#the oedipal scenario

[leogichidaa]

I saw your post about Regulus’s love interests and their categories and I gotta tell you, I choked when I read that the opportunists typically resemble Sirius and Walburga. Regulus is really living up to the claim that purebloods are all interrelated.

Someone: So why did you start dating me?

Regulus, distracted by homework and thus not exactly paying attention to how batshit this will sound: Because you remind me of my brother

Someone: *lady nervously saying “what the fuck” gif*

Average man grows up to marry his own mother factoid actually a statistical error. Regulus Black, who has grown up to marry a version of his mother in an infinite amount of AU's over and over again was an outlier and should not have counted.

Regulus is really just the poster boy for the Oedipal complex and Sirius inherited his mother's temperament so 🤷I don't think he's aware that he's picking people who are similar to his mother/brother, it just sort of ends up happening that way.

I do imagine scenarios in which Regulus is courting someone and makes comments that he considers perfectly normal but that has everyone else giving him side eye. Like, "you are almost as pretty as my mother". Or buying his girl perfume and it turns out that's the scent his mother wears.

The funny thing about him picking partners that are similar to Sirius is that he is competitive with Sirius. So when he notices that they're similar to Sirius it makes him worried that they will like Sirius better than they like him. Poor thing lmao.

Also, bless you for reading that post, I had so much fun making it lol.

#ask #anon ask #regulus black #house of black

[alwaysblooming]

title: Kafka on the Shore

author: Haruki Murakami

genres: fiction, fantasy

my grade: 5/10

synopsis: Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.

As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder. Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers.

My review under the cut!

I know it is a fantasy book, but, at a point, for me, it looked like all the characters were constantly high on something, or like the author was on drugs when he wrote it. At a point, nothing was make any sense, not even in a good way. Too many loose ends, irrational beyond what I expected, and some topics didn't please me (like Kafka's prophecy that he would sleep with his lost sister and mother????)

my review: yeah, not for me. I read 590/969 pages, until chapter 30, and then decided to stop.

The first chapters were very cool and interesting, the fantasy got me and I liked the scenarios very much (I don't think I had ever read a story set on Japan). After every page, I was excited to know what was going to happen next and I wondered how the main characters would meet and how their lives would correlate. Kafka Tamura sometimes shows himself as a very grown up person, but he is just a teenager boy, so I understood why he describes women the way he does. Nakata is a nice old man, it was very unfortunate what he had to go through.

However, I started to get bored around page 400. I wanted to give it a chance, but I couldn't anymore.

Anyway, I started the book because I've heard good things about the author, and this title called my attention, but, unfortunately, I won't know how it ends.

#strn speaks! #books review #books & libraries #bookblr #kafka on the shore #haruki murakami #fantasy #fiction #japanese literature

[notreallyimportant]

Anyone else noticed that weird “pick me” to “ #BoyMom” pipeline? I’m specifically talking about women in this context.

Like a woman who is so insecure about herself, seeking validation from the very people(men who are more likely than not misogynistic) and then have sons they have some pseudo-Oedipal relationship with.

I’ve seen it happening in real time. Women who had older kids who are girls( as far as I know), and have a son and those kids don’t exist anymore and they spend so much time imagining so many scenarios with possible future daughter in laws. And if those kids( the daughters) still exist in their mind, they’re a threat to her relationship with her son/ their brother.

Has anyone researched this in detail because this is an interesting study. Because this isn’t just a cultural “ Boys are valued more than girls” thing because that’s its own thing going on, but could also have some correlation .

#boy mom #pick me women #pick me girl

[lavideenrose]

#freud #freud for kids #oedipal scenario #depression #anxiety #psychoanalysis #psychoanalytic theory #analysis #meme #memes

[tom-isaacs]

Thesis Abstract

My thesis abstract in the university database was hopelessly out of date so I decided to give it a quick rewrite. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Sacrificial Bodies: Body art, ritual and the death drive

Ritual has been an important influence on the development of performance art, such as the primitivism in the avant-garde performative practices of Dada and Surrealism, the Zen-influenced performances of Fluxus, and the transgressive performances of the Viennese Actionists and the 1970s body artists informed by psychoanalytic theory. However, more recent scholarship, such as that by Australian art historian Anne Marsh, has highlighted important differences between traditional ritual and performance art, as well as the problems of appropriating so-called "primitive" cultural practices. Nonetheless, comparisons with and allusions to ritual remain popular for artists and art critics. To what can we attribute the continued interest in ritual despite these criticisms?

US anthropologist Roy Rappaport theorised, in his seminal work Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999), that ritual ameliorates the problem of alienation which is an effect of humanity's acquisition of language. In my research I propose that this problem of alienation has been the primary driver of the use of ritual in performance art and avant-garde performative practices. Alienation can also be understood through the writings of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, particularly his development of Freud's theories of the Oedipal scenario, the death drive and jouissance. By analysing performance artworks through the theories of Rappaport and Lacan, I aim to show that performance art, and body art in particular, is intimately concerned with the problem of alienation.

#art #phd #study #university #phd candidate #performance art #ritual #body art #psychoanalysis #lacan #jacques lacan #roy rappaport #alienation #anne marsh #psychoanalytic theory #death drive #jouissance #oedipal scenario #tom isaacs #research #phd research

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

Penny for your thoughts on gerriroman? What do you think their thing is to each of them? Where do you see it going in S4?

my thoughts on gerriroman can be mostly summarized as:

but to get more specific, roman is obviously super fucked up about sex and his own sexuality and the entire concept of it, which to me is very much like... a tree with many roots. like does he get off on being degraded because he used to get locked in a dog cage before being sent to MILITARY SCHOOL (!)? i mean on some level, probably, yeah. but i think his quip to shiv about intimacy is also pretty revealing, and he's so allergic to experiencing actual emotions in himself or from someone else that it probably makes the vulnerability involved in even meaningless transactional sex impossible to access. i think he also has some kind of spiritual performance anxiety, because for all his idiot bravado, on some level he knows or at least suspect he's an idiot fuck-up, partly because his dad and everyone else treats him like one, and partly because he has no evidence to the contrary (and accumulating evidence to the contrary would mean learning and doing things, which is hard partly because it would require confronting that vision of himself head-on), and so i think he also can't really handle the idea of someone else wanting stuff from him that he might not be able to provide - the nonconsensual necrophilia fantasy he tries to get tabitha to go along with is telling, i think; he couches it in language of wrongness, which goes back to the cage/school thing about transgression and wrongness and shame etc., which like, all classic, yes, but it's interesting that what he asks tabitha for actually isn't at all like what he got from gerri over the phone. wanting to fuck a dead girl is a whole other Level and to me reads as a fantasy where he can have sex and there's no way for him to fail, because the other person is not a real person. (and like, all of this stuff is in a loop of just becoming even more Like That as he goes through his life continuing to not be able to have sex while publicly acting out a part in a culture where fucking women is a major component of masculinity.)

so, with gerri, i mean, part of it is the cages/discipline/punishment/wrongness stuff, and then then part of what does it for him is that, too - that she doesn't ask him for anything, that she doesn't really act like she's having a sexual encounter while it's happening, and also that technically he never asked her for anything, either. it's a scenario where he can pretend on some level that this is not a mutual exchange happening between two people. (i really wonder what would happen if she ever showed some kind of sign of reciprocating his desire in a way other than just going along with it.) and then, yeah, also it's the closest he can get to fucking his mom, which probably counts for something in this deeply oedipal family. and also... i think there's something about the fact that the stuff that gerri says to him the two times they Do The Thing is like, not generic sexy-mean dirty talk. like she really kind of comes swinging for him where it hurts. the first time he starts getting into it because she's talking about what a fucking idiot he is! and i think the fact that that does it for him says something about why gerri, too, which is that gerri has known him a long-ass time - we don't know how long she's been with waystar but she's shiv's godmother so she must have known him since he was pretty little - and like actually knows what his deal is. there's no risk that he's going to disappoint gerri, because he literally cannot, because her expectations for him are nonexistent.

and then, saying that they should get married but not really, i mean, i think that's roman being dumb as hell, partly, but also - i was talking with @fourpatch about how the sad thing about tom and shiv's marriage on her end is that i really think that to her, like, in what she is capable of imagining, this is absolutely as good as it gets, is a nice guy she can ignore or beckon at will, which is partly because she is selfish, but also partly because it seems pretty likely her marriage genuinely IS much better than what her parents had! and i think there's some of that in this attempt at attachment from roman - there's a lady he can find sexual gratification with who has also decided he's worth hitching her wagon to in the world of corporate warfare. this is the best thing that has ever happened to him. he's like a kindergartener who wants to marry their best friend, connecting his feelings to his extremely rudimentary understandings of adult concepts.

gerri's side of it is a little harder to read, although a lot of that is just because we don't get a lot of her interiority on the show. but i mean, i think some of it as it's going down is just that it's hot, and the actress in some interview said something to the effect like, "i don't think it feels like sexual harassment from her boss, because it's roman" - like she really does not fundamentally view him as a serious person, and also i think she knows logan is probably more loyal to her than to him, so it's just like, this weird thing that happens and she goes along with, the way that happens sometimes in life, and maybe doesn't super understand herself. (i think this is basically also why she doesn't do anything about the dick pics even though she tells him to stop and he doesn't - i mean, there's a certain level of mutually assured destruction going on in that he could go open about their trysts, but i think she knows he's... not gonna do that, and just like, doesn't see him as enough of an adult person to be all that bothered by it.) i don't think we have enough to speculate much about what she's Into but i can imagine that even if this isn't usually her deal (although she is pretty good at it right off the bat), she as a person who like most of the characters on this show desires and is attracted to power gets something from someone viewing her in this position of sexualized authority. she does see in him the potential to be somewhat less stupid, which to her credit (and i guess his) is somewhat borne out in the s2 finale/through season 3, when he does a few things that are not just fucking up on the most gigantic scale imaginable, and she also does want to secure her own future, so keeping him pacified - what's the phrase she uses? it benefits her. i think maybe one of the more fucked up things about the two of them is that i think she's a very large figure in roman's psyche even before the sex stuff and absolutely afterwards, but i'm not sure based on what we've seen that he weighs similarly for her at all. (edited to add that i do think she has a certain emotional investment in him that i'm not sure how to pin down - like maybe she likes the idea on some level of being the one to turn him around, which is a power fantasy in its own way. but not as much as she likes making money, so.)

in terms of season 4, i have no fucking idea. the two of them on opposite sides feels pretty irreconcilable, but the intensity and weirdness of their dynamic also feels like too rich a vein for the writers to resist mining, so who knows. all the roys got screwed over by mom and dad, but roman is the only one who also got screwed over by the mommy figure he was sexually engaged with, and i mean, i don't see him handling that particularly well. but what the fuck that even means in the context of where season 3 left us, i don't know. i hope they hook up again in some form though because it's fucked up and weird and amazing when they do. kieran culkin deserves an emmy for that bathroom scene alone.

#succession #askbox

[berkowitzbrat]

Berkowitz and the Inverted Electra

Hello! Well, this is where i’ve been all this time. This post required a lot of sourcing and research, and therefore a lot of time, because it’s very theoretical. Anyway, here’s my magnum opus. Enjoy.

An Electra Complex is defined by the psychosexual relationship between a girl (or, in the ‘inverted’ sense, a boy) and her (his) mother, coupled with a sexual desire to possess their father. Oedipal and Electral urges originate during the Phallic (3rd) stage of psychosexual development.

As a male, Berkowitz would be expected to cleave to the Oedipal urges to kill his father/possess his mother; however, I don’t think this is the case. The Phallic stage takes place between the ages of 3-6 years old, around the time that Berkowitz was informed of his biological mother’s death, and his biological father’s abandonment of him. This, coupled with the continuous image of death surrounding women as he was growing up [1], helped to solidify this inverted Electral urge, the fascination with death&women and possession&men. In terms of possession and men, Berkowitz would have thought that only his biological father was still alive, and this developed (particularly later in his life) a great need to find his father, to reclaim some part of himself, and rid himself of the guilt he felt for driving his father away after (as he thought) killing his mother [2]. Another scenario during which he exhibited possession&men linked directly to death/control&women was when he would be taken to indoor pools and witnessed the thrall and power which men held over women, particulalry in situations in which there is sexual subtext, such as changing rooms [3]. 

So, great. He’s attracted to the same sex (more on this later) and death&women are interdependent concepts for him. What next? For Freud, it’s the Latency stage. This stage begins at age 7 and continues until puberty, which for boys is around 12/13 years old. This is the stage at which the Oedipal/Electral complexes begin to dissolve in order to decrease the tension and take on their  gender role (whatever that may be) as the child realises that sexual gratification exists without, not within, their parents. At this stage is usually when the child begins to become more comfortable with the same sex parent--but David has always been more attracted to the idea of his biological father, as it is all he has. It could be said, then, that the Electra complex was forced upon him by circumstance, the circumstance of his adoptive-father’s lie about his biological parents. Regardless, Berkowitz eventually becomes very close to his adoptive mother, Pearl, and began to vie for her attention, such as poisoning her parakeets in order to have nothing to compete with for her affection [4]. The typical progression of Berkowitz is entirely inverted in terms of Freudian psychosexual stages. This is a stage of negated sexuality, hence the attatchment, traditionally, to the parent of the same sex, and to make friends of the same sex; however, because Freud’s an asshole, he doesn’t consider that ✨homosexuality✨ is a concept and thinks that all children must go to the parent/friends of the same sex as sexuality cannot be prompted here. But we can take liberties here because we live in the real world. There’s nothing abnormal about Berkowitz, he was just following the pyschosexual stages as somebody interested in the same sex.

Woah! You say. But he killed women because of pent-up sexual frustration! The gun is his penis!

Sure. For most; but I’ve always felt that Berkowitz did things a little bit... differently.

The Genital stage, or the final stage, begins at puberty (12/13) and continues/ends into adulthood. As traumatising as Pearl’s death was for David, her death coincided perfectly for her metaphorical death in the psyche of 13-year-old David. During the Genital stage, sexuality is no longer ‘hidden’ (latent), and rather becomes a thing necessary to be fulfilled for emotional release. Attention turns once more to the gender in which one is interested, and David, growing up in the culture that he did, turned to women. At 15, he had his first sexual experience, a blowjob, and sources (unknown) state that he preferred ‘oral sex and petting over regular intercourse’[5]. It would be plausible that he perhaps came to prefer this, considering his one known experience with ‘regular intercourse’ resulted in a venereal disease, but I’ve always contended that maybe he preferred so-called ‘petting’ due to his... less favourable position with heterosexuality. But, as I said, I feel as if David did not explore, or rather felt he could not explore, his sexuality until later on in his life (and, even then, due to his Baptist beliefs, promoted homophobic views because, y’know, Christianity and being born in the 50s) and was, in fact, more interested in men than women. If this is grabbing at straws for anyone, I will mention his ‘homosexual fling’ [6] with inmate Gary Evans, who was long suspected to be bisexual/homosexual due to his collecting of gay magazines and, according to Hugo Harmatz, ‘love letters’[citation needed] from Berkowitz stashed amongst them.

An addendum about Berkowitz’s latent stage: when he was around 10 years old, his parents had sex whilst he was in the same bed [8]. What could be more confusing, traumatising, and shaping, than your parents doing... that... during one of the most sexually devoid periods of your life! I believe this shaped his view of performance hugely. He was shown, at a formative period, that it was okay to perform in a sexually motivated manner whilst other people were around--non-consenting other people, at that. I believe that this is the reason he took his killing out into the open. It was a sexual thrill, the killings. It was heavily related to the sexual negation of wanting to kill your mother in order to  possess your father. I am by no means saying that this is Berkowitz’s 100% proven, uncontestable motive, but the ideas of psychosexual analysis seem to apply to him in an accurate and very curious way. The traditional, heterosexual view of these stages do not match up to his psychology, but the homosexual interpretation does. 

So, we move forward to his early 20s. He returns from Korea, looking for his father, the only piece of his biological existence he believes to be alive. He still wishes, all these years later, to possess the father--the destruction of the woman has only intensified after multiple failed attempts at dating, a horrendous virginity-loss experience, and the frustration surrounding an attempt at heterosexuality. But, here we stand: his biological mother is alive, and his biological father is the one who is dead. How terribly, terribly confusing. And still, Berkowitz attempts a relationship with his biological mother and half-sister. This goes south, however, when he discovers that he was given up due to being born out of wedlock, and he drops contact with his biological family.

The disollusionment is unfathomable. His biological father, his raison d’etre, is dead. His adoptive father has moved to Florida with his new wife: this new wife has fulfiled Berkowitz’s Electra Complex, in his mind, at least. Kill the mother. Take the father. His biological mother is not who he wanted to have. His adoptive mother is dead. What is left? A display of fulfilment, sexual fulfilment, as public as it has always been shown to him--through the bedroom of his parents, through the public changing rooms. Murder on the streets. Getting to kill a woman as he always thought he had been decreed to from birth, from his first supposed mother, his biological mother.

(bibliography under the cut. thank you for reading)

Bibliography:

Radford University: Berkowitz, David [3, 8]

Simply Psychology: 5 Stages of Psychosexual Development

Tumblr/Berkowitzbrat: Exploring the Why [1]

Tumblr/True Crime and Cannibalism: David Berkowitz’s Timeline [5]

Westchester Magazine: David Berkowitz’s History in Westchester County [4]

Wikipedia: Phallic stage, Latency stage, Genital stage

Wordpress/Can’t Stop the Bleeding: How to Stuff a Wild Bikini [6]

Youtube: David Berkowitz: In His Own Words (1/9) [2]

And here’s my whole folder of resources for general Berkowitz reading materials and media: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VKlZJwRR4bpoPzO7AejAMtAJaVoBGuTg

#psychology #david berkowitz #son of sam #holy shit i'm back!!! #freudian elements #freud #analysis #electra #oedipus #adoptive parents #biological parents #discourse welcome

[therealvinelle]

Submasterpost: Twilight ships

Last updated: 24th of December

Small note: I started this category just today, so while there are many more metas that belong in it, up until now they have been placed in other categories. Meaning, this one will be filled up as I rearrange.

A moment of silence since masterposts were supposed to make things easier for me, now I have an overly sophisticated filing system.

Romantic ships:

Alice/Bella:

Could it happen?

Alice/Bella/Jasper:

Could it happen?

Alice/Edward:

Could it happen?

Alice/Jacob:

Could it happen?

Alice/Jasper:

What does “Mystical” mean? Physically? (cont.)

How does she feel about him?

Aro/Bella:

It won’t happen, but it’s where the good fic is at

It just won’t happen

No really, it won’t happen

Aro/Caius:

Could it happen?

Aro/Carlisle:

The Post-Breaking Dawn State of (the) Affairs, or: I blow holes in my own ship

Usually When I Don’t Like a Person I Don’t Move In With Them for Decades

What Is So Great About Carlisle, Anyway?

Did they fuck?

Twilight is Othello

Would Aro try and patch things up if Carlisle’s family died in Eclipse?

How would Aro react if Carlisle died in Eclipse?

What if Aro’s affections were reciprocated?

Aro/Seth:

Could it happen?

Bella/Carlisle:

Now you’re just a ship that I used to know

Bella/Carlisle/Jasper:

Could it happen?

Bella/Edward:

Three Reasons Why Edward Fell for Bella - You Won’t Believe Number One!

On their folie à deux

Will Bella being able to let her shield down become a problem in their future? (Yeah, probably.)

There’s no stone mill

Would it still happen if Bella had been older?

Would she have fallen for just any vampire who happened to be taking Biology with her?

Would he have fallen for her if he didn’t have his gift?

Anon wants me to describe an EdBella date

Bella knows the Cullens wanted to kill her. Changes nothing.

What would it take for Bella to realize Edward’s no dreamboat?

Are there any circumstances within canon under which she would kill him?

On Bella insisting on sex with Edward

Bella/Esme:

Could it happen? (No, but here’s why.)

Bella/Edythe:

Could it happen?

Bella/Jacob:

Better than Bella/Edward, Still Not Good

Would It Have Happened if Edward Stayed Gone?

What if Jacob imprinted on her?

Bella/Jasper:

Potential, I guess, but the fanfiction just isn’t up for it

Bella/Lauren:

Could it happen?

Bella/Marcus:

Could it happen?

Bella/Rosalie:

Not Gonna Happen

Bella/Stefan:

Where there’s a will...

Bella/Victoria:

Ding ding ding, the answer is YES!

Bella/Vladimir:

Where there’s a will...

Billy/Carlisle:

No, just no

Caius/Carlisle:

Could it happen?

Caius/Mike:

I don’t make it happen

Carlisle/Charlie:

Could it happen?

Carlisle/Edward:

Idle thoughts

Does Edward have an Oedipal complex? (YES.)

Carlisle/Esme:

They’re doomed

Carlisle/Jasper:

Could it happen?

Carlisle/Marcus:

Could it happen?

Carlisle/Rosalie:

Could it happen? (cont.)

Charlite/Sue:

Thoughts

Charlotte/Jasper/Peter:

Could it happen?

Edward/Jacob:

I make it happen

Edward/Tanya:

Does she want dick?

Emmett/Rosalie:

Emmett and Rosalie Are Offered the Human Again Cure: Does Their Relationship Survive?

Would they make a human woman surrogate Emmett’s hybrid so Rosalie could have a child?

Why is Emmett with her?

Felix/Hypothetical Mate:

Why That’s Not Demetri’s Problem

Fred/Renesmée:

Could it happen?

Jacob/Paul:

Could it happen?

Jacob/Renesmée:

Concerning Signs of Grooming

What will their relationship be like?

What do the Cullens, specifically Bella, think about this whole dynamic?

What if Renesmée sets her eyes on someone else? (cont)

Jasper/Rosalie:

Could it happen?

Leah/Rosalie:

Never gonna happen

Platonic and familial relationships:

Alice & Edward:

Is there a scenario where he would kill her?

Alice & Rosalie:

Are they close?

Aro & Jane and Alec:

Who’s Your Daddy?

He Seems to Like Those Little Brats

Aro, Jane, Alec and the trolley problem

Aro & Renata:

Aro Is a Cat Eating Plastic, Renata the Exasperated Cat Lady

Bella & Jasper:

Their relationship in the books, and how movie adaptions always make characters closer

Bella & Renesmée:

Does Renesmée Love Her Mother?

Carlisle & Edward:

What if Aro and Marcus tag-teamed Carlisle to convince him Edward was crazy?

Carlisle & Jasper:

Would they stick together in the event of the coven breaking up?

Carlisle & Rosalie:

How would they cope if the other died?

Edward & his human family

How important was his father to him?

Edward & Jasper:

How does Edward view Jasper?

Would their relationship be different if Jasper had better control?

Edward & Renesmée:

What if he had to choose between Bella or Renesmée?

Edward & Rosalie:

Their relationship after Breaking Dawn

What if they did develop feelings for each other?

Edward & Seth:

Why are they friends?

Heidi & Victoria:

How did she respond to hearing what became of Victoria?

Ensemble relationship posts:

What Would It Take for the Cullens to Understand the Person Edward Is?

Are there any healthy relationships in Twilight?

Other relationships:

Emmett & the pack:

He’s a leech

Love triangles:

Emily/Sam/Leah:

My thoughts on that whole mess

Crossover with other fandoms:

Bella:

Who could Bella end up with, regardless of franchise?

Death Note:

How would Edward and Light get along?

Harry Potter:

Could Bella Swan/Harry Potter happen?

The Vampire Diaries:

Could Bella/Damon happen?

Fanfiction:

How would Edward and Trotsky from the Muffin’s Lilyverse get along?

#masterpost #twilight #twilight ships #long post

[jeannereames]

What do you think of Roxana? Personally I think she did what she had to survive (if the tables were turned I doubt Stateira would have acted differently), that she lived for so long after Alexander's death suggests that she was probably intelligent and shrewd. I don't know why people 'pit' her against Hephaistion: if I'm not wrong she was under his care for a time in India, and wouldn't have been so if they didn't get on. Is her reputation just another example of the historical double standard?

Roxana, Olympias, and Potential Conflict with Hephaistion

May I just say, Damn, I’d like to have been a fly on the wall when Roxana first met Olympias! Talk about two powerhouses. Can you imagine?

Yes, misogyny is at the root of Roxana’s bad rep, same as for Olympias. Occasionally she’s rehabilitated in fiction—far more than Olympias. And that, I fear, owes to ageism. The Cute Young Girl can be perceived as nice, or at least misunderstood, but Olympias must be the Mean Old Mother.

Anyway, Roxana was a survivor. She did what was necessary. I understand why she had Statiera killed, even if she didn’t know her child would be male, or even live. Had Statiera been allowed to give birth, and the babe was male, it would absolutely trump any son she had. Ergo, Statiera had to die. I’m not sure why she also killed Drypetis, except as a witness. Or maybe both princesses of the blood had been classic Mean Girls to Sogdian Roxana from the hills. She doesn’t seem to have bothered Parysatis, who wasn’t pregnant.

As for pitting Roxana against Hephaistion, I suppose a few may assume it because Roxana killed Drypetis as well as Statiera, but see just above.

The REAL reason I suspect they do it, though, is a mix of anachronistic and overly romantic thinking. To be in contention, they’d have had to be vying for the same place in Alexander’s life/heart/court.

I mean—WHAT the everloving fuck?

Seriously. The whole Alexander-Hephaistion-Roxana-Bagoas love square, or whatever you want to call it, drives me flippin’ BUGGY. It needs to DIE. It’s so distorted, so modern, and so flat ridiculous. I blame the Olive Stone film for that and his crazy Oedipal complex crap too (although he stole some of that from Renault).

Another point: putting Hephaistion into conflict with Roxana and/or Bagoas for Alexander’s romantic attention is really reductive. It makes Hephaistion no more than a love interest. NOT A HIGH-PLACED MARSHAL. It’s not only horribly modern but also heteronormative.

KRATEROS, not Roxana, much less Bagoas, was Hephaistion’s chief rival.

Roxana and Hephaistion were never in conflict. Roxana could never displace Hephaistion. Hephaistion not only wouldn’t have cared if Alexander married her, but he probably favored the wedding (unlike most of the other high officers). He seems to have supported, perhaps even encouraged Alexander in his Persianizing for pragmatic reasons. Marrying the girl would get them all out of Baktria, which had become a nightmare scenario by that point. Philip had made an art of marrying his way to peace. The main objection from most of the men wasn’t to Alexander taking the girl, but honoring her with his first marriage. If he’d already had a couple wives, they might not have cared as much. But she was too foreign (even more than a Thracan).

Alexander also needed an heir. If Roxana wasn’t as highborn as Statiera (and almost certainly Alexander already by then intended to marry Darius’s daughter), she still had a womb and could give him a son in the meantime.

So I see no reason at all for Hephaistion to have objected, or to have disliked the girl, who was probably half his age anyway. Nor would she have had any reason to dislike him, even if he was sleeping with Alexander still. If anything, she’d likely have curried his favor, especially if he had encouraged Alexander to marry her. She needed an ally, preferably more than one. By the time she murdered Drypetis, he was a year dead.

Anyway, truth is, she may not have seen him much. She’d have been in the baggage train most of the time. She might have seen more of Krateros, at least after India, as he took the baggage train inland by the safer route. So if she did dislike Hephaistion, maybe it owed more to being on Team Krateros in that infamous squabble. Ha.

But yeah…no Roxana-Hephaistion spat. No Bagos-Hephaistion spat, either. The fact so many Alexander fans even know who this quite obscure figure (of Bagos) IS owes entirely to Mary Renault, Oliver Stone, and W.W. Tarn’s homophobia. He gets a couple lines in Curtius (and a few other sources), who primarily use him as a dog-whistle for Alexander’s growing Orientalizing debauchery. Curtius is writing about Roman emperors as much as Alexander.

#Roxane #Alexander the Great #Roxana #Sogdiana #Olympias #Statiera #Drypetis #Hephaistion #Hephaestion #Bagoas #ancient Macedonia #ancient Persia #ancient history #Classics #Tagamemnon #asks

[stan-denbrough]

please don’t compare patty to myra. they’re totally different from each other.

Yeah, they are. They’re different characters from each other. Stan and Patty are said to have their perfect little marriage and Eddie is saddled with a hysterical fat woman who has the emotional fortitude of toilet paper, and he thinks he has an oedipal complex for like 5 minutes before dismissing it.

But their husbands would have analogous situations in this scenario. You can’t scream that shipping Stan with another man means he’s “cheating” on Patty but then just pretend that Eddie was never married to Myra. You just can’t sweaty.

#myddie #stanpat #reddie #stenbrough #it chapter two #it chapter 2 #it 2019 #it movie #Anonymous

[williamsockner]

SPN S4E3 “In the Beginning” Watchnotes

TIME TRAVEL EP TIME TRAVEL EP

Literally starting the episode out with “Sam gets up to shady shit while Dean naps” because I guess our boy is real damn sleepy this season.

God Dean is so, so, so slow on the uptake. Like, I get that “time travel” isn’t the first thing someone’s mind should jump to, but getting zapped by an angel into a strange scenario full of classic cars, retro outfits and no technology shouldn’t take you forty minutes to pick up on.

Dean: “Give me clear instructions, I’m very stressed out and my cognitive skills are straight garbage.” Castiel: “Nah.”

Well, I guess it’s now literally canon that Dean wants to bang his mom.

There is so much weird Oedipal stuff going on here, holy shit. “Dean super wants to bone down with his mom” is sure a characterization choice that they’re committing to.

And then a weird shot of a phallic banana being cut up with a knife. What is happening in this episode?

Is Sam even in this season?

Dean like “hey Mom can you tell me if Dad was always a complete piece of shit or if he started normal and then went totally insane”

Dean’s sure having the “I want to bang my mom but I also need to cry a single masculine tear” face journey here.

Daniel: “Don’t steal my gun.” Dean: “Please?” Daniel: “oh ok”

Literally every SPN canon AU is “hey Dean you could be happy or you could save lives but never both” and Dean being like “depression it is :<“

UH weird sexual framing and neck-nuzzling between Dean and his grandpa, WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS SHOW

Dean’s possessed grandpa talking about wanting to bang Dean’s mom, whom Dean has already said he thinks is super hot, while sniffing Dean’s neck, like WHAT IS HAPPENING, supernatural why are you like this!!

John Winchester isn’t worth selling your soul for, Mary. John Winchester isn’t worth a corn chip. John Winchester isn’t worth a corn chip that’s already been chewed.

The Dumb Bitch Gene runs in the family, Dean comes by it honestly.

Dean: “hey so is my brother even in the show anymore” Castiel: “/shrug”

Me to SPN like: 

#spookernaturalz #stupidnatural #watchnotes #i love this show #also fuck john winchester #what a BIZARRELY incesty episode

[queernuck]

Is it just me, or are terfs inclined to defend abusive mothers?

I think this one depends, there are absolutely cases where TERFs are willing to defend abusive mothers, in large part when it comes to “peak trans” and the idea of a mother figure, a kind of fetishized motherhood they imposed upon their own subjectivity wrt the trans body, trans experiences, so on, such that their own scorn is understood as the impetus behind the flow of violence toward a trans child. effectively, the desiring-machine of a heteronormative, gender normative parent enacting violence against their child is understood as flowing through the body of said child and then through the interpretation wherein it is recognized as an affirmation of a negation, a kind of ironic reversal which proves that the true motherly instinct is preserved, is deployed against the Trans Menace in order to protect others from such a fate. a trans woman like me talking about how awful her mother is? i obviously deserved it, and in fact am lucky not to have worse, i am the one who is in fact abusing her, so on.

this is not unique to TERFs, of course, and that is important to remember.

More generally, I think that it is possible that they will defend abusive mothers out of a biological essentialism that they feel requires their defense, the notion of motherhood as a kind of vital aspect of womanhood that is retained whether accepted or refused, and the ideological position that trans women are never related to motherhood as women, are never able to be mothers, so on motivates at least some justification of abusive parenting. Of course, this will also overlap with other ideological holdings about what causes “good” mothering, what must be done in order to “create” bad mothers (as if the structure of the nuclear family is a biological essential and one that will do any sort of good for women rather than one they occasionally find convenient, one they will readily abandon when necessary and one they should abandon all the same)

crossover between TERFs and other ideologies which offer some sort of violently radical assertion on trans identity (largely thinking of various reactionary traditionalisms, TradCaths specifically) will also lead to this as the notion of motherhood as a kind of fetishized position, as part of a sort of natural cultivation that itself plays a large part in the libidinal politics of such groups (again, TradCaths being a particular example of this!) means that a mother must be defended for that which she represents, but this is not unique to TERFs nor is it even unique to these sorts of reactionaries, it is simply a more explicit development of already-present defenses of abusive motherhood as part of defending abusive parenting.

acknowledging how violent fatherhood is as a structure, how it operates in order to Oedipalize one’s own children, to build up that structure of Oedipal repetition requires a sort of construction of fatherhood’s violence as more openly acknowledged in some specific cases, some specific circumstances, but it does not mean that there is not a reversal which fetishizes motherhood incorrectly, which imagines it as a position of virtue rather than a potential site of trauma. 

so, in certain scenarios, there are reasons for TERFs to be inclined to do as much, but in many scenarios more generally where TERFs are defending abusive mothers, they do so because of how ideology around parental abuse is constructed, and how abusive fatherhood is seen as simply being the natural structure of fatherhood!

[ahsporn]

Cody Fern Interview for Out Nagazine

Out: What is it like to play the Antichrist?

Cody: It’s been the greatest privilege of my acting career so far. Between this and Versace, if for some reason the apocalypse came tonight, I’d be pretty happy with what I’ve done.

Out: How much did you know going into the season?

Cody: I didn’t know anything, I didn’t even know the theme, we found out when everybody else found out. We did know obviously that there had been an apocalypse, but I found out that I was playing Michael Langdon two days before we started filming. My first scene was the interrogation with Venable. All that Ryan had told me was that I’d be wearing a long, blonde wig and that I would have an affinity for capes. I went into the piece thinking I was the protagonist.

Out: Do you think that in a way, Michael is the protagonist of Apocalypse?

Cody: I think he is, but that’s from my perspective. I understand that the witches are the protagonists, particularly Cordelia. It’s in many ways a continuation of the Coven story, but running parallel is the story of how I see Michael, which is this very betrayed, broken, lost young man who finds his way into the apocalypse because of circumstance, not because of destiny.

Out: There’s a conversation of nature vs. nurture: we know from Murder House that there was evil in Michael from birth, he wouldn’t have been murdering his babysitters if there wasn't, but it’s become clear in the latter half of the season that he’s lost and is being manipulated by people with their own agendas.

Cody: We see him at 15 when he’s grown 10 years overnight, and the way that I always played Michael was that the murders are an impulse that he can’t control and he doesn’t understand. His consciousness is that of a 6-year-old boy when he’s a teenager, but he’s struggling to come to terms with his body and his desires, but he’s not fully formed. When you follow that, to me Michael’s story is a parable. There’s two ways of looking at the story of the devil: the way that people have interpreted the bible, and this polar opposite that Lucifer so loved god that he refused to bow down before men. Here we have god’s favorite angel in this kingdom of heaven, who was then made to bow down before god’s next making, and ultimately that leads to him being cast out of Heaven, and it wasn’t like Lucifer was wrong. Man then goes about destroying the earth. That’s what we’re doing right now, we’re destroying planet Earth, and it seems that there’s no remorse for it. I really leaned into that with Michael, this young boy who was cast from the kingdom of Heaven, who was cast out of the normal rigors of society, out of what people find acceptable, and then is used and abused and abandoned and broken, and what happens when you have no love in your life, where does that energy go?

Out: One of the ways I’ve been reading this season is a commentary about the state of gender politics. The warlocks essentially bring about Armageddon by attempting to topple the matriarchal power the witches have over the coven. Michael in a way is this avatar for misogyny and male entitlement. Was that intentional?

Cody: I absolutely believe that was intentional. The thing about Ryan Murphy is he’s able to weave these incredible social commentaries into this fascinating world he’s created. Certainly in this season we are looking at bringing down the patriarchy, about what happens when a matriarchal society is enforced and the hubris of men begins to take flight. It’s not dissimilar to what’s happening in society today or what has been happening for hundreds of years. Ryan certainly weaves that into his writing. The gender battle is being fought and Michael is the avatar for it but is certainly not a part of of it. He is manipulated into this gender battle but he himself is not misogynistic, but there’s certainly something to be said for the fact that he needs a very strong mother figure in his life and has mommy issues. His mother tries to kill him in the Murder House, Constance commits suicide, Cordelia takes away Mead and he has this robot who he has to program into loving him. I think he has an enormous respect for Cordelia. He needs strong women in his life, and if he just took Cordelia’s hand when she offered it, if he just overcame his insatiable thirst for revenge, he could’ve gone another way.

Out: One of the standout episodes of the season was “Return to Murder House,” what was it like to find out that not only was Jessica Lange returning but that you’d get to act opposite her?

Cody: My ovaries exploded. I can’t begin to describe to you how overwhelmed I was. The first scene I shot with Jessica was the scene where Michael finds her dead body after she’s committed suicide, and I was so excited and nervous and afraid of that scene that I spent the whole day shaking like a life. When we got to it I was so excited and overwhelmed, it was very hard for me to drop into the chaos around what I needed to go into. Sarah, who is just the most exceptional human being in the world not to mention the hardest working and the most talented, took my hand and said, “Don’t be afraid of this, you’ve got to really go there,” and then jokingly, “Imagine that at the end of this if you didn’t get it that Jessica would think you’re a bad actor.” It was terrifying! I was certainly able to move past a wall, that’s what was blocking me, I was so afraid of judgement, that wasn’t coming from Jessica of course, it was coming from myself and my own process. Working with Jessica will go down as one of my life’s greatest achievements.

Out: What was it like to not only act alongside Sarah Paulson but to be directed by her in “Return to Murder House?”

Cody: One of the greatest joys. As an actor, to step into the director’s chair, you have a certain upper hand because you understand how actors work and how to communicate with actors. Sarah very much comes from a place of absolute respect for the emotional process of the artist. First and foremost she’s looking out for you as an artist, which elicits such extraordinary performances because you have so much trust in her, so you’re willing to give her anything and everything. She’s got such a deft hand as a director, watching it was gobsmacking, and was working under the most extreme pressures imaginable. Not only was she playing Billie Dean and Cordelia in another episode in the same time as this was filming, she had to film 72 scenes. In contrast, the episode before had 32, so she was filming almost double what any other director on the series was filming, while playing two other characters in two other episodes with under one week of preparation, it was truly a feat.

Out: She certainly wears a lot of hats...speaking of which, you had a very special hat yourself. Let’s talk about that wig.

Cody: I loved that wig. If I could wear that wig on a daily basis I would. Wearing that wig was everything.

Out: How long does it take to get into the Rubber Man suit?

Cody: It takes about 20 minutes and a lot of lube, and once you’re in it you’re in it, you can’t take it off. So I was in that suit for 16 hours. I think I held the record for being in the suit the longest.

Out: Can you settle this debate: was Michael the Rubber Man suit who has sex with Gallant?

Cody: No, not physically anyway. The Rubber Man is also a demon, so when someone is wearing the suit, they become the Rubber Man, but when nobody is wearing the suit, Rubber Man — through the power of Murder House — becomes a demon, and that demon is in many aspects controlled by Langdon. Langdon uses every means at his disposal to warp and manipulate and draw out the innermost desires in a human being, he draws out their shadow self and he’s able to play with that shadow and create scenarios that tempt a person into giving into the evil inside of them. Because the Rubber Man is there and then Gallant realizes he’s killed Evie. There’s some mind games going on there in how Michael reveals Gallant’s innermost desire, which is deeply Oedipal, because we [we wonder], is he fucking his grandmother? Because the realization is that the Rubber Man is Evie and he’s just slaughtered her in his bed. There’s so many layers of darkness there. That’s certainly how I thought about it.

Out: I’m sure you can’t reveal anything about the finale tonight, but can you tease a bit about how Michael’s journey ends?

Cody: There’s something deeply beautiful and tragic about the way that the story ends for Michael. It was genuinely one of the hardest scenes that I shot in the series. The end of the series, knowing that this was going to be the last time I — I’m getting sad about it now — I loved Michael so much, the past nine days since we finished filming it have been very hard. I loved Michael so much and I wanted so much for him, I just wanted love for him. The way the series ends for Michael is very moving.

Out: Are you open to returning for another season of AHS?

Cody: Oh my god, in a heartbeat. The experience is beyond comparison. Moving forward there will hopefully be great triumphs in my career, hopefully I’ll get to play characters that are as complex and layered as Michael, but this will forever have been the most formative experience of my acting career and of my development as an artist. To work with these extraordinary women at such an early point in my career, to work with Sarah Paulson and Frances Conroy — fuck me, Frances Conroy is one of the most talented, hard working, fierce actresses. To work with Kathy Bates and Joan Collins, the list goes on and on. To be in the same room as Billy Porter, who is an American treasure. The entire experience was so exceptional and magic. I know I’ll never have that back, that moment, it’s gone. I would come back in a heartbeat.

#american horror story #ahs apocalypse

[psytog]

Madoka’s Non-Oedipal Complex

(Originally posted on dreamwidth 22 December 2018)

Madoka conceptualizes herself as trapped within the womb: she wants to grow up, to discover herself as a person, but she cannot do so while living under Junko's shadow. Thus, becoming God—the endgame of Madoka's character growth, the moment of her self-actualization—creates a universe in which Junko does not even remember Madoka. The two have been completely severed; the umbilical cord has been cut.

Other, subtler indications of this fantasy are peppered throughout the series. In Madoka's dream of the previous timeline, she exits a labyrinth (i.e., womb) and goes on to make a life-altering decision. And in the final episode, she abandons the red hair ribbon which Junko gifted her in episode 1.

For the first time, I'm actually reading about psychoanalysis—psychoanalytic film theory in particular, since that's the school of thought which influenced Malo's reading of Homestuck, in turn influencing my own reading of Madoka Magica—and this description of the Oedipal complex set off some bells in my head:

The  male child is bonded to his mother through the breast, and imagines   himself in a unity with her. This unity, however, soon breaks up when   the child senses his difference from the mother ... The realization of   his difference prompts the child to desire the lost unity but, as Freud insists, this desire sexualizes the mother ... The child also associates  the power to castrate with the father because he sees that the mother  "is not like him, she does not have a penis." Since the only person  having access to her is the father, the child imagines that it was the  father who castrated her possibly as a punishment. At this point, the  child's desire for unification becomes problematic for him because if he  chooses to identify with her and thus accomplish the lost unity, he  becomes like her, he gets castrated, too ... To resolve this castration threat, the child identifies with the father ...  Becoming like his father, the child moves towards social stability by  adopting heterosexual orientation through redirecting his repressed  desire for the mother toward other women in a socially acceptable  manner.

It's easy to imagine Madoka's situation as the answer to the question "What if the child was female?" Hers is not a gender-swapped scenario in which the daughter identifies with and becomes attracted to the father, but rather:

the female child, bonded to her mother through the breast, imagines herself in a unity with the mother

the child does NOT notice a difference between herself and the mother, and so this unity is not broken

the child does not desire to reclaim the unity, since the unity was never lost

the child never develops a sexual attraction to her mother

she experiences no castration anxiety, no identification with the father, no repression of incestuous desires...

...all because the fantasy of unity is never interrupted. In fact, it becomes antagonistic: Madoka wants to sever herself from Junko, but she lacks the willpower to do so.

#pmmm #meta #madoka meta

[ribbreakertv]

thoughts about my OC kevin

he’s basically tailor made for whump scenarios because of his involvements with the deep web

he’d basically do anything for his mom (not in an oedipal way, it’s just because she’s his source of income) so he ends up in a lot of danger to protect her

he’s mostly hired to dispose of corpses, but he’s never actually been near a real dead body so he doesnt realize that the smell makes him ill

one time he has to kill a guy for another character and ends up getting pounded into a jelly, blood everywhere

he’s an incel, like thinking about women beating him up lol

he actually finds himself feeling weirdly guilty about killing people directly and it keeps him up at night

#txt #oc posts #whump #whump scenario

[tasteforrot]

Dining Alone At Plaza Azteca

You are always sending me quotes from books that I haven’t read and probably will never read.

We talk about these quotes like conversation because we don’t have anything else to say to each other.

Instead of talking about current events, pop culture, or emailing YouTube video links back and forth, we talk about the past. The unchanging events of fictional characters with lives that are more interesting than ours. Filtering our current stimuli through the lens of some dead white guy.

You like to point out quotes that seem to abstractly apply to our current situation.

I’m currently shitting. If you were still around you would probably have a quote for that.

Through you I’ve read Phillip Roth:

[“This made me laugh,” you said.]

“Just as I am about to unlock the door, imagining I have covered my tracks. My heart lurches at the sight of what is hanging like snot to the toe of my shoe. I am the Roskolnikov of jerking off- the sticky evidence is everywhere!”

[“It has a section titled ‘Cunt Crazy’. The son has a literal Oedipal fixation on his mother. It is written in stream-of-consciousness self-loathing Jewish-American continuous prose. What is with male writers and their cocks? I’ve never felt the urge to write about jacking off. But it is a perennial fixation for Updike and apparently Phillip Roth.”

I said something like, “I think writing is not dissimilar to masturbation.”]

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty by Bradley K. Martin:

“North Korea called Carter a ‘vicious political mountebank;” his journey, ‘a powder-reeking trip of a hypocrite agitating for aggression and war.’ But a North Korean spokesman in Tokyo said that, in the North Korean lexicon, this was a relatively moderate slur. At least the North had not called Carter an imperialist, its worst insult. “Not an imperialist! Anything but that!”

[For three days we joked in mock horror about the thought of being called an imperialist. You brought up the joke recently and I groaned in return.]

The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides:

“He held up the baggie. Leonard stuck his nose into the bag and his depression lifted another notch. It smelled like the Amazonian rain forest, like putting your head between the legs of a native girl that had never heard of Christianity.”

[You called it a ‘paltry piece of fiction’ but you said you wanted to put your head between my legs and I said ‘okay’ even though I had no intention of letting you do that. I remembered the first time you went down on me in the hotel room that you lived in at the time. It was the first time anyone had ever gone down on me. It was the first time someone had done something specifically for me for more than an hour. You kept looking up at me periodically with this apologetic look on your face. I kept looking at your bed sheets, trying to figure out the thread count with a concerned enough look on my face that could have hopefully been misconstrued as a look of pleasure. You had an asthma attack during and after.]

Once, you texted me and said, “I must fuck you.”

I didn’t reply but I took a screen shot of the text. I texted you the screenshot a few days later without context.

It is the only quote I have sent you. I think I sent it in a way that meant, ‘look at all the ridiculous things you say to me.’ But you took it as meaning I wanted to sext.

That was the conversation that you told me I would be good at writing erotica and then made sure to add that you’re too much of a book snob to read erotica. Though, while I was sending you detailed descriptions of how I masturbated (face down, sometimes with lesbian porn) you didn’t seem to mind erotic realism.

Tonight you will text me with something like,

“Intense solitude becomes unbearable only when there’s nothing one wishes to say to another.”

You’ll text me again before I answer and tell me that the quote is from ‘Americana’ by Don DeLillo.

I will look at my Iphone light up then check my Gmail.

While I’m going through my spam inbox, trying to figure out how to get off all of these subscription lists (Macy’s, PETA, Sierra Club, ModCloth, Urban Outfitters) that I thought were a good idea to sign up for at some point, you’ll text me a third time and say something like,

“I just finished a margarita. I am dining at alone at Plaza Azteca”

You have perfectly crafted a scenario within the span of three text messages of a lonely drunk writer, drinking comically tropical drinks in a Mexican restaurant, while contemplating the prose of the ‘American heartland’. In the back of your mind, behind your wire framed glasses, matted, self-conscious beard, and nervously thin lips, you think that this is a romantic vision of a struggling writer that drinks margaritas until drunk or out of cash and eats vegetarian tacos because they are cheaper.

Bukowski in paradise.

You quoted Bukowski too many times to count. It was mostly in reference to how you were so much like him. Or how you thought that drinking at 3 am on a Tuesday while writing self-loathing poetry made you so much like him. I usually waited until about the fifth text in a row to text you back when you got started on your Bukowski rants. I knew that the important part wasn’t that I had anything to say back. The important part was to make you feel like someone else thought you were like Bukowski. I didn’t think that but I also didn’t feel strongly enough against it to start any sort of debate.

I always wanted to tell you that I hate Bukowski.

I hate Bukowski. Maybe you are kind of like him.

In response to the first text in the trilogy I text back,

“I like that quote”

Even though I don’t really like that quote.

I like to sit alone and not talk about how I’m sitting alone. I like to drink to get drunk then go to sleep in my own bed. I don’t mind not having anything to say.

Immediately you respond,

“I knew you would.”

“I want you. Come to me.”

I do not want to drink margaritas with you. I do not want to talk in quotes. I do want to be the kind of person that brings novels to Mexican restaurants.

I do not want to be with the kind of person that thinks bringing a novel to a Mexican restaurant makes them an interesting person.

Some nights I just want to watch Mean Girls and talk about the weather. Some nights I really don’t care what is and isn’t post-modern. Some nights I wish that we were post-conversation.

I wish that we didn’t have to turn everything into a metaphor for itself.

You once told me I was your ‘manic pixie dream girl’ like you had never even spoken to me before. Like I was a caricature of myself or a trope to be employed in one of your short stories. You can never talk to me like I am in the present tense.

If I met you at Plaza Azteca I would order a beer, or I would get you to order a beer for me, and you would start talking about how beer makes your stomach queasy the way I make your stomach queasy. The way you are writing a novella about a girl that makes your stomach queasy. You will use that word ‘queasy’ and I will hate it but I will nod like I am interested in becoming a character. I would spend the evening trying to figure out ways to hide my water cup from the waiter who was determined not to see it empty. I would want to see the cup completely empty. No water, no ice. I would sip my beer and hide my water and you would talk to me about something you read or wanted to read. Something about Gore Vidal or Salman Rushdie. You wouldn’t notice what I was doing with my water. I would think silently about how many water related quotes you had; quotes about being empty.

“K.”

#Gabby Gabby #Banango Street Issue 1