#i did Not but i appreciate the sentiment lars
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Say what you will about Lars von Trier but he was so real for ending each episode of The Kingdom by personally giving a silly little speech saying he hopes we enjoyed the show
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can I have anything soft and kind where newton accidentally overhears a video calll between hermann and lars where hermann is getting absolutely *demolished* by his father and it's upsetting and uncalled for and he's visibly upset by the end of it so newt decides to bring him tea and make terrible jokes and play classic music and generally acts like a friend (dunno whether hermann knows that newt overheard and how he'd react) x
this also doubles as my entry for my “Hurt/Comfort” square for my @theloccent summer Bingo!!!!!! sorry it’s taken me so long to fill mine, i haven’t had the best summer 😅
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Between the two of them, kaiju attacks always seem to hit Hermann harder. Newt’s never happy about them, obviously, he’s not a fucking sadist, but more kaiju mean more kaiju parts, which means Newt has more to work with, and more to pull viable theories from for the sake of the entire planet. Every kaiju attack brings them one step closer to no kaiju attacks. (In theory, anyway. Newt’s kind of hit a rut in his latest stuff.) There’s a bright side of things.
Hermann, though--he’s another story. When a jaeger falls, or fails, even through no fault of his own, it’s one of Hermann’s jaegers falling or failing, and he blames himself for each and every jaeger that does either, to the extent that he’ll lock himself away in his quarters for a goddamn week and agonize over everything. Even when they win he finds a way to fault himself for something--damage that shouldn’t have been sustained, a lag in response time. Fucking paint chipping off.
That’s half of it, anyway. There’s also his dad.
The fight they had this time was especially nuclear: a kaiju came a little too close to the city, and a jaeger was a little too slow in stopping it, and it managed to tear through a decently-sized business complex (which had been evacuated in time) before their jaeger blasted a hole through its gut. Dr. Gottlieb Senior had plenty to say about this the next day. Newt heard plenty of it, too, lurking outside the lab after a well-timed lunch break. Mostly well-timed, anyway. Ideally he wouldn’t have heard any of the fight.
“--Father, will you please--!” Hermann is shouting in German, and the response is prissy, and clipped, and likewise in German, faster than Newt’s Americanized brain can even follow. It must be something nasty, though; Hermann lets loose a colorful string of curses, and there’s a beep as the video call ends abruptly. When Newt peeks around the corner, Hermann’s head is buried in his hands.
Newt has a feeling he knows what this one was about. It’s the same one Hermann has with his dad after every kaiju attack, after all--the jaeger program is dead, long live the wall, come to the dark side of the force, Hermann, you’ll get a nice paycheck and live comfortably until the kaiju tear apart the world. And Hermann’s response is always the same, because he has at least a shred of goddamn integrity--fuck you, no. Well, maybe not in those exact words. The sentiment is there though.
Tomorrow, Dr. Gottlieb Senior is going to go on international television and milk that leveled skyscraper for all its worth, and decry his son’s hopeless idealism and naivety, and demand the U.N. funnel even more money away from the jaegers and into his own personal pet project, and Hermann is going to shout and snap at Newt for every little thing and refuse to put anything in his system that isn’t nicotine or black coffee and work himself to a migraine and an exhausted collapse at his desk. Today, Newt is going to be a friend.
He ducks back into the lab twenty minutes later with a cup of tea--the good shit, from the private stash he keeps in his quarters for days like today--and a whole wheat sandwich wrapped in plastic. Hermann hasn’t moved from his desk. He doesn’t so much as twitch as Newt sets both tea and sandwich down next to his elbow.
“What’s this?” he mumbles.
“I wasn’t really hungry for lunch after all,” Newt lies. “I thought you might want it.”
Hermann picks up the sandwich and narrows his eyes at it. He narrows his eyes at Newt next. “You weren’t hungry?” he says.
Newt shrugs. “Yeah, so what? If you don’t want it--”
He reaches out to take it back, but Hermann yanks it out of reach. “No,” he says quickly. “I will take it. And the tea, too.” He coughs. “...Thank you, Newton.”
“No sweat,” Newt says.
On any normal day, Newt would shuffle his iTunes library at full volume as he does his dissections, and Hermann would whine and bitch and throw chalk at Newt until Newt turns it down to a respectable half volume. Today, he accesses a very particular playlist--Hermann Jams #3--and sets his laptop volume low enough to just be background noise. He’s not sure if Hermann actually even likes classical music, but it seems to calm him down, and Newt can at least appreciate a good violin every now and then.
Hermann’s shoulders loosen up after two songs; he takes a bite of the sandwich. Good. “Need anything else?” Newt says, aiming for casual, but wildly aware of how forced it sounds. “A different sandwich? Fruit? I have a couple apples in my--”
“It’s fine, Newton,” Hermann says.
“Just checking,” Newt says.
He waits until Hermann finishes the sandwich and starts on the tea to speak again. “I finished that book I was reading, by the way,” Newt says, slicing his scalpel through a layer of kaiju hide. “The sexy one about vampires. You were right, it sucked.”
It rocked, actually, but one of Hermann’s favorite things to do is lord his superior taste in everything over Newt, so Newt is going to hand him the opportunity on a silver platter. He’s just that great of a friend. Hermann snorts derisively. “Aren’t I always?” he says. “And to think you wanted me to purchase a copy, too.”
“Hey, man, nothing wrong with book club.”
“There is when the books in question are exceedingly--well--” Hermann makes a face. “Questionable. If I picked--oh, this is very good, by the way, Newton,” he adds, lifting his tea cup. “Wherever did you find it? I know it didn’t come from the mess.”
The secret tea stash labelled Hermann in Newt’s closet was purchased at a very expensive shop in the city a few months ago. Originally Newt bought it with intentions of giving it to Hermann as a birthday present, but kinda forgot, so now he just breaks it out for these kinds of occasions. “I have connections, Hermann,” Newt says cryptically. He also has a bus pass.
They bicker good-naturedly over the literary value of vampire smut for a little bit, before switching gears to a somewhat more heated debate over what would happen if Newt just stabbed his scalpel into his kaiju sample, and--after doing it, and finding out the answer is nothing--Newt ducks out to get Hermann more from his tea stash. It’s late by that point, nearly time for them to head back to their quarters for the night. Hermann catches the end of Newt’s sleeve after Newt sets his tea down. “I’m not as oblivious as I might have appeared, Newton,” he says. “Thank you for your kindness today. It’s very much appreciated.”
He gives Newt a rare smile, stiff and awkward as hell. Something melts in Newt’s chest. “Uh. Yeah, sure,” he says, heat rising to his cheeks. “You know I’m your...friend.”
“I do,” Hermann says seriously.
He drops Newt’s sleeve; Newt finds himself inexplicably mourning the loss of the touch, and--as Hermann’s face slips back into neutrality--that little smile. “Your dad is a giant bag of dicks,” Newt blurts out before he can help himself. “He’s not worth it. Seriously.”
The smile returns in a brief flicker. “I'll try to remember that,” Hermann says.
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[Image ID: Chibi Ted Wizardess Heart in front of a gradient peach and purple background. There’s spiderwebs on the edges of the black frame. The icon is done in the style of the event Sweetly Haunted. /End ID]
The night air was chilly and crisp as I stood outside the boys’ dorm. Groups of students were walking around, bags full of treats and costumes dancing in the breeze. It was officially Halloween in Gedonelune and I was more than ready to get to the Halloween party. After all, I was helping run it. Ted and I were going to meet up and then head over together, but…
Well, so far, he was a no show.
I checked my watch. He told me he’d meet me fifteen minutes ago. What was the hold up? Did he forget and head over on his own? I hoped not. I’d made us matching costumes and even though we’d be at the party together, walking over would still be really nice. Not just for his company, but to show off the costumes I’d made to more people. Was he caught up in something at the dorms? Was he napping? My feet were already starting to hurt from standing so long, so I went ahead and went into the dorm.
I’d never really been in the boys’ dorm before. Halloween and the Winter Holiday were the only days were allowed to go into different dorm buildings, and usually I was so busy I never got the chance to come in. Unsurprisingly, the buildings were carbon copies of each other. Except there was a sour smell in the hallways as I tried to find Ted’s dorm room. We didn’t have that in our dorm, although ours probably smelled like body sprays and perfume. But I’d prefer basic vanilla and Hinomotan Cherry Blossoms over old cheese and that weird deodorant teenage guys liked so much.
Glancing at nameplates, I finally found one with Ted and Lars’ names on it. I knocked.
“Ted? Are you in there?”
“Crap!” A loud thud.
“Ted?! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just give me a moment.” Was he okay? Maybe he was asleep and I woke him up. I hope he didn’t fall out of his bed, or something. I waited for the door to open at any moment. But it didn’t. There was a lot of scurrying going around in Ted’s room, I could hear it, but the door wasn’t unlocking.
“Hey, Ted, are you sure you’re okay? Can I come in?” I wiggled the doorknob, but to no avail. It was firmly locked.
“Yeah, sorry, just give me a minute.” Again, the same response, basically.
“If you need some more time, that’s fine, but can I at least come in?” I asked him.
“I know, I know! I just, ah hell!”
“Ted?!” It didn’t sound like he was hurt, but that didn’t stop me from worry. I kept trying the door, hoping it would magically unlock itself. “Ted, what’s going on?!”
“It’s nothing!”
“If you don’t open the door or tell me what’s going on, I’m getting Elias and making him open the door for me!” I threatened. There was even more scrambling coming from the other side and in a few seconds, the door was open. Ted’s hair was sticking out in all directions and his ears were back. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Your ears are back and you look nervous. What’s going on?” Ted sighed, shoulders slumping forward. Wordlessly, he went back to his desk and picked up the hat I’d made for his costume. It was torn up and covered in what looked like handfuls of hot glue.
“Oh no, what happened?!” I snatched the hat out of his hands. There was absolutely no way I could fix this. There was too much glue trying to keep it together and there was no way I could cut through it, let alone sew it back together. “I… Uh, I don’t think I can fix this. What happened to it?”
“Me. I’m so sorry, I know you spent so much time making this,” he said. “The ear holes were a little snug so I tried to make them bigger and…” He grimaced, glancing down at the mangled corpse that was the hat.
“Ted, why didn’t you just ask me to fix it?”
“I didn’t want to pile more work onto your plate.” Although it sucked his hat was ruined, I appreciated the sentiment. I reached out and grabbed his hand.
“It’s fine. It’s just a hat and I’m happy you didn’t want to stress me out. But next time, just tell me,” I told him.
“All right, I will.” I wasn’t sure if I completely believed him, but at least he was okay. And besides, it was Halloween! This was supposed to be a fun night of candy and mischief.
“So, are you ready to go to the party?” He nodded, offering his arm to me in a grand gesture. I just laughed and took it. I hoped the rest of the night didn’t have more setbacks like this. But then again, as long as Ted was with me, I’m sure it’d at least be interesting.
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A Life By Your Side
Summary: Living together...
Notes: Couvade Syndrome affects first-time fathers and manifests itself with pregnancy-like symptoms.
Stroopwafels are waffle-like cookies filled with caramel and accompanied by tea or coffee. They originate in the Netherlands.
mei is Dutch for May.
Nothing personal against the name Femke, it was the first one that came to mind.
Other links:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/25720198/chapters/63573076
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13663177/5/A-Life-By-Your-Side
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For the moment, Lars and Mei tried to live in the same space without getting in the way. In the morning they each went to their respective jobs and when they returned, they took care of their own. Although Mei was in charge of the kitchen and made him eat breakfast and lunch. He also started to accompany her to her gynecologist’s appointments. The first time he saw the sonogram, he was excited and smiled at Mei. She smiled back at him forcibly. This wasn’t how she wanted to live out her pregnancy. It wasn’t how she wanted to start a family, if she could call it that.
Since Mei started living with Lars again, he could finally breath more peacefully. It wasn’t as if he wanted to control her, it was more about having the assurance that she would be protected, and that he would do his duty as her husband. He wanted her to have a comfortable and healthy pregnancy. Besides, that baby was his too, he wanted to give it the love and attention it deserved. Even if he didn’t know how, he would try to be a good father.
“You seem calmer lately,” commented Ludwig, who already knew he had come back with Mei.
“I am not really, with Mei pregnant and going to work is all I think about,” he said without reflecting.
“I’m sure she’s careful; plus, you go to school for her, right?” he asked.
Lars nodded and then smiled nervously.
“I still can’t believe I’m going to be a dad,” he admitted.
“Take it easy. I know you’ll do a great job by taking care of Mei and the baby”
Mei, thought Lars, pulling the picture out of the drawer again. It was actually nice to think they were building a home. If he could use that term. Looking at the picture, he wondered if he could ever love her. He wasn’t sure. How could he be? Now that she no longer had the task of bringing him back, she no longer spent time with him. They only talked at dinner time and still felt an invisible barrier separating them. He wanted to regain her trust and see her as happy as before. He wondered if she would still love him, most likely not, he thought. Although, the situation with Stacy had been a trap, it was logical that that, added to the time they spent apart, would end up for destroying that affection he complained so much about at first.
Looking at her closely, he could now understand that Mei was a woman who hid more than let him see. She was much more than she seemed at first glance. For him that sweet smile didn’t fit her melancholy gaze and if he added that things between them were going badly because of misunderstandings, he didn’t expect her to open her heart so suddenly. Probably only the old Lars had access, but he wasn’t there anymore.
If he had to be honest to himself, he would say that he wasn’t at all calm about his relationship with Mei and the pregnancy. The more noticeable the pregnancy was, Lars felt more anxious to see her leave every morning and carry that heavy bag along with all her materials for her classes. So, he wanted to keep an eye on her, started taking her to work, picking her up and following her wherever she went. Often, Mei would decline his help, but he always wanted to intervene, which made her nervous. There were still some grudges held, even though she didn’t want to admit it.
“Mei, I don’t think you should stretch out like that. Let me get the plates for you.”
In doing so, they both released one at the same time causing it to crash to the floor. At that moment, something inside her exploded. It wasn’t that she was bothered by the help, but by the constant surveillance. She had promised herself to stay away from him, so that when they decided to separate, because that was what would happen, she wouldn’t be able to feel that intense pain again, but the more she tried to put her distance away, he went after her more insistently. It was impossible to avoid this closeness, which irritated her.
“Look what you did. I told you, I can stand on my own two feet. I am not useless. Leave me alone!” Mei expressed.
He was silent, ashamed and at the same time sorry, because it sounded exactly like what he had told her that time. The intention was the same: to help, to be useful to her, make her feel comfortable, but it only overwhelmed her. She looked at him with resentful eyes. At that moment he thought that they were more similar than he thought.
“I’m sorry, but I am worried about you, you know very well that you shouldn’t stretch like that” he said, trying to be patient as he picked up the pieces of the plate.
She rolled her eyes and sighed reluctantly.
However, Mei ended up accepting his help as she needed it, and if she wanted to be at peace with him, she had to be more tolerant. Lars didn’t intend to harass her with such attention, she knew how he used to be when it came to taking care of her. Now his assistance had become indispensable, he helped her calm her morning sickness, pulled her hair back when she threw up and scrubbed her back while doing so. He stopped drinking coffee to get her away from that smell. Giving up his morning coffee was a small sacrifice compared to the discomfort she was experiencing, but he too was beginning to dislike the smell anyway, and as soon as he noticed it, he began to feel dizzy.
Other times, he would massage her calves to relieve her cramps, and once again he was with her on that. Suddenly, he didn’t feel very well, his head, back or legs hurt, he became more irritable and sensitive than usual and started to feel disgusted by strong odors. Added to the anxiety of thinking about Mei, he thought he was going crazy.
“You seem to have Couvade’s syndrome,” Ludwig told him, showing him an article on parenthood. Then he smiled.
“It’s not funny, I feel terrible.”
“You’ll get over it. Besides, you are not the one carrying the hardest part,” he said, looking at Mei’s picture.
“You know, I don’t even think that’s possible.”
“You said yourself it was a matter of two, well it seems that this too,” he added, unable to avoid smiling again.
Lars was not amused; he was so upset at the time that he couldn’t focus. Although it was true that it wasn’t his body that was changing and he wouldn’t be the one to give birth, so he couldn’t imagine how much more complicated it was for her. He thought of a way to make her feel better. Then he wanted to compensate her by fulfilling all her cravings, however rare they might be. Whatever and whenever she said would be a yes for him.
One night he woke up in a hurry when he heard someone lurking in the apartment. It was Mei poking around in the kitchen looking for food. Even though he wanted her to eat healthy, he ended up going to a 24-hour fast food restaurant and ordering to take-out. Mei hadn’t wanted to, but the craving outweighed her desire to check the nutritional value. He returned shortly after and she was waiting for him with the table already set, and then they both smiled as they realized they had eaten a couple of burgers and some big fries in no time. She looked happy, but worried because she had made him go out so late.
“I promise it won’t happen again,” she said.
“It’s ok, besides I was hungry too,” he answered and wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin.
Mei was grateful that it was a warm night, because she knew that she had blushed with that gesture. He kept making her nervous, but for different reasons. She was still very attracted to him, she wanted to hug him after those dizzy spells, cry with him when she got sentimental and he would hug her and comfort her. But for the time being she was content not to make his life more difficult with her temper, her resentment and the inconveniences it caused her, and instead she prepared for him what he liked to eat, let him rest when he came home from work and put cute notes in his lunch, so that he would see that she appreciated his help.
One of those quiet Saturdays, the rain was falling and there was nothing else to do. Mei would have wanted to go for a walk, but she was afraid she would slip. So, she took a bag of stroopwafels and poured a cup of tea. She put everything on a tray and went quietly to her bedroom. She didn’t want to disturb Lars while he was reading. He looked away from the book and followed her with his gaze.
“If you need something, I can take it to you so you don’t have to get up all the time. You watch your favorite show at this hour, don’t you?” Lars asked.
“Yes, but I don’t want to bother you,” she excused herself.
“I don’t mind, I am not doing anything important.”
Mei hesitated and agreed. She felt a bit sad, but consoled herself caressing her belly very lovingly, as if to tell the baby that she would love it more than anyone else. Not noticing that Lars was watching her from the door.
“Is it alright if I join you?” he asked.
“Sure. There are still more cookies in the cupboard.”
He came back with a cup of tea and more stroopwafels. They ate in silence, while she watched TV. Although it was an interesting episode of her favorite series, she couldn’t help but be distracted by Lars, she didn’t understand why he couldn’t leave her alone, but at the same time she didn’t want him to go. He seemed indifferent to the series, but he watched it anyway. After Mei had finished her portion of stroopwafels, she told him that she didn’t like them before, but since she was pregnant, she craved them so much that she couldn’t stop eating them. He smiled, thinking that the child would probably be just like him, because he loved them. Then Mei gestured and touched her belly again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, uneasy to the sight of her reaction.
“I just felt a little kick,” said Mei happily.
He got excited; it was the first time this happened.
“Can I touch?”
She nodded, took his hand and placed it on her belly. He smiled excitedly as he felt the movement, it was almost magical. His baby was moving and he couldn’t help but be touched. It was amazing. Some colleagues had already told him about the odyssey of expecting a baby and even more so having it with them, and also, he had also begun to investigate, but experiencing it was something completely different.
“And have you thought of any names yet? Did you… did we have any in mind?” Lars asked.
“Well, you wanted them to be called Vincent, like your grandfather, or Willen, but we hardly discussed, we thought it was better to wait until a little before the birth. We were going to call them baby bunny in the meantime, but you don’t like nicknames anymore,” answered Mei bittersweetly.
“No, it’s ok, I think it’s cute. Vincent and Willem are perfect. We could pick the first one, though,” he said. “Of course, if you still agree.”
“I do,” she said. “I like both names, but if it’s a girl I haven’t thought of one I like yet,” she added, touching her belly again. They had decided not to know the sex of the baby.
He was silent, trying to think of some pretty name.
“What about Femke?” he suggested.
Mei grimaced and shook her head. They spent a long time trying to choose a female name, went through both sides of the family, thought of famous actresses and singers, characters they liked, without success. The reasons were because it didn’t match the surnames or reminded them of someone they disliked or just didn’t like. Then he thought of his great-grandmother Anri.
“What do you think of Anri?”
She stood there thinking and then smiled.
“I like it. It’s short and cute.”
They both smiled and Mei evoked one of those night, planning their life together. They would have two boys and a girl, and they would live in a beautiful house with a huge yard in a peaceful neighborhood. Their children would learn to ride their bikes, and play with their friends, while they would work in the garden and be happy. There was a silence between them and Lars was finally encouraged to ask a question that was going through his mind.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to know how we met,” he asked, because she had already told him everything else, but that. She smiled and looked down at her belly.
“Well, we met in the month of May. I remember you once told me you liked that month because it reminded you of my name.”
They met while she had gone to buy some art supplies. They were walking around unnoticed and crashed, causing her to throw some of her stuff away. He rushed to help her, but had inadvertently ruined some quite expensive material, at that very moment he offered to buy her another, although she refused as it had been an accident. However, he didn’t feel right about it, so he bought the material and she, in gratitude, invited him to lunch. That lunch had been such a special occasion that after exchanging phone numbers, they kept texting each other and then started to hang out. Little by little, love was born without them noticing it.
“I always wondered why someone as haughty as you would have noticed me, but as I got to know you, I realized you weren’t as arrogant as you seemed,” she said, looking down.
“Do I really look like that?”
She nodded in amusement.
“Mei, have I ever hurt you or harmed you in any way?”
She pondered, in compared to their current problems, their relationship had nothing but misunderstandings and petty arguments, like those of any other couple. But there were never any betrayals or unjustified fights. And of course, they ended up talking and reconciling.
“No, you were always a good boyfriend and husband. Though quite impatient, I must say,” she added.
“Mei, forgive me for everything I’ve caused you,” he asked, taking her hand in his.
“We’d better forget about it and move on. You explained to me what happened and I forgave you. I am not better either, as you may have noticed” she answered evasively, letting go of him.
He looked at her and thought that they were really so similar, and maybe he should stop not keep harassing her with the same thing. He just wanted to know what their story was. Sometimes, in between dreams, he could see her smiling, he could see himself making a big mess in the kitchen trying to follow some recipe and making another in the bathroom trying to fix something, but they were just illusions. Anyway, he wanted some of those inventions to become a reality.
One Sunday, when Mei had gone shopping with her sister and her friend, Lars looked for something to try to fix. He saw the sink tap keep leaking so he tried to fix it himself. The result was a big puddle and more water everywhere. The repair looked good even if the faucet shook when it was opened, but the constant dripping was gone. When Mei arrived, the first thing she did was look around, then she looked at him and out her hands on her hips waiting for an explanation, shocked to see the kitchen a mess.
“I can explain” he excused himself, his clothes soaking wet.
But instead of claiming him, Mei started laughing. It was the first time in their time living together that she laughed out loud. She even had tears coming out of her eyes. She put one hand on her belly and tried to calm down.
“Oh Lars, you haven’t changed after all” she said, still laughing.
“What are talking about?” he asked, because he didn’t think it was so bad to repair something as simple as a tap.
“It’s just… I’d better not tell you; I’ve told you too many stories. I’m going to change my clothes, come back and help you clean up.”
He assumed that she thought he didn’t want to know about those erased years anymore, but as the days went by, she sometimes told him without realizing it and they ended up laughing at their clumsiness during their first date, their first kiss and even their first time. He hadn’t felt ashamed to know the story, although she didn’t tell all the details of the last event, but she did tell him about their nervousness and their laughter. Mei had a very peculiar way of telling stories that sometimes made her expressions more laughable than what she was telling. Thus, it no longer seemed an idealized form of what their relationship had been.
Lately, they were beginning to speak more frankly and he liked that she was so natural and unpretentious. While they ate, they talked about their days, anecdotes from their work colleagues, about food, about what they would like to eat the next day, in short, about anything no matter how mundane it was. And they also shared more time together, he brought her the cakes and fruits she liked, they went to her check-ups together, to buy clothes and between the two of them chose some nice clothes for the baby.
In the eyes of others, they looked like a young couple expecting their first child, but they thought they were living out that fantasy alone. Of course, Mei hadn’t stopped loving him for a second, especially after receiving all his help, but she didn’t feel confident enough to try to seduce him. After seeing her suffering from the discomfort of pregnancy and even helping her out of the tub, he had seen enough of her not to find her attractive, she thought. But at least now she accepted it and could live with it. So, she had given up the idea altogether.
“This is horrible,” said Mei as she put her phone away.
“What’s wrong?”
“I was reading about the discomforts of pregnancy, I don’t have some of the one it mentions yet, but I already feel awful about the ones I have,” she replied, annoyed.
“Is there any way to relieve them?” he asked.
“Yes, deliver the baby, but I’m still missing the postpartum period I might get stretch marks,” she complained, but making a funny face. “Maybe I should buy one of those creams or use some remedy. I’ll ask mom if she knows of any,” she said, uncovering her belly and looking at herself in the mirror.
He smiled, though a bit worried. He himself had read so many articles on motherhood that he didn’t want to know more so that he wouldn’t have those troubles too. At least her mother was looking out for her and helping her as much as she could. They made video calls almost every day to show her the progress or she visited her. Although he was still friendly with his mother-in-law, Lars was ashamed to show up after all that drama, but he was content to let her know that her daughter was fine and that she was not missing anything. Even his own mother often called to check on them, and he was glad of that interest.
While Mei was busy with work or drawing some of her projects, he decided to focus on his own as well. He retook one of the drafts and started editing it. He spent some afternoons trying to work on it until he was satisfied with the result. He asked her to read it for a second opinion. She had a web comic with very good comments, so maybe she could help him and give him constructive criticism.
“I loved it, it’s very good,” she said happily after reading it and mentioned details that she found interesting and appropriate. “I’m glad you decided to continue.”
“I think it was thanks to you that I dared to try new things,” he timidly said.
She smiled, but shook her head.
“No, I didn’t do it. It was your own initiative. You had told me that you would like to write something that wasn’t critical, some fiction, but all that was for yourself, you have a great talent and well, I believe in you,” she said.
He felt embarrassed, and realized that this is how nice it felt when you are truly esteemed. No like he had believed when Stacy praised him for whatever reason that seemed rather idealized.
“Well, now there’s something else I’d like to try,” he said, even more embarrassed.
“What is it?” she asked, curious and amused.
“I want to learn how to cook. I know I’ve been trying, but I still don’t feel confident doing it on my own.”
“Then I’ll help you,” she replied.
They started by preparing very simple dishes like soup and ended up baking a cake. It had been fun, even though his attempts at first were horrible. Then he looked at her and wiped the flour off her face. They both smiled and he knew that something was changing.
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More Crissmyglitz Wedding Guest Angst: part 2
OMG they won’t let it go. Crissmyglitz-Guest Gate. The ccers are still obsessing over the #CrissMyGlitz guest list. As I pointed out in my first post (X), every single photo posted in round one of Crissmyglitz-Guest Gate was taken while Darren was working. That’s right, every single photo the tinhatters presented as “Darren and a real friend” was taken at work. For a fandom who constantly remind the world they are astute and ALWAYS PAYING ATTENTION TO DETAILS, it was a supermassiveblackhole.
In part 1 they presented Elvis (X), Alan Cummings (X), Jenna Ushkowitz (X), Laura Osnes (X). In part 2 they added Jane Lynch, Matt Bomer, Matt Morrison, Kevin McHale, Lena Hall, Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez. Idk what was worse, that they didn’t learn any lessons after part 1 or that the fandom egged them on in utter delight.
cc-still-going-strong
Keep on.
I love your guys’ game 🤣🤣🤣
chrisdarebashfulsmiles
I like this game
(This got SUPER RIDICULOUS LONG so under)
This is the LAMEST shade ever thrown and they were eating it up. Abby spent her Sunday adding to the nonsense and trying out sarcasm. She brought up the algorithm nonsense again and I can’t stop shaking my head. The fact that it’s easier for them to believe that someone wrote an algorithm to determine the guest list for Darren and Mia’s wedding rather than simply to acknowledge that they don’t really know Darren at all is absurd. Rational people would see Darren’s guest list and realize that they got it all wrong. Rationale people don’t see wedding photos and spend 7+ months proclaiming it’s all fake because he clearly is much better friends with former coworkers, Edgar Ramirez and Lena Hall than he is with Jennifer Coolidge and Pamela Aldon based entirely on the fact that nobody posted social media pics with Jennifer or Pamela.
Mysterious absence part 2- Let’s do this…
1. LENA HALL
(see part 3 (X) for further information)
ajw720
(Opening Hedwig LA 11/16 from Lena’s IG)
(From Lena’s Twitter and Instagram July 28, 2016 (X). They were Flying to perform at DNC see pic below)
(AGAIN- same night as #1-Hedwig’s opening night LA 11/16)
(Dec 12, 2016-I don’t know the context of this one. It is obviously her photoshoot and he popped in for a pic. See below: another pic from this photoshoot posted to her IG. This is actually a nonword photo)
ajw720:guess the algorithm eliminated her for joking weekly that DC had all the privileges of homosexuality but none of the responsibilities……
(Oh ho ho ho...the shade of it all).
chrisdarebashfulsmiles: Probably.
ajw720: Or perhaps it eliminated her as when D was kissing her on stage, he was giving his PBB the finger? Remember that time
(No, actually I don’t because that is nonsense. Darren flipped someone off from stage? Right because that is such professional. You believe that perfect, well-mannered Darren Criss would flip off his fiancee while working? That’s very inappropriate behavior during working hours, especially in front of a big audience of people- each with a cellphone. It’s also very risky to flip off the woman he is engaged to- the cc secret might get out. If Darren is terrified to come out and terrified to breach THE Contract, why would he risk if all just give Mia the bird? Giving someone the bird is hardly a satisfying diss for anyone over the age of 12).
flowersintheattic254: Maybe the algorithm excludes those who like way too many posts on that had Ch/ris in them?
(OMG- Lena “liked” some pics of Chris....a pig just flew by my window. It’s almost like Hollywood is a small town and people know each other.
(No dates so it’s impossible to know what the context of the posts but that is typical of the tinhatting- they aren’t concerned with accuracies)
leka-1998: When the difference in chemistry is undeniable even in pics that show nothing but hands, that’s probably an issue.
(I have never in my 51 years heard someone claim a married couple had no chemistry as evidenced by their hands in a photo taken specifically to show off their nail polish or that a PR photo for a Broadway show showed more chemistry than the actual couple. I mean seriously?)
(I will give this one to them as as personal photo )
(Is “hand chemistry” a thing? I’m only speculating here but is the degree of hand chemistry a function of the depth finger-penetration-on-finger-penetration? Cuz.....that would make total sense amiright?)
cc-still-going-strong: Keep on.
I love your guys’ game 🤣🤣🤣
(Blergh)
ajw720: Seriously is that his wife on the left…..oh
(hahahah nice try Abby, you have every single photo of Mia memorized- its actually a very sweet photo)
(I can’t with this entire post. She wasn’t invited because he kissed Lena on stage as per the script? Oh wait- no- she was not invited because he kissed Lena on stage and he flipped off Mia (how they know he is flipping off Mia is anyone’s guess. I like to imagine he is flipping off the tinhatters). But wait- is he actually flipping off anyone? No, no he actually isn’t because that would be terribly unprofessional. Darren is at work and his bosses would not appreciate him flipping off anyone the audience. No actor who wants a career is going to flip off someone in the audience while just-fingers crossed- hoping the message is received by the intended person and not a critic or investor.).
(Work Pic. He is NOT giving anyone the finger- his finger is actually just in the shadow from Lena’s outfit).
(Lena is working: As for Mia banning Lena from the wedding- in a recent post by Lena, she talks about catching up aka they don’t haven’t spent much time together lately and notice the Mia hashtag)
(The tinhatters like that she alls Darren wifey but in fact she calls all the Hedwig’s “Wifey”. She has a lot of Hedwig photos on her social media- the vast marority are NPH).
(Lena’s Christmas photoshoot as mentioned above)
(I probably should have led with this but I wanted to prove them wrong in all the ways possible Lena was busy on February 16, 2019 performing at Lincoln Center. She may have very well been invited. See my update (X)
2. EDGAR RAMIREZ
leka-1998: Yet another person missing on February 16
(PR for ACS: A photoshoot for promotion aka PR)
(I am not sure about this pic. Darren posted it on his Instagram and Edgar responded “love you brother”- that’s sweet and all but what does it prove- nada. I am sure they really had a great time together filming ACS and felt close, but they haven’t maintained that relationship-at least not publicly -since they end of awards season. I’ll give the tinhatters half a point for this one- but bear in mind- I’m being generous because it looks like a PR pic)
(PR for ACS; ”GQ Style & Hugo Boss Celebrate Amazing Spaces”- see photo below).
(PR for ACS Emmy: This is from the 2018 Emmy “For Your Consideration” on 3/19/18.)
(PR for ACS. This is hilarious....so Edgar is doing a red carpet interview and Darren walks by him and Edgar walks away with Darren. OKAAAYYY-what does this prove? Again, they are at a work event- so far all the pics with Edgar are from work events except maybe 1)
(PR for ACS- photoshoot. While the sentiment is sweet, Edgar hashtagged it #ACS and #Emmys. OMG how much ccproof do you need to understand that this is PR? ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? Me think not cuz he freakin’ tagged it for you and you still don’t understand that it was promotion for the Emmy. He-lar-E-ous!)
chrisdarebashfulsmiles: I like this game
(of course you do- it’s catty, bitchy and pointless. I’m glad it makes you happy because this has been eye-opening as to the extend that you are collectively super bad at separating Darren’s personal life from his work life)
ajw720: @leka-1998 this friendship seems very contrived to me, constantly calling each other brother, they aren’t nearly as close as say D and J/ennifer C/oolidge or B/en F/eldman or P/amela A/ldon……………
(Ohhh ho ho ho sooo funny. It’s so funny I forgot to laugh...har har har aha Since Jennifer, Ben and Pamela actually got invites to the wedding, it is clear that they are indeed close to Darren or Mia, soooo the joke doesn’t actually work. As for Edgar being his closest friend because he called him “brother” during a big ACS promotion push-I’m not feeling it. What is so baffling to this “stupid stan” is how the tinhaters CAN’T SEE the details right in front of their faces. The Darren-Edgar love-fest was hot and heavy during the promotion of ACS and then it stopped all together...THAT is the definition of PR. I am sure they actually did like each other during the production of ACS, but when the project ended they both moved on to other projects and other friends. I’ve had coworkers -and I’m sure many of you have too-that I adored and I never wanted lose the connection we shared while working together but alas, the romance fizzled after we no longer had the workplace in common. Obsessing about the meaning of the almost-2-year-old photo of 2 strangers is pretty silly)
ajw720: The Algorithm is a very scientific way to figure out the wedding guest list-no doubt it knows who D is closest to and would not lie…..
(The problem is simple- there are no social-media pics of Darren (or Mia) with Jennifer, Ben, or Pamela which means, according to the cc-logic that it didn’t happen-aka they aren’t friends. In order to explain why the trio were in fact, at the wedding, the THE Algorithm was created. This Algorithm is a very scientific way to figure out the wedding-guest list-no doubt it knows who D is closest to and would not lie. The cc posse hate it when they don’t know what is going on Darren’s life which is why we are talking about a fake “CrissMyGlitz Invitation” algorithm 7 months after the wedding).
ajw720: @chrisdarebashfulsmiles It is seriously my new favorite game and there are so many people that the algorithm eliminated.
(Seriously? There are what- 2 or 3 photos that aren’t definitively traced to work This game isn’t working out the way the posse believes it is. This is however, THE definition of confirmation bias clouding their judgment).
3. KEVIN MCHALE
ajw720:Poor KM didn’t make the cut either. Perhaps his invite was eliminated by the weird algorithm for tagging d at his 30th right below c, yet d not pictured? He clearly considers d a good friend as he invited him to the party.
(Did Kevin suggest he was devastated to miss the destination wedding of his former coworker? Kevin and Darren went out with their former-Glee castmates maybe once or twice in the last four years- they are hardly besties. I don’t remember Kevin and Darren as being particularly close while Glee was in production. They are literally former coworkers.)
(Kevin inviting Darren to his birthday party doesn’t indicate that he “clearly considers d a good friend”. It seems like I remember the party was a surprise party?)
ajw720: Thankfully I think they’ve made up as d had no problem straddling him recently.
(OMG seriously? They are former coworkers in which some level of friendship exists. Darren straddled his leg while sitting on a very crowded seat- he wasn’t riding Kevin while they had sex in public.)
(ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION? Darren invited the Glee peeps that he has consistently been close to over the years - Max, Harry and Chord).
ajw720: So many mysteries. But hey D&M’s new straight couple besties, Al/len & his wife, made the cut!
(Nope, no mysteries at all. Darren simply cared more about inviting people that mean something to him and Mia rather than those who mean something to the tinhatters.)
flowersintheattic254: @ajw720 I expect old habits die hard with K and D. They were always flirty and fun. Maybe Mr and Mrs Le/ech are stricter regarding lap sittering. That’s probably why (nods head).
(nods head and wonders if tinters were drinking early on Sunday because this thread is petty, dumb and not at all funny or clever.)
ajw720: @flowersintheattic254 they are WAY too comfortable together, way more chemistry than D has with his bride. I’m thinking that was the algorithm’s issue.
(Comfortable? Chemistry? WTF, he looks like he is passing a kidney stone and Kevin is coaching him through it.)
flowersintheattic254: @ajw720 especially when you consider that the only similar pose with M has D holding his own arm to his chest. No chemistry at all!!!!
(Do you guys actually believe the nonsense you write or did you give up on 2/16/19 and you're just blowing smoke up each other’s ass now because I gotta tell you, the second-hand embarrassment is really uncomfortable now)
flowersintheattic254:It’s the pic on the boat with the fam. Can someone add it as I cannot find it?
leka-1998
ajw720: Not even close, if i didn’t know, i would say KM&DC were the couple and i t think the algorithm knew. It is magical how that algorithm works.
(Ooooh right...it’s so confusing, I can totally understand your befuddlement!)
(In all seriousness, watching this fandom’s toxic nonsense is like watching Kellyanne Conway and Lindsey Graham defend Trump’s baloney. Everyone knows they are full of shit but we are powerless to stop it. The damage they are doing will take years to repair- if not decades)
(Oh....Will you look at that. That is a screenshot taken from a video that is actually cute and shows a smitten Darren cuddling with Mia. Color. Me.SHOOK) .
youtube
4. MATT MORRISON
standingoutsidethefire: I thought of another ..
That the algorithm just didn’t seem to include ...
standingoutsidethefire: Clearly these two don’t have any affection for each other
standingoutsidethefire: Not friends at all
standingoutsidethefire: I get why MM wasn’t included ..I really do
(Maybe a personal- photo though likely at an show or industry event)
ajw720: Hate each other
(Once again, almost all -if not all - work pics)
youtube
5. MATT BOMER
leka-1998: “He’s just a really, really good, grounded person, and I think someone who I’ll probably always be friends with.”
- M/att B/omer
(Holy shit, Matt said something nice about Darren when asked about him by during an interview... no doubt when they worked together either on Glee or ACS)
(According to Bride’s Magazine, “How to Make Your Wedding Day About YOUl” June 2017.
5. The guest list is one of the most difficult decisions. Should you invite your mom’s work associate? Great Aunt Gertrude whom neither of you have met? Everyone from the gym? Communicate communicate communicate. One piece of tried-and-true advice is ALWAYS invite the person who said nice about you to the national media. You won’t regret it and most likely that person will give you the best gift).
(Work event)
(Work event)
(Wait -isn’t this Blaine and Cooper?)
(Work event)
Leka-1998: But the great algorithm said no.
ajw720: My understanding is they despise each other, cannot stand to be in the same room together.
(Nobody ever suggested that).
ajw720: #funny #so many of the univited #queer
(seriously “#queer”? No, not cool)
flowersintheattic254
True they have clearly and from the beginning disliked each other intensely.
ajw720: But see @leka-1998 there is D calling him handsome, we don’t want to have anything that even hints at d talking about a boy in that manner at the sham mockery, i mean nuptials………………. Because D is the STRAIGHTEST MAN ALIVE!!!!!
(OMG,,the sarcasm isn’t working).
#cc#cc fandom#ccer#darren criss#crisscolfer#debunking CC lies#debunking cc nonsense#Critssmyglitz#guest list#wedding guest#Darren and Mia get married
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It's Not the End, It Just Feels Like It
Rating: T
Relationships: Marcus Johansson & Evgeny Kuznetsov, Nicklas Backstrom & Andre Burakovsky & Marcus Johansson
Characters: Marcus Johansson, Nicklas Backstrom, Andre Burakovsky, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Christian Djoos, Alex Ovechkin, TJ Oshie, Washington Capitals Ensemble, mentions of many New Jersey Devils
Words: 2k
Summary: Marcus is traded to the Devils, and no one is happy about it, least of all Marcus himself. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do after being ripped away from the organization he’s played with his entire career. He’s having trouble adjusting; after all, this team isn’t his family.
This is my first real attempt at writing fic. I’ve got ideas for longer works, but I’ve completed something shorter just to see how it is. This hasn’t been beta’d, as I don’t really have people to do that, so forgive me for that. Let me know what you think and I can work on some improvements. Also, this story is not a happy one, it’s barely even heartwarming. Enjoy!
Some trades just worked out for the better of everyone. Sometimes, you just clicked. When TJ was traded to the Capitals, it was like he’d been in Washington his entire career. He got along with the players, made quick friends, and fit in nicely and carved out his role on the ice. Whatever combination of people and personalities just worked, and everyone was happy.
The same couldn’t be said for Marcus.
He was sleeping when he was traded. When he woke up, the face of his phone was an endless stream of texts and notifications; the Internet had had hours to brew about this before he saw it for himself.
The hardest part was telling Amelia; she had been getting so comfortable, she’d made so many friends, and he knew she enjoyed it here, like he did. She wasn’t going to be happy. She took it remarkably well, and Marcus made sure to thank her for that; even if Marcus wasn’t showing it on the outside, he was torn to shreds on the inside.
The Washington Capitals were all he’d ever known. Seven years he’d spent in a Caps uniform, working through the Caps organization. And now all of that was gone. Washington had always been his home in America. Now he’d have to move to a new city (Jersey, of all places), learn a new system, and, worst of all, play with different teammates. That was the part he was dreading the most. After spending seven years with the same organization, he’d grown up and played with the same guys. And they were so close. They felt like his family. And now he wouldn’t be seeing them anymore.
The entire thing shook him, to say the least. Marcus wasn’t one to toot his own horn, but he’d felt like an important part of the team, somewhat. He’d just recently signed a new deal, he’d had a career year, and life was looking good. And then the rug was yanked out from under him. Logically, he knew that it was all a part of the business, but he couldn’t help but feel that he wasn’t important, that he didn’t matter, that they didn’t care.
He didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to any of his teammates. It was the offseason, he was in Sweden, and everyone was spread out all over the world. Teammates flooded his phone with messages. Some of them were already gone, like Schmidty in the expansion draft and Alzy, Stick, Winnie and Shatty to free agency, and they’d already said their farewells, but everyone else had a lot to say to him. Some were polite and gave him a general, “This sucks, but I wish you the best” (Nisky, Lars, Carly, etc.), some were more tearful (Burky), and some swore vengeance and made plans to kidnap him from Jersey (Kuzy, Whip). Marcus accepted their sentiments with gratitude, and he said his goodbyes the best he could, but he didn’t know if he was saying the proper things. What in the world do you even say to your teammates when you’re traded? “I’m leaving, even though I really don’t want to, and I hope I beat you guys the next time I see you”? It didn’t feel right, all these goodbyes. He didn’t want it to be the end.
He texted Nicky almost endlessly. Nicky had always been one of his rocks, and now he needed him more than ever. He assured Marcus that this wasn’t his fault, and that everything would be okay. If nothing else, it was still just hockey. Marcus appreciated Nicky’s calming words, but they didn’t calm him as much as they should have. No offense to Nicky, but he’d never been traded. He didn’t speak from experience.
TJ, on the other hand, did. Marcus started texting him a bunch, too, asking for advice on dealing with the trade, moving to a new city, and meeting new teammates. And TJ was very helpful. Albeit, TJ was a lot more extroverted and much less awkward than Marcus, so this was probably all a breeze for him, but it helped Marcus. One of TJ’s pieces of advice stuck with him: “The other guys will know you’re coming, and they will reach out to you like Ovi and Carly did for me. Let them help you, and just go with the flow.” He wanted to wholeheartedly trust TJ, but he knew that not everyone was Ovi.
The Devils were nice and everything. Before training camp, he’d gotten texts from Andy Greene and Adam Henrique welcoming him to the team and saying how excited they were to meet him and work with him. But even as camp got started, he didn’t really feel like he fit in. There was no one he really gelled with. In Washington, Nicky had always been there to guide him, and Ovi had been like a big giant mama bear. But this wasn’t Washington. He had to throw everything he’d ever known out the window.
The guys were nice. Greene, Henrique, Schneider, Zajac, and even Taylor Hall all tried their best to make him feel welcome and a part of the team. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t belong. Putting on the Devils jersey still felt wrong. It didn’t help his acclimation that New Jersey didn’t have a single Swede on their roster. He’d lived in the States for a long time, it wasn’t like he didn’t know English, but it would have helped him just a little if there was someone he could speak Swedish to. A fellow countryman, to help him feel just a little bit at home.
He almost cried when a young Swede made the team out of training camp. In an ideal world, Marcus would have loved for a Swede closer to his age to help him in the transition to a new team, but at that point Marcus would have taken anything. The kid was nineteen - younger than fucking Burky. Marcus took Bratt under his wing, of course; even if he was almost ten years older than him, he desperately wanted another Swede around. But he wasn’t the same as Burky - no one was the same as Burky.
They faced the Capitals within the first two weeks of the season. Part of Marcus wished it wasn’t until later so he could be more settled before seeing the whole team again, but part of him just wanted to get it out of the way so he could move on from those emotions (though he knew the real emotional turmoil would come in December, when he’d go to DC the first time as a visitor). But, in his heart, all he really wanted was to see the guys from the team - the guys he’d come to know as his family until he was ripped away.
The night before the game, he arranged to have dinner with a bunch of the guys. He was texting back and forth with Nicky - there were going to be a lot of them, they all wanted to see him again.
At the restaurant, Nicky and Burky arrived first, and they brought along the new Swede they’d adopted, a blueline rookie named Christian Djoos (a rookie who was somehow older than Burky); Marcus remembered seeing him at a couple of training camps, and their past interactions were brief at most. Nicky and Burky insisted on bringing him along, wanting him to meet Marcus and for them to become a “proper Swedish family,” according to Burky. Those particular words pulled tightly at Marcus’s heartstrings.
The rest of the guys piled in quickly after that. Ovi was there, of course, enveloping Marcus in a bone-crushing hug radiating all the warmth and joy that had been absent from Marcus’s life since July. Kuzy was there too, absolutely overjoyed to see his longtime liney. Marcus would have been lying if he said he hadn’t been severely missing that smile and the patented Kuzy humor. And it was just like Kuzy to greet him by loudly kissing both of his cheeks.
Completing the group was Braden, Dima, Carly, TJ, Nisky, Whip, and Beags. So many of these guys had shared the ice with him for his entire career, up until now. He refused to admit that there were any sort of tears coming to his eyes.
The night went on, they ate and laughed and caught up, and for awhile, it was like Marcus had never left and nothing had changed. He felt a sense of comfort and camaraderie he had not felt even for a moment since he’d donned a Devils uniform.
All too soon, a bunch of the guys had to go. Braden, Carly, TJ, Nisky, Whip, and Beags left en masse, giving Marcus big hugs and fist bumps and promising to check him when they saw him on the ice tomorrow. Ovi and Dima left shortly after, the two Russians giving him warm salutations as they left.
Just the five of them remained. The young Djoos, who had been fairly quiet for the majority of the meal, still looked awkward, as if he wasn’t sure what he should be saying or doing. Marcus couldn’t really talk, he knew that he had been the same when he was a rookie, but he did want to try to get Djoos to talk to him eventually. It was only when Marcus turned to him and asked him a question in Swedish that he finally relaxed and cracked what might have been a smile. Though the Swedish did elicit a hurt lament from Kuzy, claiming that they’d forgotten about him.
Marcus laughed and said a few more nonsense sentences to the others in Swedish before Kuzy threw a roll at him, demanding, “Did all my assists mean nothing, Jojo?” Marcus caved for his favorite liney and reverted back to English.
Eventually, though, Kuzy had to leave. Marcus really hated to see him go. Kuzy pulled him into an embrace that was surprisingly tender, saying to him softly, “Miss you lots, Jojo. Nothing like playing hockey with you on my wing.”
This time, Marcus couldn’t hold back the tears. He didn’t care. “Miss my favorite center, Kuz.”
They pulled away, and Kuzy cracked a joke about how he was going to dangle on Marcus tomorrow, but Marcus could see that he was getting emotional. He wiped the tears away from his eyes as Kuzy left the restaurant.
He sat back down, and Burky pulled Marcus close and held him there, as he was oft to do. The mood in the room was a lot more somber than it was just thirty minutes ago.
Nicky, with that soft yet calculating gaze of his, looked Marcus up and down. “Are you really doing okay, Jojo?” he asked, the conversation reverting back to Swedish for the remainder of the night.
Marcus sighed. “I’m not going to lie to you, Nicky...it hasn’t been easy. I’ve been in the same place my entire career. And then overnight, it’s a new city, a new organization, new people...it’s a lot to adjust to. The guys are nice, but it’s been hard to really connect with them. I know I’ll get there, but it hasn’t happened yet and it’s frustrating. And it shakes your confidence. You sign a new deal, and then the next year, you’re traded...it kind of makes it seem like they don’t want you.”
“Management doesn’t know what the fuck it’s doing,” Nicky said bluntly. “Shelling out all that money. Not that those guys aren’t worth it, but it was a disaster waiting to happen. I didn’t think you were going to be the consequence, though.”
Marcus had thought about this a lot. Clearly he wasn’t cut out to be a GM, because he had no idea what he would have done. The part of him that’s crippled by self-doubt believed that trading him was the only option, but he knew there were other things that could have been done to avoid taking him away from his family. Too late to change any of that now, though.
“Burky cried when you were sent away,” Nicky said, causing Burky to turn a shade of deep red. “He called me and he cried, wondering why they were taking his big brother away from him.”
“I did not!” Burky protested.
“Glad to know you love me so much,” Marcus teased, jabbing the bit of elbow that wasn’t trapped in Burky’s cuddle into Burky’s ribs.
“Of course I love you, Mackan. We’re family.”
“He talks about you a lot,” Djoos finally piped in. “I’ve heard so much about the great, wonderful Jojo, who is funny and kind and mean and smart and was the best brother and had the world’s greatest beard.”
Marcus didn’t know how to respond. That’s high praise, even from Burky. He was finding that his eyes were having trouble staying dry.
“I think he’s overselling me, I don’t think I’m quite all that.”
“I would never tell a lie about you, Jojo. It’s all true,” Burky said, that big, dorky smile on his face.
Marcus didn’t have a rational thought for the rest of the night. He was pretty sure he cried, but that was yet to be confirmed. He remembered a group hug, even Djoos joined in. He vaguely remembered leaving the restaurant and walking the Swedes back to their hotel; Nicky gave him some kind of uplifting “We’re still here, we’re still family, it’ll all be okay,” Burky gave him a hug like he never wanted to let him go, and Djoos gave him an awkward yet polite “It was very nice to meet you, I hope to see you again sometime.” But again, Marcus couldn’t really remember; it was like his brain gave out and his emotions took control, and he couldn’t clearly remember what happened for the life of him.
They lost really badly to his old team. They didn’t play well, and frankly it was quite messy. Marcus’s heart stopped when Dima was hit like that, and he almost fought his own teammates himself, but nothing could have prepared him for fucking Burky stepping in and fighting. Complete and utter shock. Guess things had changed since he’d last rocked the red. But then Whip stepped in and pounded the original offender once he left the box, so the world wasn’t completely out of whack.
Marcus knew it would take a long time to truly become comfortable with his new team. Probably longer than it would for most people, given his specific circumstances. But he had to hold out hope that he would get there. Because the thought of playing out his tenure with his new team never truly being comfortable and never truly feeling like he belonged...the thought was unbearable.
#marcus johansson#nicklas backstrom#andre burakovsky#evgeny kuznetsov#christian djoos#alex ovechkin#tj oshie#caps ensemble#washington capitals#new jersey devils#hockey rpf#my writing#i got this all ready in the aftermath of today's disappointment#and now i have some followers too so#please read it and tell me what you think#im desperate for a little feedback this is my first true dabble and idk how people will like it#i wanted to do this on ao3 but i dont have an account and cant get one for awhile#so please leave comments and reblog and shit#thanks!
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Orion
Prompt
Write a 500 word account of the track you focused on, working from your technical, factual, descriptive, and emotional responses to describe and discuss what it lends to its overall sound and impact.
Intro
Listening to Orion at this point in my life feels like talking to an old friend. I must have started listening to Master of Puppets when I was 4 or 5 years old. No joke. That makes 25 years that this song has been a part of my life. Time has shown me that this song is so much more than a deep cut on a heavy metal record - it’s a genre-bending masterpiece.
The starry middle section, the part from which the song gets its name, helped me to appreciate post-rock music in my teenage years. Reading that Cliff based a lot of his harmonies off of Thin Lizzy made me check out bands like them. Eventually I got to Motorhead, and then on to punk rock. I think if I really sat down and drew it out, I could draw a parallel between Orion and any other music I’ve been passionate about before. (Probably not but you get the idea.)
With this prompt, I tried my best to write a fitting tribute for one of my oldest friends. I owed it to the song. I got most of my information on how symphonies are structured from an article on New York Public Radio’s website and the book Metallica put out in celebration of the Master of Puppets 30th anniversary called Back to the Front. It was cool to read the WQXR article and fit all the pieces together. I honestly got really excited when I found a way explain how Cliff applied his influence of classical music to this song. Also, I haven’t read anything like this about this song before, so it was cool to feel like I was exploring some uncharted territory.
I tried my best to meet the 500 word requirement, and I think I came a lot closer than I did on my last entry. It was really tough. Maybe if I had chosen a different song it would have been easier to meet the word limit. But there are just too many good things to say about this song, you know?
Orion
Save for guys like Les Claypool, the bass is a background instrument. John Deacon wrote some of Queen’s most popular riffs, but he’s nowhere near the household name of Freddie Mercury and Brian May. In metal, a genre of music that’s known less for its grooves and more for thunderous drums and crushing guitars, it’s remarkable that Cliff Burton became such a renowned and respected voice. Burton’s voice is perhaps heard the loudest on his magnum opus, his symphony, Orion, the instrumental track from Master of Puppets.
Section I - The Fast Movement (Allegro)
There are two themes to start off this piece. The first, a synth bass, made to sound like a chorus of bowed double basses. The second, a heavy, classic Metallica groove on a Em/D/Ebm riff. The development showcases Cliff’s inventive use of effects over an A/E/C/C/E/A progression. When James comes in and doubles Cliff’s bass part - Cliff takes a backseat, stepping away from his pedals to lock in with Lars’ kick drum.
II. The Slow Movement (Andante, Adagio)
The song really comes into its own in Movement II. It’s a heartbreaking F#m/A/Bm/Em progression of somber chords arpeggiated by Cliff himself. The swelling guitar harmonies pull the listener into a moment of complete despair. It’s that moment when grief overcomes you and all you can do is succumb to its weight and let it run its course.
It’s hard to look at this song as anything besides a lament for Cliff. The very name of the song evokes feelings of someone looking down from the heavens. At moments like this, it’s almost as if the song actually foreshadows his death, like the lilies in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance. Obviously, that wasn’t Cliff’s intention. This isn’t a posthumus recording. He died - tragically - in a bus accident promoting this album. However, and perhaps inarguably, his death gave this song a new meaning.
III. The Dance Number (Scherzo, Minuet)
Of The Dance Number, Ray Burton (Cliff’s father) said,
“Cliff came home and played his mother, Jan, and I ‘Orion’ - the part with all the dubbed harmonies, which was in three quarter time…[I joked] that it would be a great tune for Jan and I to waltz to!”
True to form, this waltz gives way to a trio in which James, Cliff, and Kirk have a conversation with their instruments. For Cliff, any by proxy, the listener, the whole song builds to his solo, which is another testament to his voice as a player. The emotion, the soul in Cliff’s fingers rival that of David Gilmore. Arguably, there’s no other bass solo on record that sounds so utterly desperate and alone.
IV. A Fast Movement. Again. But Even More Impressive.
The last movement is a celebration. It’s a reprieve of the second theme from the first movement, but instead of hitting the snare on the 1 and 3, Lars hits the snare on every downbeat with a 16th note double kick pattern. This beat blows the roof off the end of the song and opens it up to the trademark Metallica jam that the band perfected on Load and Reload. An additional couple of rhythm guitar tracks add to the overall feel and if you listen closely, you can hear Cliff grooving with the song, improvising fills high on the fretboard.
To echo the sentiments of many, there’s definitely no telling what musical territories the band would have explored had it not been for his death. In all likelihood, “Orion” was Cliff Burton making the most of the unique position Metallica was in at the time. They were with Q Prime management and signed to a major label. Radio wouldn’t touch the band, so no there was no pressure to write a hit single. The band really had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted - the perfect storm for a musician like Cliff.
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evening lar!!!!!!!!!! so like this is just me period/cold ranting but like..........where's christy's birthday wishes for derek???? like it's taken me days to realize I never saw anything?????????? I was expecting like some pics (like derek did for her bday) or like a tweet but nothing???????? how???? brb going back to my sick bed you're an angel lar I hope your mom is doing alright hugs and kisses xoxo
TBH I haven’t seen Christy post birthday wishes for anybody on social media so it isn’t super strange to me that she didn’t post anything for Derek. But she does also have a private Instagram, which I assume Derek might follow, so maybe she posted it there haha who knows?
Thank you so much, oh my gosh!!
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not that i have much interesting to add to all the thoughts coming out about the new SU episodes, but i’m gonna yell about it here anyway. spoilers under the cut
where the FUCK is white diamond. why does white diamond not give a singular fuck about this drama? is white diamond secretly a fusion between yellow/blue/pink? is that why we never fucking see her??? i’m. having a hard time imagining why tf white diamond wouldn’t be in on this trial shit... given how Intense the other two are about it, yanno?
i guess. white could be like, the Ultimate in “feelings are Useless i don’t need to feel”/Super Compartmentalized And Clearly Ignoring And Repressing Feelings type.... which... i mean.... i guess? idk
i think the Diamonds are pretty clearly four-humor based, so, quick refresher:
Blood promotes a feeling of joy, mirth, optimism, enthusiasm, affection and wellbeing.
Phlegm induces passivity, lethargy, subjectivity, devotion, emotionalism, sensitivity and sentimentality.
Yellow Bile provokes, excites and emboldens the passions. Being inflammatory, irritating and caustic, it provokes anger, irritability, boldness, ambition, envy, jealousy and courage.
Black Bile makes one pensive, melancholy and withdrawn. It encourages prudence, caution, realism, pragmatism and pessimism
(more at this source link)
pink = blood, blue = phlegm, yellow = yellow bile, white = black bile
that last bit Would Definitely Track with this reading of canon. but... idk. just thoughts. i just wanna know why white diamond (and white diamond’s GEMS) haven’t shown up yet. to be completely fair, it’s not like we’ve seen a ton of homeworld gems; and almost all the gems we have seen (minus Off-Colors, Just Introduced) are DIRECTLY tied to blue or yellow’s designs regarding Earth.
then there’s the whole Another Diamond Did It theory now, which like. if it was Blue she’s the best goddamn actress gemkind has to offer. i don’t actually think it was yellow, because blue & yellow seem to have genuinely bonded (and fought about) the best way to memorialize pink.
which leaves White a big question mark-- and if we’re going about it with the lens of the humors as above, it would give White motive in that Pink was literally obsessed with this one planet and doing absolutely nothing useful with it. at least, not in White’s eyes. aren’t there only two kindergartens??? that’s really not much, compared to the homeworld planet we see that is basically an exterior shell above a rotted gutted core of a planet. imagine the resources wasted just attempting to get pink’s focus anywhere else-- let alone the resource drain pink must’ve already been, given what we can infer.
i mean, given the murals-- white ‘manages’ the most planets according to that, at least, with yellow second, blue third and pink deaaad last.
some thoughts to chew on for ya, i guess.
but anyways. speaking of Off-Colors, aka the Motley Crew, aka The Misfit Toys, aka The Best Thing that Steven Could Have Possibly Run Into on Homeworld..... i love them.
rhodenite is like, i’m 80% sure a pearl and a ruby. right? i mean it tracks design-wise and gem-wise: she has a circle/pearl-style chest gem and a tummy square-inside circle-outside gem, which has been associated with rubies, plus if you just look at the fashion....
padparadscha shares sapphire’s gem-shape, so. she’s cute but i’d like to know more about her outside of action sequences. imo the bit wasn’t super funny, though i do appreciate the neurodiversity she represents among the Off-Colors
speaking of gem-shapes: fluorite has A Diamond down on the belly button. wild mass guessing theory: fluorite Is Part Pink Diamond. i mean she do got Pink and.... it would explain where her entourage went.... JK JK. that would be a terrible story beat. how would-- no. fluorite as like, the Benevolent Poly Grandmothers-ly Figure is amazing enough in and of itself.
the Rutile twins hit on a sweet-spot for me character-design wise; multiple heads.... plus the different but essentially similar/reinforcing dialogue.... AND kind...... i loooooove it i love her i love. good.
plus the Lion Reveal.... and LARS being a decent human for once.... i like how lars’s motivation is more or less “i fukked up so much i’m gonna die i guess i have nothing to be afraid of fukkin up anymore it’s not like it can get any worse”
i can’t say lars deals with his fears in a healthy way but he certainly deals with them in a relatable way, so i’m glad to see character growth from him. tho i still 100% believe sadie DESERVES SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T LIE ABOUT TIME SPENT TOGETHER AND OTHER SHIT JEEEEEEZ
idk i’m runnin’ outta steam here it’s nearly 1
steven ur doin’ so well with what uve got
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Lars’ (now ex) boyfriend hits her fist with his face, and Ceth isn’t impressed.
The quarters are fairly quiet for the day, as it has been since the war had ended some years ago, but she can see Aunt Rei and Mum sitting with their students at the long table far off to the end of the brightly-lit hall, Iliev and Ceth among them. She slips into one of the consultation rooms and waits there until she can hear the class wrapping up. The students mostly miss her, so Ceth lets out a faint yelp when she grabs his sleeve to pull him into the room, slamming the door shut promptly after.
“What in the—” He takes a moment to adjust, then lets out a shocked “LARS?”
“I need your help,” She says, and she can tell by the change in his expression, from shocked, to indignant, to worried, that she probably looks as pale and clammy as she feels.
“What did you do?!” He ushers her over to the chair by the singular desk and sits her down, and she holds her hand out to him.
“I got into a fight with Jace.” The words come out a bit jumbled, but Ceth seems to hear her well enough. His eyes darken a little as he examines the scrapes and the angry red bump on the knuckle of her little finger.
“Weren’t you two... together?” He asks, and his voice is mild, but she knows he’s holding back a bigger response as he walks to the tray in the corner to collect some vials. It’s actually impressive – Ceth isn’t particularly good at holding back his emotions, but she assumes it’s because he realises it’s a delicate situation.
“We’re not anymore.” She winces as she sets her hand down, flat, upon the desk.
Ceth sits down beside her and begins to clean her knuckles. “Did he hit you?” He asks, his voice shaking, and she has to smile at how sweet the sentiment is.
“Sure,” She tells him, chuckling faintly. The cleaning solution stings, but she’s fairly certain she deserves this. “He hit my fist with his face.”
Ceth glares up at her through his lashes.
“Sorry.” She looks down at her lap. “I punched him. He was being unreasonable.”
“What happened?” Ceth sets the cleaning cotton aside and starts to feel at the bump, frowning. “There’s a fracture, but I’ll set it and you’ll need to take a break from physical training until it heals. Or at least use your other hand.”
She grunts, irritated. Well, it was worth it. “I got a letter from Mae while we were together.” You’ll never turn his head, Lars, it’s never going to happen. Even then the words still stung. “And he has a jealous streak, apparently. I don’t know. We were yelling at each other, and we both said some hurtful things.”
Ceth raises an eyebrow. She can tell he’s thinking about how to respond, so she leans back, throws her uninjured hand over her face, and groans, “Just say it, Ceth.”
“Well, I mean, I haven’t been with Cel very long, but,” He starts, lightly. His hands are deft as he works on her fracture, binding poultice against the skin to cool. “I don’t think I’d be okay with it neither if she were obviously in love with someone else?”
“You’re talking rubbish,” She tells him. “Mae and I are just friends, and we’ve been friends since we were kids. Cel’s always baking treats for Iliev, and I don’t see you getting jealous about that.”
Ceth chuckles brightly. “That’s because I get to taste the treats first, and Iliev is my best friend.” His voice grows a bit serious. “I’m not saying anyone’s at fault here, but if your relationship ends with one of you punching the other, it’s probably not the best to keep going.”
She thinks back to the many times Ceth has yelled at her and Mae for hurting each other in training, and almost laughs. “I’m pretty sure it’s over, Ceth.” It doesn’t hurt as much as she’d thought it would.
Ceth is quiet as he continues to splint and wrap her fingers, and she takes the time to collect her thoughts. Mae’s been gone all of eight months, and she misses him. And there’s been a lot of teasing; too much, she thinks, about how she’s grown angrier and more distant in his absence, but brightens up each time his letters arrive. It’s probably no fun for Jace, she thinks, and there’s a sense of guilt and shame that rises at the realisation. Oops. I guess there really is no way around this one.
She opens her eyes and straightens up, frowning. “Is it really that obvious?”
Ceth grins a bit. He’s almost done, and is knotting a length of bandage around the splint. “Only if you look properly. Sometimes I think you’re aware of it too, only you’re trying very hard to not be. I don’t actually understand why.” He meets her eyes. “If you love someone, just say it. It’s not as if he’s going to judge you for it.”
“He’s probably going to panic, because we’re all like brothers and sisters in his head.” She smirks a bit, and Ceth rolls his eyes. “I could do without that meltdown he had when he realised you and Cel were together, thanks.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think he thinks of you as a baby sister.” Ceth tells her. “I’ve a feeling he’d sooner rip his own arm off than to ever train that hard with his baby sisters.”
She shrugs a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. He’s not here right now.”
“But he’ll be back.” Ceth nudges her foot with his. “So maybe don’t punch anyone else until then.”
She looks down at her splinted hand and lets out a sigh. “Don’t tell him, okay? Or Cel.” She doesn’t want them worrying. “Please?”
Ceth sighs and shakes his head. “You’re an idiot.” He grumbles. “Fine, I won’t tell anyone, but you probably should when you get the chance.”
She gets to her feet. “We’ll see. Thanks, Ceth. I appreciate this.”
Mae’s letter is still tucked into the front of her robes, and she finds herself blushing a bit at the thought of him bent over a desk, writing to her in particular. She shakes the thought away. I’ll think on that later. She doesn’t think it’d be easy, or fun. But right now, I’ve got to find a man about an apology.
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LIKE HANNAH ARENDT IN her preface to Men in Dark Times (1968), Deborah Nelson concedes that the six women whose careers are canvassed in her 2017 book Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil would definitely not appreciate being classed together, by gender or any other category. Thankfully for us, Nelson is undeterred: she boldly gathers Diane Arbus, Hannah Arendt, Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, and Simone Weil into a common room to stage a wonderfully readable, engaging, provocative conversation about their similarities in style and outlook. The main characteristic these women share is unsentimentality — “a concerted attempt to manage feelings so that no one tears up: not the writers, not their subjects, and not their readers.”
It is thrilling to contemplate the synergy sparked by the times when (some of) these women actually were in the same room together, sharing the same intellectual universe of ideas and encountering and commenting on each other’s work. Because of the popularity of Margarethe von Trotta’s 2012 film Hannah Arendt, many readers will be aware of Mary McCarthy and Arendt’s important friendship, but we might not be aware that McCarthy was also Simone Weil’s first English translator or that she once quipped to Susan Sontag at a cocktail party, “I hear you’re the new me.” Readers also may not know or remember that Diane Arbus’s 1972 photography retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art produced Sontag’s On Photography (1977), or that Joan Didion admired McCarthy’s work and modeled an essay on her literature of “fact.”
Nelson does not focus greatly on their interactions, however, instead challenging us to explore their commonalities in style and aesthetic practice. She also makes us see the misogyny at work when women writers and artists are criticized for being cold, contrary, insensitive, austere, unfeeling, or solitary. Critics often accused these writers of being too “detached” and thus displaying a defect in character, when in fact this attitude, as Nelson shows, was a deliberate style, an unsentimental engagement with suffering that exposes the unreliability of compassionate motives. As Sontag tells us, human misery is too often rendered beautiful, repeated exposure to such pain exhausts any shock to the conscience we may initially experience, and a confrontation with suffering renders no reliable ethical response. Nelson argues that, in the work of these women, we see a refusal of empathy, a refusal of the illusion of shared suffering, which opens up space for a particular kind of attention to painful reality.
Nelson divides her coverage into six chapters, and true to Virginia Woolf’s desire, each woman receives a room of her own. While they share unsentimentality as a politics, aesthetics, and ethics, each has her own lexicon and tools of the trade. Arbus’s camera stages the pain of helplessness and the failures of agency. Arendt anatomizes heartlessness, calling the perpetrators of the worst injustices “banal” just as the Holocaust is coming to the world’s attention. Didion writes in declarative syntax and with rhythmic repetition in order to erase self-pity, for her a moral flaw that produces bad writing and bad politics. McCarthy seeks to call our attention to the factuality of the world by banishing the forms of self-delusion that she thought plagued her generation. Sontag calls for an “erotics of art” to make us see, hear, and touch as an antidote to excessive emotion and its opposite, the inability to feel, both of which block sensation. Weil offers us the tragic as a way to deal with trauma; her approach to suffering eradicates feeling by forcing us to focus attention on the world’s blind necessity.
Attending to history and the generational mood her writers inherited, Nelson points out that the issue of how to represent suffering — our own and that of others — in the decades following World War II was presented as a choice between extremes. This was a time when the scale of suffering was so vast that writers, artists, and thinkers were forced to grapple with the inadequacy of the formal tools they had to represent it, even as it seemed ubiquitously visible. Should they choose authenticity or irony, saturation or denial? Nelson tells us that her subjects rejected these extreme poles, instead “insist[ing] on an encounter with suffering that is serious, engaged, and often painful.”
Another important thing these six women share is an antagonistic relationship to feminism. They sought a confrontation with reality without sentimentalism, but their anti-feminist posture raises the stakes involved in their collective refusal to explore how emotion and feeling infect and inform reality. Nelson operates with an unstated assumption that feminist writers of their generation chose strategies of authenticity and saturation. Did these six artists and thinkers mistake feminism’s diverse styles for mere emotional attachment? Despite Nelson’s effective brief for these writers’ collective style, I remain troubled by identifying them with one style, which obscures feminism’s many styles. Nelson says that “collectivity is something none of the women could abide. […] [T]hey were also, not coincidentally, ambivalent or outright hostile to the feminist movements of their days,” not because of any internalized misogyny or rejection of the claims of oppression, but because of feminism’s “relationship to emotional expressivity, its foregrounding of psychic pain, its emphasis on collectivity, and its advocacy of utopian projects.” They saw themselves as “realists” and were “robustly anti-utopian.” “Utopianism, very simply,” Nelson tells us, “violated two rules of their creed: that reality must be faced in all its complexity and pain; and that the outcome of any action is unpredictable.”
Nelson is taken with her subjects’ insistence that we prize the object of reflection — in other words, the painful reality — over our feelings about that object. But I think we also need to be aware of how other people’s feelings affect us and how those power dynamics create and maintain the feelings of oppressed subjects too. Attending more closely to the feelings of those who suffer — feelings of disgust, sympathy, detachment, anger, guilt — can not only let us see the way feelings constitute and shape us, but it can also help us recognize that the idea of cold reality is itself a kind of fantasy. Indeed, it is the feelings and fantasies of those in power that shape our reality. Can we risk ignoring feelings as they manifest in the creation of what we often experience as a violent world of cruelty and suffering? Can we ignore the way feelings may counter oppressive realities and create alternative worlds? This may be a question for Nelson’s women as much as for Nelson herself. Nelson has done so much to illuminate their creation of a singular space and style for thinking. What is left for us is an invitation to assess the costs and benefits, as it were, of their success.
Beauvoir forces us to confront what Nelson’s writers elide: that reality is shaped by male power, infused with male fantasy, and fueled by feelings — mostly ugly feelings of anxiety, disgust, fear, and anger. Other feminist writers engage this reality too, realities shaped by the hierarchy of sexual difference. Drawing on Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, Shulamith Firestone’s style is anything but detached, but it is also not sentimental. It does not make us tear up; it elicits our anger by helping us see the world in a new way and from a collective space: an engaged partisan forging of solidarity with women (and children) who suffer. Or we might consider Valerie Solanas’s 1967 SCUM Manifesto, which solicits shared anger and joy but also appeals to women’s “cool.” Solanas seeks to bring women together to “wheel on to something far beyond what [the world] has to offer.” Her style, like Firestone’s, like Beauvoir’s, is quite different from that of Nelson’s women. It shows the infusion of male fantasy in constructing reality and seeks to empower our shared suffering, shared anger, and shared desire for something else, something beyond patriarchy. Firestone said that, “[I]f there were another word more all-embracing than revolution[,] we would use it.”
Feminists are tough enough too, but they enlist different styles: they explore the feelings and motivations of the enemy and are willing to call women to battle. Solanas begins SCUM Manifesto by announcing that life in this society is an “utter bore.” What is most offensive about patriarchy is its lack of anything interesting to attract women who are “proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant.” Being a woman is a style, not an identity. It is instructive to remember that Beauvoir saw herself first and foremost as a novelist, Firestone as a painter, and Solanas as a playwright. For each of them, politics begins with aesthetics.
I don’t think Solanas would say that Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, and Weil are what she calls “Daddy’s Girls,” but she might wonder about the male company they preferred to keep and the style they preferred to adopt. In any case, I feel fairly sure that, like me, she would enthusiastically welcome Nelson putting them together in a common room to share each other’s company for the space of this book.
¤
Lori Jo Marso is Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies and Professor of Political Science at Union College. She is the author or editor of several books, most recently Politics with Beauvoir (2017), Politics, Theory, and Film: Critical Encounters with Lars von Trier (2016), and 51 Key Feminist Thinkers (2016).
The post Feminism’s Styles appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.
from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2GG37Gx
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