#and also i think that seeing young generations shit on queer tragedies of the past is kind of like a man yells at brick wall sit bc | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hornystiel · 23 days

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hiii!! offering my 2 cents on the subject of "old man". younger generations in general use it very loosely but it's without ill intent, rather it's coming from a perspective of "that man (dilf) is so hot i need them but i could never because they'd see me as a child so i gotta call them old instead". like they're out of my league but i'll blame it on the age difference you know?

and in destiel's case i believe it's affectionate, they're old compared to most queer couples represented and they're getting older together and it's hopeful to see that :)

~ a gen z mutual who's too shy to come off anon ly 🤍

hi! a literal wall of text ahead

okay i actually have a lot of thoughts about this topic and i really hope i won't sound rude but i just want to talk about it for a sec here. and below will be purely my own musings which probably won't coincide with a general fandom views on the matter and it's wider than this question and destiel but well

anyway

i totally get what you're saying about younger fans calling them old because they're too young for them but still hot etc etc. i know that's not some ill intent, clearly. however, what bothers me about the question of 'old' age in fandom spaces is this - for some 'old' starts somewhere around 35+ and they mean it (i wonder what they call a 50 yo? a corpse probably). and yeah of course for 16 yo 35 is twice their age but i wouldn't have even the slightest problem with it because i've been in fandom spaces since i was maybe 14 and stumbled upon people of different ages and backgrounds and we can all coexist quite fine. but what i see now (and maybe again, that's like a recurring generational thing, i don't know, i'm not that old and i wasn't in english spaces until i got at least 18-20 so) - those younger fans repeatedly saying 'you're 30 and in fandom? get out. go find some appropriate hobbies for your age group, like fishing hehe'. like it's fine to be horny over some dudes twice (or even more) your age, but people who in reality are not even that far from you, because usually it's 20 somethings who write such things - and it's a crime. you're suddenly gross. i wonder what those kids would do without all the stuff written, drawn and giffed by those who have a child on one hand, a full time job on the other, and their age appropriate hobbies in between. like when i was a tiny fan i was like 'holy shit that person somehow found a way to update that long ass sherlock fic while being neck deep in her family things and work i wanna be like them!" and it also gave me hope about the future of my fandom life. like age shouldn't matter. but now i see this shit, the whole 'more than 3 yo age difference is pedo' talk, 'adult creators shouldn't post anything because children can see' talk etc etc. and i know, of course, that that's the general internet censorship on the rise and neopuritanism is dancing tango with it but still.

what i'm saying - i do have a problem with younger generation using the term old very 'loosely' because they wield it as a double aged sword. you're either some hot dilf who can be forgiven for your shitty fandom takes because well you're hot (and i'm not talking about anyone in particular here rn) or you're a gross 30 smth in fandom space who shouldn't draw porn because teens can't click the block button

AS FOR DESTIEL

short answer - i don't like what the people who call them old add to their characters and lives when they do that.

long answer under the cut

all of that is what EYE don't like in most popular fandom hcs and i usually just scroll past the things i don't like, i don't want to start shit publicly (and because of what, takes?), but here you can read what i usually think when i see them.

first - if we're talking canon ages. 40 smth and this is dean's age at the end of the show - is NOT old. at all. i can't even call him that affectionately. because this is the tragedy of it all - he dies YOUNG. very fucking young, he didn't see any calm life, didn't pursue his dreams, didn't have a normal life and love and then he died. in a way, and i see some others think the same, calling him old is like 'welp it's not that bad, he lived long enough, seen shit'. but the thing is - he didn't? literally. so no, for me he's young, died young and it's fucking awful. not talking about cas here because well, billions years, old, young, he's everything (<3)

if we're talking about post canon fics where they settle. you can all burn me at the stake but sadly my spirit will just repeat the same shit - making them some kind of a wannabe hetero aging couple is not only boring as fuck, but also completely out of character for them?

what i usually see in the posts with 'old men <3' there

some variation of a white picket fence house

baby jack

dean being some kind of a soccer mom who bakes and argues with other moms

cas being more of a dad shaped thing who gardens and Doesn't Get It at the parents' meetings or somewhere equally boring and somehow still clueless about a lot of human shit

them creaking every part of their bodies (jesus my joints have been like this since i was 14, and my back is bad now when i'm only 30 where is my retirement pakige?)

probably forgetting smth but you get the gist. and, again, not saying that that's ALL i see with the old men posts and art etc (some hcs are wild and i LOVE them), but the majority? yeag, i've been permanently a destiel blogger for 4 years now, i've seen the popular stuff

doesn't all of that remind you of a typical heterosexual family on some conservative cable tv show? if not i'm happy for you, but i can't help but see how the roles are set in stone and i don't find it endearing at all. that's one reason. and also i'm a strong believer that a baby won't fix dean. jack won't fix shit and here's another stick to my pyre - i don't care about him at all and i think that dean especially should focus on himself and his own shit and his shit with cas if they settle together, not be thrown into the baby routine again. the fandom likes to remind everyone how dean raised sam and it's mostly true but don't you think for one goddamn second he would want/need to live for himself and not over obsess about bringing up another kid? sure he loves them, but if every person with dean's baggage were trusted with kids as a cure-al ...well. and again very hetero, 'you should have a child, that'll fix your hysteria!' i'll even say, very real life stuff, just not the one i want to see here.

another reason is this - they are freaks.

they are assholes, freaks, serial killers, undead creatures, bad people...who are very much in love and very soft with each other and their family but they are still freaks. and i don't understand how them getting old will so fundamentally change so many aspects of their characters that they become typical suburban mom and dad combo. maybe i sound like a person who doesn't want them to be happy, or who doesn't get the 'it shows that their life is finally calm and they can pursue Normal Hobbies and Raise Kids and Build a Farm (idk how that is a calm place have you ever been on a farm with animals that you should watch and take care and kill if needed. another talk for another time) and To Love is to be Changed' etc etc etc. believe me i get it all perfectly, just not for them. if it tickles your pickle, by all means. what tickles mine is cas getting the weirdest (and often dangerous) hobbies (and this is why i got him driving a motorcycle, boxing and skydiving in my old men cheating fic) and he's an impatient guy so i don't think he'd love gardening really, he'd be mad at the plants and kill them or grow them as fast as his grace would allow (yes i'm also against human all the way cas, baby we're getting a bingo here). and dean of course should have ties with his community and i've already talked about this but i see how they are out of active hunting, but still help those who are still in it (if the supernatural isn't wiped completely and i don't see why it should be), maybe they always have a place in their home for those who come to regroup or just to chat or smth. and dean is an overprotective and micromanaging asshole so he would want to still have the gist of it all (and cas would want to unwind by killing some things from time to time)...and they still sleep in the same bed, eat the food they cook together, wear matching tatts maybe as a wedding gift to each other, and have dogs, cats and whatnot.

what i want to say - i don't get why the weird and the sweet can't coexist. why should they lose all of their insane bits. they loved each other WITH them (cursed or not remember) why should they change so drastically to fit the 'happily ever after' narrative.

anyway i can probably write a lot more but that's a long ass grumbling as it is.

sorry your question became the starting point for this rent i genuinely hope i didn't offend you and if you finished reading all of this woah you are a hero <3

#destiel #destiel hc #deancas #deancas hc #spn hc #idk how to tag this so whatever #anons <3 #asks #fandom

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mermaidsirennikita · 2 years

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ARC Review: A Lady for A Duke by Alexis Hall

4.5/5. Releases May 24, 2022.

Viola Carroll has done much to live publicly as the woman she was born to be--including faking her death at the Battle of Waterloo, giving up her title as a viscount, and leaving behind her best friend, Justin, the Duke of Gracewood. For years now, Viola has been living as the lady's companion to her sister-in-law, assuming that she will live the rest of her life as a quiet spinster. Though she has no hopes for marriage or children, she has made herself content just to be her true self.

Until, that is, word comes that Gracewood was not only permanently injured by the war, now requiring a cane--he's also been hideously depressed and has become addicted to laudanum. Not only is this hurting him; it's ruining his sister's societal prospects as well. With much coaxing from her sister-in-law, Viola reluctantly visits her old friend in an attempt to raise his spirits. To him, she's a stranger--nothing more than a pretty, quiet young woman. To her, he's the man who once knew her better than anyone else, and to see him in this state is devastating.

As Gracewood and Viola become closer, the weight of their history bears down on her--as well as the limited prospects of any potential future they could have together. She cannot be his duchess, and cannot give him an heir. Yet Gracewood wants her, and only her. How can she ever tell him the truth?

I've been so excited for this book ever since I heard of its existence. I'm not normally an audiobook person, so the fact that I went for this immediately in audio form is a testament to how much I wanted it (and how much I need to give audiobooks a chance--Kay Eluvian did a great job with this one). The entire concept was really, really cool to me. The idea of a trans woman using the Battle of Waterloo to fake her death and transition the way she needed to? Her hero being her old friend who has been torturing himself with grief ever since her supposed death? (And no, Gracewood does not immediately recognize Viola, which I've seen some take issue with. In my opinion, it's pretty conceivable that with years past, Viola being declared dead, and Viola being a woman not even being vaguely on Gracewood's mind, with her change in dress, hair, and the use of cosmetics being taken into consideration... I think it makes sense, and I think historical romance has handwaved FAAAAAAR wilder shit than that.). Inject it in my veins.

But, and I say this as a cis woman, there's a level of trepidation that I think is normal to feel when you pick up books, especially romance novels, especially historical romance novels about trans characters. You want the difficulties Viola faces as a trans heroine to be acknowledged, sure. However, as someone who reads books about trans and NB characters with growing readers I personally know in mind, I can't help but feel a level of... worry. Romance is meant to be a fantasy for readers, a place where you can read a story feeling safe and knowing that there is a happily ever after in the end. It's not for me to say what queer authors should do with queer stories, nor do I want to dictate what trans readers should seek from trans romance; however, you would like to hope that a historical romance with a trans heroine can be more than tragedy and angst with a dollop of a happy ending at the last minute.

I'm so happy to say that A Lady for A Duke is pretty much everything I was hoping it would be on that front. Obviously, I'm not an expert--and please feel free to disagree with me if you read the book as a trans person and feel dissatisfied. That's super valid, no matter what your reasoning is. But generally speaking, I found this to be a super touching, thoughtful, and yes, hot romance that nevertheless lived with Viola and her identity. She's not unrealistically secure at all times, a caricature of a confident woman. One example I'd give is that she doesn't necessarily want Gracewood to see her without makeup early in their relationship, and as such she slips away before he can. She's not constantly miserable, but she has insecurities. She's also just... happy to be who she is. To be a woman, to wear dresses, to revel in her femininity while at the same time retaining many of the skills she learned growing up (fencing! She can fence and it makes A LOT OF SENSE). She's aware that she's pretty, even if she doesn't always feel like the prettiest girl in the room (who does). She's flirtatious, if not totally confident in it due to her inexperience. She's such a great heroine, and I loved her completely.

I think it's important to note that the big climax and major issue of this book at the end has nothing to do with Viola being outed. There is no outing here. The only person who "realizes" Viola's identity without Viola choosing to let them know is Gracewood, and I wouldn't call that an outing. It's him recognizing her. He is shocked, and there is a brief bout of deadnaming and misgendering as a result, but he is not angry because Viola transitioned. Nor does he really have a hard time with Viola transitioning. He has a hard time with the fact that he thought his best friend was dead for years, and it turns out she isn't, and he would've liked to know, thanks! Which... I get that. I also get why Viola didn't tell him. It's one of those delicious conflicts where both people have valid reasons for doing what they did. Until Gracewood realizes who she is, Viola's biggest angst is truly not to do with her gender, but with her guilt over letting Gracewood think she was dead and his despair and subsequent decline. For me at least, this was waaaay more compelling conflict than the "Viola constantly gets deadnamed" conflict I was worried would occur.

I also loved Gracewood. He's suitably tortured, both on a "hero is hot because tortured" level and a "this is a very good exploration of PTSD, depression, and addiction" level. Gracewood has plenty of reasons to be fucked up. He lost his best friend. He saw plenty of men die. He was grievously injured and as such has limited mobility now, in a society that doesn't accommodate or understand such issues. He also super wants to kiss the pretty lady with familiar freckles, though!

I enjoyed that Gracewood and Viola's relationship has a level of ambiguity to it and Hall just kind of let it sit there. Their friendship prior to Viola embracing her true identity is marked as something different from their romantic relationship that starts after she and Gracewood "re-meet". However, once Gracewood does figure it all out, it's kind of up to interpretation--did Viola have feelings for Gracewood all along? Did Gracewood have feelings for Viola all along? Gracewood is very definitively stated to be a straight man. He's not attracted to men at all. Yet Viola has never been a man, whether Gracewood (or she) realized it at the time or not. I kind of appreciated the way that Hall left this a bit up to interpretation--I could see an argument for Viola and Gracewood having been in love all along, and I can see an argument for their romantic love only really starting up once Viola was in a mental place where she could accept love as her authentic self.

It's also just a very fucking romantic book. It has some lines. My dude Gracewood can knock a lady out with the line deliveries. Viola was never a super sexual or romantic person prior to her "rebirth", and as such she's a bit new to everything. Gracewood is not and that dynamic was pretty charming. I've never been a big one for friends to lovers, but this particular version of "actually, I totally misread our dynamic for a long time, we are in fact super attracted to each other" really worked for me.

I've always thought that Alexis Hall was a talented writer, but some of his contemporary books have been a bit on the closed door side for me? Which is fine, a romance novel doesn't have to have sex, and certainly I can understand the delicacies of writing queer sex in a romance novel that is not only going to be read by queer people. There's a lot of space for fetishization and exploitation of queer sexuality in romance, and furthermore there's been a lot of debate about straight women writers kind of dominating the m/m romance space. (I will also note: Alexis Hall uses he/him pronouns and identifies as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. Beyond that, I don't know anything about his sexuality or his gender identity, and I'm not going to make assumptions. Just wanted to put that out there as a kind of disclaimer; I don't want to lead people to think that this is a book about trans woman, written by a trans woman, when I can't verify the author's identity beyond what I've seen him disclose.). However, I have obviously made it pretty clear that I love to read romance novels with sex. It's my preference. I will almost never choose a romance novel without sex knowingly unless there is a hook that makes me want to read it anyway.

This book. Does have sex. And it is hot. I know that for some people the sex scene could potentially be triggering for some dealing with dysphoria (and the book could be in general, so please read with caution), so I do want to give a heads up that this is a fully descriptive, pretty explicit sex scene. I loved it. I thought it was very romantic and didn't take the chastely sweet~ route I thought it would. It's about the connection between Viola and Gracewood and how physically into each other they are ALONGSIDE their deep emotional bond, and I fucking loved it.

On that level, I also want to say that it was pretty refreshing to read a book in which there was none of the "Wow Gracewood, what a hero, you want to be with the woman you're in love with" bullshit we often see in pop culture. He doesn't get a pat on the back for wanting to be with Viola. To be honest? Once he's got his emotional shit together, Gracewood is really gung-ho on the whole thing. He's all about making Viola his and having a life with her. It's Viola who has hesitations, for many reasons. There is really no hesitation on his part on the subject of loving her, besides his initial shock over the recognition.

Aside from the love story, which was great, you have a fun cast of supporting characters. Viola has a loving, supportive family--Lady Marleigh is particularly meddling in a very "romcom heroine's best friend" kind of way, which I enjoyed immensely. Gracewood has an offbeat little sister who's constantly getting into trouble, but she's a teenager who's trying to figure her own shit out and maybe falling in love with women who are too old for her, so we forgive her. There are a couple of villains, and they are a bit standard issue, but to be totally honest, the emotional conflict is where this book truly lies.

I can see there being some room to critique in terms of the last minute big conflict and the subsequent scrambling. I did not personally mind it, as it felt very old school historical romance. It was kind of great to see this story, which is pretty progressive for the subgenre, being injected with some OH MY! A VILE ROGUE HAS ARRIVED! type drama. The book is pretty long as it is, and at times the pacing felt a tad bit slow, which is why I'm not giving it a full five stars. But please don't take that as any reason to not pick the book up. It's more of a heads up.

Overall, I would highly recommend A Lady for A Duke if you're in the mood to get a bit emotional. It's not a weeper. It's very fun. There's just a lot happening here, and it feels true, and I enjoyed basically every minute of it.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

#romance novel blogging #arc review #arc #arcs #books #book review

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terramythos · 3 years

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 10 of 26

Title: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Author: Oscar Wilde

Genre/Tags: Fiction, Gothic Horror, Third-Person, LGBT Protagonist (I... guess)

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 4/13/2021

Date Finished: 4/20/2021

When artist Basil Hallward paints a picture of the beautiful and innocent Dorian Gray, he believes he’s created his masterpiece. Seeing himself on the canvas, Dorian wishes to remain forever young and beautiful while the portrait ages in his stead. The bargain comes true. While Dorian grows older and descends a path of hedonism and moral corruption, his portrait changes to reflect his true nature while his physical body remains eternally youthful. As his debauchery grows worse, and the portrait warps to reflect his corruption, Dorian’s past begins to catch up to him.

Perhaps one never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part. Certainly no one looking at Dorian Gray that night could have believed that he had passed through a tragedy as horrible as any tragedy of our age. Those finely-shaped fingers could never have clutched a knife for sin, nor those smiling lips have cried out on God and goodness. He himself could not help wondering at the calm of his demeanour, and for a moment felt keenly the terrible pleasure of a double life.

Full review, some spoilers, and content warnings under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Misogyny (mostly satirical). Racism and antisemitism (not so much). Emotional manipulation, blackmail, suicide, graphic murder, and death. Recreational drug use.

Reviewing a classic novel through a modern lens is always going to be a challenge for me. The world seems to change a lot every decade, let alone every century—whether some canonized classic holds up today is pretty hit or miss (sorry, English degree). And considering the sheer amount of academic focus on classic texts, it’s not like I’m going to have a “fresh take” on one for a casual review. I read and reviewed The Count of Monte Cristo last year, and thought it aged remarkably well over 170+ years.

Somehow I never read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray for school. I tried reading it independently in my late teens/early twenties, and honestly think I was just too stupid for it. Needing a shorter read before the next Murderbot book releases at the end of the month, I grabbed Dorian Gray off the shelf and decided to give it another shot. By the end, I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked the book.

I’m actually going to discuss my pain points before I get into what worked for me. The first half of the book is very slow-paced. The Picture of Dorian Gray is famous for… well… the picture. But it isn’t relevant until the halfway point of the novel, when Dorian does something truly reprehensible and finds his image in the picture has changed. There’s a lot of setup before this discovery. The first half of the book has a lot of fluff, with characters talking about stuff that happened off screen, discussing various philosophies, and so on without progressing the story. Some of this is fine, as it establishes Dorian’s initial character so the contrast later is all the more striking. I just think it could have been shorter. I realize this comes down to personal taste.

I’m also torn on the Wilde’s writing style. He’s very clever, and there are many philosophical ideas in his writing that did genuinely made me stop and think. The prose is also beautiful and descriptive; this is especially useful when it contrasts the horror elements of the story. However, there’s a lot of unnatural, long monologue in the story. Not sure if it’s the time period, Wilde’s background as a playwright, or just his writing style in general (maybe all three), but the characters ramble a LOT. My favorite game was trying to imagine how other characters were reacting to a literal wall of text.

I also feel the need to mention this book has some bigoted content, as implied in my content warnings. The misogyny in the story is satirical; it’s spouted by the biggest tool in the book, Lord Henry, whose whole shtick is being paradoxical. You just need basic critical thought to figure that out. However, some things don’t have that excuse. A minor character in the first half is an obvious anti-Semitic caricature. There’s also some pretty racist content, particularly when Wilde describes Gray’s musical instrument collection. While these are small parts of the book, it’d be disingenuous not to acknowledge them.

All that being said, there were many aspects of the book I enjoyed, particularly in the second half. Wilde does a great job characterizing terrible people who fully believe what they say. Lord Henry is an obvious example, and Dorian follows his lead as the story progresses. One of my favorite bits was after Sibyl’s suicide (which Dorian instigated by being a piece of shit). Dorian is initially shocked, but as he and Lord Henry discuss it, they come to the conclusion that her suicide was a good thing because it had thematic merit. It’s just such a brazen, horrible way to alleviate one’s guilt.

Dorian also goes to significant lengths to justify his actions. At one point, he murders Basil to keep the portrait a secret. While he briefly feels guilty about this, Dorian grows angry at the inconvenience of having killed this man, supposedly an old friend. He even separates himself from the situation, expressing that Basil died in such a horrible way. Bro, you killed him! It was you! The cognitive dissonance is just stunning.

It’s also viscerally satisfying to read about Dorian’s downfall as his awful choices catch up to him. Dorian becoming tormented by the portrait is just... *chef’s kiss*. Is it surprising? No, it’s pretty standard Gothic horror fare. But there’s something to be said about seeing a genuinely horrible man finally pay for what he’s done after getting away with it for so long. I wish real life worked that way.

There’s the picture itself, too. I know it’s The Thing most people know about this novel -- but I just think it’s a cool concept. I like the idea of someone’s likeness reflecting their true self, and the psychological effect it has on the subject. Most of the novel is fiction with realistic horror elements, but I like that there’s a touch of the supernatural thanks to Dorian’s picture. It’s an element I wouldn’t mind seeing in more works.

It's sad to read Dorian Gray with the context of what happened to Wilde. The homoeroticism in the novel is obvious, but tame compared to works today. Wilde and this book are a depressing case study in how queer people are simultaneously erased and reviled in recent history. Wilde was tortured for his homosexuality (and died from resulting health complications) over 100 years ago, yet the 1994 edition of Dorian Gray I read refers to his real homosexual relationship as a "close friendship". It's an infuriating and tragic paradox. Things have improved by inches, but we still have so far to go.

As I grow older I find I appreciate classic works more than when I was forced to read them for school. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a gripping Gothic horror story. Some aspects didn't age particularly well, but that's true for almost anything over time. If you're in the market for this kind of book, I do recommend it.

#this review is late but in my defense the nier remake came out #taylor reads #2021 reading challenge #8/10

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ace-trainer-risu · 7 years

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Why do you hate bosie douglas?

Oh man bout to lay down some Oscar Wilde Discourse!

Just kidding. Sort of?

Anyway, the short answer would be that I really, really love Oscar Wilde. He’s definitely one of my favorite authors/artists/historical figures ever. He was an amazing and incredibly influential figure who lived a tragic life and died way too young, and Bosie (aka Lord Alfred Douglas, for those unfamiliar with his nickname) was not the only person responsible for the tragedy of Oscar’s life, but he undeniably played a role in it. And I just, I really can’t forgive him for that.

The long answer is…

Well, okay, so at my university, English majors had to take a senior thesis class, which was basically just a seminar where you studied one topic really in depth. I took mine on Oscar Wilde, and it was an amazing class, so I really know a lot about him and have read a lot of his writings.

I never know what is and isn’t common knowledge about Wilde since I know a lot about him, but for those who don’t really know him, the basic story is that Wilde was a popular and scandalous Victorian author and playwright. He popularized various fashionable movements like aestheticism and dandyism. It was kind of an open secret that he was carrying out affairs with men. He had an affair with a younger man named Lord Alfred Douglas, AKA Bosie, who was a wealthy aristocrat from the Queensbury family. In the late 1890s, at the height of Wilde’s playwriting popularity, Wilde was embroiled in a series of trials that ultimately led to him being jailed for four years hard labor for gross indecency (essentially for having sex with men). Upon getting out, Wilde emigrated to France, where he died shortly after at the age of 46.

This is not the point of this post, but I highly recommend reading him. The Picture of Dorian Gray is obviously his most famous work, and it’s really beautiful and weird and fucked up and super gay. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, and it’s also so influential of a work that it’s really hard to see how influential it is, because of course lots of things are like Earnest, except they’re like that because of Earnest. But what I would really recommend to first time Wilde readers is “The Happy Prince” which is a beautiful and heartbreaking little fairy tale that he wrote. He was a hugely influential author on modernism, post modernism, comedy, playwriting, etc.

This is tumblr so I feel strangely compelled to defend my love for him, so, yes, Oscar Wilde is #problematic fave. He practically invented being a problematic fave. I can almost guarantee that young Victorian ladies were fanning themselves and sighing over how much they loved his plays but it was too bad he was so scandalous and their mama wouldn’t let them go see him lecture. I am Aware. I could cheerfully list his myriad sins. But for pretty much all of them, I can think of mitigating factors. I will settle for saying that it’s essentially unfair for a modern, Western person to judge the sexual lives of queer* people in the past. They lived in a completely different culture from us, and many of them were simply doing the best they could under difficult, painful circumstances. It’s important to remember that legal, socially accepted same sex relationships are a very recent invention in the west. If Oscar Wilde cheated on his wife and turned to sex workers, well, what the hell else was he going to do? It’s probably worthwhile to note that by all accounts, he always treated his wife and sex workers very decently and generously.

(*Queer is an anachronistic term. I am aware. However, it’s a little tedious to write out “same sex attracted people” every time. In my opinion, queer is the modern term that most closely matches the way that Oscar Wilde wrote about sexuality. So that’s what I’m going to use.)

Despite his flaws, Wilde also did a lot of amazing stuff. He was, by most accounts, incredibly generous and kind. He was funny and witty. He was good to his children. My friends, we probably wouldn’t look at pretty pictures and write #aesthetic if it were not for Oscar Wilde. He modernized play writing. He was a socialist!!! He was a feminist!! He hated corsets!! He wrote out like a fifty page essay that was basically his headcanons about how Shakespeare was bi and hooking up with his one of his actors who was named Willie Hughes. He wrote kinda bad poetry (which I personally like). He lowkey had a feud with Henry James. He was a Fashion Icon who loved having his photo taken. If you or someone you love has ever worn a tux you can thank Wilde for helping popularize them. And, in my opinion most importantly, he was constantly thinking and writing (subtextually) about how to revolutionize cultural thought about sexuality and male identity. To call Oscar Wilde “gay” or “homosexual” is really a simplification of how he thought about sexuality. In fact, he explicitly objected to being called homosexual (altho it’s important to remember that was a much more stigmatizing term at the time than it is now!). Oscar Wilde, instead, was interested in a forming a world in which, basically, everyone could be themselves and could express themselves freely through art and sex. He wanted people to be able to freely love each other without being slapped with some fixed, restrictive label. Like, you guys, do u ever cry b/c Oscar Wilde just wanted the world to be beautiful and queer and free and for everyone to be gay and happy and make art BECAUSE I DO

And, like, okay. Bosie had a hard life too. I get that! His father has gotta be on the list of like Top Ten Biggest Assholes In History. As much as I dislike Bosie, multiply that by like ten hundred and that’s how I feel about fuckboy Marquis of Queenbury. I know I made that post about traveling back in time to punch Bosie; well, the only reason I don’t wanna punch his dad is b/c his dad like literally invented (a form of) boxing and I’m very small. I am Positive I could take Bosie in a fight, and I am positive his black hole of a father could take me. Also it was probably not easy to be a trailblazing twink in the 1890s (altho like John Gray managed it without being a literal piece of shit so……..). To be serious, Bosie clearly had a lot of rough stuff in his life. But, you know, so do lots of people. And I know I was just saying it’s hard to judge historical figures for their sex lives, but I’m judging Bosie for his behavior, not his sex. So, with all the context out of the way, here’s why I hate Bosie:

a) His poetry is like the soppiest shit ever.

b) He was extremely emotionally manipulative and possibly abusive toward Oscar Wilde. I know it seems kind of weird, because our cultural mindset for abusive relationship is big beefy guy beating his small, helpless wife. And Bosie and Oscar are both men, and Oscar was older and physically larger (did you know that he was like six foot? I hadn’t known that.). But there’s a lot of fucked up stories about their relationship. They were very on again off again, with Oscar frequently being the one to end things, and there are reports of Bosie going to extreme ends to get them back together, including threatening to kill himself. One story, which is hilarious with the distance of time but would have surely been dreadful when it happened, is that one time when they broke up, Bosie sent Oscar a nine. page. telegraph. NINE PAGES! For those of you who don’t know, telegraphs back then charged by the word. That’s like sending your boyfriend nine pages worth of texts, except you send each word individually and you know for a fact he’s out of data for the month. Also some poor individual had to type it all out for you. And yes, Wilde was the one to pay, because you could send telegraphs collect. And this despite the fact that Bosie was very well off, whereas Wilde, who was rather extravagant in his pursuit of dat aesthetic lifestyle, was usually tight on money. There’s also a rather horrible story about a time where Bosie fell ill and Wilde tenderly nursed him back to health, and then when Bosie recovered and Wilde caught his illness and fell sick himself, Bosie verbally abused him and left him alone to suffer. What I’m saying is, it was not a healthy relationship and Bosie did not treat Wilde well.

c) It’s basically inarguable that Bosie played a significant role in Wilde’s trial. Again, I’m not saying it’s just his fault, because it wasn’t. But things would have gone down massively differently without Bosie…or they might not have gone down at all. (Do u ever cry b/c maybe Wilde didn’t have to die at 46 and maybe if he hadn’t queer rights would be years, decades ahead of where they are now I mean I’m not saying definitely, I’m just saying m a y b e???)Queensbury family dynamics were a highly complex thing. It’s probably significant that somewhat before the trial, Bosie’s older brother died under controversial circumstances. The official story was it was a hunting accident, but the gossip of the day was that he killed himself because he was having an affair with another man. This was a serious blow to Bosie’s father, so when his youngest son, with whom he’d always had a contentious relationship, started publicly cavorting with a man rumored to be up to some real scandalous shit, the Marquis of Queensbury was not happy. At one point he even physically threatened Wilde’s life. But Wilde, at least at first, genuinely tried to calm things down. He repeatedly advised Bosie to make up with his father; instead, Bosie continued to provoke him. Eventually, Queensbury left a note for Wilde at a club accusing him of being a sodomite (basically the Victorian equivalent of calling someone the f-slur). And this is where things get really messed up. All of Wilde’s friends advised him to just leave things alone, not make things messy. Bosie, in contrast, advised Wilde to sue his father for libel. So, like, quick note about the legal ramifications of this: basically, libel is only illegal if it’s not true. Thus, all Queensbury’s lawyers had to do was prove that Wilde was having sex with men, which they were able to do, because, you know, he was totally having sex with men. I mean, it was wildly foolish of Wilde to sue for libel when he knew it was not libel! Why would Bosie push him into that?And that wasn’t the end of it, because the Labouchere Amendment made it illegal for two men to have sex, even in the privacy of their own homes. So, because Queensbury’s lawyers could prove that Wilde was engaging in gross indecency, he was able to be charged. The libel trial ruined Wilde’s social standing; the second trial ruined him legally. Oh, and the costs of the trial also bankrupted him! Things then get slightly more horrible, because, for a person of Wilde’s fame and status, the police basically gave you a warning period. There was a time frame in which he could have fled the country, and extradition treaties were not really a thing then, so although he would have been ruined and unable to return to England, he wouldn’t have been arrested. All of his friends advised him to flee, but he didn’t. And no one really knows why, although if you ask me, it’s because a) he was basically an extremely self destructive person, and b) I think it’s probably unimaginably heart breaking to have your entire society turn on you and paint you as a monster and pervert, and maybe at a certain point you lose the will to fight, and c) Oscar Wilde wanted everything to be beautiful and like art, like a story, and I wonder if he didn’t feel that this was how the story of his life was “supposed” to go. But that’s really just my theory.And so Oscar Wilde was sent to jail for 4 years hard labor, and by all accounts his heart and his health were broken. He lived in France for a few years, but he never wrote anything again other than the Ballad of Reading Gaol (“Each man kills the thing he loves”… I’m looking at YOU Bosie), and then he died, still quite young, and not of syphilis despite what certain supposedly reputable biographies try and tell you.And none of that had to happen. None of that would have happened if it weren’t for Bosie. He shouldn’t have pushed his father to attack Oscar, and he certainly shouldn’t have pushed Oscar into the libel trial. Oscar Wilde himself wrote that he felt as if Bosie threw him and his father at each other, as if he was trying to destroy both of them. And then after the trial, he basically abandoned Wilde. I believe he only visited him in jail once. Why would you do that? Why would you try and destroy the person you supposedly love, the person that loves you? I just can’t understand or forgive that. I know I joke around a lot in this post but what happened to Wilde honestly makes me so sad. It breaks my heart. He was a beautiful person who wanted to make the world beautiful and full of love and art, and the person he loved tried to destroy him. And really, the inexcusable straw for me is that later in life Bosie wrote some piece of shit biography in which he denied that he and Wilde were ever lovers and painted Wilde as some sort of monster and pervert. No one fucking asked you, Bosie.

So yes, that’s why I fucking hate Bosie, and that’s my Oscar Wilde Discourse™.

#things you didn't care to know about veronica #the asks and the answers #oscar wilde #that oscar wilde discourse #bosie hate #do i need to tag that lol #i hope this is not? a controversial opinion?#but even if it is I STAND BY IT #i hate bosie fight me #but like...be gentle

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No Gods, No Spirits, No Angels: The Religious Experience of Witnessing "Angels in America" as a Queer, Jewish Millennial

In Honor of World AIDS Day

“I watched my friends die,” the pep talk began. “I saw the inside of a paddy wagon more than once. I chained myself to the pews of a church.” This was coming from a theater professor, the day after the 2016 election. I had come into his office minutes earlier, shaken and despondent, telling him I no longer felt I wanted to continue pursuing playwriting.

“No. No. No,” he replied. “Now is when you must throw yourself into your art, full-speed. You cannot back down now. Feel upset today, fine. Take a break, whatever. But you have to get out there and fight tomorrow. I swore years ago I would never have to wear my ACT UP shirt again. But I dug it up this morning, and I’ll be wearing it out there at every protest and demonstration. I sure as hell better see you there, too.”

In my desperate need to understand what he went through, I blurted out, “I’d love to interview you about your experience.” The conversation came to a halt. The pep talk ended there. I had breached the fine line between a curious outsider and an intrusive one.

I encountered this before. When you’re a storyteller, you want to be interested in everybody. You’re taught to ask questions and gather the stories that will inform your work. You can’t write about the human condition if you’re not bearing witness to its many facets. We all want the juicy gossip, the ghost stories, the too-gruesome-to-be-real tales of people overcoming extraordinary strife. Yet that can be dangerous. Growing up Jewish, we’re taught that to remember the Holocaust is to prevent its recurrence, but we’re also taught never to ask about a survivor’s experience unless it is offered. This is the paradox of knowing survivors of tragedy: so many of them want to educate, to prevent history repeating, but their own trauma is often too painful to re-live.

Time and again, I have found the AIDS Crisis, like the Holocaust, to be the great rift between generations. For Jewish descendants of survivors, like some of my friends growing up, the Holocaust was the elephant in the room; something that made family dinners and religious celebrations a point of anxiety. Even if they lived in the most Jew-friendly town in America, survivors are forever looking over their shoulder. Their descendants are taught to as well, even when they’re not sure why. There were days my Jewish friends would tell me about the Holocaust being used as a point of guilt, a way to say, “Stop behaving so selfishly, don’t you remember what your grandfather lived through?” Survivors of the AIDS Crisis will sometimes—maybe inadvertently—scorn queer Millennials for not understanding the agony they encountered. As many of us came of age in the new millennium, perhaps moved away from home or began frequenting gay clubs and bars, we’d each have our own stories of encountering elder days with one too many drinks in their system, ranting furiously about our privilege, our “never having seen true hardship now that AIDS is gone.”

Of course, HIV and AIDS are not gone, and my generation isn’t blameless for our ignorance. I can’t begin to count how many gay people my age have told me they had never heard of ACT UP or the AIDS Quilt or even the efforts of artists like Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz. However, many of us want to learn. We want to understand what it must have felt like back then so that we can build stronger bonds with our queer elders. More of us want to educate, because we know the deadly price of ignorance; of thinking that knowledge of our history doesn’t affect us as individuals. After the Pulse shooting, I dived in. I read books on the Crisis, and binged documentaries. Yes, my fury over the Reagan administration’s inaction increased ten-fold. I made it my mission to educate fellow members of the community. But I don’t think I could fully grasp, on a deeply emotional level, what the turmoil must have felt like, until this year.

In March, I returned to my alma mater to see a production of Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches. This is the first in a two-part, seven-hour magnum opus drama written by Tony Kushner. Millennium follows a cavalcade of characters: Prior, the former drag queen diagnosed with AIDS; Louis, the pencil-pushing boyfriend who leaves him; Joe, the closeted Mormon law clerk; Harper, Joe’s equally Mormon, agoraphobic wife who sees less of her husband since he started cruising for sex in Central Park; and Roy Cohn, the evil lackey to Joseph McCarthy, dying of AIDS and denying every word of it. It is a tale of how the AIDS Crisis affected vastly different people, evoked through a “Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” Angels’ eponymous subtitle complete with spirits and giants and fiery biblical set pieces.

I thought I knew what I was in for as I found my seat in the theater, having read the script two years earlier. I figured I would probably cry when Prior screams at Louis, “I’m dying! You stupid fuck! Do you know what that is!” Yet, I was nowhere near prepared. By the end of the 3.5-hour show I was a red-faced, blubbering mess. Something happened to me in that small college theater. Something that made my heart feel altogether light and heavy; something that made my eyes see more clearly. By the time I returned to Chicago, I had had two nights of deep sleep accompanied by vivid dreams of the production. In one dream, I was an actor, and I had to get on stage and deliver a monologue. All the cast and the audience were waiting for me, and I couldn’t remember my lines for the life of me. So I fled to a parking lot and cried. In the other dream, I was an audience member who wandered on stage during a pivotal moment. I couldn’t seem to find my way off stage, and Prior scolded me for not paying attention, for not listening. Coming back to my Midwest studio apartment, I only had one overwhelming conclusion circling my head: I had just had a religious experience.

Western religion and theatre go hand-in-hand. They both involve rituals of an audience congregating for a set time to look at costumed people on a stage and try to glean a message. Theorists like Jill Dolan have asserted that a theater event creates temporary communities out of total strangers experiencing a shared moment. That is what it sometimes feels like to be queer: a community of strangers, desperate to make our pieces fit, coming together through some shared sense of otherness with the world. Seeing Angels for the first time, with Millennial actors, did for me what religion is supposed to do: connect us to our ancestors. I watched my community suffering on stage, and it felt real. It felt more authentic than any other play I had ever seen. The painted-on lesions, the heavy New York accents, even the moment Prior shits his pants and raises his hand to reveal blood (evoking an audible gasp from the audience). For the first time in my life, I felt I could empathize with at least a fraction of what those who survived the Crisis experienced.

Some people laughed when I mentioned how Angels felt like an out-of-body experience, and I was beginning to feel a little silly. Then I talked to Jeffrey James Fox, who played Prior in the University of Michigan production. “I guess, in a way,” he said, “I had a religious awakening.” He started to get choked up as he continued.

“When you’re Jewish, you learn about Jewish heroes and the Holocaust and tangible things that happened. You learn a little about the history of your people. Gay people don’t have heroes for a lot of their life, especially when you’re in the closet for twenty years or more… Like reading about ACT UP, my God! Their own research, their own doctors. They made everything happen on their own, because nobody else would!”

Most profoundly, he said, being in Angels as an openly gay man changed his thinking on how he wants his career to take shape. “I want to devote a good chunk of my career now to giving a voice to people who don’t have them. If I had seen a movie with a gay character when I was younger, imagine how much more comfortable I would’ve been with myself so much sooner! This whole thing…” He trailed off for a moment before concluding, “Yeah. I guess it is religious.”

We are a generation that feels more alienated and disconnected from religion than ever before. Millennials are distancing themselves from the religious practices with which they were brought up, choosing instead to forge bonds through pagan rituals or astrology. For some of us, theater offers a new religion, or at least a supplemental religious experience. It can connect us to the past, distract us from the present, and give us a glimpse into potential futures. For young people like Jeffrey, the history of ACT UP is the history of queer people’s resilience; of being backed into a corner, on the brink of extinction, and responding by rolling up our sleeves and solving the problem ourselves. Millennials, remarkably in tune with the complexity and fluidity of identity, increasingly no longer see themselves in religious stories and traditions. So we seek out other ways to connect to our past. We become the researchers of queer history, we find the forgotten stories, and we gather on stage or on Netflix or in movie theaters, and dammit, we tell the stories ourselves. We make our friends and family listen, so they will learn and fight alongside us for a better future. Out of pure necessity, we become the preachers of our own queer religion.

In October, a man entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire. I awoke to texts from friends offering sympathy, and read article after article of the “rise” of anti-Semitism in America (it’s always been there, it’s just emboldened now). I felt that creeping sense of guilt I know so well, for not having the “correct” amount of empathetic pain. I struggled to place why I was suddenly so void of feeling over the shooting. Of course I was upset to hear of the murder of fellow Jews, yet I wasn’t surprised. There wasn’t an aching loss and I felt overwhelmingly guilty for that. Why did the Pulse shooting break my heart, keep me in bed for two days, and force me to pen a new play? Why did the Tree of Life (whose alternative name, Simcha, is the same as my Hebrew name) come as no surprise?

Talking about this absence of pain with a friend of mine, I found myself referencing the Judaic aspects of Angels in America, which I had always ignored for the larger queer themes. Yet, I suddenly realized that the shooting didn’t shock me precisely because I was raised Jewish. The emphasis on always being aware—and always being prepared—that the world has tried to wipe us out for thousands of years has been ingrained in me. In a twisted way, Jews are always anticipating the next attempted genocide. There are two large groups that I can call “my people”: Jews and the LGBTQ community. I was shocked by Pulse because I had not yet had the history lessons of “my (queer) people” like the lessons afforded to me by Hebrew school, because queer studies are still “niche.” The culture that encouraged survivors to speak out about their time in the concentration camps had never existed for survivors of the AIDS Crisis or the Upstairs Lounge or Stonewall.

All of a sudden, I understood the religious aspects of Angels in America like never before. The depiction of Heaven as a place equally unfathomable and in disarray, in which Prior delivers a scathing speech that he’d rather live with AIDS than be healthy in Heaven, enforces the Jewish teaching of striving to do good on Earth for the sake of being good and helping others, rather for the sake of—to steal from The Good Place—an afterlife “moral dessert.” Then there’s Prior’s assertion that God must be dead. It is the play’s most direct reference to what many survivors of the Holocaust felt after they were freed from the camps: God is not coming back.

“And even if He did,” Prior says. “If He ever did come back, if He ever dared to show His face, or his Glyph or whatever in the Garden again. If after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of this terrible century He returned to see … how much suffering His abandonment had created, if all He has to offer is death …

“You should sue the bastard. That’s my only contribution to all this Theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare He. He oughta pay.”

The monologues that precede both Millennium Approaches, and its successor Perestroika, are intentionally (sometimes literally) preachy. One is spoken by a Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz, presiding over a funeral, and the other by Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov, “The World’s Oldest Living Bolshevik.” Rabbi Chemelwitz waxes poetic on how the deceased immigrant laying before him reminds him of, “how we struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home, so that you would not grow up here, in this strange place, in the melting pot where nothing melted.” He lambasts the descendants for giving their children “goyische names,” and assimilating to a kind of America that makes you forget your roots. In Part II, Aleksii’s monologue similarly curses us, for we could not possibly know the struggle he and his comrades overcame for a mere ideological future. That is what Jews and queers and the children of mass terror alike have always heard. The last survivors beg us to listen and to empathize and to never take for granted how fragile our freedoms really are. They make movies, write plays, and do whatever it takes to keep history alive and relevant, and to maintain the spark of hope that maybe we’ll be the generation that finally ends the madness.

My encounter with Angels at Michigan haunted me for days, and I needed a way to get back to that feeling. So, I made a pilgrimage. I found a way to see the show—all seven hours—on Broadway. By happenstance, I chose the day Tony Kushner was in the audience to celebrate the 25th anniversary of opening night. That’s how I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be; like at the end of Sister Act when the Pope shows up to listen to Whoopi’s whipped-into-shape choir. In this long journey to New York and back again, I realized something important: if theater is a religion, you don’t need to see a Broadway production to be transformed by religious text. Yes, Prior Walter’s monologue in Perestroika hit me like an oncoming train when uttered by Andrew Garfield, but that doesn’t mean the same feeling might not be achieved by a queer Millennial performing in a small theater anywhere else in the world. Like anything religious, it is all up to interpretation. As my life experience changes, so too does my understanding of Angels in America.

It’s not that Millennials don’t feel we need organized religion as much anymore. It’s that we’re learning there is an inherent religiousness to simply being human and wanting to fight for a better life for ourselves and for those who come next. Our forebears—professors, mentors, the older queers we meet in bars—may never have the words to express their stories of the AIDS Crisis, or the Holocaust, or the Next Terrible Thing. It is our duty to make ourselves understand. But it seems as though proactivity only comes from awakenings. I hope my fellow Millennials have the kind of religious experience I did. Let it change you. Let it fill your heart. Let it bring us closer to the generations before us, so that we may finally bridge this unnecessarily bitter gap. May you all find something that gives you the courage to scream and shout and demand—as one singular being—the right to a better life.

Eric Grant is a playwright, essayist, and theater-maker based in Chicago. He was an artist-in-residence at The MITTEN Lab in Bear Lake, Michigan, and his work has been presented at the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice and most recently at Second City's De Maat Theater. You can find him on Instagram and at www.eric-grant.net

#theater #queer #activism #AIDS #Eric Grant

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