And besides, sometimes one has to choose one's battles. It is neither possible nor appropriate to rebel against everything, all the time, to attack every individual or institution guilty of injustice.

Victoria Mas, The Mad Women’s Ball

I’ve just finished reading le bal des folles and lemme just say, genevieve was so in love with eugenie from the word go it was so obvious

Some of y’all could not handle Hannibal season 4 when will graham walks out with wrinkles and a  receding hairline. I’ve seen the fan art, I’ve read the fanfics- as soon as will graham isn’t “twinkable” yall would loose interest. Stop lying to yourself.

Me and my mutuals tho we want to fuck that old man

I've been loving the thought of Bucky getting kind of possessive recently and honestly, it's way too hot

Because I love the thought of him dropping you onto the bed and barely giving you a second to think before his lips are back on yours and his bodyweight is pressing you into the mattress.

"Such a good girl for me." He hums between bites to your neck, letting himself take the extra few moments to ensure he's left a trail of bruises in his wake.

But he's right and you know he is. You're only a good girl for him.

One of his hands trails its way up your bare leg, starting at your knee. It moves painfully slowly, the wait making you more desperate than you thought possible in such a short space of time.

"Bucky, please." You whine, begging for more, begging him to really touch you instead of just the featherlight graze of his fingertips.

The very tip of his index finger drifts over the thin lace of your panties, admiring that they're soaked through with evidence of your arousal. "Is this all for me?" He teases, tapping gently on your clit through the slick fabric, watching your expression because touching you like that just isn't enough.

You nod but that's not the response he wants and you know it. He wants to hear you. So you indulge him.

"I'm so wet for you." You whisper, a little embarrassed but the way he kisses your shoulders reassures you.

He brings the slick tip of his finger to his lips, making sure you're watching before he lets it slip into his mouth, making a show of the way he indulges in your arousal. You hear him groan quietly before he shuffles down the bed, pulling your panties off and tossing them onto the floor.

"God, you're beautiful." He trails two fingers in gentle circles over your clit before replacing them with his mouth. His tongue flicks methodically over the most sensitive part of your body, lapping like this is all he needs. For a second, you think it might be.

Your hands find their way into his hair, desperate to pull him closer. You can't help but notice that his tongue feels so different to his fingertips, despite the fact he uses very similar motions. His tongue doesn't offer the same friction or pressure but it's a truly wonderful feeling in its own way.

Half of the excitement of this is watching the way he loses himself in the taste of you. You feel him groan against your sex, his eyes squeezed shut and you know he needs this. He needs to feel the way your body reacts to each calculated flick of his tongue. He needs to feel you come undone against his mouth and he's determined to make you do just that.

His fingertips dig into your hips and thighs, his grip matching the intensity of his mouth and everything about this feels Heavenly. You know he's going to leave you marked with little crescent shaped indentions from where he's gripped you too tightly and his blunt fingernails have bit into your flesh but part of you loves the thought of it.

"You taste beautiful. You're such a good girl." You hear him mumble, kissing the insides of your thighs, taking a second to catch his breath, his fingers taking over in his mouth's absence.

"I'm your good girl, Bucky." You whine, leaning into his touch and you feel his lips curl into a soft smile against your skin.

The Mad Women's Ball (Mélanie Laurent, 2021)

The fact that you continually misgender Adam Cole is fucking weird dude. It's not cute.

Tell me you haven't heard of a headcanon without telling me you haven't hward of a headcanon. Like-... damn sorry people are having fun-? Maybe get your head out your asshole anon. You really don't get to come into people's ask boxes with that kinda bullshit...wrestlers are playing a character. Dya know what the most common thing people do with characters? Make their own headcannons. Like sorry you don't like people writing trans people but I think that's a skill issue with you.

Also the adam cole in our system uss she/her pronouns. So if that's what you're bitching about. I'm not misgensering.

The Mad Women's Ball (2021)

I’m rewtaching a favorite show of mine - well, up until season 4 favorite - Yellowstone, and I realize that they capitalized on an emotional topic to get out of shoddy writing and what I hate even more is that it worked. 

Jamie and Beth have hated one another from the get go, but between season 1 and season 2, it goes from ‘every sibling in this family somewhat hates the other one but they’re still kind of okay to one another’ to there’s a very intense hatred that wasn’t there before between these two specifically. 

There’s a few scenes where you can make a guess - Beth as a child is blamed for their mother’s death (by her mom herself) when Beth’s horse spooks into their mom’s and the horse crushes her. Okay, maybe that’s why Jamie doesn’t like Beth, and Beth just hates everyone because that’s pretty traumatic. Nope - you get another flashback where their mom is still alive on a Christmas when they’re all pretty young and you find out Beth has always been dramatic, and Jamie is complaining that they should just start opening presents without her because it will be New Year’s before she comes down. Okay, so they’ve always had issues. Some siblings are like that, I get it, fine. One girl, middle child, in a family of all cowboys and she also hates horses? Makes sense - drama is the only way for her to get attention. 

And then comes The Real Issue - some time after their mom dies,I assume Beth is 16 or 15 and Jamie is two years older and about to leave for college, his birthday is in December - so 17 ish. She’s been knocking boots with the other teenage ranch hand (who becomes the love of her life later on) and she winds up pregnant. Rather than go to her father, her older brother, or even the guy she’s been having sex with, she goes to the brother that she doesn’t particularly like, and asks him to take her to a clinic for an abortion. Their family is 6 generation famous - everyone knows this family, their business, etc. John Dutton runs this valley through fear and violence. They founded the town. So they can’t go to a Planned Parenthood, even several towns over, because people will still know and report back to John. So they go to the next door Reservation where Jamie shows his ID while his sister waits in the truck, and the nurse at the desk informs them that a stipulation in getting an abortion there is you’re sterilized. Jamie seems to think about it for a minute, goes back out to the truck with his sister, and tells her it’s okay to come in. 

From then on, Beth absolutely despises Jamie for the rest of their lives because ‘he prevented her from ever having kids without telling her about it.’

And this is where I lose it. 

I get why they picked it, bodily autonomy is a hot topic and so is the fact that indigenous women were sterilized by white doctors against their knowledge for years in a planned genocide. It made the audience so mad that they just stopped paying attention to the amount of holes in this plot. It might’ve even made this make sense if Beth wasn’t the white daughter of a homicidal white land baron who ran everyone and everything in the state of Montana. Why is the blame put squarely on the 17 year old (or the 15 year old) when clearly multiple adults somehow just....screwed the pooch? If you knew who’s kids those were, if you stopped and sort of paled at their last name, why would you not tell the one getting an abortion ‘hey - you sure about this?’ because that’s just too much WTF to expect a white doctor to recognize the rich white kid and say absolutely nothing - no consent form, no talking to her about it - why would you not question Jamie at that point? Why wouldn’t you question Beth? Is this rape? Is this abuse? YOU DON’T KNOW, THEY JUST DECIDED THE EMOTIONAL REACTION WOULD PREVENT PEOPLE FROM LOOKING TOO CLOSELY. Why would you sterilize the fifteen year old in secret when women who are in their 30′s have to get multiple doctors and a psych eval to get a hysterectomy, or tubes tied when their rationalization is ‘you might want kids some day?’ or ‘what does your husband have to say about it?’

Again, it’d would’ve made perfectly logical sense if it’d been an indigenous woman and a white boyfriend (or no boyfriend, or even her own husband, or literally just by being  indigenous). Why does no one question why Jamie was either 1) so angry at his sister that this is some pubescent revenge scheme (except it’s clearly shown that he regrets it - thank you Wes Bentley for caring about your character development when the writers didn’t) or 2) so scared of his dad finding out that his little sister is pregnant that he decides right then and there that getting sterilized is the best course of action? I mean, this is the dad who puts a branding iron to his youngest son (when he’s still a teenager) when he gets a woman from the Rez pregnant and refuses to take her to a clinic for an abortion like his dad tells him to. That’s the son he likes. So the threat is real that something bad would’ve happened if they told their father - bad enough that Jamie and Beth keep it a secret into their 40′s - but AGAIN - why is this on Jamie? And only on Jamie? Is it really that hard to make the leap that Jamie knew what his dad was going to do - drag his sister to a clinic anyways, and then quite probably kill the kid who knocked her up - the kid who winds up being her husband and her father’s favorite son? Why are we not putting the (or any) blame on John Dutton who was apparently so fucking awful at this point that they were scared to go to him and this was the better option? 

There’s too many parts in this story line that make absolutely no sense, or require a lot more guilty adults than just Jamie and Beth (should also note, that for the first season, Jamie and Beth, for having this horrible relationship and skeleton in the closet, still call one another when they’re in trouble - need a ride, need to confess something, try to save the ranch, etc - and then it just vanishes in season 2). 

Maybe I give Jamie too much leeway. Maybe it’s because I love Wes Bentley as an actor and keep watching the Behind the Story shorts on the DVDs where he explains Jamie’s motivation. Or maybe because I really fucking don’t like that they’re obviously trying to make Jamie the Bad Guy because he’s the adopted son and clearly, Adopted Kids are always the Bad Guy in media (I have never met a single adopted or foster kid who was like ‘yeah, my loyalty is to my Bio parent despite the fact that they were so fucking awful that I got taken away by the state and put in a much nicer home with people who actually want and love me, let me torpedo my adopted family’s lives straight into the shitter now that I have my bio family again’. But the fact that the entire fandom in a goddamn western has become like Team Iron Man vs Team Captain America because EmOtIoN irritates the fuck out of me because it’s excusing the writers for having absolutely no fucking idea what they’re writing about and just want drama for the sake of drama and never really thought out how this would actually go down. 

And this isn’t even touching on the fact that any child that Beth had would be emotionally or physically abused because that’s exactly what Beth does to the teenager she ‘adopts’ in season 4, because having a kid doesn’t automatically make you a better person - which they would know, if they looked at the amount of kids in foster care. 

women's college ball is such a the lord giveth and the lord taketh away situation for me. on the one hand the games are so often just total routs which is pretty boring to watch. but on the other hand, the sheer number of gay haircuts you will see in the crowd...effervescent.

-Xanthe

Title: The Mad Women's Ball

Author: Victoria Mas

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2019

Genres: fiction, historical fiction, feminism, fantasy, mental health, gothic

Blurb: Dr. Charcot holds all of Paris in thrall with his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad and cast out from society...but the truth is much more complicated: these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives, those who have lost something precious, wayward daughters, or girls born from adulterous relationships. For Parisian society, the highlight of the year is the Lenten Ball, deemed the Madwomen's Ball, when the great and good come to gawk at the patients of the Salpetriere Asylum dressed up in their finery for one night only. For the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope. Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister Blandine, she shunned religion and placed her faith in both the celebrated psychiatrist Dr. Charcot and science...but everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family that has locked her away in the asylum because Eugenie has a secret: she sees spirits. Inspired by the scandalous banned work The Book of Spirits that all of Paris is talking about, Eugenie is determined to escape from the asylum - and the bonds of her gender - and seek out those who will believe in her. For that, she will need Genevieve's help.

books i've read so far in 2023 - 21/06/2023

Smiles sicko-ly (UConn eliminated from the tourney)

INCREDIBLY FUNNY that I refused to settle for just saying "bread" but yes it was those! So in that sense, the lavish bread physics are integral to conveying how important the little things were in getting him through prison. Still, for the sake of the drip…...... perhaps sacrifices are needed...

But yeah, I'm thrilled you noticed those things about the evolution of Jo's design, too! It's super interesting to think about in terms of storytelling, I don't think you're inarticulate in saying that at all. Speaking of, I also just look up "holder" to find prev asks at this point lol

Jo and Ichi's dynamic is also a major topic of interest for me (as we've seen). I think a lot of what's going on with them is definitely some variation of "old habits die hard." That's natural when you form that kind of uneasy coexistence. But like you mentioned, it's also telling that Jo picked up the nickname in the first place, because I went back through the entire script, and it really is the case that only Arakawa, Masato, Jo, and the people who raised Ichi call him that. It's reserved for his family.

I think this line about Aoki (that I completely forgot about before looking at the script again lol) may also shed some light: "A long time ago, I knew him as the young master. He knew me as Ichi." Because they all do that, don't they? Ichi still says Captain, Boss, and Young Master, Jo still says Boss, Ichi, and Young Master, Aoki still says Dad and Ichi.

Even though on paper these relationships should've dissolved with Ichi being expelled, Masato becoming Aoki, and Jo taking over as second patriarch, to one another, they're all still who they used to be. And as an aspect of how they communicate, the "learned language" that forms in families, it stands out when they're all on the same page with the terms they choose to use.

This line from Ichi also stood out to me: "But my aniki taught me different. He said whoever makes the first move is the victor. The guy with steel balls wins." Like, that's clearly Jo, right? For one thing, the "flavor" of aniki is different from Captain, of course--one is directly an appointed post, and one is more open to interpretation--but it also clearly shows that Jo's imparted his "philosophy" to Ichi in some ways.

I think, to a degree, it's one of those holdovers from RGGO that wasn't fully implemented. Because they're more or less the same in RGGO in this regard, but RGGJo does outright say it makes him weirdly happy that Ichi still calls him Captain, so that's a clearer indicator and makes the idea feel more "complete."

With what I said before about their "learned language," too, the Arakawa Family has this way of saying goodbye that's specific to them, and I really miss it in Y7. It is referenced briefly, but it's not a "thing" like it was in RGGO. It's kinda like how The Gang in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia greet each other with "Hey-ohhh!" LMAO idk but. I Enjoy. But that's also why it stood out to me that LaD8Jo greets Ichi the same way as Y7Jo and RGGJo.

ALSO that is so sick the author of Soliloquy saw your art…… incredible……….. + as an aside since I was reminded, it's very true that sometimes people seem to "fill in the blanks" with tropes, and my favorite is honestly when it's both funny and offensive. There was this whole "phase" (and to everyone's credit it was short-lived) of playing Mine up like this Huge Misogynist because he's not attracted to women, and it's WILD to recognize that he's gay but still pull up homophobic tropes for funsies.

Like I was mad at the time mostly on account of the mischaracterization (because come on, even if you've only seen Y3, he is still uncharacteristically soft with Katase… not that he wasn't INSANE for The Slap, but it also wasn't at all rooted in the same things as say, Nishiki slapping Reina might've been.) But it was funny. Perhaps not in the way it was intended to be, but it was funny. And, you know, that's why I'm happy to stay in my own little corner as well.

You coulda just said bread it's ok 😭 I WAS right though it WAS a carb......

On the subject of language though, it's def something I picked up on (if my last ask wasn't any indication lmao)! It's a real neat detail and something I think helps push that 'family' theme Y7 has going on (or at the very least demonstrates how despite the times changing, they still have those bonds with each other whether they acknowledge it or not), it definitely being a case of picking up a habit/term from family.

About tropes in fan works though, I can't act like I'm guiltless of it LMAO so I don't have too strong of a leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing it (and I can't lie, sometimes I do find playing into the trope funny if it's at least based on something from the text and it's just exaggerated For The Bit yeah). However I do think the strangest thing was linking misogyny and Mine (I made a post rambling about it but deleted it like. .3 seconds later) because nothing he does in either Y3 nor RGGO is explicitly misogynistic? In the slightest? And as we talked about before he's considerably pretty respectful towards women? Again, he surely did slap a little girl, but it wasn't because she was a girl you know (still cringe to do but if we're gonna talk about it let's do it right please and thank you). As you say though, pushing that trope onto Mine just feels like perpetuating the harmful stereotype that gay men hate women, and in cases like that then I can't really take the piss out of it without having a weird taste in my mouth.

Books read in 2023: The mad women's ball by Victoria Mas

Illness dehumanises; it makes puppets of these women, at the mercy of their grotesque symptoms, rag dolls in the hands of doctors who manipulate and examine every fold of skin; curious animals who elicit only a clinical curiosity. They are no longer wives or mothers or adolescent girls, they are no longer women to be considered or contemplated, they will never be women who are desired or loved; they are patients. Lunatics.