pixelated rat when?

What? what the fuck are you talking about, what the fuck what the f

“He still thinks in the narrative of his life he’s a hero. So, I guess, let’s just say I believe in flawed heroes and heroic villains, and I think he, Loki, is a kind of heroic villain.”  x.

The Importance of ‘Dear’ as a Noun 

What does the language in Hamilton’s letters tell us about his relationships?

Using the letters Hamilton wrote that are on Founders Online I’ve been examining at how he uses the word “dear” (as well as variations “dearest”, “dr” and “chere”). Founders Online has over 7000 letters and out of those he used “dear” (or a variation) in approximately 1300 of them.

Dear as an adjective

Dear as an adjective was used commonly in the 18th century. It is a pretty versatile word. Men were commonly addressed “dear sir” or “my dear sir” this doesn’t necessarily reflect any particular affection. Hamilton uses “dear sir” or “dr. sir” in 928 of the letters, he address a range of people as such, including George Washington, his good friend James McHenry, his boss from St Croix Nicholas Cruger and Thomas Jefferson.

It was also quite common to use dear before a name or title. He addresses John Laurens as “My Dear Laurens”, Richard Kidder Meade as “My Dear Meade”, Baron von Steuben as “My Dear Baron”, Marquis de Lafayette as “My Dear Marquis”, William Duer as “My Dear Duer”, Susanna Livingston as “My Dear Miss Livingston”, his son Philip as “My Dear Philip” ect.

He might use dear in conjunction with a nickname/pet-name to show affection. He frequently addresses McHenry “My Dear Mac”. In one letter he refers to Laurens as “my Dear J”. He uses a few variations with Eliza including “My Dear Betsey”, “my Dear girl” and “My Dearest Angel”. When their son James was sick he refers to him in a letter to Eliza as “our dear sick angel”, and when John Church was sick he is “our dear lamb”.

He would also use “dear” in conjunction with the relationship he had with them. For example he refers to a range of people as “My Dear Friend” including but not limited to John Laurens, Lafayette, James McHenry, Richard Kidder Meade, Gouverneur Morris and Angelica Church. He also refers to Angelica Church as “My dear Sister” or “My Dear Sister in Law”. His daughter Angelica is addressed as “my dear daughter” ect.

Dear as a noun

The best way to explain the difference between dear as an adjective and dear as a noun is to look at Hamilton’s December 6th 1787 letter to Angelica Church. This many of you will recognise is the letter that inspired the Hamilton song Take a Brake. For those who aren’t familiar with the historical letters here is a rundown of what happened:

In her October 2nd letter to Hamilton Angelica writes:

Indeed my dear, Sir if my path was strewed with as many roses, as you have filled your letter with compliments, I should not now lament my absence from America…

Notice the comma between “dear” and “Sir”. Now this may be a mistake on Angelica’s part but Hamilton latches onto it, he writes:

You ladies despise the pedantry of punctuation. There was a most critical comma in your last letter. It is my interest that it should have been designed; but I presume it was accidental. Unriddle this if you can.

Basically what Hamilton is on about is that she wrote “my dear, Sir” rather than “my dear Sir”. In the phrase “my dear Sir”, “dear” functions as an adjective, a descriptor, he is a Sir who is dear. Thus the phrase “my dear Sir” doesn’t have romantic connotations to it, as seen above it was communally used to politely address someone. However the comma changes this, the phrase becomes “my dear”, “dear” in this instance functions as a noun, he is her dear, this makes it romantic.

Hamilton finished his letter with a flirtatious “Adieu ma chere, soeur” which translates to “Goodbye my dear, sister”. Note the comma.

The entire premiss of this flirtation is the romantic sentiments attached to the the phrase “my dear”.

With this in mind I proceeded to examine Hamiltons use of the the phrase “my dear” (and variations “my dr.”, “my dearest” and “ma chere”). In his correspondence on founders online he only uses “dear” (or variations) as a noun 9 times and only to 4 different people: Elizabeth Hamilton, Angelica Church, John Laurens and Rufus King.

First and foremost I want to address the letter to Rufus King. This is a bit of an outlier as it doesn’t seem to be a romantic letter. Hamilton addresses the letter “My Dear” however considering the context I suspect this may be a mistake. Hamilton tended to address King “My Dear Sir” or “My Dear King” so it’s possible that that is what he intended to write here.

Out of the remaining 8 letters 4 of them are to Eliza. As Eliza was his wife this is altogether unsurprising and I don’t really have much to say on this. (If anything it’s surprising there are only 4 examples however he often uses other cute pet-names like “angel” when writing Eliza which is romantic in it’s own way).

The one an only use in a letter to Angelica is the earlier example.

The remaining 3 are from letters to John Laurens.

Notably if you look at the draft for Hamilton’s April 1779 letter to Laurens you can see that he originally wrote “And Now my Dear Jack” before crossing out “Jack”. This shows a clear and purposeful choice to change “my Dear Jack” where “Dear” functions as an adjective to “my Dear” where “Dear” functions as a noun.

I will note that he has written “one” underneath with what appears to be an arrow pointing up as if he was changing it to “And Now my Dear one” however if you take a broader look at the draft you will see that “one” actually belongs to the line below.

Conclusion

So what is the point of this? One of the big problems we face when studying queer history is the change of language and how it’s used. Let’s take Hamilton’s famous opening line from his April 1779 letter to Laurens as an example.

Cold in my professions, warm in ⟨my⟩ friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it m⟨ight⟩ be in my power, by action rather than words, ⟨to⟩ convince you that I love you.

As someone in the 21st century I instantly read this as a romantic sentence, however one might point out that perhaps I’m ignoring the historical context. In the 18th century unlike today it was not considered unusual for friends to write quite flowery affectionate letters to each other.

For example in his letter to Meade on the 22nd of October 1981 Laurens writes:

I embrace you tenderly: my eyes are sore, my body and mind fatigued by an uninterrupted flow of business, but as long as they exist, my friendship for you will burn with that pure flame which is kindled by your virtues_

I might counter this argument by pointing out that “by action rather than words” reads like a euphemism, however one could easily argue that it’s somewhat ambiguous. While this sentence could be read as Hamilton saying that he wishes he could show his love for Laurens through sex, it could also be read as Hamilton saying he wants to show his love for Laurens through other non-sexual actions (such as doing nice things for him).

I could argue all day that this line is clearly romantic but without some concrete understanding of what language was considered romantic it’s hard to argue the point.

Hamilton’s letter to Angelica clearly shows the romantic implications of “dear” as a noun. If it didn’t have such implications Hamilton’s entire flirtation in this letter makes no sense. If we conclude that “dear” when used as a noun is romantic, and Hamilton purposefully close to use “dear” as a noun when addressing Laurens we must conclude that Hamilton intended it to be read as romantic.

One might suggest perhaps that it is different as Laurens was a man. That when writing a women it has a romantic connotation but writing a man it doesn’t. However if this was true and the use of “dear” as a noun between two men was a common term of endearment between friends we would surely see it used more.

Stepping away from Hamilton’s letters for a moment I decided to look at some of the other letters on founders online. I didn’t look at these letters in as much detail but a quick look seemed to indicate that the most common uses of “dear” as a noun were between John Adams and his wife Abigail. While this was a very quick look I didn’t identify anymore uses between people who were not already known to be romantically involved.

Based on this research I would conclude that “dear” when used as an adjective could be romantic but definitely wasn’t always romantic, however “dear” when used as a noun carries a romantic connotation.

I would argue that we can conclude that people to whom Hamilton addressed as “my dear” (with perhaps the exception of King) were people he had romantic feelings for (or at least people he intended to suggest he had romantic feelings for).

SZA in Garden (Say It Like Dat)

you should talk about everything damon did while katherine was in elena’s body.

oof i would fucking love too.

Because like, this happens in season 5- so tvd had already done enough to obliterate elena’s character for the sake of Damon’s redemption. She’s forgiven a lot but i genuinely think those few episodes were damon at his absolute worst morality wise.

this is happen at the point of the show where damon had been established, maybe not as a hero, but as a less evil guy than before and overall a likeable character (not to me but ya’know). He has Elena and she trusts him and loves him and she’s forgiven him for everything he’d done to her and others in the past. The show seems pretty determined to get the audience to completely let go of the idea of stelena or a single elena and understand that damon can be good for her,

- then this shit happens

So Katherine possesses Elena to avoid dyeing (i have MANY thoughts on that storyline too bc it’s actually the primary reason i struggle to respect Katherine as a character but that’s for another day) and she breaks up with Damon while possessing her. I’d also like to mention that she doesn’t even go about it that brutally, like it’s not nice but she literally just tells him all the true stuff ab his and elenas relationship.

Damon then reacts by

- killing Elenas recently reunited childhood best friend aaron

- trying to kill her brother, who previous death literally destroyed elena

- and just being an all around abusive dick

Now what really gets to me about this storyline, other than how fucking horrifying it is, is what it says about how Damon views Elena and the reality of what her situation with not only Damon but the salvatore brothers is and always has been. because a lot of ppl refuse to see Elena as a victim when it comes to her relationship with them but like- THIS FUCKING STORYLINE SAYS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW.

Elena can’t leave Damon. She never could. This storyline literally confirms- Damon will destroy her if she leaves and the show DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WITH IT.

Now we can argue that when returned to her body, Elena has little reaction bc she’s hearing it all second hand and to memory it is pretty sugar coated, but it’s difficult not to think that she saw this situation as a confirmation of her trapped status. Do i think that was the writer’s intention? no fucking idea. literally i have no idea what the tvd writers were going for in the later seasons.

but one of the reasons i defend the person Elena ends up as in the later seasons is bc she really couldn’t have become anything else, this dependent women who can’t live without damon was forged in these storyline’s and it’s so fucking depressing. She was groomed and abused to hell and back by both stefan and damon and she really never stood a chance.

anyway holy fuck this got long and probably wasn’t what you need from the ask but thank you for sending it lmao

May I offer you a frog sketched in paint in this trying time ?

october is pride month here in south africa and halloween everywhere else. so, in honour of that, i drew a few pride ghosties that y’all can use as lockscreens. happy spooky pride!

(the little pale orange, green and blue one is the unlabeled flag)

have you ever considered playing 5D chess?

These are the only games I have desktop shortcuts for right now baby

Megan Thee Stallion via Twitter

All of you, you’re a curse on this earth stretched out over generations.

“[Laurens’s] gallantry, in action, was highly characteristic of his love of fame. The post of danger was his favourite station. Some, indeed, may style his display of intrepidity, at every risk, the height of rashness.—Strictly speaking, it was so. But, at the commencement of the war, when the British Officers were persuaded, or affected to believe, that every American was a coward, such total disregard of personal safety, on the part of Laurens, such display of chivalric intrepidity, that equally excited their surprise and admiration, was, essentially, beneficial to our cause. To deny that his anxiety to meet the foe, led him too often into unnecessary peril, is impossible. I had, too often, cause to see and to lament it. Let one instance suffice to prove it. A Centinel on the bank of Ashley River, opposite to Dorchester, perceiving a Red Coat moving through the brush wood on the other shore, gave the alarm that the enemy were without their lines. This being communicated to Lieutenant Colonel Laurens, a troop of dragoons, and a company of infantry of the Legion, were ordered to cross the river and reconnoiter. But, the rapidity of the stream determined Captain O’Neal, who commanded, to wait till a boat, which had been sent for, should arrive. In the interim, Lieutenant Colonel Laurens gallopped up and demanded with warmth, “Why this halt, Captain—were not orders given to cross?” “Yes, Colonel, but look to the current, and judge if it be practicable.” “This is no time for argument,” rejoined Laurens. “You, who are brave men, follow me.” Saying this, he plunged into the river, but was instantaneously obliged to quit his horse, and with extreme difficulty reached the opposite shore. O’Neal, than whom a braver man did not exist, indignant at the speech of Laurens, replied, “You shall see, sir, that there are men here as courageous as yourself,” and at the head of his troop, entered the river. I cannot do justice to the scene that followed. All was tumult and confusion; for, although no life was lost, several of the men were so nearly drowned, that it became necessary to use every means to make them disgorge the water they had swallowed; and all were so much exhausted, that a temporary halt was indispensably necessary. The infantry, by the aid of plank, and large doors torn from a neighbouring ware-house, passed over with less difficulty. In the mean time, Lieutenant Colonel Laurens, attended by Messrs. Ralph and Walter Izard, and Mr. Wainwright, who ever accompanied him as his Aids, hastened to the spot where the British regimental had been seen. It then was found, that a military coat had been hung up in a tree, by a soldier who had been whipped and drummed out of the 64th Regiment, for drunkenness, and whose lacerated back would admit of no covering.”

— From Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America, with Sketches of Character of Persons the Most Distinguished, in the Southern States, for Civil and Military Services by Alexander Garden (of Lee’s Partisan Legion; aid-de-camp to Major General Greene; and honorary member of the historical society of New-York)

A little affirmation for myself after doing a 30 minute stretching routine:

I don’t have to nail it right now. It takes time and work, which I’m willing to give. Small victories are important, and at least I’m trying. I got nothing but time, and eventually I’ll feel amazing. I just have to be patient.

I’m proud of whatever I was able to do.

If you needed to hear this, please remember that you won’t get it on the first try and that’s okay! Small victories, fam. ♥️

how to trick writers into giving you more fanfic to read

i think trans people should be allowed at any given moment to commit acts of vanity. and violence. maybe at the same time.