I want it, more than anything. Please,” your voice straining as you beg.

“Tell me you want me to have my way with you,” Joel speaks into your slack mouth as he rubs his arched nose against yours.

“I want you to have your way with me,” you moan against his wet shirt, “so bad.”

“Good girl, now, m’not gonna fuck you here, because I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop and I need to have you in my bed tonight.” Joel starts to move his hand down your body lifting the hem of your dress. “But, you are going to cum for me right here.” Joel captures your mouth with his. His hand starts to trace the outline of your panties, you mew out a cry as his fingers slip through and begin to pet you right where you ache the most. His hands are so big, his fingers so long and thick, always putting the right amount of pressure, moving the way you need him to move. Joel Miller is a capable man, everyone knows that, but nobody, except for you, knows just how capable he is.

Joel sticks a finger in you, though his finger is thick and feels so good, you need more to fill you.

“Another,” you instruct in between fevered kisses. Your pussy clenches as Joel pushes another finger in you. “Yessss,” you moan out against his lips.

“That’s my good girl, gotta get you stretched out f’me.” Joel begins to kiss his way down your chin and neck stopping at your chest, your hard nipples jutting through your wet dress. Joel takes one into his mouth, sucking the fabric and your tit deeper into his mouth. The sloppy wet sounds of Joel’s suctions making you want him more.

“Another finger,” you shudder out. “Three? You really want it tonight, don’t you?” Joel mumbles against your chest as he sticks a third finger in. It burns, it burns in the best way. You’re ready for him, it’s what you’ve been waiting for all night. You bite down on your lip as your legs begin to shake, Joel can tell you’re right on the edge and twists his fingers inside of you as he finger fucks you harder.

Your orgasm bursts forward your whole body going stiff as you try not to wail out into the night.

“That’s iiiiiit baby,” Joel pulls his fingers out of you and softly pets your pussy from hole to clit.

He removes his hand from between your legs bringing it up between the two of you resting his finger tips against your lips, you open your mouth and begin to lick. His tongue meeting yours as you both clean his thick digits covered in you. He takes his hand away leaving just your mouths to taste each other. His kiss turns tender, your kiss turns desperate.

Joel pulls away resting his forehead against yours. “My beautiful birthday girl. Let’s get you home, my gift’s not done.”

——

Your body practically chills with the promise of what is left to come. Joel grabs your hand and you take it depending on him to lead you to his home. Every step you take you feel your wet core heavy with lust, you’re soaked from the rain and from Joel, if you could drown like this, you would go down with the sinking ship. His house comes into view, your body tingling in anticipation at the site as the both of you speed your footsteps up in perfect agreement.

He throws open the gate, you’re following so close you almost trip on his heels making your way up the walkway and steps. He fumbles for his keys and unlocks the doors, you take the opportunity to run your hands all over his back and sides, rubbing the wet cloth of his shirt as it molds to his body. The door swings open and you both shuffle into his living room gasps escaping your mouths, both out of breath from your dash home and your mutual want for each other. You step out of your wet shoes and shake your hair out.

“Take your dress off, right now.” Joel huffs out as he tosses his keys on the console table and begins to kick his boots off.

You strip yourself of your baby blue frock as fast as you can. You’ve never had a reason to wear such a revealing piece of clothing. You don’t know why you held onto it, let alone grabbing it from the communal clothing rack, never thinking anything, or anyone, would be worthy enough for you to dress up for. Joel’s worthy, so worthy.

“Feel like I’m a little underdressed here…” your words grab Joel’s attention as he moves his hands up to his chest to begin to unbutton his denim shirt. He gets one button taken care of before he rips it open. Shame, it’s your favorite shirt, you'll have to fix it for him later. You watch as a button rolls underneath a table, before you can note where it lands, your attention turns back to Joel to find him stepping out of his jeans and underwear leaving him completely naked.

What a sight, what a fucking sight. There’s only a lamp on in the room, Joel’s body being cast in amber color and shadow, one side of him on full display glowing in the light, the other more difficult to discern. He moves forward stalking you. “Now I’m the underdressed one here. Take them off for me,” he says as he moves to pick up a bottle of whiskey from his shelf.

You follow his instructions shucking your underwear down your legs and leaving them pooled at your feet.

“Good girl,” Joel says as he begins to walk towards you unscrewing the lid off the bottle. He stands in front of you and takes a drink. “Open your mouth,” he orders as he grabs your hair and tips your head back. He takes another pull from the bottle, this time he raises his mouth over your mouth and begins to dribble drips of whiskey down from his mouth into yours. A moan raises from your throat, causing Joel to tighten his hold on your hair and arch your head back even more. He spits the rest of the whiskey straight into your mouth, you happily swallow his spit and liquor down. He unwinds his hands from your hair, takes another drink and kisses you, the whiskey and his tongue spilling into your mouth. Joel pulls back and takes his last swig before resting the bottle on the table. “Get upstairs.”

You don’t think you’ve ever run so fast in your life, tripping over your feet as you rush your way up, Joel’s naked form hunting you like prey up each step.

The sight of Joel’s bed brings a new wave of goosebumps to your skin.

“Bend over on the bed darlin,” Joel turns on a lamp in the corner and pulls it closer. “Need to lick and fuck you with my tongue.”

You move over to Joel’s side of the bed and bend forward, your ass sitting high in the air and your face in the sheets, you inhale the smell of Joel on his sheets. You swing your hips in giddy anticipation of what’s about to happen.

You feel his body lean over yours, his erection laying over your lumbar. “Okay baby, once again, need you to tell me you’re good with me having my way with your body,” he tempts into your ear.

“Fuck, y—yes, fuck, of course I am good. So good.”

“That’s my girl,” Joel’s heavy body lifting off of yours as he kneels between your legs. You feel his hot breaths on you where you’re aching for him the most, you widen your stance egging him on to touch you. “Look at you,” Joel licks your thigh, “so fuckin’ wet you’ve spilled out into your thighs.”

You scream a pleasured yell as Joel’s teeth bite down into the flesh of your thigh and sucks your skin into his mouth. The pain is perfect. He loosens his bite, kissing and licking the spot, the sensation making your body quiver.

“Okay baby?”

“Y-y-yessss,” you answer.

“Whaddo you need sweetheart?”

“Lick me,” you beg out, “please.”

“‘Course. Where do you want me to lick you?” Joel questions as he nuzzles his head against your ass cheek, giving it a small bite.

“My pussy. Pleeeaaase,” you’d say you sound pathetic but you couldn’t care less, your lust overshadowing any type of pride.

“Mm, you sound so needy baby, you sound like you really need my tongue on you, huh?” His teasing drawl drives you crazy, your body won’t stop moving, absolutely radiating tensity from your want.

“Please,” you implore, sobbing out.

“Alright baby,” his hands grab your cheeks and spreads them, widening his view of you. “Prettiest thing I ever seen, love your pussy.”

This act feels so depraved, everything on display for him, legs and cheeks spread wide, your pussy exhibited for him like it’s an art piece.

You literally scream into the bed, biting down on Joel’s comforter as his tongue finally meets your core. This, thiiiiiiis is what you’ve been wanting all night. Joel moans against you, not being able to hold himself back as he tastes you, his fevered licks exploring your cunt, his large tongue mapping every inch of you. He’s absolutely conquering you, the noises of his lips and tongue smacking against your wetness soundtracking his journey.

He can feel you getting close your hips beginning to cant as your orgasm begins to crest. You knew it wouldn’t take long, between the alcohol buzz and Joel’s tongue lapping up your wetness and cum from earlier, you knew you’d be a goner.

“Mmf, cum for me,” Joel speaks against you, his mouth full of you, too busy to pull away to clearly speak. You don’t think he can get any closer to you, his tongue working your orgasm up in intensity with each swirl and dash against your clit. You feel it, it’s here. Your legs instantly collapse, thankful that the rest of your body is resting on the bed. Your eyes tightly squeeze shut and then begin to rapidly blink as your orgasm shatters through you. Joel flattens his tongue against your clit as it pulses. You’re too turned on to make a noise, Joel stepping in for you and groaning as your juices seep out of you.

“Did so good baby,” Joel says leaving one last kiss on your clit before standing up behind you. You want to flip over to look at him, you haven’t seen his face since you laid down on the bed. You have no energy, you’re just a shell of a woman, the only sensations you can feel is the pool of wetness in between your legs and your light inebriation.

Your attention gets pulled to the sound of Joel spitting in his hand, followed by a hiss coming out of his mouth. When you realize exactly what he’s doing, you summon the strength needed to turn over. You flip over, your back thudding on the mattress your legs still spread wide, feet resting on the floor. And there…. there…. THERE he is, standing in the middle of his room, one large hand wrapped around his hard cock softly stroking as he watches you with hooded eyes. You know you just came, but the sight makes your pussy clench with desire.

Joel jerks himself off as his eyes roam your exhausted form. “Been thinking ‘bout this all day. You all laid out in front of me heaving for air after cummin’ all over my tongue,” slow strokes matching his lazing words. “Just about canceled our night out when you opened your door in that little blue dress, looked like you were wearing the sky, baby.”

You bite your lip as all of your senses are so overtly overwhelmed by lust. The sight of Joel’s handsome face watching you, the hazel flecks in his eyes twinkling in the golden light of the lamp. The smell of the rain on your skin mixed with the heady scent of your arousal and Joel’s sheets. The taste of Joel’s whiskey tongue still in your mouth. The sound of Joel’s fist pumping along his hard cock. The feel of the aftershocks of your orgasm still quaking your body. It’s so fucking much, you need Joel inside you. The thought of feeling him stretch you causes a whimper.

“Yeah baby? Havin’ a hard time over there?” Joel stops stroking his hard length, his hand pauses on his shaft. “You want me to fuck you now?”

“Pleeeease,” you keen out.

“Alright sweetheart.” Joel confidently strides over to you, dick still in hand. He stops right at the edge of your feet. “Turn back around ’n get on all fours in the middle of the bed f’me.”

You follow his instructions eager to please. The sooner you get this done, the sooner you can feel Joel enter you.

“Good girl,” he praises as the mattress dips lower with his weight behind you.

Your heart is pounding so loud, your whole body thrumming, you gulp down a breath of air trying to calm your need. You feel Joel’s cock brush against your ass cheek, he’s so close to fucking you.

“Sweetheart, I’m gonna fuck you real good and hard now. Happy birthday baby.”

And just like that, Joel buries his cock inside of you, you’re absolutely stretched around him. Your clit already worked over by Joel’s tongue, now your hole deliciously stinging while it flutters around his cock. He begins thrusting, tender and slow full strokes. Entering and exiting, swirling the head of his cock right at the entrance before plunging back in because he knows you love the feeling. Joel’s groans and your cries join in song as he begins to pound faster, the sound of your bodies slapping together match the rhythm.

“Feel so fucking good, always so perfect for me. S’a good girl, always take it so good,” Joel grits out.

He grabs your hair and wraps it around his fist as he pounds into you. “No one knows how fucking slutty you get for me behind these walls. They think you’re one of those innocent little teachers.” Joel pulls your hair harder causing a scream of ecstasy from you. “You love this, don’t you?”

You do. It’s so rough, so different from how gentle he always is with you. It feels like a luxury to be treated this way by him.

“Y-y-y-yes, God I love it,” you whimper.

“That’s right. That’s what I like to hear. So pretty so smart. So much smarter than me, now I’m makin’ you stupid with my cock, right baby?”

Everybody knows Joel Miller as the strong, silent type, a man of few words, somebody who doesn’t do chit chat. But with you in his bed naked and wailing as he slams into you, Joel Miller won’t shut up.

“Doin’ so good for me. So pretty, so perfect f’me. So wet for me.”

“You made me so wet earlier, I was afraid I was going to leave a mark on the barstool.” Your words coming out as tortured weeps, so lost in your ecstasy you struggle with every word spoken.

“Fuuuuuck.” That got him good. He pounds you even harder, the bed frame shaking violently against his wall, your body and cunt acting as if it’s the only barrier between Joel knocking a hole in the plaster. “Had I fuckin’ known I would have made you stick your face on that chair and made you lick yourself up as I fuck you against it.”

That’s it, that’s the hottest thing you’ve ever heard. Joel’s deep timbered accent grunting those deviant words as he grabs you and begins to roll his hips into your cunt. Your body is strung so tight and rigid in all places besides your hips and core, pumping and rolling along with Joel’s as he fucks you. You’re close again, your panting breaths letting Joel know.

“Baby, if you gotta cum, cum,” his grip on your hips pressure into you.

“Going … going.. going to,” the only words you can say as your third orgasm radiates out of your body, your pussy is the epicenter, tingles firing through your veins, your hands fisting the blankets at your detonation. Slack jawed and fucked senseless you rally the strength to not disintegrate and fall into Joel’s bed. Your world has been shattered by Joel, but your body survives for him, your legs and arms shaking under gravity and your weight as they deal with the fallout.

“C’mere baby, lemme help you.” Of course he can tell you’re struggling. He reaches his hands around, clutching your stomach and pulling you up against him. Your back up against his chest, his hand seeking out your breast, the other wrapping around your torso and clutching you to him. He holds you as he fucks into you, his nose brushing against your ear as he puffs and grunts against your neck. “Fucking. Love. You. So. Much.” Each word matching a thrust into you. Your hands find his and grip them, you’ve never felt more loved and protected. Joel Miller has got you.

You feel the familiar shudder in Joel’s movements as he edges close to his climax. His labored breaths getting louder and more fevered against your neck. You’re absolutely wrecked, but the angle of Joel’s cock inside of you mixed with the feeling of the shudder in his movements as he edges himself brings forth another orgasm. Words are gone, just sounds, whatever your throat can muster up and out of your mouth.

“That’s it, that’s it, that’s it,” Joel repeats. His hands squeezing yours so tightly, his chest heaving against your back, his strong thighs straddling yours, his nose pressing into your ear. You feel his body tense as he pulls out. His release coating your pussy as his whole body surrounds you. Hot breaths huffing against the side of your face in between featherlight kisses. “Love you,” a whisper in your ear so delicate and sweet as he lets go of your hands. Your body falling forward without his support, your arms catching you before crashing down on the bed. Joel gets up with a groan as you lay yourself down on your stomach, taking the opportunity to stretch your legs out before rolling over on your side to watch Joel. He stands arms akimbo in the middle of the room. He’d look like a Greek statue if his shoulders weren’t rising and falling rapidly as he catches his breath. He’s gorgeous and he looks just as wrecked as you feel.

“Probably shouldn’t have gotten up as quick as I did,” he chuckles. “Damn well feel like I’m standing in the middle of a earthquake.” You love the casual banter he puts forth seconds after being deep inside you, his cum still covering your core. This is love.

You smile at him, your cheek resting on your hand as a makeshift pillow. You’re exhausted… the whole night and your four orgasms catching up with you. Eyes feeling heavy, matching your limbs you begin to drift off.

A wet sensation in between your legs jerks you awake. “Sorry baby, just want to clean you up,” a whisper just as light as Joel’s tender attention as he washes you lulls you back to sleep.

——

“Baby,” Joel’s low voice gently wakes you up along with a soft kiss to your forehead.

You groan as you stretch your sore muscles under the sheet, opening your eyes to find Joel gazing down lovingly at you. He’s backlit by the filtered morning sunlight shining in through his bedroom windows. What a way to wake up. “Happy birthday sweetheart, I’d let you sleep all day but I need to give you my present.” His face is so bright and cheerful, a boost in your confidence provided by just how happy he looks when he’s with you.

“Thought you gave me your present already last night,” you yawn.

“Sweet girl, that was a present for both of us. Now come on, get up.” You grab his offered hand and reluctantly get out of bed. Joel wrapping his arms around you in a tight hug, his hands splayed across your back as you nuzzle your face in his warm chest. “Happy birthday.”

A/N: THANK YOU for reading my first ever fic. My inbox is always open. :)

#joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #tlou fanfic #tlou fanfiction #pedro pascal character fanfiction #joel miller/reader #pedro pascal fanfiction #the last of us fanfiction #elks #joel miller smut #joel miller fic #pedro pascal

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katabay · 3 months

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SUBTEXT

so I've focused in on Perceval and Bors before, and I've done Perceval and Gender (for more on this specifically, see: Clothes Make The Man: Parzival Dressed and Undressed, Michael D. Amey) and did a whole comic that leaned into some subtext™ on temptation, but actually let's throw out the subtext! let's bring Augustine into this!!

Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)

introduction to Confessions, Augustine (trans. Sarah Ruden)

so for perceval a knight is both the gender he wants to perform but also something that is expressly compared to god, and if god is a lover that seduces. well. does this not also apply to knights as well?

Homosexuality in the Renaissance: Behavior, Identity, and Artistic Expression, James M. Saslow

and while galahad might be the obvious choice, I think perceval's relationship with bors during the grail quest narrative is more interesting. it's not god that transforms perceval, it's the sight of knights for the first time. something in here specifically is incredibly intriguing to me, but there's a different text I need to finish reading to fully form some thoughts on it.

le Morte d’Arthur

and finally! tentatively. I think I might slowly start turning this idea I had a couple years back into a fully formed comic. we'll see! I had most of it blocked out, but halfway through reading augustine's confessions, I think was when perceval finally clicked for me as a character in a later narrative cycle setting. I think I might have to spend a lot of time doing some visual research first because my god I cannot consistently draw armor to save my life......back when I lived in new england, there was a museum with a wonderful medieval armor collection I could visit.....alas.........I will have to hit the books (literally, I have a collection of books on medieval armor but this is apparently the one thing I can't visualize properly in my imagination. save me, museum collections, you're my only hope)

⭐️ credits for the collage panels! (all open access or public domain, etc.)

-Saint George and the Dragon -Saint George and the Dragon (different one lmao) -Pages and Knights, Frontispiece for "The Man at Arms" -Cloisters

⭐ if you like my comics and have a couple bucks, I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!

⭐ and other places I'm at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

#knights knights knights!#sir perceval #sir aglovale #sir bors #generic medieval tag #komiks tag #long post #there’s a forbidden citation after the ‘does this not also apply to knights as well’ that cites some Templar related academia #we’ll see if I start getting into the Templars here tho

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gaykarstaagforever · 5 months

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I think Todd in the Shadows is also a good example of how long it can take to put out videos, if you're researching / writing / producing them yourselves:

One a month? One every three months? It takes time to do all this.

If someone is dropping a weekly hour-long commentary video that isn't just them podcast-ranting about too many gays, they either work with a team, or are stealing.

And if they work with a team, they should credit them, so we know whose art or words are a part of this.

Sarah Z does it like this.

Jenny Nicholson does two huge videos a year, because I'm pretty sure she does them all herself. This content takes MONTHS to put together.

If you like a non-corporate channel and they're dropping slick videos daily or weekly, that's a red flag. You should probably narrow your eyes at where this content is coming from.

...Or they just don't sleep and use hard stimulants. But that also makes the content suspect, in its own ways.

You're not an unsupervised 11 year old. Be more mindful about what you're consuming. Stop generating revenue for dipshits who don't want real jobs.

"HEY I DON'T CARE IT IS JUST CONTENT I'M TIRED AND -- "

You can either stand against the dystopia, or get eaten by it. Grow the fuck up.

#rant #illuminaughtii #james somerton #sarah z #jenny nicholson #todd in the shadows #plagiarism #hbomberguy #youtube

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reasonsforhope · 8 months

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"When Ghana’s parliament voted to decriminalise suicide and attempted suicide in March, Prof Joseph Osafo felt a weight lift from his shoulders.

Osafo, head of psychology at the University of Ghana, had been engaged in a near 20-year battle to abolish the law – brought in by the British – which stated that anyone who attempts suicide should face imprisonment or a fine.

“It was a very good feeling. I felt like a certain burden had been removed. I was extremely elated,” he remembers. “Then the next morning, I realised we had a lot of work to do.”

Four countries decriminalised suicide in just the past year

Ghana is one of four countries to have decriminalised suicide in the past year – Malaysia, Guyana and Pakistan are the others. More could soon follow, which campaigners say is a sign of greater awareness and understanding of mental health. Kenya and Uganda have filed petitions to overturn laws and members of the UN group of Small Island Developing States have committed to decriminalise. Discussions are also being held in Nigeria and Bangladesh.

“There seems to be a domino effect taking place,” says Muhammad Ali Hasnain, a barrister from United for Global Mental Health, a group calling for decriminalisation. “As one country decriminalises suicide, others start to follow suit.”

“It is quite unusual,” adds Sarah Kline, the organisation’s chief executive. “It’s a huge sign of progress and an important step forward for the populations most at risk, as well as the countries as a whole.” ...

A large number of laws were introduced by the British during colonial rule. Suicide was decriminalised in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the 1960s – it was never criminalised in Scotland...

The results of these punishments can be “devastating” and present “a huge barrier” to addressing the problem, says Natalie Drew, a technical officer with the mental health policy and service development team at the World Health Organization. Health experts and advocates argue that suicide should be treated as a public health issue rather than a crime.

Criminalising suicide denies people the right to access health services and discriminates against them because of something they’re experiencing, Drew adds. Research shows that in countries where suicide has been decriminalised, people can seek help for mental health and rates tend to then decline.

Next Steps

In September, the WHO is due to release a guide on decriminalising suicide for policymakers, with explanations of how countries have managed it...

“[Ghana’s decision] should have an impact on the work ongoing in other countries, especially in the Africa region,” says Osafo. Within the past couple of months, he has set up a mental health working group with representatives from about 20 African countries, and one of the biggest issues on the agenda is decriminalisation of suicide, he says. “Nigeria is active, Cameroon is active … Kenya has joined and is doing fantastic work. We have Uganda. People have been asking us how we did it.”

Since suicide was decriminalised in Malaysia last month, Anita Abu Bakar, founder and president of the Mental Illness Awareness and Support Association (Miasa), has already seen things change. Crisis response teams and helplines are expanding, and money from the mental health budget is being given to organisations who work in the community. “This is the shift we’re so happy to see,” she says. “It was such an archaic law.”

She adds: “I’m a person with lived experience. What does decriminalisation mean to people like me? We feel supported, we feel this conversation can go to a different level. Obviously decriminalisation is not the only way to prevent suicide, but it’s a big one. I’m happy for this progressive move – better late than never. I’m excited to see what happens next, not just for Malaysia but for the rest of us.”"

-via The Guardian, July 20, 2023

#cw suicide #cw sui mention #ghana #malaysia #guyana #pakistan #nigeria #kenya #uganda #cameroon #mental health #mental illness #healthcare access #decriminalization #england #colonialism #good news #cw sui attempt #suicide

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merrybloomwrites · 24 days

Text

You Can Start a Family (Extra: Getting High)

Summary: Y/N's never tried weed before, and has an interesting night trying it for the first time with the three people she loves and trusts the most.

AN: This is a story about people getting high, written by someone who's never been high. I did a fair amount of research, so I hope it's accurate enough to what people experience lol

Previous Chapters:

Main Story: One ; Two ; Three ; Four ; Five ; Six ; Seven ; Eight ; Nine ; Ten

Sickfic Part 1 ; Part 2

Mitchrry Prequel

Fan Reactions

Holiday Blues

Mitchryy Reunion

Word Count: 2.8K

CW: Mentions of smut & daddy kink; drug use

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It’s a perfect Friday morning. You’re sitting at the kitchen table of your LA home with Sarah, Mitch, and Harry. Sarah had surprised you all with a full English breakfast “just because” and you’re enjoying every delicious bite.

It’s so good that everyone is practically silent, no one wants to take a break from eating to say anything. You’re the first to get full so you decide to start up some conversation. There’s something you’ve been wanting to ask them but have been too shy to actually voice your question.

Deciding to finally go for it, you break the silence saying, “What’s it like to get high?”

Simultaneously, all three of them stop mid chew to stare at you, completely caught off guard by your question.

Harry composes himself first and after finishing his bite of food he says, “Well it depends on what drug you’ve taken.” You’re grateful for the way he responded, showing that they’ll take the conversation seriously and not as a joke.

It’s no secret that he and Mitch have done a couple different drugs in the past. It’s common knowledge that “She” was written by Mitch while he was under the influence of psychedelic drugs. And everyone’s heard the story of Harry biting off part of his tongue while high on mushrooms.

Harry has also mentioned having done coke once or twice, and that admittedly makes you a little nervous. You went through the DARE program growing up where you’d been taught that all drugs will ruin your life and kill you. So while you never judge others for occasionally getting a little high, it does make you somewhat nervous that something bad could happen when they do.

You voice your concerns to them, and they talk you through what drugs they’ve tried, what it was like, and how they ensure their safety while under the influence. By the end you’re feeling better about everything.

But you notice one thing they left out.

“And what about weed?” You ask.

“What about it?” Mitch asks.

“What are you guys like when you smoke it? Eat it? Whatever you all do with pot,” you clarify.

“The boys prefer to smoke,” Sarah answers, “And I don’t like smoking, so I’ll have some edibles if I want to participate.”

“We all get pretty mellow,” Mitch says to answer your question.

“You can be more mellow?” You inquire jokingly, referring to his generally calm demeanor.

“He just sits there all smiley,” Harry says.

Sarah laughs and adds, “Yea, until he starts getting extra horny.”

You blush thinking about what that must be like and then ask, “What about you two? What are you guys like?”

“Sarah gets very giggly. And chatty,” Mitch answers. “And Harry gets the munchies.”

“Seriously?” You ask. Harry, the person in this relationship who is most regimented about what he eats and rarely ever snacks, gets the munchies?

“Oh, for sure,” Harry answers. “All bets are off when I’m high. Calories don’t count,” he finishes with a shrug.

“I wonder what I’d be like,” you say quietly.

“Y/N, do you want to try it? We’d all be with you, make sure nothing happens,” Sarah says.

You sit silently for a moment, debating what to say. This was another goal of yours for this conversation. You want to try getting high, especially with the three of them, who you trust more than anyone. You had been offered weed at a couple parties before, and always turned it down, nervous that something could go wrong. But here? With Sarah, and Mitch, and Harry? Well, that sounds like it could actually be fun.

You nod and say, “Yea, I kind of do want to try.”

“Okay,” Harry says. “We can make that happen.”

After that, the conversation turns to other topics as you finish eating and cleaning up breakfast. Harry spends a good chunk of the day writing. Mitch helps him but heads to the grocery store in the afternoon. Meanwhile, you and Sarah work in the garden, getting it ready to put in some new plants.

Happy with your progress for the day, you head inside to take a shower. When you’re done and dressed you walk down to the living room where Sarah, also freshly showered, and Harry and sitting together on the couch. You join them, sitting beside Harry. He talks a bit about what he worked on so far and then you finally hear the door opening, alerting you all that Mitch has returned from the store.

All three of you join him in the kitchen, helping to put the groceries away. You get to one bag that looks different from the others, like it came from a different store, but it still just seems to contain some different snacks, namely chocolates and some gummy candies. You get a closer look and notice the little leaf symbol on all of the packages.

“Uhm, Mitch? What is this?” You know what it is, or at least, you’re mostly sure, but it feels like a good idea to actually confirm.

He looks over to see what you’re holding and smirks before saying, “Well that would be weed. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to grab some after our talk this morning.”

“Can we try it?”

“Sure,” he replies.

“Tonight?” You ask.

“Are you sure?” Sarah confirms.

“I mean, it seems like a good time. We have a free weekend, which never happens. And I don’t want to overthink it more than I already have.”

“Ok,” Harry responds. “After dinner if you still want to then these will be our dessert,” he says, taking the bag of goodies from you and putting it in a cabinet, far away from the rest of the snacks.

“Sorry it’s only edibles,” Mitch says to Harry. “Sarah doesn’t smoke, and I didn’t think Y/N would either. And you don’t like smoking alone so, yea.”

“Are you not joining us?” Sarah asks.

“Not this time, I want to stay sober just in case.”

“Look at you, going into daddy mode,” Harry jokes.

There’s a flicker in Mitch’s eyes at that, something you’ve never seen before. “Haven’t heard that nickname in a long time,” Mitch says.

“You haven’t earned it,” Harry replies, tone definitely cheeky, and a little suggestive. You tuck the encounter away in your mind, making a note to ask them about whatever that just was at another time.

Now that everything seems to be decided, you turn to start making dinner. With the prospect of a new experience on the horizon you need to do something that’s familiar to you. Sarah helps you cook, and the boys clean up after.

Once everyone is in comfy clothes you meet up back in the living room. Mitch is holding the chocolate bar and gives you a look before asking, “Still want to try this?”

“I do,” you reply. You’re excited, even if you’re slightly nervous about how you might act or if you might say something stupid while under the influence.

“Alright,” he replies.

Mitch opens the package, breaking off three pieces and handing one to each of you. He then passes the rest to Harry, saying, “You might want one more in a bit. It’s a pretty low dose.”

You pop the chocolate in your mouth, a thrill going through you at doing something you’ve always been told was dangerous. It’s silly to feel this way, knowing now that the likelihood of this having any type of negative outcome is extremely slim, but it still feels almost reckless in an exciting way.

Nothing happens for a bit, but you expected that. Harry ends up taking one more piece, and you wonder if you should as well. Before you can even ask, Mitch says, “No more for you, give it time.”

Sarah adds, “It’ll kick in soon, trust me.”

And she isn’t wrong. You don’t notice it happening, but eventually you feel different. Your body feels kind of tingly, and you’re smiling but you don’t really know why.

The next thing you know, you and Sarah are discussing the garden at length. The area you have set aside is totally not big enough. You need way more space so you can grow veggies and berries and like, three orange trees so you can make your own orange juice every morning. Harry gets up no less than five times to retrieve snacks from the kitchen and you discover you’re actually starving, which is weird because wasn’t dinner an hour ago? You’re never hungry so soon after a meal.

Some more time apparently passes, and you and Sarah are now laughing at a story Harry’s telling about his craziest fan encounter.

Suddenly you remember a comment from earlier and turn to Mitch. He’s sitting next to you on the couch, completely entertained by the antics of the three of you and doesn’t miss when your attention focuses on him.

When you don’t say anything for over a minute he gives you a confused look and says, “Can I help you?”

“Why did Harry call you daddy earlier?” You ask.

At this question both Mitch and Harry blush. BLUSH. You don’t think you’ve ever seen that before.

Mitch looks at your doe eyed, innocent expression and thinks for a minute how he’s going to explain this to you. He sometimes forgets that all your sexual experience has been with him, and there’s a lot you’re unfamiliar with. Sure, the fact that you have sex with three people at once might seem adventurous, but the sex you all have tends to be mostly very vanilla. Mitch watches your inquisitive expression as he figures out the best way to explain daddy kinks and dom/sub dynamics to you.

He decides to start by asking you, “Have you heard of daddy kinks before?”

Your eyes go wide as you realize that this is going down a sexual route. Sarah starts giggling next to you at your reaction and you pout before saying, “Don’t laugh at me, you know I was sheltered!”

“I don’t mean to, you’re just so adorable when you're all shocked and naive,” she replies.

Sarah then shifts on the couch so she’s laying sideways, her back against the armrest. She pulls you to her, so your back is against her chest. Mitch slides closer and Harry takes the seat next to him. You and Sarah both stretch out your legs over Mitch’s lap until your feet rest on Harry. You feel all warm inside, getting to be in contact with all three of them.

“Sorry for laughing,” Sarah says quietly in your ear. “You know how much we love teaching you new things.” You shutter involuntarily at her suggestive tone. She wraps her arms around your middle as Mitch says, “You never answered my question.”

“There was a question?” You say and start giggling. You search your fuzzy brain, trying to remember what he asked you, then trying to remember what you guys were even talking about.

“I asked you if you knew what a Daddy kink is,” he says, watching you closely in case you had another entertaining reaction.

This time your face goes serious, and Mitch can literally see the wheels turning in your mind as you come up with an answer.

After a literal minute of thinking you reply with a decisive, “No.”

“Okay. So, a common misconception is that someone with a daddy kink has daddy issues. And that could be the case for some people but that’s not really what it is. It’s about power dynamics. Like one person gives over control to the other person. And the one with control would be considered daddy.”

“Mitch, that was a fucking terrible explanation,” Harry says. “Y/N, did that make sense to you?”

“Not really, no.”

Sarah decides to take over and says, “Do you remember the night after one of the Wembley shows when we teased you on the ride home?” You immediately remember what she’s talking about and a shutter of pleasure runs through your body at the memory. “And when we got back to the room we edged you even more and wouldn’t let you come? And then made you come multiple times until you passed out?”

“Holy shit,” Harry says. “Why have I never asked about things you did before I joined? Fuck, that sounds hot.”

You blush at the memory and Sarah continues, saying, “That night, Mitch and I had the power. We were in control of your pleasure. You trusted us to take care of you. That’s what a dom/sub dynamic is about. And there’s different titles that doms go by, like sir and ma’am or daddy and mommy. Depends on personal preference.”

“And Mitch prefers daddy?” You ask. He huffs out a laugh and looks visibly flustered at this question, so you say, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Oh, he for sure prefers daddy,” Harry adds. “The first time I let it slip out, he came instantaneously.” Your body starts to heat up and you squirm in Sarah’s lap as Harry continues, “I’d asked him to restrain me and just take what he wanted. He went full daddy mode and didn’t even realize. One of the hottest things I’ve ever experienced.”

You can’t sit still any longer, so you move, your limbs uncoordinated due to the drugs and lust clouding your mind, but you finally succeed in straddling Mitch’s lap.

“I wanna do that,” you say.

“Do what exactly?” Mitch presses.

“I dunno. Everything. Anything you guys want to do. I want to give up control,” you answer.

“Darling, I don’t think you’ve ever been in control in bed,” Sarah says with another giggle.

“Okay but like, I wanna do it legit. Please, daddy?” You say with puppy dog eyes looking right at Mitch.

He groans, and you think you’re getting your way, so you move to kiss him and grind down in his lap. His hands grip your waist and frustratingly, they stop your movements.

“Look at me, baby,” he says, and your eyes dart back to meet his. “We can try it, but not now.”

“Why not?” You whine.

“Because you’re high and can’t fully consent. We all have to be sober to do this the right way. And there’s a lot we need to talk about first. We need to discuss limits, safe words, things like that. Okay?”

“Fine. But I won’t forget this.”

“Trust me babe, neither will I,” he replies, nipping at your ear and you give him a dirty look for teasing you.

“Now, why don’t we watch a movie?” Mitch suggests.

“Emperor's New Groove!” You immediately shout.

“What’s that one about?” Harry asks.

“Seriously? You’ve never seen it?” He shakes his head no and you look at the other two who confirm they’d never watched it either.

“NONE of you have seen Emperor's New Groove? That’s a fucking travesty.” They all burst into laughter since you never curse but this seems to be high enough stakes to earn the explicit word.

“We are watching it. Right now.” You jump off the couch, stumbling across the room to grab the remote. You plop back into Sarah’s lap, legs outstretched over the boys, and concentrate on putting the movie on.

Before you press play you say, “I have one very important question.”

“And what would that be, love?” Harry asks.

“Are there more snacks?”

Without a word he gets up and makes a trip to the kitchen, bringing back an assortment of treats.

You grab some of the chocolates and start the movie.

You’re all a giggling mess watching the movie, and you’re starting to get very sleepy by the time it’s over. Mitch has his work cut out for him, rounding the three of you up and helping you all get ready for bed. You cooperate with brushing your teeth and washing your face, but refuse to put pants on, arguing that it’s too warm and all you want is one of Harry’s t-shirts. You also refuse to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom, and Mitch steps in before Sarah can try picking you up while she’s still unsteady herself.

You’re basically dead weight in Mitch’s arms, and you laugh uncontrollably when he gently throws you onto the mattress. The night ends with all four of you together in bed, exchanging “I love you” back and forth repeatedly.

You fall asleep on top of Mitch, and he thinks back to how the evening went. He can’t help but smile at the fact that high Y/N is basically a combination of the other three when high. You laugh and talk uncontrollably like Sarah, snack like Harry, and get a bit more horny than usual like Mitch.

And he certainly won’t forget the conversation you’d had any time soon. He hopes the rest of you won’t either. As he strokes your hair and looks fondly at Sarah and Harry sleeping at his sides, he feels like today was a perfect day. And he can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

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AN: Thank you so much for reading! Requests are open so if you want to see anything specific, let me know!

Taglist: @akkatz @pandeebearstyles @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite@theekyliepage@numafarawayglxy @booberry019-blog @hillzrry@ssareidbby @gem1712 @acesofspadess@houseofdilfs@shaquille-0atmeal-1@kissitnhekitchen @amateurduck @poguestyleskye@n0vaj3an@snwells@drunk-teens-doing-drugs ; @fdl305@creativelyeva@daphnesutton@selluequestrian@lovingfurypanda @stardream14 @tbsloneely@eversincehs1@boomitsallie1@rose-garden-dreamz @fictionalmensblog @buckybarnessimpp

#harry styles x reader #mitch rowland x harry styles #mitch rowland x reader #mitch rowland x sarah jones x reader #sarah jones x reader #sarah jones x mitch rowland x reader #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles x you

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xtruss · 1 year

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At Long Last, Mathematicians Have Found a Shape With a Pattern That Never Repeats

Experts have searched for decades for a polygon that only makes non-repeating patterns. But no one knew it was possible until now

— Will Sullivan | March 29, 2023 | Smithsonian

Infinitely many copies of a 13-sided shape can be arranged with no overlaps or gaps in a pattern that never repeats. David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss (CC BY 4.0)

From bathroom floors to honeycombs or even groups of cells, tilings surround us. These patterns cover a space without overlapping or leaving any gaps. Like a rug filled with diamond shapes, where each section looks the same as the one next to it, every tiling ever recorded has eventually repeated itself—until now.

After decades of searching for what mathematicians call an “einstein tile”—an elusive shape that would never repeat—researchers say they have finally identified one. The 13-sided figure is the first that can fill an infinite surface with a pattern that is always original.

Repeating patterns have translational symmetry, meaning you can shift one part of the pattern and it will overlap perfectly with another part, without being rotated or reflected. The shape described in a new paper does not have translational symmetry—each section of its tiling looks different from every part that comes before it.

The designs on these rugs have translational symmetry—the patterns on the rugs repeat themselves. Juli Kosolapova via Unsplash

Sarah Hart, a mathematician at Birkbeck, University of London, who didn’t contribute to the finding, tells New Scientist’s Matthew Sparkes that she had thought finding an “einstein” (named for the German words for “one stone,” or one tile) could not be done. “There are infinitely many possible candidate tiles, and even the existence of a solution feels quite counterintuitive,” she says to the publication.

“Everybody is astonished and is delighted, both,” Marjorie Senechal, a mathematician at Smith College who did not participate in the research, tells Science News’ Emily Conover. “It wasn’t even clear that such a thing could exist.”

David Smith, a retired printing technician and nonprofessional mathematician, was the first to come up with the shape that could be a solution to the long-standing “einstein problem.” He shared his ideas with scientists who took on the challenge of trying to mathematically prove his conjecture, per the New York Times’ Siobhan Roberts.

The team published a preprint paper detailing the findings on the site arXiv last week, and it has not been peer-reviewed yet. But experts say the work is expected to be supported with further investigation, per Science News.

“This appears to be a remarkable discovery,” Joshua Socolar, a physicist at Duke University who did not contribute to the finding, tells the Times. “The most significant aspect for me is that the tiling does not clearly fall into any of the familiar classes of structures that we understand.”

Each "einstein" tile has eight kite shapes inside of it. David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss (CC BY 4.0)

The “einstein” tile is made up of eight kites, or four-sided polygons with two pairs of adjacent, equal-length sides. Researchers call it “the hat” because of its resemblance to a fedora.

The shape is simpler than some experts expected it to be. Chaim Goodman-Strauss, a mathematician at the University of Arkansas and one of the authors of the paper, tells Science News that if he’d been asked to guess what the shape might look like before the finding, “I would’ve drawn some crazy, squiggly, nasty thing.”

In the 1970s, mathematician Roger Penrose discovered that two shapes could form a non-repeating tiling pattern together, prompting hopes that a single shape may be found to do this one day. Researchers have been able to make other non-repeating patterns in the past, but the challenge has been finding a shape that can only make a non-repeating pattern, Goodman-Strauss tells the Times.

The shape of “the hat” can also be morphed to form additional tile shapes that make non-repeating patterns, as shown in the video above.

This new finding could lead to materials science investigations—for example, shapes that form non-repeating tilings could help design stronger materials, Hart tells New Scientist. The elusive shape might also spark creative inspiration for new decorative designs or art.

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absynthe--minded · 11 months

Note

Hello! Can I respectfully request the promised lecture and Powerpoint about Fingon/Maedhros? I'll be honest here... I just do not see it, and I truly do want to understand. There are other relationships in the Legendarium that I really do think Tolkien deliberately and unequivocally coded as queer, and I've used all those same examples you list to back up my arguments. And I do see the parallels with Luthien and Beren (just as Sam/Frodo has parallels with that). But otherwise, I don't see a lot of queer coding. Which is not to say that I think it's a bad ship, just that I don't really see much in the text to support it or see much indication that it's what Tolkien intended. I would love to be convinced, though! I swear I'm not trying to bash Russingon or provoke anything. It seems like you have put a lot of thought and research into this, and I'm honestly curious, because this is a ship that has always puzzled me a bit.

First, thank you for asking! It’s always a pleasure to talk about my boys and my OTP to end all OTPs

I want to start what’s probably going to be a long series of self-reblogs by saying something that’s going to be important in the long haul: there is a difference between “I personally interpret this in a way that enhances the story, and it’s canonically compliant” and “I think and will seriously argue that Russingon is supported canonically by things that explicitly exist to point toward it being more than friendship”. The line can get kind of fuzzy, but it does exist, and the foundation of any good queer analysis is recognizing that.

So before I get into Sarah Waters, Mary Renault, and what the British legal system has to do with any of this, I’m going to make three lists.

Stuff That Probably Doesn’t Mean Anything, But That Is Fun To Examine From A Shipping Perspective:

Maedhros wears a copper circlet, Fingon wears gold in his braids

Maedhros abdicated the throne in favor of Fingon entering the line of succession

Maedhros stepped into a position of military authority after Fingon took the throne, working closely with him specifically to attack Angband after the Bragollach

Fingon is stated by Tolkien himself to have never married nor had biological children, and Maedhros never married nor had biological children either

Stuff That Is Ambiguous In Intent, But Is More Significant Than The Above:

Fingon clearly still cared enough about Maedhros that despite probably not knowing whether or not he burned the ships, he set out to rescue him alone in a display of loyalty to the rival royal line that put his priorities firmly in the “this nér whom I love” camp. It’s worth noting that Maedhros’s family are the reason that his sister-in-law is dead, the reason many of his own people froze to death, and the reason his brother is dead. Maedhros’s rescue, and forgiving him, is more important to Fingon than any of that. Why?

Morgoth’s battle plan for the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (as relayed in the Grey Annals in The War of the Jewels) involved forcing Maedhros and Fingon apart and trying to take both of them down simultaneously. Fingon was of course ultimately killed by Balrogs, and Maedhros avoided being killed by allies-turned-spies, but the goal was to keep them apart and incapacitate them both. Why?

Maedhros’s mental stability, willingness to exist in a society, passion for fighting Morgoth, and desire to curtail his brothers’ worst impulses all evaporate after Fingon’s death and Fingon’s death specifically. Why?

Maedhros and Fingon maintain a relationship with each other that is significantly more important to their actions than similar relationships between Finwëan cousins. Aredhel is never recorded as prioritizing Celegorm to the same extent, and Finrod only goes on a hunting trip with Maedhros and Maglor after things between their families are patched up. Why are they different from others in this way?

Stuff That Actually Matters In Analysis:

Fingon and Maedhros, Beren and Lúthien, and Frodo and Sam all share very nearly the same story at a crucial point. All three feature a situation where a rescuing party feared the one they loved was dead, discovered they were actually held prisoner by Sauron, went alone into peril, and used a song to find who they searched for successfully. Both Maedhros and Beren lost a hand in the course of their journey. Frodo lost a finger, and Sam cut the hand from the orc whipping him. All three pairs were rescued by at least one of the great eagles. Sam and Frodo have on-page declarations of love. Beren and Lúthien are the self-inserts of the author and his wife. This connection is not accidental; the author explicitly compares Frodo and Sam to Beren and Lúthien on the Quest for the Silmaril in the text of The Two Towers. If Maedhros and Fingon are being linked thematically with the central romantic relationship of the Legendarium, there is a reason why.

The Grey Annals tells us that Fingon rescued Maedhros “and their love was renewed”. That’s a direct quote from the text, not an exaggeration. This is more canonical proof of love than we get for some married couples (notably Fëanor and Nerdanel, who are never stated to love one another in the text).

Laws and Customs Among the Eldar explicitly states that half-first-cousins are allowed to marry without it being considered incestuous, so long as their parents aren’t close. That seems like an extremely odd standard, until you remember that there is an unusually close pair of half-first-cousins whose parents don’t get along.

(Obligatory note: the published Silmarillion does state that Idril and Maeglin are too close to marry. The published Silmarillion’s treatment of Maeglin is also almost certainly invented by Christopher Tolkien - Maeglin in the drafts written by JRRT himself is wildly different than how he appears when Chris writes him. Tolkien himself avoided making any such statements about cousin marriage and Turgon opposed Maeglin marrying Idril because he didn’t think it was a love marriage.)

The Grey Annals also discusses one of the histories of the green elfstone that Aragorn receives from Galadriel as a wedding gift - in this draft, it was made by Fëanor, and Maedhros gave it to Fingon. When Aragorn receives it, it’s been set in a brooch in the form of an eagle. Here we have another thing that passed between Maedhros and Fingon that is explicitly linked to romantic relationships between two characters echoing Beren and Lúthien. This is once again not accidental.

Fingon’s harp is almost certainly a reference to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which also heavily inspired Lúthien pleading for Beren in Mandos. Yet again, we have deliberate intent by the author to position this relationship in a light that reflects romance above all else. You could even go further and point out that there are parallels between Thingol’s hostility toward Beren and Fëanor’s distrust and hatred of the Nolofinwëans. Túrin and Beleg, who get to kiss on the page, are also echoes of Russingon - early bliss marred by a kinslaying, a hopeless quest alone armed with a bow, an injury that results from freeing the captive party.

The fact of the matter is that none of this is accidental. Tolkien was deliberate in his worldbuilding, his parallels, his setups and his plot choices. There is a reason that Fingon and Maedhros are linked to so much romance, a reason that they are positioned on equal footing with other more clearly queercoded ships, a reason that it’s their relationship that shapes the First Age. When you accept that none of it happened accidentally, that allows you to broaden your scope, and look at Tolkien’s inspirations, his life, his friendships, cultural influences, and why he might have been so cagey about his M/M ships when they aren’t just important but vital to the text. (After all, Sam and Frodo’s happy ending comes after Sam’s time in heteronormativity, and Túrin and Beleg fall apart in a similar fashion.)

It’s just - it’s not crazy or insane or Shipper Goggles to say “these relationships matter, and the stories actually don’t make sense without them”. That’s all.

(Next time, if you like, we’re going to talk about historical fiction, and there will be lesbians.)

#RUSSINGON #silmarillion #silmarillion meta #absynthe’s meta #replies #tolkien #anon replies

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thothxv · 11 months

Text

myhouse.wad-adjacent facts and blatant shilling for the musicians who soundtracked it

As has been largely disseminated, new mappers making levels based on their own houses are a common trope in the doom community, and they are often referred to generically as "myhouse.wad". The earliest myhouse maps are actually some of the oldest Doom maps in existence, predating Doom 2 (also at least one Doom 2 map was based on Sandy Peterson's house...)

A lot of people are impressed with myhouse.wad's room over room. I'm more impressed that in the first house myhouse used a boom-style silent teleporter to implement room-over-room sloppily so that the illusion very easily breaks (just step back up the stairs while one of the basement doors is open: it will snap shut because you are being teleported back into the version of the house with an upstairs, and thus there can't be an open door there), just like an inexperienced mapper might in 1999, before using modern GZDoom portals to do it more convincingly in the second house.

There's been a lot of theorizing about myhouse's author, probably because veddge is a very very competent mapper and also because everyone who does know who the author is has stonewalled inquiries at the author's request, implying that the author has a meaningful identity in the Doom community. Or maybe they're just shy. However, DavidXNewton noted in his analysis series on myhouse that it does a lot of things in a ways that are unnecessary using modern UDMF and ZScript but would be familiar to someone coming from a less advanced mapping format like Boom or Old ZDoom. This is indicative of Veddge being more along the lines of what he says he is: either someone truly returning after a long absence, or at the very least someone who isn't terribly familiar with modern GZDoom mapping. Either that, or the entire map was mapped in character. I genuinely don't know which I'd find more impressive.

"doomcute" is a term used to refer to maps that recreate real-world items or environments in doom (usually because the immediate reaction from players is "oh that's adorable!"). Myhouse maps are invariably trying for doomcute, but another early doomcute map was Shamus Young's Doom City from 1995 (yes, Shamus Young of DM of the Rings fame. I discovered while researching that he actually died last year. Rest in peace). Doom City recreated a couple of real-world looking buildings, but the thing everyone seems to remember about Doom City is its recreation of... a gas station. Food for thought.

Hilariously, myhouse almost got lost in the shuffle on Doomworld, because most people weren't looking for a myhouse.wad to play. Several of Veddge's collaborators posted in the thread to keep this from happening.

I believe Veddge's confirmed collaborators on myhouse are Kevansevans, esselfortium, and Jimmy. I don't know much about Kevansevans, but I believe he helped with the scripting and some of his scripting work from other sources made it into the wad because he's officially credited (as is everyone whose work was used in the map: it's all inside the PK3). Essel and Jimmy are credited only in anagram form because they are responsible for the music, which is actually wholly original (also Jimmy gave no indication he was involved until it was revealed by players unscrambling the anagram, which was very very funny).

I'm actually going to talk about Essel and Jimmy in detail over the next few bullet points, because I feel like it. And they're both really neat.

Sarah "esselfortium" Mancuso is responsible for memory=entryrrrr/////, the piece the plays in the burned house and various other places throughout the wad. She's composed professionally for video games and has several albums, but in the Doom community she's probably best known for creating and managing the Back to Saturn X project, a trilogy of megawads (only two of which are presently released) being developed by a massive team of modders, with custom assets, a custom palette, a complete original OST, and some very impressive maps... all intended to be playable with a vanilla doom2.exe. Which is insane: Vanilla Doom is brutal to map for, on account of harsh limitations that it's hard to be confident your map or project falls within. Back to Saturn X was so ambitious that it found previously undiscovered ways that Doom can crash. Of course, in addition to running the project, Essel also mapped for it, made textures for it, and composed a significant portion of the soundtrack. And because that was not impressive enough apparently, Essel also (with some help from a few others) created Knee-Deep in Knee-Deep in ZDoom, a joke wad that takes the (in)famous Knee-Deep in ZDoom, a mapset designed to show off the features of ZDoom, and recreates as many of its tricks as it can entirely in vanilla. A feat I can only describe as black magic of the highest order. She also went out of her way to say Trans Rights during her bethesda interview, so that's cool too.

James "Jimmy" Paddock is responsible for the increasingly glitchy and messed-up version of D_RUNNIN that plays in the second house. Which figures, because Jimmy's music is everywhere. He takes commissions for music, he's contributed free music to the community, and his music is very very popular. Notable wads he's contributed tracks to include Plutonia 2, Speed of Doom, Reverie, Back to Saturn X Episodes 1 and 2, Eviternity, and Doom 2 In Spain Only, and the MIDI soundtrack to John Romero's SIGIL, which some consider to be even better than the Buckethead soundtrack. He also is the project lead and mind behind The Adventures of Square, a standalone, free game made in GZDoom, he's done texture work, he's made several award-winning doom mods (cacowards, that is), mapped for numerous other projects, and had just done a whole ton of stuff. The doom community gave him an award for lifetime achievement. Oh, and he did an alternative MIDI OST for Prodeus? Genuinely didn't know about that.

While researching this I learned that Jimmy is going to be evicted in a month, so now's a great time to check out his music online and see if you're into it. I'm not a super fan of his vocal delivery, but I really like some of his instrumentals and MP3 versions of his MIDIs.

#doom #myhouse #myhouse.wad #myhouse.pk3

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dw19791967 · 2 months

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That Type of Girl Part 3

Pairing: Dean x reader (Eventual), Sam x reader (Platonic)

Warnings: language, unrequited love, angst, mentions of torture, mentions of self-hate.

This is the third fic I have ever written, all mistakes are my own. Please be gentle on me!

______________________________

What does one wear to church? I wouldn’t know since I never really went as a kid and as an adult well, once you know who God really is, it can be hard to get past that.

I decided on a long oversized maroon sweater, black leggings, and boots. I never really was a heels girl. Sure, I could handle a wedge or boots with a chunky heel, but I definitely wasn’t the type to wear six inch heels. I decided to leave my hair in its natural state, but I did twist my bangs together and pinned them back. I can’t braid, no matter how many times I have tried to learn. So twisting two pieces together is my go to, especially to get hair out of my face. I applied my regular makeup routine. I do it for me, not to impress people. I may be overweight and unappealing in other aspects but my makeup is something I am proud of. Years of practice have helped make it easy, and quick.

I walked out of the bathroom ready to go. “Alright boys, let’s do this.”

__________________

When we arrived at the church not a ton people were there. There was a small group gathered. A few women, they seemed to be in their late 20’s and a couple of men who seemed to be around the same age.

“Ok Y/N you ready? Remember, Dean and I will be here if you need us. We are going to try to scope the place out a bit” Sam looked at me. I am glad he was confident in my people skills, cause right now I am not. I do fine talking with people I know and even strangers. But the pressure of trying to force a conversation can be a struggle sometimes. And since Dean didn’t seem too confident in my skills earlier, I have been dreading this. How is it that the man who is supposedly my best friend, doesn’t believe I am capable of doing something I have done a hundred times before.

“I guess.” I started heading towards the group of people.

__________________

We just arrived back at the motel. Sam sat down next to me “Well we found nothing, we checked all over the place. Nothing suspicious, no sulfur or EMF.”

“Yeah and all the single chicks were a bust too.” Dean smiled.

Of course he would be worried about chasing tail.

I sighed. “Ok, I talked to a group of people at the church. They mentioned a guy Sarah worked with, his name was Ryan not sure on last name (Sarah was the most recent victim). They also mentioned Sarah had a crush on a dude at the church, Marshall. And last one, she had talked to Rick quite a bit at the church. One of the ladies said Rick has just been in town the last 2 weeks. Something seems off with Rick, but I’m not really sure what.” I looked over the case files again. I always like to make sure I am not missing anything.

“Well since we are at a stand still, I say it’s time to hit the bar. We need a break from researching and thinking.” Dean stood up.

“Maybe you're right, we can take a break and come back to it later.” Sam looked at me. “What do you say Y/N?”

“I think I’m going to stay here, try to figure out what is happening. Something is wrong in this whole equation.” I kept reading the files. I am also not in the mood to see Dean flirt tonight. But I will keep that thought to myself.

“Well party pooper, call if you need us.” Dean patted my shoulder.

Maybe a break from the boys will do me some good.

I had just changed into a t-shirt and took my makeup off when there was a knock at the door. I figured one of the boys was back and forgot their key.

“I swear you guys can’t survive without me.” I headed for the door.

I cracked the door open. Rick. What the hell is he doing here?

“Hi Y/N, I hope you don’t mind me stopping by. I just wanted to check on you and see if you maybe needed anything.” He rubbed the back of his neck. A nervous tick maybe.

“Um, I appreciate that. How did you know I was here?” This is weird for sure.

“Oh my aunt owns this motel, so I checked with her and she said you were here. She also mentioned you had two guys with you. Are you going to let me in?” He smiled at me.

“Uh, I guess.” I grabbed my knife and stuck it in the back of my leggings. A girl can never be too safe.

“So who are the guys here with you, brothers?” Rick made his way into the room.

“No, just friends. They came to be supportive. Can I get you a beer or water?” I had told the group of people at the church I was a cousin of Sarah’s, since she had no family in town it was an easy lie.

“I’ll have a beer, thanks.” I handed him the drink. “So where are your friends?”

“Out, they should be back shortly.” I was getting nervous. Something was not right here.

“Oh I doubt that Y/N. You know Dean always enjoys working on his night moves.” Rick's eyes flashed black. Next thing I know everything went black.

Oh I am so screwed.

_______________

“Wakey, wakey sunshine. God, I can’t believe how stupid you are for a hunter. Who the hell lets someone they barely know into their hotel room?" Rick poked at me.

We were in an abandoned warehouse. I was cuffed to a chair. This wasn’t exactly how I planned on my night going.

“Well, what can I say? I’m prone to making stupid decisions. So why don’t we just cut the foreplay. What do you want? ” I smiled.

Whack. Damn. I almost had forgotten what it was like to get the shit knocked out of me.

“You know, all of the women I took. There was nothing exciting about them. I mean they wonder why they are single. Maybe it’s because they are so damn boring. But you, I mean besides being overweight and homely, there's a certain spark to you. And once I found out you were a hunter, well you had to be my next victim.” He smoothed my hair out.

“So are you doing this for shits and giggles or is there a bigger agenda you are playing into?” He made his way over to a table and brought back a knife. Great.

“Oh sweet Y/N, of course I am doing this for me. You see, I have played by all the rules and followed the main man's plan. But it’s time for me to shine and this is just the beginning. So whatcha say, are you ready to have some fun?” Rick started to slice into my arm.

Lucky for me, I have a high pain tolerance.

“You see, you were an easy target. Your self esteem is so low. Plus can’t forget your little crush on the elder Winchester. What makes you think he would ever look at you twice?” Rick now started slicing my thighs. “I mean you have a pretty face for sure, but you know Dean prefers his women slim. You will never be that type of girl ya know?”

“Screw you. You don’t know the first thing about me. I mean you do realize anything you say to me, I have either heard or said it to myself a thousand times before? Way to be creative.” I laughed. I have always been stubborn. I’m sure as hell not going to stop now.

“You know, you are really starting to get on my nerves. How about I find a way to shut that pretty mouth up. I doubt the Winchesters would even miss your annoying ass.” Rick punched me in the face.

I spit blood out of my mouth. I hope he gets this over with soon.

Tag List:

@hazel-eye-coffee-shop-girl-blog

@deanspinsterwitchs-readinglist

#dean winchester series #dean winchester x reader #dean x reader #spn fanfiction #supernaturalfanfic

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an-awarewolf · 16 days

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What careers I think the counselors pursued after the quarry.

Most of these are based off the jobs they worked at camp.

Laura - Easy. Veterinary medicine. Specifically I think she’d be more comfortable working at a zoo or a wildlife reserve with tigers or bears (real bears) instead of putting animals down all day.

Max - after not getting accepted into whatever college Laura did, he decided not to pursue college. Or maybe he did, and just took online courses instead so he wouldn’t have to be away from Laura. either way, he ends up becoming a mechanic.

Jacob - I’m honestly not sure, but he definitely has a sports scholarship. I’m not sure he knew himself what exact career he wanted to pursue during the events of the game, but he would probably I could see him becoming a physical therapist or a personal trainer. Maybe both.

Kaitlyn - Gets a degree in business and runs her own. Not sure what type of business, but boy is she running it. She starts small but definitely climbs the latter and becomes a rather impressive business woman (KAITLYN IN A SUIT KAITLYN IN A SUIT)

Ryan - He does end up going to animation school, but halfway through one of his grandparents gets really sick and passed. The other dies of a broken heart less than a year afterwards, so he’s forced to drop out to provide for Sarah. Luckily a small indie studio hires him despite not having a degree and he’s able to make ends meet.

Nick - Culinary arts. My only reference for this is the fact that he works in the kitchen at camp. But it’s fitting. I’d imagine he’d the type of person who can make a really impressive meal out of seemingly nothing. Yelling for runners is also a pretty good way to purge those anger issues of his.

Dylan - Quantum Physics, obviously. I could definitely see him using science theories to try and explain the whole werewolf incident. Eventually I think he’d end up working at a research center trying to figure out nuclear fission. He ends up becoming the breadwinner between him and Ryan.

Abi - She went to art school and dropped out because she didn’t agree with what she was being taught. She ends up doing commissions online with the help of Emma for publicity, eventually she also ends up working with Ryan at the indie studio as a character design artist.

Emma - You can’t tell me this diva isn’t going into theatre. She’ll probably play Sharpay at least once. She also keeps up her online presence, but goes on hiatus for a bit during college.

#hacketteerheadcanons #hacketteers #the quarry #supermassive games #dylan lenivy #laura kearney #jacob custos #nick furcillo #max brinly #kaitlyn ka #ryan erzahler #abigail blyg #emma mountebank

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antialiasis · 5 months

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Chess (2018 Kennedy Center revival)

So I was just going to briefly mention all the other different versions of Chess I have consumed in the big essay post I’ve been writing on and off, but there was just too much to say about this one which made it really awkward to fit it in, so fine, here is another individual chesspost. Nearly 7500 words of rambling under the cut, oh my god.

This production represents the latest official full overhaul of Chess. It sports an all-new book written by Danny Strong, also known as the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is some whiplash (Sarah Michelle Gellar is apparently a big Chess fan, too). It was later staged again as a concert with some further modifications in 2021, but I listened to an audio bootleg of the 2018 version. (There exist some videos of it online, but only scattered bits.)

The Story Changes

This version has London’s basic plot structure with the distinctive two chess tournaments (this time four years apart, which is neither the original number nor the actual number of years between world chess championships), but rearranges Act I, adds a lot more quippy dialogue and swearing, reinterprets the characters, and recenters real-world politics in the whole thing — sort of the exact inverse of what Chess på svenska did with the material. It opens with “Difficult and Dangerous Times” to set the scene in the Cold War and features the Arbiter narrating with sardonic omniscient commentary between songs/scenes throughout, which does feel a bit more consistent than the Arbiter suddenly having a narrator role for the duration of one song in Act II.

All the main characters in this version are reinterpreted with significant new background context, which is a very interesting way to rewrite it that I definitely dig in principle. For example, Florence’s first scene here involves Walter threatening her with deportation from the US unless she can make Freddie behave for the duration of the tournament. Most versions of Chess make the political scheming very symbolic and vague — exchanges of mostly unnamed political prisoners or handwaved concessions — but this version is noticeably specific, with specific nuclear arms treaty negotiations that the CIA believes would be negatively affected if Freddie keeps openly antagonizing the Soviets. She tells Walter to go fuck himself (told you it adds more swearing) and that nobody can control Freddie Trumper, but ultimately she doesn’t have much of a choice but to reluctantly play along. This addition recontextualizes her character and her interactions with Freddie in Act I a fair bit — it’s pretty significant, after all, that she is under threat and may lose her home if she doesn’t somehow control what she really can’t.

Meanwhile, Freddie himself here suffers from a full-on mental illness which he takes medication for. Walter asserts on a phone call early that they’re dealing with a “genuine paranoid schizophrenic”, but then later calls him a “bipolar bitch”; I take the blatant inconsistency combined with the obviously insulting nature of these remarks to mean probably we’re not meant to take either of them at face value, but these two lines from Walter are the only ones suggesting any specific diagnosis. (I unfortunately suspect Danny Strong didn’t have a specific condition in mind and research it so much as just slap him with a Generic Ambiguous Mental Illness for which he takes Pills.) One way or another, Freddie’s ambiguous mental illness gives him bouts of intense paranoia, driving him to do things like trashing his and Florence’s hotel room to look for listening devices at one point. Florence keeps insistently, frustratedly telling him to just take his goddamn pills even as he’s in genuine distress; it’s pretty uncomfortable, and also definitely one of those things that are at least more human when his episodes could cost her the only home she has: she’s desperate and in distress too.

(I do kind of feel as if this whole bit would make more sense if Florence and Freddie had a strictly business relationship here to start with, instead of being explicitly portrayed as a couple — when they have a committed intimate partnership going on, one would think Florence getting deported would also be pretty obviously significant for Freddie, and Florence quietly playing along with the CIA and crossing her fingers that she can indirectly coax him into behaving with seemingly no serious thought given to whether it’d be better to just tell him why he needs to stop feels stranger. The scene with Walter sounds like Walter/the CIA are not aware of their romantic relationship and Florence wants to keep it that way — they both refer to Freddie strictly by his full/last name and as “her player” — so I guess Walter would have assumed she wouldn’t tell him, but surely the calculus would at least look a bit different to Florence herself. Even if it just prompts her to realize Freddie would still be liable to react by becoming even more erratic and vocal about his paranoias, that feels like it’d be significant enough, at least for her feelings on this relationship going forward, that it never actually coming up or being suggested within the story starts to feel marginally odd. Not a major complaint, though, just a bit of overthinking.)

Freddie in general is noticeably portrayed much more sympathetically here than usual throughout. Where other versions of Chess tend to present Freddie as an attention-seeking drama queen who plays up ludicrous arbitrary demands for money and press, here things like his walkout from the first chess game are made to come from a much more genuine place: he has major sensory issues and is intolerably thrown off balance by distracting noise and lights (which really are deliberately arranged to sabotage him). “Florence Quits”, the song with the misogyny verse, usually reads as being triggered by his jealousy and inability to accept that Anatoly’s just playing better than him, but this version makes it feel more about how he feels persistently gaslit about the ways he’s being sabotaged than anything else: he accuses the Soviets of having a hypnotist in the front row to throw him off (which they do, and Freddie literally saw him and recognized him) and Florence of working for the CIA (which she has been, if not by choice) while they deny it and brush it off, and the tense opening notes of the song play under him desperately yelling “You’re lying to me! You’re all lying to me!” (Which doesn’t make the misogyny okay, obviously, but it does make it feel more like a desperate, paranoia-fueled lashout where you don’t know how much he really means all that.)

When he subsequently forfeits the match against Anatoly, he makes a speech that sounds absolutely despairing where he says chess has been taking a toll on his health since he first became champion at eleven years old, and he doesn’t feel he can trust anyone, even himself. In Act II, before “The Interview”, he even actually apologizes to Florence for how he treated her; heck, his motivation for going so hard after Anatoly in “The Interview” itself is portrayed as being that he is genuinely disgusted by Anatoly leaving his family so callously (which is a lot of fun given Freddie’s own issues about his father leaving him and his mother behind) and wants Florence to hear the truth about what a despicable man he is, which is still unpleasant to her but clearly comes from a much more sympathetic place than either simple spite or reluctantly complying with Walter’s orders.

As for Anatoly… he was taken from his parents when he was a small child to be groomed by Molokov and the KGB into becoming a chess champion, and he’s well aware from his very first scene that the state had killed the previous Soviet champion after Freddie unseated him. (Freddie excoriates the press early on for not covering why the former champion disappeared off the face of the Earth because they’re too busy bashing Freddie, which sounds like paranoia, but the narrative has actually told us Freddie is right and they really did execute him but no one but Freddie seems to notice or care — another way in which Freddie is jarringly sympathetic here. In general, Freddie is portrayed as paranoid, and the other characters treat him like he’s just paranoid, but the narrative keeps proving Freddie’s paranoia right.)

Anatoly, though, isn’t afraid of the same fate, because “The state cannot execute a man… that is already dead.” (This general sentiment could press my buttons, but it just feels super corny and melodramatic the way it’s presented and performed, especially with that dramatic pause in there.) He is deeply depressed, thinks his marriage to Svetlana is fake and his kids hate him, and says repeatedly in Act I that he hates chess and just wants to be free of it, though he also describes a particular championship match he watched as the only time he’s felt love. At the end of Act I, he defects to the UK along with Florence as usual (his defection fully blows up the treaty Walter was worrying about despite Anatoly’s victory, so Florence’s refugee visa is indeed revoked, and that’s why they end up in the UK). Theoretically he should be free of chess now, but it bothers him intensely that he only won by forfeit (here they never finished playing a single match), resulting in him returning to defend his world champion title, and win it ‘properly’, four years later in Bangkok against Viigand.

Unknown to Anatoly, by Act II, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Soviets are extra on edge and believe a planned NATO military exercise is actually the US mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Walter tries to convince Molokov it’s just an exercise; Molokov insists unfortunately the generals are going to believe it’s an invasion and be ready to retaliate unless Viigand wins the championship (if Viigand wins they will take it as a ‘sign of goodwill’ from the US, which will change their minds on the apparent invasion because, uhh, unclear). Throughout Act II, the larger stakes in this version are set up to be that if Anatoly should win the match, the Soviets are liable to start a nuclear war.

Does Walter go to Anatoly to frankly tell him that apparently the Soviets have lost their minds and are basically threatening nuclear war over a chess match and try to convince him to throw on that basis? Does Molokov realize that if he’s telling Walter to go rig the chess match so the generals will call it off, he clearly doesn’t actually believe that the US is about to invade, so probably he should be trying to convince the generals not to go for the nuclear option himself? No, of course not; this is Chess, so we have to have the songs that are in Chess. So instead, Walter and Molokov just go through the same indirect schemes as usual to unbalance Anatoly and convince him to throw the game, with some minor twists. Molokov actually actively threatens Svetlana with being sent to a gulag to die if she doesn’t convince her husband to return — and Svetlana does straight-up tell Anatoly this, only for Anatoly to brush her off and tell her they won’t do that. Florence learns the same from Walter and initially dismisses him, and fully doesn’t believe him about her father being alive, but does ultimately sympathize with Svetlana and worry for her, which I like. But Anatoly is obsessed with winning this championship above all else and fully convinced Molokov is bluffing.

In the end, he plays the game to win, oblivious to the nuclear threat; as he checkmates, Walter makes a desperate phone call to his superiors to call off the training exercise. (Why he didn’t just do that immediately when Molokov told him the Soviets were taking it as an attack, instead of spending all this time playing along with this elaborate chess mind game, is a mystery.) Only… they don’t, and the Soviets watch with their fingers on the nuclear button, but ultimately they don’t fire. The Arbiter’s narration informs us this was the closest the world ever came to destruction, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis, and that this then served as the wake-up call that prompted negotiations about nuclear deescalation.

Anatoly, meanwhile, returns to the Soviet Union as usual, this time successfully exchanging himself for Florence’s imprisoned father, and Walter gives the two of them visas so that they can return to the US together.

Broad thoughts

I feel profoundly weird about the mixing of real-life history and completely fictitious alternate history here — you can’t just assert in narration that the fictional events in your musical were what taught the US and Soviet Union that maybe they should just talk to each other, while making a specific comparison to an actual thing that really happened, after spending the musical asserting that the Soviets murdered chess players for losing the world championship. I think mixing history and fiction can work fine if we can imagine that for all we know this is what really happened, or alternatively that this is what might have happened in some alternate universe similar to but distinct from ours. But here, we’re creating highly significant and publicized events that are obviously fictional, making it absurd to pretend this is what really happened, while also presenting these fictional alternate-universe events in objective hindsight narration alongside real events that happened in the real world and as a supposed cause of them. This ending narration just feels like it’s weirdly trying to have its cake and eat it too.

All in all, though, I think this is definitely one of the most interesting efforts to rewrite Chess. It definitely has something it’s going for, there are several neat ideas in it, and in particular I appreciate that it tries to give extra attention to the characters, more context to their actions, and more messy, humanized depth, inner conflict, and complicated motivators and stressors behind what they do. I genuinely enjoy what it’s doing with Freddie in Act I, in particular, even though it feels somehow both jarringly like it’s woobifying him (I genuinely think he ends up coming across as the most sympathetic of the three mains here, with so much of his erratic, childish and unpleasant behaviour being recontextualized to be more understandable and the way his hatred of the Soviets keeps being validated by the narrative) and like the narrative is weirdly harsh on him (this much more sympathetic Freddie who suffers from an actual mental illness is treated like absolute irredeemable scum by every other character including the fourth-wall-leaning narrator, even more than usual).

I also think the restructuring of Act I was pretty solid for the most part, though there’s definitely some awkwardness, like how Freddie’s expanded encounters with the press sort of clumsily repeat the same beats a bit. On the one hand, I can get what Danny Strong was going for in choosing to introduce everyone first and then go into “Merano” instead of doing several minutes of narrative meaninglessness before the main characters are even introduced; on the other hand, that kind of just half-defeats the sole original purpose of “Merano”, which is to provide a very jaunty more stereotypical musical theater song so that Freddie can be introduced via barging in and interrupting it with his very different vibe, and if I were Danny Strong I would definitely have just removed “Merano” at that point. But the “Difficult and Dangerous Times” opening works great, and it nicely avoids the “almost nothing of note happens for nearly forty minutes” and “several meaningless fluff songs in a row” problems of the London script, introducing conflict and stakes early and keeping the narrative going.

Ultimately, though, a lot of what it’s trying to do doesn’t quite come together to me, and some of it is variously misguided or just strange.

The Politics

To start with, I can definitely get wanting to emphasize the role of Cold War politics in the narrative, and I basically enjoyed the increased political focus and higher stakes in Act I — but I don’t think making Anatoly unwittingly almost start a nuclear war works here, or fits properly into this narrative at all. The Soviet generals have to be holding idiot balls; Molokov has to be holding an idiot ball; Walter has to be holding the biggest idiot ball of all; and most importantly, the ludicrously massive stakes being pasted on top of the match despite none of the main characters even knowing about it means we zoom thoroughly out of the character drama of the situation: “Endgame” just becomes grotesquely trivial with that hanging over it without Anatoly’s knowledge, rendering the actual drama of the climactic song completely irrelevant to what’s really at stake.

I also dislike, in a version that emphasizes the politics, how distinctly slanted it is. One of the things that I like in the London strain of Chess is that Walter and Molokov are both slimy, manipulative bastards in different ways, both sides’ political actors cruelly toying with the lives of the players for their own impersonal ends; the righteousness of each state as a whole doesn’t really matter to this story, only the impact that the whole conflict and the mutual scheming has on the main characters’ lives. But in this version, the Soviets and Molokov are cartoon villains who literally abduct children to force them into chess camp and then murder them if they don’t win the world championship, while Walter may be a condescending asshole who’s willing to threaten Florence but is distinctly the ‘good guy’ in his interactions with Molokov, which comprise most of his screentime, especially in Act II. Walter even gets a humanizing moment where he explains he has a nine-year-old son and has nightmares about him suffering a nuclear winter (Molokov, meanwhile, tells Walter in Act I that Anatoly is like a son to him but could not more obviously not care about Anatoly at all when he proudly presents his new champion material Viigand in Act II). I just find it really detrimental to Chess’s narrative to make it about Soviets Bad, US Good, and more so the more you focus on that — to whatever extent you highlight the politics in this story, it should be done in a way that’s about how the political machinations of the Cold War impact the character drama at the center of it, and it’s distracting when instead you make it into a loosely related B-plot about Walter’s desperate diplomatic efforts to stop the evil Soviets from destroying the world with their shortsightedness.

I think a successful more politically-focused Chess could definitely exist, but I think it’s always going to function best if Walter and Molokov feel at least narratively like just about equal scumbags. It’s not even impossible to imagine nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction coming up in the course of it — but it needs to be using that to make us enraged at all of this on behalf of Anatoly/Florence/Svetlana/Freddie, not enraged at Molokov on behalf of Walter.

The Character Work

Meanwhile, I do basically like the setup and recontextualization done for all of the main characters in Act I, but unfortunately none of them quite delivered as well as I hoped in the end.

Let’s start with Florence. I actually quite liked the deportation threat, putting Florence herself under personal pressure in a way she usually isn’t. I dig characters being put through the wringer and making decisions under stress. But the story doesn’t quite do anything with that other than using it as silent context behind her early interactions with Freddie and technically as the reason she and Anatoly move to the UK offscreen. We don’t, for instance, ever see Freddie learn that that’s why she moved or that he was unwittingly indirectly responsible for that, or otherwise address that in any way, and as far as Florence in the rest of the story is concerned, it might as well never have happened — we never see her having any kinds of feelings on it, or even confronting Walter about that nasty little part he played in her life when she meets him again (she doesn’t even comment on it when he offers her the chance to go back to the US at the end!). To an extent this is, of course, because Florence being deported was never originally part of the story of Chess, so of course it doesn’t come up in any song or have any significant specific impact on the core series of events — but if you’re going to add it in at all, you really ought to be taking that somewhere in the rest of your additions that isn’t just briefly handwaving that she gets to go back at the end.

Like Long Beach, this version brings Florence’s father back at the end — but unfortunately, it feels really unearned here. Compared to other London variants, it actually ditches the bit of “The Deal” where Florence is tangibly emotional and riled up by Walter’s offer of her father — she fully dismisses the idea of her father being alive as bullshit, and instead it’s Svetlana who moves her to have doubts when she sees her begging Anatoly to return on video and realizes Svetlana still loves him. I do really like that, by itself, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this version’s portrayal of Florence; her empathizing with Svetlana to the point of feeling genuinely guilty for having taken her husband from her, and believing maybe the right thing to do would be if he went back to Svetlana for her sake, is actually very good, serves as a great lead-in to “I Know Him So Well”, and makes Florence’s character feel far more sympathetic in a production where she’s otherwise pretty lacking in that department. But it leaves us with no emotional connection whatsoever to Florence’s father — we’ve only heard her mention him twice before Walter’s offer, very briefly, in Act I, and not really with any sense that she misses or is all that invested in him. Seeing her reunite with him means nothing for her or her arc; it just comes out of left field, and winds up being another thing slanting this version towards Good Guy Walter, Bad Guy Molokov, what with Walter offering her visas back to the US for both of them seemingly out of the goodness of his heart.

It would have been possible to actually build up to this in a way that would make it satisfying. Florence and Anatoly have several conversations; we could have used some of those to have Florence actually talk about her father and how she feels about him being gone, and that could have been part of building up her relationship with Anatoly, made it meaningful that Anatoly’s parting gift to her is to ensure her father’s return. I suppose Danny Strong’s thought process may have been that if he built up Florence’s father too much, that should become her main concern once Walter brings that into it, and he wanted her concern to be about Svetlana instead, which I guess is fair; it also means Anatoly only really has to dismiss the potential harm to one other person in his obsession with the winning the game. But if you do make the decision to not build up her father, then bringing her father back is not an ending that makes any sense, and there was no need to do this — they could have easily cut out all suggestion of her father being alive entirely and it would only have made things smoother. I think the only reason she gets her father back in this one is in some hasty effort to make Florence’s ending less bleak, but because it doesn’t have any emotional resonance, it’s just not the right way to do that here.

Speaking of Florence and Anatoly, the romance here… once again has some neat, interesting things it’s going for but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The two of them do have some actual conversations where they bond a bit, which is already a marked improvement over the default London script — but their very first conversation features Anatoly asserting out of nowhere that Florence has “a way of brightening his spirit”, despite not even knowing her, which isn’t super convincing and just comes off kind of creepy-awkward. Florence asserts a few times that he’s sweet and kind, but we don’t really see much of him actually coming across as sweet or kind — his lines tend to be either melodramatic or sardonic moping interspersed kind of jarringly with awkward jokes. He’s less charming or sweet and more like a lonely, kicked dog, which is fine if Florence is into that but doesn’t quite make her descriptions of why she likes him ring true.

This production actually goes back to the concept album a bit when it comes to Florence and Anatoly — namely, more than political manipulation and external pressures forcibly tearing them apart from the outside, there’s a more substantial internal tension between them as Anatoly genuinely simply prioritizes winning the chess match over her and dismisses her as she tries to question him about Svetlana. The two approaches can both work but do different things for the narrative; this internal approach puts more focus on the personal conflict and character drama and makes the relationship more interesting, which is definitely good, and in principle I think this is built up to in a pretty solid way here — Anatoly, raised to become a chess champion to the exclusion of all else, being maddened by the notion of not actually beating Freddie in Act I and needing to prove he deserves the championship to himself in Act II before he can feel “free from chess” works as a coherent reason for him to be so strikingly, unhealthily obsessive about it.

But I think the biggest problem is that Florence and Anatoly individually don’t hit well enough as characters to create investment in them. Florence is ultimately not developed enough and mostly just acts kind of unpleasant, especially to Freddie, all the way up until that Svetlana bit in Act II. More importantly, I just can’t like or understand or sympathize with Anatoly at all, beyond recognizing that core of what his arc is going for. Part of it is probably down to the writing of his lines, which I’m just not a fan of in general. I already named one example from his first scene. Here’s how Anatoly and Florence’s very first conversation starts:

ANATOLY: It’s not his fault. This game drives us all crazy. FLORENCE: I’m fine. Aren’t you even a little bit scared? ANATOLY: Of Trumper? FLORENCE: No, that they’ll kill you if you lose. ANATOLY: Oh. To quote the great Leo Tolstoy, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” FLORENCE: What does that mean? ANATOLY: I don’t know exactly, but it is very Russian.

I just don’t find this dialogue very convincing. Why is he reciting a dramatic irrelevant quote if he doesn’t know what it means and just thinks it’s “very Russian”? It feels like a generic quippy exchange off a snarky TV show. Does Anatoly use humour to cope with his situation? Not really; this is pretty much the only time he says anything that might be taken as that. This feels like a joke that’s there only to get a laugh out of the audience, not because Anatoly would actually tell it — and consequently, it doesn’t tell us anything real about Anatoly. Meanwhile, Florence responds to this with “Oh, you’re funny,” as if that’s one of the reasons she falls for him when I would decidedly not name that as a character trait he has. I feel like most of his dialogue just doesn’t have a great sense of character — in stark contrast to Freddie, who oozes character. I can’t get a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. He’s just there. And this also makes it harder to see what Florence sees in him and believe in the relationship.

Moreover, this Anatoly just comes across as kind of a terrible person, not in the fun coherent intentional way Freddie is a terrible person but in a flat, confusing and kind of unintentional-seeming way. Svetlana here is actually really sympathetic, with lovely little additional bits of dialogue that make her feelings hit harder (her voice as she tells Anatoly that “You left us!” breaks my heart), and this is possibly my favorite version of Svetlana in any Chess. But Anatoly is really, really terrible to her, by which I don’t even mean the cheating on her but the bit where he keeps angrily insisting to her face that she never loved him and she brainwashed their children to hate him and of course they’re not going to kill her (hey, Anatoly, guess who’s already well aware that the Soviet government in this universe is not above executing people over chess?).

And even that could be made understandable, given his situation — he could just be in hard denial about it because the thought of them having been suffering with him gone and being punished for his actions is so horrific he just shuts it down — but there’s never any sense that that’s what’s really going on. We don’t see him privately upset about the possibility later, for instance — he just keeps insisting the same and dismissing Svetlana to Florence, too. We know it’s not that it’s true — we see Svetlana admit to Molokov that even though he ruined her life and she never wants to see him again she still loves him, and we hear her sing “Someone Else’s Story” and “I Know Him So Well”. Nor do we ever get any hint at exactly what Svetlana or his kids did to make him think this of them, if anything (his own kids!). Anatoly just seems to sort of bitterly, adamantly believe this for no reason at all. And that makes it impossible to empathize with. Okay, sure, Anatoly, you were taken from your family as a child, but that really doesn’t even start to explain any of this. There could have been ways of making it feel at least believable, tragic in a deeply fucked-up way, but the story here just doesn’t do the work. And once again, Anatoly being so unpleasant for no reason just makes it harder to feel at all invested in his relationship with Florence or sad when they part.

The best fix here isn’t quite obvious, and I can’t say I envy Danny Strong trying to put all his neat little ideas together and make them work. If Anatoly were to appear substantially conflicted about Svetlana and put any real stock in Molokov’s threat, that would render “Endgame”, where he doubles down anyway, kind of jarring and inexcusable as he’d be not just refusing to return to her but refusing to care if she is killed. So in order for this to properly work with “Endgame”, he probably does need to be very deep in denial about whether they’d really kill her. I think what I would do, if I were writing this plot where groomed-as-a-chess-champion Anatoly knows the Soviets killed Boris Ivanovich and they’ve threatened to kill Svetlana too, is to emphasize better how irrational Anatoly is being and try to show it more as a consequence of growing up among the constantly plotting KGB.

Let him go off on a proper paranoid rant to Florence about the reasons why he thinks Svetlana is just plotting against him, and some innocuous things he saw his kids do once that mean she brainwashed them. When Florence tries to challenge him on how batshit he sounds, he just storms out, saying she’s being taken in by their lies and just wants to sabotage him, and disappears — and she doesn’t see him again until he appears at the final game and plays this manic, desperate match while insisting to himself that Svetlana and Florence both just never understood him and hated his success. Afterwards, we can perhaps see him finally, quietly asking Molokov if they’re really going to kill her, showing that on some level he already knew the threat might be real and had just firmly blocked it out (in the actual ending as it is Molokov simply tells him unprompted that she really will be punished unless he comes back, and he just asks why with no addressing of his previous adamant insistence that that wouldn’t happen). His and Florence’s final conversation could then involve a bit more of a reckoning with that and with what his relationship with Svetlana was really like, through a more honest lens.

I’m actually pretty tickled by this scenario because that would really drive home a pretty fun parallel between Anatoly and Freddie — which in hindsight I think this version must in fact have been trying for, but didn’t quite do in a focused enough way for it to really hit. Anatoly and Freddie are both chess players with deeply abnormal childhoods and bouts of paranoia that cause them to behave in toxic ways, which ultimately drives Florence away from both of them.

This production shows the first chess game as the “Chess Game” instrumental playing under Freddie and Anatoly having alternating inner monologues about the game and their issues, deliberately drawing a comparison between the two of them; they both say they hate chess, that they don’t feel like real human beings. It’s not exactly subtle, but I liked the way this was used to build up their respective brain gremlins and was intrigued by the parallel being set up. I didn’t feel they ultimately did much with the parallel, though, because the story then didn’t really continue leaning into it much from there. By emphasizing this Anatoly’s paranoia as paranoia and not just as him legitimately thinking the marriage was never real and the KGB wouldn’t kill her, we could properly build the story around that parallel, and I would genuinely dig that.

The one place after the chess match where the actual thing does sort of try to get at the Anatoly/Freddie parallel again is in the dialogue scene that precedes “Endgame”. This scene is not sung (though it has the “Chess Game” instrumental in the background, which connects it neatly to that previous bit comparing the two of them), but it’s clearly based on “Talking Chess”: Freddie approaches Anatoly to tell him Viigand’s weakness lies in his King’s Indian Defense, and:

ANATOLY: Why are you helping me? FREDDIE: Jesus Christ! Am I the only one who cares about this game? ANATOLY: It’s more than a game now. There is so much more at stake than who wins or loses. FREDDIE: No! No, winning is everything. Fuck politics! Fuck the KGB, fuck the CIA, fuck them all! We are the ones who have dedicated our lives to chess. We are the ones who have given up everything for greatness — our childhoods, our sanity, our loves. Anatoly, we’ve sacrificed everything. They’ve sacrificed nothing. What’s the number one rule of a chess champion? ANATOLY: Play to win. FREDDIE: As long as you do that you can never lose, even if you do.

Much as I love “Talking Chess”, though, this on the surface similar scene just didn’t feel right in this context when I listened to it. In Anatoly’s last scene here, he told Florence firmly that he just wanted to win and that his marriage with Svetlana was never real and it’s all KGB mind games. Him going “It’s more than a game now, there’s so much more at stake” suddenly now comes out of nowhere — if he believes that now, it could only be if he actively reconsidered something offscreen, but he doesn’t say anything elaborating on what he’s thinking now or what he might have reconsidered or why, just that vague, generic line that contradicts everything he’s expressed up until this point. It’s another example of Anatoly’s dialogue just feeling really flat and meaningless to me — his lines here don’t say anything, just serve as vague filler to prompt Freddie onward. And because unlike London proper the setup leading up to this is all about him already being absolutely determined to win the game at all costs, this just feels redundant, unnecessary, going through the motions of something that’s in London without realizing that with the changed context it doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

I think that’s unfortunately the case with Freddie a bit here too. I enjoyed Act I’s quite different take on Freddie, and his establishing narration for Act II petulantly stating Anatoly won the championship last year “by forfeit, I might add”, and “The Interview” is recontextualized in a very fun way as I mentioned before — but after that it feels like Danny Strong doesn’t quite know what to do with Freddie anymore and just has him sort of arbitrarily go through the motions of London in a way that doesn’t necessarily hang together with everything he’s established of Freddie so far. It made sense that this Freddie, despite being decidedly hostile towards Walter and the CIA, conducted the interview to show Florence what a bastard Anatoly is — he’s not doing it for Walter, he’s got his own reasons to want to do it once Walter’s shown him the Svetlana video. But I find it a lot harder to swallow that this Freddie — whose usual problem seems to be that he’s compulsively blunt about how he really feels — would then be easily persuaded to play his part in “The Deal”, which involves exaggeratedly trying to be all buddy-buddy with Anatoly. Maybe if there was better setup around it, like with “The Interview” — but “The Deal” only has seconds of kind of half-assed leadup here, and from there it moves directly into “Pity the Child” (after a segue featuring the recording of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita, because nuclear war).

Freddie’s next appearance after that, then, is this “Talking Chess”-esque dialogue where he’s realized the parallel between the two of them, how they’ve both sacrificed everything for chess and the political schemers have sacrificed nothing and that’s why he should play to win. I can appreciate how the low point of “Pity the Child” would trigger that particular realization, contemplating how much he lost and sacrificed to achieve his status in the game and perhaps afterward realizing Anatoly is the only other person here who might understand that. That feels like it basically tracks and is interesting.

But… it also means that fun very specific contempt for Anatoly in particular based on him having left his family like Freddie’s own father did is just kind of… gone, I guess, or at least Freddie doesn’t consider it relevant enough for it to stop him from going out of his way to pep Anatoly up for the game with no mention or hint of it. (At least Freddie probably isn’t aware of the threats made against Svetlana in particular, so he doesn’t know Anatoly winning would shatter his family even further.) And we’ve lost the bit in “Talking Chess” where the notion of the political scheming actually leading to Viigand winning the match just personally offends Freddie because Viigand is not even that good; instead Freddie is just putting forward “Play to win” as some kind of general inviolable chess principle, which is kind of generic and not nearly as characterful, in my opinion. I’m not saying we ought to have had the “Viigand is mediocre” bit here — I don’t think it would quite fit in for this Freddie, whose feelings about chess itself are very conflicted and who is more concerned with showing up these political hacks who have sacrificed nothing while they sacrificed everything — but as a Freddie moment I would really have wanted to end on something stronger there than this vague assertion that “The number one rule of a chess champion is to play to win.”

Like in London, this is Freddie’s last substantial scene, but he does have a part in “Endgame”, and it’s also an interesting one: he gets Sixty-four squares / they’re the reason you know you exist (but not the preceding How straightforward the game…), but also a couple of other verses usually sung by the chorus, and the lines he gets are clearly very purposefully chosen to reinforce that final resolve regarding the sacrifices they’ve made for greatness, which I really appreciate: Listen to them shout / They saw you do it / In their minds no doubt / That you’ve been through it / Suffered for your art and in the end a winner and They’re completely enchanted / But they don’t take your qualities for granted / It isn’t very often / That the critics soften / Nonetheless, you’ve won their hearts / How can we begin to / Appreciate the work that you’ve put into / Your calling through the years / The blood, the sweat, the tears / The late, late, nights, the early starts?

All in all, Freddie is still definitely my favorite part of this Chess, but while the parallel itself is neat it’s too muddled and I find the second half of Act II pretty uneven for him. What would I do if I were writing this bit?

I’m not totally sure how I’d want to tackle “The Deal”, but as for the “Talking Chess”-but-not scene: I would ditch the bit where Freddie is trying to advise Anatoly on strategy and the bit where Anatoly is apparently suddenly not determined to play to win just so Freddie can then tell him he should be again. None of that is contributing anything in what this version has been building up. Instead, they just sort of bump into each other, Anatoly fresh off his paranoid rant to Florence about Svetlana, Freddie fresh off “Pity the Child” and the strange realization Anatoly might be the only person who’d understand him a little bit. At first they just sort of stop and look at each other. Freddie starts, guarded, with some kind of oblique accusatory prod about the leaving his family thing, which he still deeply resents.

Anatoly has calmed down now, but he tells him what he told Florence: that it was always a fake marriage, a fake family, that the video was just a lie set up for him by the KGB, that Svetlana had brainwashed their children to despise him.

This incidentally plays into Freddie’s existing preconceptions pretty well. He’s probably not instantly convinced but it checks out enough he’s willing to reluctantly leave it alone for now. Probably mutters something like, “Fucking Soviets.”

Anatoly says something like, aren’t you going to try to make me a deal to get me to throw the match and go back? Freddie says no, fuck that. Says the whole bit about how we are the ones who have dedicated ourselves to chess, who have sacrificed everything, childhood, sanity, love, and they’ve sacrificed nothing. Why should we listen to those CIA and KGB assholes? Draws out that parallel. The two of them are probably standing in symmetrical positions on the stage.

Anatoly just nods slowly, agreeing. “I would have beaten you.”

Freddie scoffs and says, “Dream on,” but not quite with the spiteful arrogance he would’ve said it in Act I.

Then they part, and we move on to “Endgame”. The scene isn’t about Freddie helping Anatoly, or about Freddie convincing Anatoly to go for the win; it’s about the Freddie/Anatoly parallel, about Freddie realizing it and in his profound loneliness finding a smidge of connection with this guy he hated because he’s the only one who sort of Gets It, and about showing how Anatoly’s conviction has developed since the first chess match where part of his inner monologue went, “I can’t beat him, he’s too good.” Anatoly is so ready to prove that he really is the world’s best chess player.

Conclusion

Man, this version is so interesting. It’s a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a bunch of tasty potential and a real sense that Danny Strong had some genuine thoughts on what the show was missing and how to rework it to fix that, even where his attempts were ultimately confused and don’t succeed. In some ways it’s the most me-core version of Chess and in other ways it’s deeply antithetical to me and in most all ways it’s trying to do something neat but does it in a flawed way. Special shoutout to this Freddie, who honestly deserves better than this Florence.

#musicals #chess musical #chess the musical #ramble #review

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