#elain feels attraction to a homosexual man

[trumanlilac]

/ / c h a p t e r - o n e / /

The room was drafty, it felt almost like a real hospital...well it was...but...you know, like the actual ones that people get shots and stuff in...I looked around, it was a typical setting. A few flower vases in the corner with plants that you could tell were obviously fake...and empty arm chairs all around. I was happy they were empty, I didn't want to see anyone...although I did wish someone was around so I could ask how these damn things went along...

Just with that thought, a tall guy dressed in all black came straggling in. He looked lost, or stoned...I really couldn't tell. He had a strange hairdo...shaved on the sides and long at the center...it was kind of cool as I scoped it. His eyes fell on mine, I looked away quickly. He sat down beside me, the smell of cigarettes against his leather coat easing into my nostrils. How could such an attractive guy let himself reek of the aroma of cancer sticks.

"Hi." He smiled slightly.

"...hi..." I smiled slightly also, taken by surprise that he'd actually speak to me...he didn't look like a talkative, or very friendly guy...I guess because he was wearing so much black.

"I'm not crazy, by the way." He assured me.

I laughed, I couldn't help it...he was so forward, "neither am I."

"Well good." He nodded, his smile growing wider, "not that I thought you were."

"I didn't think you were either." I shrugged shyly.

"But even if you were that would be fine." He said, looking right at me. We were so close together due to the set up of the chairs that it made me nervous, I leaned to the side a little, backing from him.

"Same for you." I looked away, I always became a bit nervous to look at an attractive person right in the face. It gave me an everlasting feeling that there just had to be shit on mine or something.

"Matty." He held his hand out, I could see his eyes wandering around every bit of my face and behavior, he obviously knew I was nervous...was he a psychologist? And just acting like a client?

"Katie." I shook his hand quickly and slipped mine into the pockets of my over sized cardigan sweater.

"Katie. Is it short for-"

"Katie?" A woman called, guessing she was my psychologist, I stood up and swung my purse over my shoulders, "sorry." I didn't look back, and followed the woman back to her office.

"Hi, my name is Elaine, I'll be your psychologist." She smiled and extended her hand after closing the door behind us. She happened to be a very attractive woman, and quite young to my surprise...maybe in her thirties or so. She wore red lipstick and had long blonde hair tied back...and bright blue eyes...and breasts that she obviously wanted to show off because they'd nearly pop right out of her blouse if she were to jump.

I reached out and shook her hand, then sat down.

"Are you doing okay?"

"No, a really attractive man just told me his name and I don't know how to take that."

Elaine stared at me, blankly, then a false smile spread across her lips. I could tell it was false...

"Well...let's talk about that. Why don't you know how to take that, Katie?"

"This is one of the problems. I don't like when people talk to me...well...men. I'm not homosexual, I am attracted to men, but when they talk to me it makes me want to just...just..." I sighed, wanting to pull my own hair out. Wasn't this woman supposed to make me feel not crazy about my damn problems? What the fuck is this shit?

"Go on..."

"Jump off a bridge." I admitted, feeling even loonier than I must have looked.

"I see. Would you consider this a fear?"

"Yes." I said quickly.

"Do you have this problem when females talk to you?" She asked.

"No, not at all...but I do get a feeling that they're judging me, as all people do to each other but I get a feeling that...they're out to get me. Break me down and make me feel awful about myself...like they feel higher than me in...life. I'd much rather just be alone and-"

"What you've just described, seems to me..a phobia of socializing. Which could come from a number of things..."

I looked at her, I've been told the same thing all my life by my one and only friend. What the hell was I paying this lady for if I could have just listened to my friend? My head began to spin. I stood up, grabbing my bag, "I don't feel so good...I'm gonna go...I'll call you to reschedule." I walked out of the room, finding my way back to the waiting room. Matty was still sitting there, he looked up from his lap.

"Hey, that was fast." He said.

"Yeah. Bye." I waved, quickening the pace of my feet.

"Hey wait up," he stood up, I stopped.

"I was wondering...if you wanted to wait for me...and come watch my band rehearse after this?" He asked.

What? Was he a fool? I didn't even know him...a band...I'm trying my best not to laugh...or run...

"Excuse me?"

"I know it seems strange but we've been trying to get an audience that we don't know to kind of tell us if we suck or not, and give us a hear...you would be helping a ton." He said.

"I dunno...I really should get going I-"

"Please?"

"Matthew?" The same woman came out, I tried not to make eye contact with her.

"I don't-"

"Please? Come on, we'll have free drinks." He said, lowering his voice.

"Oh, I don't drink." I shook my head, lowering mine too.

"...I didn't mean alcohol." He laughed, "you remind me of my girlfriend..."

"Matthew...?" Elaine called again.

"Right here just a sec." He held his hand up, still staring at me.

Girlfriend? I sighed on accident, "oh you have a girlfriend? Will she be there?"

"She's dead," He said.

My heart suddenly sped up in pace as he said those words, I suddenly began to feel sorry for him. If she was dead...why would he refer to her as if she still were alive and they'd still been dating? And how could I possibly remind him of her? What did I do? I sighed, feeling the pressure, "alright." I took a seat, watching him walk off with Elaine with a smile on his face.

#omg! a matty healy fanfic #the 1975 #matty healy #fanfiction #fanfic #the 1975 fanfic #matty healy fanfiction #matty healy fanfic #george daniel #adam hann #ross macdonald #writing #my writing #fic writing #writeblr

[aelingalathyniusrailme]

I think it’s time to accept that elain and azriel are the two, non-canon, gayest characters in this entire series and that they are clearly using each other as beards.

#azriel falls in love with a lesbian #azriel thinks he should end up with another lesbian #elain falls for a homophobe that is probably gay #elain feels attraction to a homosexual man #guys come on #elain #azriel #and when I say gayest I am excluding bisexuals #calm down #nesta and cassian

[koalathebear]

Anne with an E: Season 2 (spoilers)

Just finished watching it tonight and despite a rocky start I loved it.  Spoilers beneath the cut.

Many, many thoughts ...

Fan Fiction rather than canon

First of all, this retelling of Anne of Green Gables is official fan fiction.  It isn’t canon, and I’m totally fine with that.  I’m comfortable with the characters being borrowed from LM Montgomery’s universe and used to tell different stories and deliver different messages.  So you’ll never find me being annoyed about things deviating from canon.

That being said, episode 1 made me deeply anxious at the Marilla-Nate dynamic and had to stop watching for a little bit.  I didn’t want to believe that they were going to go there ... and have Marilla be so susceptible and vulnerable.  

Nate was such a smarmy bastard and I couldn’t believe that Marilla would be attracted to him - particularly as she’s clearly been emptying out his gross chamber pot on a daily basis!! :D  Dunlop was quite an interesting character to me - he clearly enjoyed and was good at baking, wanted to belong and had a slightly different motivation and attitude to Nathanial - but was still a Bad Man.

Marilla, Matthew and Mrs Lynde

I think they remain very true to their book counterparts.  Sure, the series explores more of their back stories and in fact creates new back stories and textures for them - but these all felt very believable and authentic to me, so I was happy with that.

Mrs Lynde is borderline.  There were moments when she was very true to the books, but there were moments towards the latter part of the season where her manner towards Miss Stacey was just spiteful and malevolent with no particular reason.

Anne

Anne remains a complex character.  Amybeth McNulty is amazing and portrays her so beautifully but McNulty’s Anne is just so different and almost jarringly strange compared to Megan Follows’ portrayal that even though I’ve told myself that these are completely different ‘universes’, I still feel a little odd sometimes.  McNulty’s Anne is so damaged.  I don’t mind the gritty reality and pain of her portrayal of Anne as if she’s borderline traumatised and clearly suffering from PTSD.  

I think I’m more frustrated with Anne when she’s selfish, bratty, rude, talking over the top of others.  The way she treats her devoted Diana is one example of it.  Often she doesn’t seem to care about Diana at all - Diana is so loyal and loving and yet Anne’s so oblivious to her.

It’s not McNulty’s fault - the writers have moments like the scene at Aunt Josephine’s party where an artist is imparting some words of wisdom to Cole and Anne kind of bursts in with a torrent of words all about herself and her views on it - when that moment is actually supposed to be Cole’s.  We see the world through Anne’s eyes so I get why they did that, but it actually just made her look selfish.  She did it in episode 9 when Gilbert’s trying to engage with and talk to Miss Stacey and Anne’s interrupting constantly.  I think the different in that episode is that they are deliberately trying to make Anne look selfish and self-absorbed... but not sure I’m entirely happy that characterisation.  Anne has many faults but I didn’t think selfishness was one of them.  Similarly in the scene when she bursts into their little cottage in the woods and is in a fury and a rage about how badly she looked in front of Miss Stacey - she doesn’t give Cole a chance to get a word in edgewise.  She comes across as bratty and unlikeable.

Sometimes she also comes across as a bit stupid sometimes.  Anne’s supposed to be impetuous, prone to scrapes and misfortune but this Anne is almost dumb sometimes - spinning around and tearing a veil, knocking her candle onto the ground and starting a fire that burns her essay ... That is pushing the limits of ‘unlucky’ Anne a little far.

Nonetheless, McNulty is amazing and still manages to make the character lovable despite her very severe shortcomings and flaws.

Gilbert Blythe

He remains incredibly true to my image of Gilbert - whether the book version or the Jonathan Crombie version.  

His adoration of Anne is constant and beautiful and I really liked the way they explored his character, sent him off to faraway lands  - something entirely consistent with his intelligent and inquiring mind.  I continue to ship Anne and Gilbert madly - I’m so glad this show hasn’t changed that.

Other observations

Modern sensibilities.  Yes, some of the messages were blatant and unsubtle. But I’m ok with them.  I thought it was interesting to explore diversity and inclusivity in Avonlea.  Aunt Josephine (and her Gertrude), Bash, Cole and others were effective ways to consider these issues.

Jerry Buote.  I have to say I love Jerry in the series.  A tiny character in the books, he’s been fleshed out, given his own storyline, dialogue and personality. I really like him.

Mr Phillips.  I’ve never liked Mr Phillips in any of the variations of the story but I’m really not that happy with them making him a closeted homosexual.  Combined with his inappropriate and almost predatory relationship(s) with his students, that is almost reinforcing an unfortunate stereotype about homosexuality that makes me feel uncomfortable.

Miss Stacey.  I really liked her character, the actress who played her and her storyline. I did not like the way they had Anne behave around her, though.  That was just horribly embarrassing and inconsistent with my idea of Anne.

Billy Andrews: So glad that they had a tiny redemption for him at the end in the form of the fox.  Until then he was terrifyingly psychotic.

I loved the many shippy moments.  Blowing out the last candle at Christmas ...

Gilbert waiting outside the freight train:

Since they didn’t have Gilbert rescuing Anne as Elaine in a rowbat, it was almost the next best thing.... having him waiting outside the carriage with an amused, faintly quizzical expression on his face.

I liked their newfound accord at the end of season 2 when Anne admits that she’s behaved poorly towards him.

I can’t wait until season 3 ... The characters continue to be interesting and delightful and I can’t wait to see what happens next.  Mary’s son seems extremely dodgy and suspicious to me.

Will they have Diana tread her canonic path of domesticity with Fred (who is very good) or will they allow her to take flight and do something different?

Is Ruby still doomed, or will they let her live - like Matthew?

Which elements of the books will be incorporated and which ones will be ditched?

I can’t wait.

#anne with an e #anne of green gables #season 2 #spoilers #my brain dump

[weirdbynorthwest]

Notes on Northern Exposure, S01E02: “Brains, Know-How and Native Intelligence”

We begin the episode with Chris Stevens delivering his first ever “Chris in the Morning” address on the show, in Cicely’s local radio station, KBHR, or “K-Bear”. Why “K-Bear”? Well, firstly, it’s customary for radio stations to be given easily pronounceable names inspired by their initials, for the sake of marketing. But there’s an additional fun fact regarding this particular station’s origins: both KBHR and its nick-name belong to a real-life local radio station in Big Bear City, California. Surrounded by the Alaskan wilderness, Cicely undoubtedly has more than its fair share of bears, so the nickname remains appropriate.

The subject of Chris’s speech, and a significant chunk of the episode, is the 19th century poet Walt Whitman, an American literary giant and one of Chris’s leading artistic inspirations. But not everyone approves of Whitman. Chris recalls being “blindsided by the raging fist of [his] incarcerator,” at the juvenile detention home where he spent his juvenile delinquent days. This stern authority figure told Chris, in no uncertain terms, “that Walt Whitman's homoerotic, unnatural, pornographic sentiments were unacceptable and would not be allowed in an institution dedicated to reforming the ill-formed.” Whitman’s sexuality has been the subject of endless debate, but it’s generally accepted that he was either homo- or bisexual. That Whitman, “that great bear of a man, enjoyed the pleasures of other men came as a great surprise” to Chris, leading him to “reconsider the queers [he] had previously kicked around.” Yes, Chris wasn’t always the open-minded liberal we otherwise see him as. He was, in his youth, capable of homophobic violence. This makes me, a confirmed homosexual (or “homo-romantic grey-sexual,” if we’re being particular), rather sad. It also makes me more inclined to be wary and critical of Chris in this episode.

Chris reads Whitman’s “When Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865), a poem written following the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865), during a period of national mourning over the then recent assassination of former president Abraham Lincoln. The poem doesn’t explicitly identify Lincoln, but it’s generally thought that that’s who the poem was about. However, the final line of the first stanza – “And thought of him I love” – may have been presented in this scene in order to underline the topic of Whitman’s sexuality. For Whitman’s clearest expression of homosexual love in verse, one should really examine the “Calamus” sequence of poems written in or before 1859, included in the third edition of Leaves of Grass, originally published in 1855. (I nearly read some to an ex-boyfriend on his birthday once. I regret not doing that. But they were aware of the thought, and I got a lot of love for it, so it balanced out.)

We catch a glimpse of Maurice fishing whilst listening to Chris’s show. He clearly isn’t impressed by all this talk of Whitman enjoying “the pleasures of other men.” Maurice was established as being, at the very least, a sexist and racist bigot in the previous episode, so any homophobia on his part wouldn’t come as a surprise. This still doesn’t prepare the viewer for what Maurice will do next.

Meanwhile, in this week’s instalment of “Will They? Won’t They?’ Joel and Maggie are in the Brick, having a go at each other over plumbing. This argument at least feels as if it springs from a natural cause, compared to last week’s glaringly-contrived-in-order-to-establish-the-formula bickering. Joel is talking to Maggie as his landlord, about a faulty toilet. Maggie teases Joel over his lack of self-reliance: why not try fixing it himself, or go out and fertilise the scenery? She winds up calling him a “helplessness junkie”, an odd turn of phrase he’ll spend half the episode grumbling about and later delight in throwing back at her, when she visits him in his surgery over a self-inflicted knee injury.

Joel’s chauvinism is out in full force again, as he offers to treat any puncture wounds Rick may have received from Maggie walking all over him in her heels. Yecch. And then he comes on to her in a way that fictional characters in a “Will They? Won’t They?” comedy set-up routinely get away with, when he says “you’re clearly attracted to me.” Of course, the show will routinely remind us she is. But in real life, if you said something like that to someone, it would be widely and rightly considered inappropriate. Unlike the utterly irredeemable and thoroughly loathsome Ross Geller in Friends (NBC, 1994-2004), Joel is a genuinely likeable character under all the sexist asshattery the writers insist upon having him say. I hope the situation improves, and soon.

Joel remarks that he’s “not the Grizzly Adams type.” This is a reference to John “Grizzly” Adams, a nineteenth-century mountain man who hunted and trained wild animals (including, you guessed it, “grizzly” bears) for use in zoos, menageries and circuses, from New England to California. An outdoorsman and a showman (he partnered up at one point with another American icon, that jack-of-all-trades P.T. Barnum), “Grizzly” Adams became, in the popular cultural consciousness, an iteration of an American frontiersman archetype, akin to Davy Crockett. Joel does not resemble that archetype at all – but Brick proprietor Holling Vincoeur, according to Joel, does. We’ll see how that comparison bears out in the episodes and seasons to come.

Meanwhile, over at K-Bear, the “raging fist” of Maurice Minnifield comes raining down on Chris Stevens like the fist of that faceless authoritarian in Chris’s juvenile detention home. I find the violence Maurice inflicts on Chris in this episode jarring. We later learn from Joel that Maurice threw Chris through a plate-glass window. We see bruises and band-aids on Chris’s face, and his arm in a plaster cast. We learn, towards the end of the episode, that Chris snuck in a decent left-hook – but that still, to my mind, doesn’t make up for what might be one of the single most unpleasant things Maurice has done on the show.

And while we’re on the subject of violence, what about Ed’s response to Joel describing his current spat with Maggie? He asks “Did you hit her?” Where did that come from? A more uncharacteristic thing for Ed to say – even just two episodes into the show – is hard to imagine. Is it meant to suggest that Ed grew up in an environment where domestic violence was the norm? Or that Cicely’s foremost cinephile learnt everything he knows about human interaction from the movies? I don’t know. I just know that it’s a weird, discomfiting line.

Ed introduces the episode’s secondary plot, which is about Ed’s uncle Anku (Frank Sotonoma “Grey Wolf” Salsedo). Ed tells Joel that his uncle is a “witch doctor,” which briefly leads them into a variation on the famous “Who’s on First?” comedy routine.

Ed’s uncle is seriously unwell – as in, there’s blood in his urine. And blood in your urine is nothing to be sniffed at. 11 years ago I had a urinary tract infection thanks to the onset of type-one diabetes. The pain was unreal. Imagine passing red hot needles instead of water. TMI? Ah, DMY. My point is, it’s not something you can comfortably ignore. And as a doctor, Joel knows it’s not something you can afford to ignore. And so, at Ed’s behest, Joel spends a significant chunk of the episode befriending Anku and trying his best to persuade him to seek medical attention. But, unbeknownst to Anku’s family, Anku has already sought medical attention and learnt that he has prostate cancer. He just needs Joel to pressure him into swallowing his pride as a medicine man before seeking further treatment.

Joel will, in dealing with Anku, realise in an on-screen “eureka!” of an epiphany that pride is the theme binding all the episode’s narrative threads together. Anku’s pride, his own pride, Maggie’s pride, Maurice’s pride, are all wrapped up in a neat little package. Is it too neat, too tidy? Maybe, but I like it. It’s a reassuring sign that Joel’s character won’t remain static, that he’ll gain new insight into the town and its characters, learn new things and continue to develop over the course of the series.

“Keeping it in the family”: Mrs. Anku is played by Armenia Miles, the mother of Elaine Miles, who plays Joel’s secretary, Marilyn Whirlwind. In future episodes, she’ll play Marilyn’s mother.

Anku asks Joel if he’s ever seen the film Little Big Man (dir. Arthur Penn, 1970), in which Dustin Hoffman plays a man who, as a white child, was rescued and raised by a Cheyenne tribe. Is Anku drawing a connection between the Jewish actor and Jewish doctor, to whom he imparts some of his own “native intelligence”?

Joel, after explaining that he can’t keep chasing after Anku, pleads with Ed not to “do this northern brooding thing, I can’t stand Bergman films.” Is Joel intentionally using sophisticated cinema references he knows Ed will get? Because if so, that’s kinda cute. Couple that with Ed watching Joel as he sleeps, and I wonder if anyone, anywhere, at any time, has thought to ship these two characters?

As Maurice takes full control of radio K-Bear we learn he’s a huge fan of musical theatre, something that’s often been depicted as a stereotypical trait of gay men (less so these days, but very much so in the nineties). Is the episode replaying the old, unhelpful cliché that “all homophobes are repressed homosexuals”? I don’t think so. It certainly doesn’t underline or lean into that idea. As much as Maurice’s showtunes are driving the residents of Cicely crazy, he’s never mocked for the fact that he enjoys showtunes.

At a town meeting, angry Cicelians call for the reinstatement of Chris Stevens as radio presenter. Maurice isn’t having it. “One of our own, Chris Stevens, made a mistake,” he “did a bad thing” and “he had to pay for it.” What was that mistake? We get an answer, of sorts, when Maurice returns to the airwaves the next day and attempts to explain his recent behaviour. It’s a speech that causes the entire town to stop in its tracks, suggesting we should stop in our tracks too and take what Maurice is saying seriously.

Maurice recalls his devastation upon discovering, as a child, that his hero John Wayne didn’t do his own stunts. The gist of it is, Maurice doesn’t want his heroes to be humanized, to have their weaknesses exposed. “Sure, we’re all human,” but do we have to be reminded that our heroes are human too? Maurice is an advocate of the “Great Man” theory of history, the idea that the greatest achievements in human history were brought about by great men (and with his ego, he no doubt fancies himself one). Maurice wants his heroes to remain on their marble pedestals as untainted paragons of manly virtue. “We need our heroes. We need men we can look up to. Believe in. Men who walk tall.” Of course it doesn’t occur to Maurice, just as it doesn’t occur to most advocates of the “Great Man” conception of history, that those heroes could include women or minorities.

Maurice considers Walt Whitman a hero. Though “Walt Whitman was a pervert,” in Maurice’s bigoted view, “he was the best poet that America ever produced.” Maurice concedes that Whitman was, most likely, a homosexual. He’d just rather not know or be reminded of that. Because Maurice is a homophobic bigot who believes that homosexuality is a weakness, a character flaw that should be hidden from view, never to be acknowledged. But just because Maurice believes that “there are damn few of us who deserve to be called heroes” and that, despite his own bigotry, Whitman deserves the title of hero, doesn’t make Maurice less wrong or less of a bigot.

And yet, as the speech prompts Chris to go and apologise to Maurice, the episode seems to come down firmly on Maurice’s side of the argument. Not that there’s actually been an argument. No one in town has attempted to argue the opposite of Maurice’s position – that a knowledge of Whitman’s probable homosexuality does nothing to diminish him or his work. The implicit and unfortunate assumption in this episode is that it does diminish Whitman. That’s why we have Chris apologising to Maurice, saying that he also doesn’t want people reading Walt Whitman for “the wrong reasons.” What reasons are those, Chris? The only reason suggested in the episode comes from Ruth-Anne, when she tells Joel that all the Whitman has been taken out of the library as there’s “nothing like an interesting sex-life to get people reading.”

So, is Chris suggesting that he doesn’t want people reading Whitman because of his sexuality? Why not? Whitman’s “Calamus” poems meant a lot to me when I was younger, and I would never have discovered them had I not heard about Whitman’s sexuality and the poems’ reputation. I see in them a beautiful expression of the romantic feelings I then had for my ex-boyfriend, and I can’t read them now without getting misty-eyed. Like a lot of great poetry, the poems powerfully describe feelings of romantic/erotic longing, the distinction being that they clearly describe feelings of romantic/erotic longing between men. It isn’t “subtext.” You don’t have to “read between the lines.” It’s there, in the words on the page. Whitman’s sexuality informs his writing, even if his writing isn’t explicitly sexual.

Unfortunately, in the nineties there persisted this idea that homosexuality was something to be guarded against, lest it corrupt our children or our own imaginations when engaged in the intellectual enjoyment of nineteenth-century verse. Depending on where you are in the world, it’s an attitude that still persists or even prevails. And this episode of Northern Exposure appears to embody it.

For me, Whitman’s “Calamus” poems are a powerful reminder of a time in my life when I was young and happy and in love. But Chris appears to be suggesting that I’m reading Whitman wrong. Well… Fuck you Chris. There’s nothing wrong with highlighting the fact that Walt Whitman was likely gay or bi, or that a significant number of his poems appear to have been informed by his own homoerotic desire. It can do a lot of people – gay or bisexual people, for example – a lot of good to know that people who felt the way they do existed in the 19th century, and that they wrote beautiful verse you could share with a loved one.

It should be clear by now that, unlike Maurice, I don’t believe it’s a mistake to humanize our heroes. Knowing Mark Twain loves cats humanizes him. In no way does it diminish my love of Mark Twain (but then I’m a cat person, so I’m biased). Other than the very worst literary critics, who really wants to see the likes of Twain and Whitman reduced to cold, lifeless marble statues in the Pantheon of the American Literary Canon? It does us no harm, either, to learn the personal and political beliefs of our heroes, especially if we don’t want people thinking we share certain of those beliefs. Hero worship is problematic in general, but it’s impossible for us not to admire people, to have our own personal heroes. But as we grow and change over the course of our lives, we shouldn’t be afraid to update that list.

In the course of its run, Northern Exposure introduced a gay male couple; confirmed that its founders, Cicely and Roslyn, were a lesbian couple; and was the second US TV show to feature a gay wedding (the first being Roc [Fox, 1994-1994]). Northern Exposure was not only on the right side of history, it was consistently ahead of its time. If I’ve been especially hard on this episode, it’s because I know how far it falls short of the show’s future accomplishments.

#northern exposure #brains know-how and native intelligence #chris stevens #john corbett #chris in the morning #big bear city #california #cicely #alaska #walt whitman #homosexuality #homophobia #queer themes #lgbtqia #when lilacs in the dooryard bloom'd #calamus #leaves of grass #maurice minnifield #maurice j. minnifield #barry corbin #will they won't they #dr. joel fleischman #joel fleischman #rob morrow #notes on northern exposure #sunday in cicely #sundays in cicely #grizzly adams #frank salsedo

[howlsmovinglibrary]

So I finished ACOWAR

This is in no way a coherent or articulate piece of writing in the same way my ACOTAR/ACOMAF piece tried to be, and I don’t think it even can be called a review, because I don’t tend to review books that already have this much visibility in the booklr community. It’s more just the notes I made while reading ACOWAR, which I kind of felt was the weakest book in the series so far (and if you haven’t already guessed it, I’m not much of a fan to begin with).

This entire piece is basically just spoilers, and salt, so please don’t read unless you already know/don’t mind finding out some major plot points!

First off, can I just say that every time ‘the male’ or ‘the female’ is used as a descriptor, I wince. I think it is a) bad writing and b) cis-centric as fuck. There needs to be more non-binary people in fantasy!

This book was so….bloated. It needed to be edited down a lot – the sheer number of chapters is insane. I had this poignant realisation when I read five chapters of High Fae trash talk at the faerie High Lord meeting and then…the thing they were having a meeting over just…happened anyway? And the meeting suddenly had no meaning whatsoever?

So many abusers are now being made into sympathetic/rehabilitated figures. I took Rhys’ redemption arc in ACOMAF because I kind of suspected that that was the way his and Feyre’s relationship were going to pan out but….both Eris and Tamlin received sympathy, and were made into heroes or forces for good at some point in the plot? Feyre forgave Tamlin? Mor’s abuse at the hands of Keir and Eris is pushed aside because ‘times are hard’ and ‘tough choices have to be made’? And Mor had literally no say or agency in that decision?

Meanwhile we have Ianthe. an abusive woman who’s entire character is one-dimensional villainy and demonised female sexuality. She is portrayed as having not a single scrap of goodness in her soul, not one redeeming characteristic, someone who Feyre has no moral quandary over letting be munched up by the Weaver. Even though her use of sex could realistically be portrayed as a product of internalised misogyny? And yet the men who ‘nailed a message’ into Mor’s womb get nuanced portrayal, the benefit of the doubt in the run up to the war, and even moments of heroism?????

I’m not saying that Ianthe should be redeemed, I just don’t understand why this instance of sexual abuse is so utterly condemned to the point where we watch her smash her own hand in some kind of medieval punishment, and yet the instances of sexual abuse perpetrated by men are all given a degree of either redemption or pardoning because of the circumstances of the plot. Is it because female to male abuse is more taboo and thus seen as more ‘evil’? Because SJM has so ingrained male-to-female sexual abuse into the very fabric of her patriarchal fantasy society, that we and Mor are expected to just accept that this is ‘the way things are’, or even write it off out of necessity as ‘boys will be boys’? I HAVE NO IDEA AND IT MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE.

Given my recent essay on the subject, I was interested that SJM tried to problematize and dismantle the concept of mating bonds a little in the conversation Feyre and Rhysand have about Lucien and Elain. It’s made into ‘Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls’ (Chapter 24). There was even the handwave of ‘oh this homosexual relationship may be the product of a mating bond, but they’re probably keeping it a secret from everyone’.

To be honest, I don’t think it succeeded in explaining away the problematic elements of mating. The biological imperatives were still there, ‘the bond is nothing more than...preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring’ (Chapter 24). Aggression was still a major part of the male side of the bond (like when we get the internal monologue of Lucien and witness him fighting his ‘instincts’) and it’s still implied that men are slaves to the desire that the bond generates, whereas women don’t feel it as strongly/can control their physical desires? ‘But the males...It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through’ (Chapter 24) This has some serious ramifications in terms of gendered conceptions of sexual drive. In my opinion, mating bonds are still squicky.

I now mostly just want SJM to put her money where her mouth is and follow through on her attempts at muddying the water: if she insists on pairing the spares, have Elaine get together with Azriel rather than Lucien, and show a relationship where the mating bond is terminated not because of outright physical abuse on the side of the male, but because of a romantic attraction overcoming a sexual/biological one. (Yes, I ship it. Or rather, I ship Elaine overcoming her trauma and going on to be a badass seer, building herself a temple and calling out bullshit like Cassandra in ancient Troy. But if she needs to have a boyf – and it’s SJM so she probably does – I want it to be Sad Shadow Man.)

‘Helion favours both males and females. Usually together in bed’ (Chapter 47). I’m not saying that bisexuality can’t work this way, but I gather that SJM has used the hypersexualised bisexual trope before. 

I think that perhaps Mor’s jealousy of Nessian is because she’s attracted to Nesta (a la season 1 Korrasami)? But even so her possessiveness of Cassian and her hostility towards Nesta was horrible and OOC and made me angry every time it happened. I hate it whenever female-female relationships are sacrificed because of a guy, but it is particularly frustrating in a book where male-female relationships are definitely already the priority. And given the way that Nessian is reaching canonical status, even if you do attribute the jealousy to female-female attraction, it’s only going to end badly for Mor.

Feyre used Mor’s sexuality as a weapon against her after she was justifiably called out on reckless behaviour. Fuck off Feyre.

I know that Azriel is a good character. I know this. And yet this book turned his relationship with Mor into this awful poster child ‘friendzone’ dynamic, where Mor feels pressurised to hide her sexuality because of the hurt it will cause *him*. I don’t think this is a fault of the characters, but of the entire treatment of their friendship and SJM’s portrayal of Mor’s queerness as a burden.

No main characters die. In this apparently impossible war that basically ends in an afternoon. No – everyone is magically resurrected after barely five pages.

Bonus points for not even having the courage to keep Amren out of fae form and thus rip up her incipient ship with Varien. You could have written an entire book on the inner circle going off on a quest to find and subdue a superhuman dragon Amren unshackled from the bonds of human morality. But no. She’s ‘in the cauldron’.

DEUS EX MACHINAS (dragon ex machinas?) MAKE ME WANT TO SCREAM. Find a better way to resolve your conflicts. Especially when even the decision to unshackle Amren from her human form in order for her to become the Deus ex Machina in question has literally no lasting consequences.

Speaking of deus ex machinas: is anyone else annoyed that the only death god who survives the battle is Bryaxis, the one who only asked for a window in exchange for his services, rather than freedom and an implicit murder spree? This means that there are literally no consequences to these so-called ‘tough decisions’ that have to be made in times of war, and everything can just go on fine. ‘No evil death gods were permanently unleashed in the making of this war.’

Can I forcibly rip SJM away from the Russian mythology that she is no doubt going to butcher in the continuation of this series? As soon as I read the name ‘Koschei’ I groaned aloud. You can’t just take whatever mythology you like and use it to make your own magic system! You’ve already detached the Morrigan from any semblance of Celtic Mythology!!!

That being said, I did like:

That the Archeron sisters FINALLY seem to be forming a strong friendship rather than the girl-on-girl hate mess it’s been for the past few books. I liked that Nesta was as powerful as Feyre, and had a more integral role in the final battle than she did.

I liked that in Feysand we see a stable ‘after they get together’ relationship. I still think ACOMAF is ‘stronger’ as a book, as SJM is better at writing romance than plot, but at least there was no needless YA angst, beyond Rhys’ martyrdom complex.

And this sounds awful, but I’m glad that Feyre had a PTSD relapse. I felt that in ACOMAF, her recovery from mental illness was equated a little too strongly with her growing romance with Rhys. Love doesn’t cure mental illness, and I’m glad the SJM showed that.

But overall, this book (much like this commentary) was a bit of a rambling mess of little consequence.

#acowar spoilers #a sort of live tweet reading thing I think? #and it probably falls on the side of #anti-sjm #anti-acowar #I gave it 2.5 stars on goodreads in case anyone is wondering

[zayrickyear2jh]

13/12/19 BA2a Research: Session 4 The nightmare city and the urban laboratory

Plot Summary: Chapter 3

We meet Dr Jekyll at last. A large, well made smooth-faced man of fifty, although

In this chapter - Jekyll reassures Utterson he can be free of Mr Hyde whenever he wants. He says it’s a private matter and he asks Utterson to let is sleep. He calls Dr Lanyon hide bound, meaning narrow minded.

Plot summary:The Carew Murder Case Chapter 4

Nearly a year passes peacefully.

The Hyde commits murder. HIs victim is Sir Danvers Carew, a respected member of parliament.

The events witnessed and somewhat strongly described

Consider the careful setup

Before the coming of the ever-present fog, the night was cloudless and brilliant lit by a full moon. Why might the full moon be important to mention?

Stevenson writes in rapturous terms:

The maid servant sat at her window and fell into a dream of musing.

Carew appears to her as an aged and beautiful gentleman with white hair and a very pretty manner of politeness

The moon shone on his face as he spoke

Such an innocent and old world

Hyde

A great flame of anger

Broke out of all bounds

Ape like fury

Why do you think Stevenson sets up the murder scene in such a romantic way? Its the contrast between the elements of good but evil. The scene represents tduality in action.

The association of Carew with innocent and beauty makes the violence more shocking by contrast.

It has the effect of turning Carew into a martyr-like figure. His death can be seen as symbolic.

Utterson exhibits his usual self-control (ego; reality principle)

He is ever the gentleman: refusing to draw hasty conclusions.

Uttterson travels through the chocolate-coloured fog towers Soho, accompanied by the police, to Mr Hyde’s lodgings the witness has identified him. It seems to Utterson like some city in a nightmare.

Mt Hyde has done a runner but the policeman is optimistic. Several thousand pound are found in Hyde’s bank account: surely the man will call to collect  it. All they have to do is lie in wait for him.

So the chapter ends on a cliff-hanger with a clear hook to chapter 5.

Carew ‘accosts’ Hyde with ‘a very pretty manner of politeness’

What might Stevenson be hinting at here?

Elaine Showalter calls the novella a fable of findesiecle homosexual panic. She notes that working class men of the ear were sometimes seen as erotic object by their aristatic superiors.

Hyde is classless rather than working class this itself would have been disturbing and bewildering.

‘Blackmaile’s Charter’

-Known as the Blackmailer’s Charter’s this was the piece of legislation that led to arrest of Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Urannian- The word homosexual wasn’t used in English til 1892 in a translation of a German sexology manual Psychopathia Sexualis. Victorian mainly used the word Uranian for them, this actually meant having a female psyche in a male body. Ironically the 1885 act helped create the concept of a homosexual identity.

The duality of Rober Louis Stevenson

Stevenson himself was a man of contradiction

Effeminate but straight

Wealthy but dressed down )stuffy with bad teeth)

Born to strictly religious parents but lived a bohemian life as an adult.

Played at being lower class but exploited upper class connection.

Not conventionally handsome, he was said to have mesmirizing eyes and drew many male admirers including folklorist Andrew Lang and novelist Henry James. Stevenson appeared to enjoy the attention of his male admirers. And, whether he intended it or not, Uranian men of the era did find sympathetic undertones in his work. To use mourned parlance, could this be a type of queer baiting?

There is no biographical evidence that Stevenson himself experienced any same sex attraction, but Claire Harman suggest.

Social Taboos in Gothic horror

Jekyll and Hyde: The Gothic revival.

Stiles notes the Gothic conventions of Stevenson’s novella: the nocturnal settling, the theme.

The birth of Gothic horror

Horace Walpole’s dream Castel of Qtranto

Place and time

Power/Sexual power

Note how Walple’s The castle of otranto was also inspired by dream.

Key features of the Gothic

Wild landscapes vs improsonment. The re-emergece of the past within the rest.

Fascination with obscene patriarchal figures figures

Explores the limits of what is is to be human: internal desires or forces outside your control.

full of perverse weird and dangerous kinds of sexuality.

The vulnerability of women in the 19th century

The Gothic genre had scope to explore the lives of the 19th century woman.

The genre often depicts the triumph of young women over seemingly impossible forces.

If you’ve your story female protagonist you may like to explore the tropes of Gothic horror in your critical analysis.

The Uncanny

Gothic horror is all od uncanny moments.

Figures that are not quite human such as dolls, waxworks, automat

Strange, mysterious, unsettling, unnerving, unearthy

Meaning Un heimlich means un-homely

Therefore we don’t feet at home with the uncanny or the home is somehow transformed or changed.

No one can ever quite describe Mr Hyde. A prolonged state of uncertainty.

J and H was fascinated with clockwork autumata. Could be a potential

Tip: If you’re writing a horror film, try making it personal: use your own fears and phobias to make the terror.

And harness the power of the uncanny by focusing on dread and apprehension rather than outright horror.

main it unhomely: unsettle the viewer with sinister hints a radio that turns on by itself a child’s toy that is not where you left it, a writhing maggot in a piece of fruit.

Make it un-secret: show us something that shouldn’t be shown.

Give the view time to feel the fear: You have to allow the sense of underlying unease to intensify over time.

Birth of the city/the urban Gothic

Jekyll and Hyde is seen as the first Urban Gothic novel.

In the mid 1800s huge numbers of people left the country for an excited new life in the city. But many had to live in slums with no sanitation. Disease was rife. Young children worked in factories or cleaning chimneys.

London was the largest city in the world, totalling 4 million inhabitants in the 1880s’. Stevenson chose it as the setting for his ‘urban gothic’ tale but some critics argue it’s real settling is Edinburgh, where Stevenson grew up.

The evil within..

In the tale 19thC Gothic novel the threat is no longer some external force. Instead the evil is sinuously curled around the very heart of the respectable middle-class norm’ This made it more frightening because it made the evil inescapable.

Middle-Class Victorian had a great fear that sexual depravity and other kinds of moral decay would pass from the nocturnal world to the safe space of the home.

Like a district id time city in a night mare ( The Carew Murder Case)

They grew less interested in the wild landscapes of traditional Gothic, and focused instead on the new landscape of the city: an equally appropriate source of desolation and menace.

By identifying and exploring that obsession through art and literature, they sought to control and contain it.

This fear is made visual in Jekyll and Hyde through symbolic use darkness and fog.

The urban labaratory and the strange science of the mind.

The primary figure at the heart of most Victorian fin de siecle texts is the scientist and during the fin de siecle what the scientist tends more and more to dabble.

Questioning boundaries: science, pseudo-science, and the occult.

The greatest pace of advance and change in the fields of science and medicine led Victorians to necessarily suspend disbelief: unlikely things might easily turn out to be true.

As a result the gap between science and the occult was much narrower in Victorian Britain than today.

The dual brain

we’ve already seen that hypnosis suggested the possibility of a hidden self. This concept was reinforced by the victorian theory.

Left brain is seat of logic and reason

Right brain is emotions

Women and savages were strong in the right brain. Hyde is describe as ape-like

Sergeant F: the uncanny quality of the double

In 1875 the Cornhill magazine published the case study of a brain damaged French soldier Soldier F.

Sergeant F was male, and his condition was caused by a wound the battlefield. But the dual or multiple personality was almost overwhelmingly a female condition and still is today its known as Dissociative Identity.

Stles theories that small, puny, right brained Hyde has something of the victorian feminine about him: emotionally unstable.

Victorians also believed that your personality could be read in the shape of your skull.

The Victorian era saw a huge divide between rich and poor, and in essence these types of belief enabled upper class Victorians to feel okay about their unequal wealth.

Phrenology

Developed by Franz Joseph Gall in 1796, this pseudo-science made the claim that your personality and character could be recognised by the shape of your skull.

The Profession Sickist

In letter he described himself as a professional sickest. As a result, much of his work was written in bed.

Strange case of Jekyll and Hyde

The Lancet = medical journal

Jekyll is both physician and patient, call into question the legitimacy and objectivity of scaentific case studies.

As a professional sickest its likely the Steenson experienced it.

Film to watch - The burke and Hare murders