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princelydisaster · 10 months

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I have the inexorable urge to rant about a character I’m obsessed with that much of the fandom hates

Anyway fuck it.

I understand that a lot of people dislike Charles Quigley (for good reason) but I keep getting burned by finding fanfics and posts tagged with the character that only feature him to make fun of him or something

Honestly if you are writing a fanfic in the Harlots ‘verse and don’t want to include him, there is no shame in writing him out. (Or any other character for that matter.)

Have a throwaway line where someone says he went to visit a friend for a month or something.

That could also introduce things like more tension because Lydia might be more stressed / worried about having her precious baby mid 30s boy out of the house. Maybe she’s more prone to lashing out. Maybe she’s distracted and her rivals like Margaret get more bold about taking action against her.

It introduces a lot of interesting things that could work for a number of fanfic plots.

…Okay that’s it for people who don’t want to include him in fanfics, I’m gonna discuss things I think could be explored in fanfic below.

Note that because this show has a lot of interconnected characters I also talk a lot about Lydia, Emily, and Nancy for some reason.

TW: discussions of abusive relationships, incest, sex trafficking, kidnapping, murder (stuff that’s in the show)

I’ve seen someone say before that Charles is one of the few straight male characters on the show who’s important because of his part in fleshing out female characters via relationships.

I can see that. I think the nature of the show means that he as a man - a passive one at that - wouldn’t get a lot of screen time.

The point about him being important relationship wise is really interesting. Tbh, the early-mid season 1 interactions between Emily and Lydia remind me of the trope of a dad running to chase away his daughter’s boyfriend with a shotgun.

There’s that gender flipped part where women aren’t usually given as much sexual agency in tv/film etc, but also I like that it’s not played off as a kinda quirky “overprotective” parent thing, but the show recognizes how toxic this dynamic is.

You can argue in the gun toting dad example it’s sometimes bc the daughter is underage, but still, there’s often that undercurrent of a parent being threatened by their child getting a romantic partner and “replacing” them.

This is a big part of the Lydia and Charles relationship imo. I would characterize it as a nuanced depiction of an emotionally abusive relationship with elements of covert / emotional incest.

Emotionally abusive because she tends to manipulate him - isolate him from others, like potential partners.

When she feels he “replaced” her by choosing Emily - she immediately replaces him with Charlotte, a surrogate daughter.

Note: covert incest is not actual, literal incest. I do Not think their relationship has an actual sexual / romantic component to it. (but idk if you think that would be interesting to explore in a fanfic, go right ahead.)

I’m referring to unhealthy parent/child relationships where the child is expected to take on a role similar to the parent’s spouse. Such as where the parent expects the child to comfort them emotionally (even from a young age), or to prioritize their relationship over other forms of relationships, like friendships or dating other people.

I can definitely see that, especially with Lydia’s line to Rasselas in season 2 after he talks about losing his partner to an unknown disease. He says something like “I lost my precious boy”.

And she says, “so did I”.

This is due to Lydia being self centered as fuck, sure, but remember how she reacted to Charles nearly dying of an OD because of Emily? She was nowhere near this mopey about it.

(Ofc she had to make sure he was safe but once he was in stable condition she immediately struck.)

In that case at least she could react with violence and use Emily to boost her own standing.

In the case of Charles moving out to live with her, she’s kinda screwed, her old methods of dealing with a situation by attacking others to her own benefit don’t work.

It’s not really actionable. She can’t just go after Emily at the moment.

Lydia is finally stuck having to deal with the idea that her son - who she’s made part of her identity, especially if it means she can say she’s a Good Mother so she’s winning at Patriarchy - maybe chose someone else over her. Or doesn’t want to be close to her anymore.

—

Okay yeah I have talked about the relationships a lot but I could also talk about Charles himself.

Again, he’s a very passive character in a show about very active - or even aggressive - women.

I think his scenes in the show serve an important role of providing some levity or respite from the more intense drama (ie kidnapping, psychological torment, etc). It kinda breaks things up so you can fully digest how awful the other scenes are.

Not to say that he’s a totally innocent guy.

He’s still a shitty person, very self centered and privileged and willing to take advantage of others for his own desires.

I feel like sometimes I’m tipping the scales in his favor too much, as Charles is a morally grey character who likes to think he’s a good guy, but… it’s much easier for him to continue being awful or allow others to suffer for his benefit.

I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff at play with him, the ways Lydia’s parenting makes him see her as a role model and also a negative role model.

He starts off wanting to follow in her footsteps, to impress her. When Lydia starts intimidating Margaret for Emily coming to her, he backs up Lydia by remarking that Emily’s pretty bangable.

(Which is… kinda a stupid thing to add, but it still has an effect on Margaret, which is what they want.)

But once Charles starts to get into what it really means for Lydia to be a bawd - and him by extension - he doesn’t want to continue in the same way.

It’s not just, maybe he can keep Lydia from lashing out at the girls, or maybe if she does he can help them out by sneaking them food.

Once Emily nearly kills him via OD to escape, he doesn’t feel like going after her. Maybe he has a realization from that near death experience. Maybe he’s just too passive to want revenge. Maybe he knows that if he tried to get revenge Lydia would just take it to an eye for an eye levels of intense.

Maybe you could argue that he’s got some kind of guilt around what he did to Emily.

He seemed to almost have a moment of self awareness when (iirc) he told her he’d want to move out some place without Lydia, where she wouldn’t have to have sex with anyone… except him. Oops.

I think the relationship with Emily - because she’s a lot more pro active than he is, and she’s willing to talk back to him despite the power he has over her - forces him to realize his role in things.

And the development with the whole kidnapping people and giving them over to sadistic cultists to murder thing gets him firmly off Lydia’s side.

(Well, that and the line where iirc Nancy says something like “you can’t be on everyone’s side”.)

I think also there’s a lot that could be said about Nancy’s role in nudging him in the direction of a redemption arc in season. Maybe more like pushing him, idk.

Nancy is one of the only people who’s really patient enough to help Emily, even when she lashes out because she feels vulnerable.

She’s one of the first people who really treats Charles as an adult now that I think of it. Like even when Emily rocks the boat, she still plays into his childish side to keep his favor.

I think it’s largely because he’s the exact kind of guy Nancy is used to seeing - a rich dude who wants a dominant woman to take care of him and guide him - and the added history with his mother helps.

You could also argue that while Lydia fits patriarchal ideas of the ideal mother - being nurturing (unless you piss her off), delicate, feminine, lacking her own romance / sex life in lieu of caring for her child (usually) - Nancy is more like the reverse of all these traits, but she actually cares for and guides the people she takes under her wing.

When Emily lashes out at people she thinks are condescending to her, Lydia just doubles down on punishing her, but Nancy gives her the benefit of the doubt and offers her aid.

Was this post a Trojan horse for Nancy birch?? Maybe??

I think that the contrast is also interesting, with Nancy lacking all the conventionally feminine things that make Lydia appear to be a good person on the surface, but actually nurturing and wanting people to grow and providing good coping mechanisms and a shoulder to cry on. Often at the expense of herself.

(So basically Lydia is cloth mother and Nancy is wire mother? Yeah)

I realize I went way off the mark here but I think there’s a lot of potential in exploring the relationship between Charles and Nancy too.

Like he’s more used to seeing women who try to fit into social roles men place on them (whore, virgin, mother, crone etc archetypes) so seeing a goth butch lesbian who tells him to get his shit together… kinda breaks his brain.

It’s a really interesting dynamic I wish we saw more of.

—

There’s a lot more I could say, and maybe will say at a later date, but I’m getting kinda tired of writing this post. I tried to focus on the stuff that was touched on in canon + my own interpretation of it. Or different ones you could run with.

If you got this far… thank you for reading! I give you a sugar pig (whatever that is) for your efforts

#princely squeaks #harlots on Hulu #Charles Quigley #Lydia Quigley #Nancy Birch #Emily Lacey #in the end??#why couldn’t I fixate on characters who have merch OTL I have to make my own or write long shit like this

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gatutor · 4 months

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Julie Bishop-Charles Quigley "Girls can play" 1937, de Lambert Hillyer.

#Julie Bishop #Charles Quigley #Lambert Hillyer

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letterboxd-loggd · 6 months

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Convicted (1938) Leon Barsha

December 3rd 2023

#convicted #1938 #leon barsha #rita hayworth #charles quigley #doreen macgregor #marc lawrence #edgar edwards #noel cusack

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pierppasolini · 6 months

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Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) // dir. Charles E. Sellier, Jr.

#Linnea Quigley #Leo Geter #Silent Night Deadly Night #Charles E. Sellier Jr.#my caps #my edits #*silentnightdeadlynight

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aseriesofunfortunatetexts · 10 months

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asoue + tumblr

#lemony snicket #quigley quagmire #klaus baudelaire #charles #josephine anwhistle #ernest denouement #frank denouement #esmé squalor #a series of unfortunate events #asoue #asoue edit #text post meme

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unfortunatetheorist · 7 months

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Hello! Love your blog :) Hoping you can help me with a quick q. On page 269 of The Slippery Slope, Violet, Klaus and Quigley discover the VFD motto ‘the world is quiet here’ but the narrator (Lemony) describes ‘four tiny words etched over their heads’, not five. Do you think this is a mistake, or is he leaving one out (e.g: ‘the’), or is he deliberately misquoting? The motto is derived from the first line of the Algernon Charles Swinburne poem The Garden of Proserpine: ‘Here, where the world is quiet;’ — so should the real interpretation of the motto be ‘the world is quiet’? Interested to hear your thoughts, thanks!

Hi, @sianitha, thanks for the ask (my Very First Discussion)!

It's definitely an interesting question, for which there can be a few theories:

Lemony is lying, for some bizarre reason.

Lemony is referring to The Garden of Proserpine when he means the actual emblazoned motto.

Either the word 'Here' or the word 'The' got burned from the fire, and Lemony is right.

It's an unnoticed editorial mistake.

Let's see. We know none of it is burned, as Quigley read all five words out.

Lemony is lying, for some bizarre reason.

Lemony is referring to The Garden of Proserpine when he means the actual emblazoned motto.

Either the word 'Here' or the word 'The' got burned from the fire, and Lemony is right.

It's an unnoticed editorial mistake.

Lemony is known for being a bit of a liar, but I think he tells mostly half-truths - when necessary - simply because he can't trust anyone, after having gone on the lam. But in this context, it's unnecessary; he's writing these books to clear his name and the Baudelaires' names, what good would it do him to lie?

Lemony is lying, for some bizarre reason.

Lemony is referring to The Garden of Proserpine when he means the actual emblazoned motto.

Either the word 'Here' or the word 'The' got burned from the fire, and Lemony is right.

It's an unnoticed editorial mistake.

Also, as a volunteer, he'd know his poetry pretty well; well enough to distinguish it from the organisation's motto, even if it is similar.

Lemony is lying, for some bizarre reason.

Lemony is referring to The Garden of Proserpine when he means the actual emblazoned motto.

Either the word 'Here' or the word 'The' got burned from the fire, and Lemony is right.

It's an unnoticed editorial mistake.

And this makes sense when you look at other typos, such as...

...well, as far as I remember, there was one in TPP about Klaus and "her sisters", or something to that effect.

As for the interpretation of the motto, I think it means

"THE WORLD IS QUIET HERE"

i.e. Wherever there is a branch of the V.F.D., the world THERE is quiet. Elsewhere, it's noisy and uncouth.

Hope that helps,

¬ Th3r3534rch1ngr4ph, Unfortunate Theorist/Snicketologist

***EDIT: There's also a fifth option which I hadn't thought of when writing this - the motto reads "THE WORLD'S QUIET HERE". But this also doesn't follow, as Quigley read out 5 words, not 4.***

#asoue #vfd #lemony snicket #a series of unfortunate events #snicketverse #theory #the world is quiet here #the slippery slope #the garden of proserpine #Algernon Charles Swinburne #first ask #very first ask #violet baudelaire #quigley quagmire #quiglet #quiglet shipper #quiglet forever #literary allusion

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the-dust-jacket · 4 months

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Congratulations to all of the 2024 American Indian Youth Literature Award honorees! These are the Medalists and Honor books in the Middle Grade (and chapter books) category.

#American Indian Youth Literature Awards #ALA Media Awards #We Still Belong #Christine Day #Eagle Drums #Nasugraq Rainey Hopson #Jo Jo Makoons #Dawn Quigley #Mascot #Traci Sorell #Charles Waters #She Persisted #Laurel Goodluck

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afterthegreatunknown · 9 months

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List of Snicket-Verse Characters I headcanon as Asian Descent, Fully or Partly, with the One (1) Book Canonical Asian Character

The One (1) Book Canonical

Haruki [Murakami]: Japanese. Originally born in Kyoto in the Fushimi-ku ward, Haruki and his family moved to the City when he was six due to his father’s job (in the organization). When it comes to reading and writing Japanese, it isn’t as perfect as people assume, for Haruki spend more of his childhood reading and writing in English. Speaking Japanese though, Haruki can 100% do.

Headcanons Characters, ATWQ

Dashiell Qwerty: Chinese descent. Qwerty is an alias surname his family uses when out in the field for VFD. His real surname is Qiao, and whenever not in the field, volunteers call him Qiao. Or ‘Q’, if they can’t pronounce it. Dashiell has a technical middle name; his Chinese given name, Qiang. Dashiell is (was) only call Qiang by his parents.

Jackie’s Grandfather: Korean. Jackie’s grandfather full name in western order, is Pyong-ho Ahn, nickname in his youth as Moray. Phyong-ho used to manage Moray Wheels in the past in addition to racing, before retiring and allowing Jackie to take over. Phyong-ho by the present no longer goes by Moray, unless you’re a very close friend of his.

Jackie (Ahn): Korean descent. Jackie is really Jackie’s first name, though they do accept the Korean name their grandfather gave them: Jae-kyung. Jackie only answers to Jae-kyung if it’s spoken by their grandfather, their parents (now decease), and their aunt and uncle and cousin who lives in the City, finding it something special meant for family only.

The Talkie Brothers: Asian descent of different nationalities. Arthur Takei is of Japanese descent. Amit Sharma is of Indian descent. ‘Talkie Brothers’ came because many couldn’t pronounce Takei. They thought about going by “the Sherman Brothers” for some couldn’t pronounce Sharma correctly either, but that is used by a real pair of musically talent brothers.

Alice Lost, nee Takei: Japanese descent. The younger sister of Arthur Takei, Alice has a great talent of doing origami. She can make anything out of a piece of paper, but her specialty was making paper cranes. In fact, before her death, Alice was aiming to create 1,000, and had reached 1,000 exactly when the fire broke out at the Lost Arms.

Ornette Lost: Biracial. Japanese descent from her mother Alice, Irish descent from her father (Prosper immigrated to SBTS as a child with his parents). Ornette’s talent of (paper) sculptures came from watching her mother folding origami paper into cranes. Ornette feels connected to her mother when making origami cranes, and aims to fold 1,001 in her memory.

Headcanon Characters, ASOUE

Captain Widdershins: (French) Chinese Cambodian on Father’s side, and native Cambodian (Khmer) on Mother’s side. Widdershins does his best to feel connected to his former home country, be celebrating holidays that he can barely recall celebrating, making meals if the ingredients available, or speaking Khmer to himself and sometimes around Fiona. For that last one, Widdershins gave Fiona a Khmer [nick]name, though after an interaction with a volunteer, had Widdershins stopping it. Post-canon, he starts saying Fiona’s Khmer [nick]name again, usually when it's just the two of them.

Raymond ‘Q’ Quagmire: Chinese descent. Raymond is an adopted Quagmire due to his brother Dashiell’s death/murder. Raymond, like Dashiell, has a technical middle name that is his Chinese given name; Jiahao. However, for reasons, people assume Dashiell’s Chinese given name is Raymond’s, made worse because many had forgot Raymond and Dashiell are related.

Joan Quagmire [nee Morstan]: Chinese descent. Joan’s birth surname is Lau; Morstan is the surname of her adopted family. Two of Joan’s favorite games to play are Mahjong and Wei Qi (Go). While she’s not the best player of the latter, she’s brilliant in the former. Joan likes making her children (all together) play a game with her once a week; they never won.

Alex and Lindsey Morstan: Chinese descent. Being Joan’s triplet sisters, they were forced to play Mahjong and Wei Qi with her, with the latter being the game they’re best at. Alex and Lindsey are fonder of reading (translated) Chinese novels; Alex loves Journey to the West, while Lindsey enjoys Flowers in the Mirror.

Duncan, Isadora, and Quigley Quagmire: Chinese descent. Duncan, Isadora, and Quigley, pre and post canon, do their best to gain insight and feel connected to their identity, in their own ways. Duncan does it by researching Chinese history, particularly of the Chinese Dynasties (the Tang Dynasty is his favorite). Isadora does it by watching Chinese opera (she loves the costumes, and the singing style). Quigley does with the hands-on approach of preparing and cooking traditional Chinese dishes with help (parents and aunt pre-canon. Post-canon, Quigley get Hector or Widdershins’ help, sometimes the two adults together if needed).

Charles: Vietnamese descent. Charles’ full name is Charles Nguyen, the son of two Vietnamese people who lived half their lives in France before moving to the Land of Districts. Charles worked with his parents at their swanky restaurant, Nguyen Bistro; it serves traditional Vietnamese dishes as well as French dishes as an alternative. Charles took business (and cooking) classes to fully take over, but a mysterious fire that burned the restaurant and the apartment home, as well as killing his parents, changed his path.

Sir: Thai. An immigrant that came to the Land of Districts to escape his past, Sir found work at Lucky Smells Lumber Mill as a regular employee, before getting promoted to foreman. When the owner Smogface Wiley died, the mill was doom to close. However, Sir managed to get a trial run as boss, and later became the new permanent owner. Sir’s cousins working at the Mill is true; they’re the ones who made Sir escape his past in the first place. Sir had no qualms on the conditions they’re working, seeing how he survived it and worked his way upward (and maybe revenge).

(Regarding Sir’s unknown name, his first name at least, it’s Chalermchai. When he was a regular employee, Chalermchai was usually referred to or call by that didn’t require the foreman or anyone else to say his name. But when Chalermchai became foreman, people discover they were unable to say it, so Chalermchai became ‘Sir.’ Not many people call Sir by his first name nowadays. Charles says it, and even then, it’s rare.)

R, Duchess of Winnipeg: Biracial. Japanese descent from her father, Ryutaro (Second generation Japanese-Canadian), and French from her mother, Sabine (French from France and French Canadian). R is a naming pattern from her father’s family, for in Sabine’s family, no one ever had an ‘R’ name before (Sabine does have the alias of ‘Rhea’ though). R isn’t connected to her Japanese heritage as much as she likes; the most she knows of is Japanese theater, mainly Kabuki. The R engrave ring was something Sabine did herself, much to her mother (R’s Grand-Mère Thea) disapproval, for Sabine wanted the ring to be special for R when she gets it.

R’s heir, Ramona Q, and the Q stands for Quach (Quách): She's the daughter of two Vietnamese refugees who were very good friends with R. They confided to R about the odd interactions Ramona had with her local librarian, leading to R telling them things to do to keep their daughter safe. When Ramona’s parents died in a fire, R decided to adopt Ramona to lessen VFD’s influence. R loves Ramona very much, being an honorary aunt to the girl before adopting her, and does her best to let Ramona be connected to her culture (clothing, music, food; food is most common and accessible one of all).

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