#to which i would say there is! but you went to the queer market day
Text
I become 300% more of both a lover and a hater when I'm on my period. just a time of the month when I have strong opinions I would say
#i want to kiss a butch for 3 hours. also i'm the only one in the world with correct opinions about everything#me the main character of life#anyway i saw this post complaining about sanitized mass marketable queer art#where the person described themselves based on the interests i guess they thought were most stereotypical and then were like#isn't there something rawer or more real than this#to which i would say there is! but you went to the queer market day#idk it is a frustration of mine too i do get it#but i think some people could stand to just get weirder and like the things they like#idk i buy cute little queer stickers all the time but i regularly stand out as a strange person in both queer and straight communities#get a friend who worked the same shit job who will sell you abstract alien art they made while they were high it's not hard#go to goodwill more. you'll find some raw expressions of humanity.#if you just want your interests to be more genuine to you it's simple#you just have to accept that maybe 2 other people will be able to rec you music or foods you enjoy#being more specific isn't everything it's cracked up to be sometimes#i think the problem here is mainly capitalism
137 notes
·
View notes
Text
Workplace Connections
Romance short. A junior secretary makes a friend at work, and some more besides.
10k, rated M, F/F. A young woman makes friends with one of the only male secretaries in her workplace. 1960s Manhattan, featuring lavender marriages, period queerness, misogyny, etc. Light-hearted age gap cheeriness.
Read on Patreon / / Read on Medium.
---
Elsa had considered herself lucky to work in an office like this one. A lot of the girls she went to college with went on to get fancy jobs in the city, but hers is almost certainly the fanciest – she works up so high in a Manhattan skyscraper, after all, and because the company trades in a lot of different materials, she gets nice perks on top of her pay packet.
Silk scarves, in May – she has different ones for every day of the week, made to match her different dresses; she likes to match her earrings to her hairpins, too, and colour them altogether.
It’s sort of expected of you in an office like this, to be well put together, to not just be capable and adept at typing, but… pretty. And Elsa might not be the prettiest girl in the world, but she’s pretty enough, especially the way she dresses, the way she puts her face on.
Some of the girls even ask her for fashion advice from time to time in the office, which is nice – not because she’s particularly on trend, but because she’s got such a good eye for colour and detail. A lot of them are trying to find husbands, want to get married to one of the executives or to a client, at this office or another.
There are handsome men in the office, she supposes – Elsa doesn’t know she’s ever had much of an eye for handsome men before seeing the details in their faces, their clothes.
Her boss, Mr Lockwood, would perhaps be handsome if he weren’t so cold and miserable all the time, was perhaps more handsome when he was a younger man – in any case, even the least attractive men in the office are balanced out by their secretaries. This is a sales office, after all: it’s all about marketability, at its core. She knows no one would want to hear all that feminist talk, but it’s about the status symbol of a beautiful woman on your desk, representing you – you’re selling her and she’s selling you, almost, an additional tactic.
Most of the men in the office have beautiful secretaries, anyway – Mr Garvey doesn’t. He’s a red-faced, unpleasant man, cold, and he disapproves of women so much you’d almost think he cared about the feminist angle too, but really, he just hated them, Elsa thought.
He’s never had a woman for his secretary, the girls say, and he absolutely won’t have one – his secretary is called Jasper, and he’s one of the only male secretaries Elsa knows. They’re more common in some industries than others, she’s heard.
Jasper is handsome, but in a plain, forgettable way – he has dark hair, thin pink lips that naturally turn to a frown when his face is resting, brown eyes. His eyelashes are lighter than the chestnut of his hair and eyebrows, and the golden tint in them catches the light at times.
He’s not a pretty face or a sweet voice or the phone, and some clients and coworkers are actually disappointed to work with his boss, make playful comments about how they’re missing out when they meet him instead of “one of the girls”. People mistake him for one of the executives, at times, which he shrugs off.
The other girls don’t always know how to deal with him, the rest of the secretarial pool. He’s one of the more senior and experienced of them, knows a few tricks of the trade, is extraordinarily capable – and if one of them asks for his voice, if they’re in a hurry and want to avoid flirting, or if they need to make a call and know that a woman calling won’t be taken seriously, Jasper will call up on their behalf, even read off a card if they want him to.
Not every day – not every week, even – but sometimes, he’ll do it.
“Happy to,” he always says. “What else am I for?”
Elsa’s having a bad day when she comes into the kitchenette frazzled and exhausted, sweating in her Wednesday dress and with a tear on the cuff of her blouse that her hands are shaking too much to fix – maybe from lack of sleep, or from too much coffee, or just anxiety.
Mr Lockwood’s been riding her hard today. He’s going to lose an account, he thinks, and he’s taking it out on her, keeps changing his mind about how he wants letters written, what tone to use, what calls to make. He’d just slammed his hand onto the desk beside her typewriter, demanding he get one in a different font set, and she’s got to go and get another before he comes back from lunch.
Jasper is sitting alone at the table, smoking a cigarette and idly paging through a magazine. It’s a woman’s magazine. All the magazines in the secretaries’ kitchenette are women’s magazines, and he never complains.
It’s a bit odd. He’s a bit off. Some of the girls think he might be wrong, somehow. Why else would a man take a job like this in an office like this one?
“Just you?” she asks. Her voice sounds thick from crying, and she stifles a sniffle, feels the snot thick in her nose.
“Anita’s birthday – most of the girls on the floor went out with her to Kiplings’. I expect you can still catch them up.”
She doesn’t say anything, pouring tea.
“Are you going to repair that tear?” he asks. He has a sort of cold, quiet voice – most of the men in the office are either warm and flirty, charismatic, or they bark and bluster. All of them are louder than Jasper is. He only ever puts more volume in his voice when he’s on the phone – ordinarily he speaks very quietly, deliberately.
She doesn’t know why, but him asking that is the straw that breaks the camel’s proverbial back – she bursts into tears, letting out a wail, burying her face in her hands.
“Oh, dear,” says Jasper in that toneless, detached way of his, and stubs out his cigarette.
Elsa’s grateful that Mr Lockwood had gone out to lunch with two of his partners, that there’s no chance of him coming to find her until at least three o’clock.
Jasper takes her gently, his palms gripping her upper arms, and guides her to sit. She watches powerlessly as he finishes pouring tea for her, putting in the sweetener she uses before she asks, and as she tries desperately to pull herself together, he opens up another drawer and pulls out the sewing kit.
It’s the communal one, and all the threads are put away messily, the needles shoved into one little cushion that’s smaller than a golf ball and splitting apart at the seams.
“My mother would tell you there’s never much point in crying over a man,” Jasper tells her as he scoots his chair closer and sinks down into it. She’s in parallel to him now, and she sniffles as he pushes the hem of her cuff up, sliding the needle through the fabric and smoothly beginning to sew it neatly together with surgical confidence.
“Have you done this before?” she asks.
“I take dictation and read fashion magazines,” he says mildly. “Is it such a stretch of the imagination that I also know how to sew open a tear in a woman’s sleeve?”
After a pause, because every retort she can think to that is too rude, she says, “I’m not crying over a man.”
“I suppose Mr Lockwood isn’t much of one,” says Jasper, and she laughs and cries at the same time, a shudder going through her.
“He thinks he’s going to lose the Sachs account.”
“He is. Roux Gold’s new brother-in-law owns a sawmill – family trumps a business connection every time.”
She hadn’t known that, and she stares into space as Jasper finishes sewing up the tear with a neat flourish of his wrist, trimming off the excess thread and then putting the needle back. She can barely see where he’s sewn it, the white thread matched to the fabric colour.
Mr Lockwood has been muttering angrily about deals and prices and inventory and logistics, and he’s never once mentioned that Roux Gold’s gotten married, or that it might impact his situation.
“He can’t keep it?” she asks.
“Not unless he marries into the family as well, no, but he has to appear to try. Just let it wash over you, Elsa. Let the man tantrum as he pleases.”
“It’s not a tantrum,” she manages to say, wiping her eyes, and Jasper nudges her tea toward her and she picks it up, drinking from it. It’s too hot. She swallows. “He’s stressed.”
Jasper stares at her blankly as he relights his cigarette. He can make his eyes go so dead, when he wants to.
“Don’t cry over a man, Elsabeth Lorne,” says Jasper quietly, “but don’t you go making excuses for one either. Least of all a substandard boss.”
“He isn’t—”
“Yes, he is. He’ll be gone by September anyway – the Sachs account is his third loss this quarter. I shouldn’t be surprised if he loses a few more in the meantime.”
“But it’s not his fault,” she hears herself say almost reflexively.
“The Sachs account isn’t, I’ll grant you,” says Jasper, tapping the butt of his cigarette and sprinkling ash into the tray. He has pretty hands, pale, with manicured fingernails with pink beds. “The others were. Weather the storm, as I told you. Once he’s gone, Eva will move you onto someone better – your work is very good, and Anja on Paul Vine’s desk is getting married in August. It might line up nicely that you take over his desk.”
“Mr Vine’s?” she asks. “But he’s so much higher up than Mr Lockwood.”
“And you’re a good secretary,” Jasper tells her in blunt, even tones, as if he’s irritated she would doubt it, or show any sort of modesty for her skill or position. “You’re neat, well-organised, keen. You’re very adept and highly adaptable – flexible.”
“But today I—”
“You’re crying today because you’ve been asked, I’m guessing very unreasonably, to do the impossible,” says Jasper. “When the impossible is expected of you, it’s hardly up to you to meet expectations. Understandable, as well, to have a bit of a cry.”
She looks down at her lap. “Why are you here?” she asks. “Why do you work here?”
“Is this your coy way of asking how much more money I make than you?”
“What? No!”
He chuckles softly, and she feels her cheeks burn as she stares at him, indignant, as if she’d ask that. As if she would.
“Why are you a secretary, I meant,” she mutters. “And part of the pool here. When you could be like one of the men.”
“Am I not one of the men?” he asks. His voice is very deliberate, just like everything about him is deliberate, but more so in this moment even than usual. Suddenly she feels very ashamed.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you did.” He takes a drag from his cigarette, and offers her one from his case, which is made of brass and has roses carved into the metal. She shakes her head, and he clicks it shut. “It’s a sensible question. Why would I be a secretary when secretaries make so much less money than the men they serve? Why would I do women’s work when to do so is to invite mockery? Why would I drop myself in the midst of women rather than doing serious, men’s work?”
There’s something sardonic about how he says it, the words blistering with irony. She doesn’t know anyone alive who talks with such disdain for men as Jasper Hackett is right now – and it’s for them, Elsa thinks. He’s not angry at her for asking, just hates the question, hates the world that makes her ask it.
“I lack the stomach for masculinity,” he says, gesturing with one graceful hand, his cigarette a moving glow. “I don’t well-digest red meat, either.”
“You don’t like other men.”
“I suppose not.”
“Not even Mr Garvey?”
Jasper smiles at her.
Mr Garvey is the Chief of Accounts and one of the senior partners. He’s terrifying, so square it’s like they made him at the canning factory before they tailored his suits for him. Some of the girls joke that he wouldn’t let women in the building at all if he could.
“No one at all likes Mr Garvey, young lady,” says Jasper mildly. “Barring his wife, perhaps, and even her affections can’t be taken as given. But I do appreciate his severity, I suppose – one knows where one stands, no politics, no nonsense. No masculine posturing.”
Elsa is quiet, reaching up and touching the new stitching on her sleeve.
“Might I ask you a question now, or is this a one-sided interview?” Jasper asks, and she feels her brow furrow, her nose wrinkling slightly as she looks warily across the table at him. “Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.”
“Have you brought something?”
“A salad.”
“Good.” The way he says it, it’s less like praise and more like a verbal check mark – he says it in the same tone he does after receiving an affirmative in a meeting. Brisk, business-like, in-motion.
“How did you tear your sleeve?”
“I caught it.”
“Obviously. On what?”
“One of the shelves in the stationery cupboard. There’s a loose nail.”
Jasper frowns, and as she watches, he takes a notebook out of his suit pocket and makes a note, probably to tell the janitor. “Are you certain you don’t want to catch the girls up to join them?” he asks as he writes it down.
“I’ll just cry more,” says Elsa. “It’ll embarrass me. Maybe later. Why don’t you go?”
“I’m not man enough for the men in this building,” Jasper says with a shrug. “But I’m too much of a man for a girls’ lunch.”
Elsa’s instinct is to argue with him, for some reason, or try to somehow comfort him, although she doesn’t really know what he needs comforting for. She doesn’t know what he means exactly by that, about not being man enough. He’s the one who’s become a secretary, who wants to sit outside the boardrooms and take dictation rather than be inside them making presentations, or going out to dinner with his coworkers, with the other men.
Maybe it’s the culture.
Some men don’t like it, she knows, the “culture” – they don’t like to drink or go out with girls because they’re already married, or shy, or disinterested. The men get to opt out of it, or go home to their wives, and leave.
She doesn’t get to opt out. None of them do, really.
She hates the way they look at her sometimes, the men in the office, hates the hungry stares and the up-and-down flickering looks, the hands on her back, her waist, touching her cheeks, her neck, playing with her hair. It’s not as if it’s just the men in the office – it’s the men in the world. She just works here.
She’s not Mr Lockwood’s type, and it feels, sometimes—
Well.
Sometimes, the way he snaps at her, the precise way he raises his voice, it feels like he’s angry at her for not being what he likes, for not being pretty in the way he enjoys, the way he would enjoy. It feels like he’s angry that he doesn’t want her, and blames her for it.
She goes on dates, sometimes. Some of the girls live for it, the dates with clients or with copywriters, with the accounts execs, with the accountants. They talk about it like it’s a game – she feels less like a player and more like a poker chip, bet and played on the table.
Jasper is one of the only men her age in the office – well, he’s a bit older, thirty-something, but not forty or fifty – where talking to him doesn’t feel like it might turn around on her, like it might become a date.
That’s why the girls think he’s off, maybe. It feels dishonest, like there’s a trap there, somehow.
“Does it make you—” Elsa starts, and then she stops herself, not wanting to speak out of turn, not when she already feels like she’s made things mortifying for herself, when Jasper’s seen her cry, and now that’s what he’ll think of her whenever he sees her, sees her work.
“Hmm?” he prompts her.
“Did you eat lunch?” she asks.
They say he doesn’t, sometimes. She’s heard the girls gossiping about it in the break room or in the corridors, that he’s just like them in some ways. That he skips meals, that he likes to keep trim – and he is that. He’s got sharp cheekbones, and you can tell when he’s been more stressed out than usual, because he eats fewer meals, because the hollows show more in his cheeks.
He smokes more. Eats less.
“Mr Garvey is in one of his moods,” says Jasper.
It’s not that she doesn’t get the connotation – she hears that it’s negative, just that Garvey has so many negative moods that it’s hard to narrow down the estimation.
“Do you ever cry at work?” she asks. It’s half a joke, but his smile is wry when he shows it.
“Not anymore,” he says evenly, seriously. “When I was young, I did, now and then. Younger than you, I mean – at twenty, twenty-one. When I started.”
“Right out of college?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go to a woman’s college, too?” She winces at the words as they come out of her mouth, but he laughs again, doesn’t seem offended. She likes his laugh – it’s throaty and has a hoarse quality to it, maybe from the cigarettes. It’s not as deep as some men’s, but it’s not high either. No one would ever mistake him for a woman on the phone.
“I went to a secretarial school, yes.”
“Was your class all girls?”
“Mostly.”
“Does Mr Garvey treat you like he’d treat a woman?”
“Spit on me and tell me not to spike my heels into his carpet? Only when I find him in a jubilant mood.”
It shocks a laugh out of her, one of her hands over her mouth. He’s starting another cigarette, tapping it on his case before lighting the cigarettes head to head.
“You’re terrible,” she says.
“I am,” Jasper agrees, catty and just a little smug. “And I don’t know. Mr Garvey is a passionate misogynist but his hatred of women is more to do with his religious nature. Men have sex with women – ergo, men see women, and think of sex. In Mr Garvey’s mind, the mere presence of a woman stirs men to distraction. He doesn’t want people to think of sex in the office.”
“Well, I don’t want people to think of sex in the office,” she mutters, and she lowers her voice as she says the word, almost whispers it. She looks behind her shoulder to see if anyone else is there, but it’s just them. She doesn’t know that she should engage him on these terms at all. He speaks bluntly about the subject in a way that makes her nervous.
“No,” Jasper agrees. “Nor I, really. But Mr Garvey’s methods aren’t fantastic, and in any case, without revealing myself as a feminist, Elsa, women are more than a reminder of sex on legs.” He trails off, gesturing broadly with his cigarette, and then says, “He doesn’t treat me like many of the other men treat you girls, no. He doesn’t pat me on the backside or flirt with me, or fuss over my appearance – doesn’t scream at me in the same way some people do their secretaries, or nitpick my work so. Kimberley says I’m one of our best clerks, but honestly, I’m middling.
“They might not like my company, Elsabeth, but because I’m a man, our esteemed coworkers assume I must be better at my job, particularly my figures and so forth. And because I’m a man, my work isn’t constantly interrupted with male attention and attempts at my seduction – or just the distraction of someone staring at me while I’m trying to get things done.”
She sips at her tea, digesting that for a moment. “I never thought about that,” she admits. “All the time it takes up. Obviously, I know it… But I never thought about it in terms of minutes.”
It’s a lot, in the day. It’s more than minutes, in the day – it’s an hour, at least. Multiple, probably.
“I’m relatively invisible, of course,” he adds. “Being noticed, observed, in one thing in small doses, but a stressor when constant.”
She doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t ask, “Do you ever feel like a zoo animal, or perhaps a farm animal up on the butcher’s block?” because, she supposes, he knows enough that he doesn’t have to.
“I wish I could be invisible,” she says. She’s astonished by the weight of the envy in her voice.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’d hide you if I could.” He taps a little more ash from the head of his cigarette. “What made you choose secretarial work as your profession?”
She thinks about the question for a moment, wonders how honest she should be. That’s the thing about working in an office like this one. You’re meant to be honest, but not too honest.
When people ask, “How are you?” they don’t really want to know – you’re meant to make the right small talk, and talk about things without really talking about things, talking around them instead. It’s the same thing about who you are. What you’re meant to say, how you’re meant to behave.
Dressing as neatly as she does, as perfectly, is as close to being invisible as she can get – because she never has a detail out of place, and because she keeps her clothes in uniform, men don’t have anything new to comment on. She feels an additional surge of gratitude for Jasper fixing her sleeve.
“You can be honest,” Jasper says.
People usually mean it as a trap when they say a thing like that in this building – no one can really be honest in sales, unless the honesty is cover for a lie. Somehow, it feels different with him. She feels a sort of kinship with him.
“I could make more money here than in a factory,” she says. “Much more.” It’s true, and she regularly says it, and often it makes people laugh, but Jasper doesn’t. He nods his head in understanding.
“Much more,” he echoes.
“I took a typing course in high school. My English teacher said I’d be good, streamlined the process for me.”
“That was why you went?”
“I think so,” she says quietly. “I just didn’t really know what to do. More school was easy – I was good at school. And then I came out east with a girl from home, we got a place together. I work here – she works across town.”
“In sales?”
“In insurance. She says it’s a better office to find a husband in, that the men are less flighty, more reliable.”
“One can count on an insurance man to be risk-aware and sensible with his investments, I suppose.”
“How will you find a wife?” she asks, and he glances up from where he was looking at the tabletop, his eyebrows raising slightly. “I mean, would you— would you marry another secretary? Meet someone here at work, like we do? Or…?”
“You don’t listen to the office gossip, do you?” he asks. “Or you do, but you don’t understand it, exactly. Not sure why it matters, nor where it comes from, what spurs it on, what turns those wheels. Why ever does it matter so much, what they talk about? Why do they treat it with such gravity, these little faux pas, the arguments, the seemingly insignificant remarks?”
Her stomach flips, and she’s aware that her expression has crumpled.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he says softly, getting to his feet. “It’s not my intention to bait you or to be cruel to you. I’m not looking for a wife, young lady.”
“You’re, um…” She trails off. She’s heard people joke about it. Laugh about it. Not about Jasper, just— Just in general.
“You’re that way?” she ends up asking.
“I’m already married,” says Jasper. Her gaze drops to his hands, looking for a wedding ring she knows isn’t there. In response to her dropping eyes, he pulls out a chain from under his shirt, a ring shining on it, and says, “I don’t wear a wrist watch either.”
She swallows hard around the lump in her throat, suddenly so embarrassed she feels she could burst into tears, and he pulls his shirt forward by the tie, dropping the chain and ring back under his collar.
“Oh,” she says. “I’m— I’m so sorry, Mr Hackett, for, for saying—”
Jasper smiles at her, and steps out of the room.
* * *
Elsa doesn’t understand why he’s never mentioned it to the girls. She’s heard them say it, heard them call him a single man or joke about what he’d be looking for in a wife. Anja had once joked that he was probably hoping some man will mistake him for a girl and take him home as a bride.
All the girls had laughed and then gone hushed and quiet, but some of them had giggled for ages afterward, kept nudging each other and tittering when he went by.
“It’s illegal for a reason,” Joanie Eames had said at the bar. “Like having sex with farm animals.”
Elsa doesn’t know that it’s exactly the same, but she knows it’s wrong, that it’s a depravity of the worst sort, that those sorts of people are dangerous, ugly inside. She feels bad for thinking Jasper might be one of them, for letting herself assume, for saying it. She’s lucky he was so unmoved by it, that he just found it funny.
They used to tease her at school about it, for being the way she is – too literal, too naïve. “Don’t you know anything?” used to ring in her ears on the walk home, she’d heard it so often.
“He’s married, you know,” she says the next time Anja says it after Jasper had come into the break room to pin a note about typewriter repair policy on the board, her talking about how lightly he walked in his loafers.
He wears Oxfords, anyway, not loafers.
“What?”
The girls all go quiet, staring at her, and Anja felt like she’d been spot lit – she was normally in the background, in amongst the crowd of them, not looked at or stared at like she’s being stared at now.
“Jasper Hackett,” she says. “He’s married. He just wears his ring on a chain.”
“Why would he do that?” demands Anja, looking suddenly angry, little pink marks appearing at the tops of her cheeks, because she never has a full blush. “How do you know?”
“Oh, he just mentioned it,” says Elsa, trying to sound casual. “He doesn’t wear a watch, either.”
She wonders if she shouldn’t have said anything, because at the end of the day when Jasper comes out of Mr Garvey’s office and there’s six of them all crowded together, Anja calls him out.
“Hey, Jasper!” she says in that sweet, bubbly voice she has.
“Something I can help you with, dear?” asks Jasper in an even sweeter voice than hers is, so fine and cutting you could probably use it like those wires they cut ham with.
Anja falters, blinking. “I just wanted to ask,” she says. “What’s your wife called?”
Jasper smiles, and it’s a very polite smile, his eyes flittering over the group of them. His gaze locks with Elsa’s for a second, and she almost mouths, “Sorry,” but doesn’t.
“Linda,” he says lightly.
“You don’t have a picture of her on your desk,” Anja says.
“I don’t, I’ve never cared for cluttering a workspace,” Jasper says. “In any case, I well recall what she looks like, I don’t need a reminder. I see her very often.”
Anja doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, so Joanie asks, “What’s she like?”
“She’s tall, two inches taller than me, in fact. She has a beautiful head of hair, a lovely chestnut shade – not like mine, it’s got a shine to it, a bit more red. She’s a very impassioned speaker, an academic. She’s a research assistant over at City College.”
He waits for a few seconds, his expression anticipant, one eyebrow raised, until Joanie says – sort of impotently, “She sounds lovely.”
Jasper says, “She is! Night night, girls,” and moves off down the corridor.
“He walks like a woman,” Anja remarks once he’s out of earshot.
Elsa doesn’t know that he does, but he does walk gracefully, with a kind of flow. Maybe he is light in his Oxfords. She isn’t sure exactly what that means.
* * *
Jasper, some weeks later, comes by Elsa’s desk just before lunchtime, and says, “Would you like to join my wife and I for dinner this evening?”
She stares up at him, her fingers hovering over her keyboard.
“She keeps a kosher kitchen, if that makes the offer more appealing.”
“I haven’t been keeping kosher since I left home,” she admits guiltily. “But that sounds nice. Should I bring anything?”
“Just your fine self and a smile. The smile isn’t even mandatory, if it’s hard to keep up.”
She’s in a bad mood by the end of the day, feeling maudlin and sorry for herself – Mr Lockwood had actually shouted at her, had screamed so loudly that the walls had rattled, and only because she’d asked which Mr Smith he wanted something sending to, because he hadn’t been clear.
All the girls have been so nice to her all day, have been a bit gentler than usual and more sympathetic – several of them regularly refer to Mr Lockwood as a short straw, and they say she’s good to be so patient with him.
Jasper is just covering his typewriter as she goes up to his desk, and Mr Garvey steps out of his office, where Jasper stands to help him on with his coat.
Mr Garvey gives Elsa an ireful look, and she’s in such a poor mood she just stares back at him.
It’s beginning to rain outside, and Mr Garvey surprises Elsa by asking Jasper in gruff tones, “Do you want me to drive you two to the station?”
“No, thank you, Mr Garvey, I have an umbrella. Safe home.”
Garvey mutters something incomprehensible and stalks out.
“Come,” Jasper tells her as he pulls on his own coat and belts it shut over his suit. “I’m only a few stops away, on the same line, and it’s not too much of a walk.”
“Do we have to pick anything up?”
“There’s a bakery across the street from us, but that’s more a siren call than anything.”
“It must be hard,” Elsa says as they step into the lift. “With both of you working – to get groceries and so on.”
“Lina works four days a week, which does help,” Jasper says. “But yes, we’re often reliant on friends to fit some things into the schedule.”
He calls the lift operator by name when they leave, who bids them good night, and Elsa walks beside him into the street and follows his lead toward the subway.
“How long have you been married?”
“Ten years next November.”
“Ten years… You got married young?”
“Twenty-seven isn’t so young.”
“You’re thirty-seven!?”
Jasper blinks, and she looks away, because not only was he surprised, but several people had looked over.
“I thought you were— Well. I didn’t know you were so old.”
“So old,” Jasper repeats, huffing out a soft laugh. “Kind of you to say.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ve made my peace with my youthful features – I looked damn neat pre-pubescent in my early twenties. You’re twenty-two?”
“Twenty-three next month. I feel old.”
“Do you indeed? Why’s that?”
“All the girls are right out of school.”
“Ah. Not world-weariness, just comparison.”
She doesn’t normally ride this line of the subway, and she sits beside Jasper and looks at all the different people, careful not to keep her gaze on anybody for too long. She wants to look without being looked at, without being talked to. No one talks to her – at one point, a man glances over at her and she shifts immediately, wondering if he’s going to come over as his glance becomes a stare and he keeps concentrated on her.
She can feel the weight of his eyes on her face, feel them come down to her body, and in her periphery she sees him shift on his feet—
Jasper leans toward her and starts talking about something Jackie Kennedy said on the radio as if resuming a conversation, and she’s so surprised she doesn’t even realise the man has got up and left until they’re at their stop and they both stand to their feet.
“How do you know to do that?” she asks as they walk up the steps and into the street again. There’s no line at the bakery, and Jasper points out some pastries, buys them and a loaf of bread as well.
“Do what?” he asks.
“You do it with the girls at work sometimes too,” she says. “One of the guys will be flirting with her, and you’ll distract him, or ask if she’ll go and do something for you. Or you’ll just stand in the way and he just… won’t.”
“Men respect other men in a way they don’t women,” says Jasper. “My experience of that is diluted for the sort of man I am, granted, but I’m still a man. Linda and I met in a similar situation – we rode the same train, men were always bothering her. I started standing in the way.”
“So you could marry her instead,” she says with a slight challenge in her voice, and he laughs as he takes the package from the baker, thanking him in Yiddish – the whole conversation was. It’s been a while. She never hears it at work, maybe the occasional “oy”, but nothing else.
It’s not classy enough for the men in the office, the big clients.
“Believe it or not, we knew each other three years before all that. We talked on the train sometimes, and then she used to invite me to parties, and I’d go along with her. One morning, she said she was tired of her roommates bickering with her. She said we should get married.”
Elsabeth stares at him, at the faint smile on his face as they cross the street.
“She did?”
“Oh, yes. I thought she was joking, but she had a whole presentation prepared and she laid it out. A very strong public speaker, my wife, even when her public amounts to one easily convinced man.”
“So you got married then?”
“A few months after our discussion. We’ve been living her since, and we have two cats together. You’re not allergic, are you?”
“No, no. What about children?”
“Oh, we haven’t got room for that,” Jasper says casually. “My mother-in-law gifted us a bassinet, but it doesn’t go unused. Ido and Noam barely share it already without fighting an infant for space as well.”
Elsa thinks about this for a moment. She’s never really imagined being nearly forty and not having children at all. It’s always felt like there’s a sort of ticking clock on her life, until she has to give it over to a man’s children – children that have to be hers as well, but they never really feel like that in her head.
“You don’t want any?”
“Not particularly, no. Parenthood isn’t for everybody.”
“Isn’t it?” she almost asks, but he’s leading her inside, and the question evaporates on her tongue as they step into the house and he eases off his shoes before he takes off his coat, so she copies him.
Linda isn’t home yet, the two of them alone in the house together.
She feels kind of stiff and uncertain, keeping her distance from Jasper as they hang up their hats and coats, as he steps through the living room and into the kitchen, beginning to wash his hands.
Ido and Noam are sitting either end of a shelf with their tails hanging down like bookends, peering at her.
“Where’s your wife?” Elsa asks, hearing the slight quaver in her voice as she walks toward the cats and reaches out her hand to one, letting it sniff her fingers. They’re both huge, fierce-looking animals, muscular with dark, shaggy coats and strong facial features. They’re almost dog-sized really, and she’s surprised the shelf doesn’t creak under their weight.
“On her way home, I’d hope,” Jasper calls from the kitchen. “Linda is less punctual than I am, I’m afraid – timeliness is not one of her virtues.”
She wonders if she’s made a mistake, coming to Jasper Hackett’s apartment, to a man’s apartment, alone with him. No one even knows she’s here except for the cats, and maybe Mr Garvey, and Mr Garvey hates women – would he even care if something happened to her? Would he even notice? It could be his wife doesn’t even know. It could be that he doesn’t even have a wife, that Linda’s made up and she’s here, in a man’s flat, alone, just them.
Her heart is beating faster in her chest.
She turns to look around the rest of the flat, and she feels a bit more nervous when she looks and looks and doesn’t see photographs of the two of them together, just art on the walls, and a lot of books.
Her mouth is dry as she steps into the middle of the living room to look into the kitchen without stepping closer. As she looks, she sees that Jasper has stripped off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, that he’s chopping vegetables.
Elsa’s never seen a man cook before outside of a restaurant, and the knife moves fast, his movements neat and easy, well-practised and at-home with what he’s doing. She feels sick about it, the grip he has on the knife, the fact that he’s not even looking at her.
“Um,” she starts, her mouth dry. She feels a little faint. “Mr Hackett?”
“Goodness, girl, don’t call me that. Jasper is fine. Sorry, would you like a drink? There’s tea and coffee, a few cordials – let me get this mise-en-place finished, and I can make up some lemonade for you.” The wooden noises of the knife on the block keep sounding, and she wrings her hands in front of her belly, rehearsing excuses to leave on her tongue.
And then the door opens behind her and she lets out the breath she was holding, feels her body sag.
It tightens up again when the woman in question walks in, nudging the door closed behind her with her hip so she doesn’t have to put her bags down, and Elsa realises that Jasper Hackett is married to the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen.
Linda Hackett is an Amazon – when Jasper said she was tall, she hadn’t taken into account the idea that she would still wear high heels. Jasper is just under six feet tall, but Linda is past that. In her heels, she must be six feet and two. She has thick cascades of gently curling chestnut hair, warm in colour with golden red undertones and a healthy shine, deep red lips, dark eyes. She wears pants, yellow-beige plaid with her sleeveless blouse tucked into them, a cardigan around her shoulders and held in place with a chain.
“Ah,” she says when she lays eyes on Elsa. “You’re here, good.”
Elsabeth’s tongue feels frozen in her mouth, and she can’t make it work, can’t make herself say anything.
“You said she was shy,” Linda remarks to Jasper, and presses a bag of groceries into Elsa’s arms. “Unpack these.”
For some reason, Elsa’s cheeks blossom in a blush, and she obediently takes the bag, stumbling into the kitchen and setting it down on the counter. It’s a small kitchen, so she ends up back to back with Jasper as she unpacks it – some frozen things, some fruit, rather than things they’re eating tonight.
“How was work?” asks Jasper.
“I’m thinking of murdering one of the adjunct professors,” says Linda casually, leaning in so that Jasper can kiss her cheek, which he does without looking away from the vegetables he’s chopping.
“Only one?” Jasper asks in reply, and Elsa looks at the two of them side by side, at how Linda leans back against the kitchen counter and stands beside him as he chops, swiping a piece of bell pepper to chew and swallow. They look incredible, side-by-side like this – Jasper looks far more handsome, beside his wife, than he does on his own right. They sort of complement each other. “Elsabeth Lorne, meet Linda Hackett,” says Jasper.
“Hi,” Elsa croaks out, her voice breaking on the word.
Linda’s laugh is low and deep – her voice isn’t hoarse, but it has a resonance a lot of women’s don’t have, and it’s naturally far louder than her husband’s is.
“How was work for you?” asks Linda. Her shoulder gently nudges against Jasper’s, but her gaze is locked with Elsa’s. Her arms are crossed under her chest, and it’s— distracting.
“Sam is on a new blood pressure medication. He’s nervous about it – it’s making him quite antsy.”
“Taking it out on you?”
“No more than usual. He offered us a lift, actually, but I declined. I didn’t want poor Elsa here to receive the full force of his personality in such a small space.”
“Mr Garvey?” asks Elsa.
“He can be really lovely outside of the office,” says Linda.
“Really?”
“No.” She smiles as she says it, shifting her arms. She hasn’t got a low neckline, her blouse buttoned up to the neck, but even under the cardigan, Elsa can see how significant her chest is, how big her breasts are. It makes sense, with what a big woman she is, her broad shoulders and her tall frame, that her chest should be in proportion, but…
She feels like some sort of pervert for noticing, her lips quivering, the tops of her ears feeling hot as well as her cheeks.
Linda is lighting a cigarette, and before she takes a drag of it, she holds it to Jasper’s lips, letting him take a drag as he keeps prepping.
“He’s a prickly personality, even in the home,” says Linda. Her fingernails aren’t painted, but they’re beautifully manicured and buffed to a pink shine like Jasper’s are – she’s got quite short fingernails for a woman, doesn’t wear lacquer or have pointed nails. She probably types a lot herself at work. “God knows we’ve had our share of furious arguments over dinner here, Sam and I. But he means well, which is more than most.”
“What do you argue over?” Elsa asks.
Before Linda can answer, Jasper says, “Those two fight over everything. If Linda said the sky was blue, Sam Garvey would be about ready to insist it was green.”
“He’s an awful prick,” says Linda, then chuckles. “I miss him when I don’t see him for a while.”
Elsa’s laugh is breathless, nervous. She doesn’t know any women like Linda, she doesn’t think. Women who smoke like she does, or are so tall, or who call people pricks so easily and so confidently like it’s nothing at all.
“How do you find the work?” she asks Elsa. “Jasper says you two have been chatting recently, that your boss is a bit of an ass?”
“Mr Lockwood,” says Elsa quietly, folding up one of the brown paper bags. “He’s, um… He’s an angry man. He loses his temper a lot.”
“Some men would be happy typing their own letters,” Linda says dryly, tapping her cigarette into an ashtray. “But then they wouldn’t have a secretary as a punching bag. Do you like the work, your boss aside?”
“I like typewriters,” says Elsa.
“Oh?”
“My father is a watchmaker,” Elsa says. “He repairs them back home – watches, clocks. When I started typing at school, he bought some to take apart, to learn to repair, so he could show me. He wanted to make sure I knew how.”
“Oh, that’s sweet,” says Linda softly. Her lips are beautiful when she pouts them out. “So, you can repair them?”
“Yeah, actually, I can repair them okay,” says Elsa. “Especially older models, you know, ones from the forties and earlier – my school actually had a bunch of different models in case people were working at small businesses. The ones at work are newer models, and they’re more accessible for small repairs, less so for deeper mechanical work. Typewriters these days are made to be transported more, so the casements are heavier and more fixed, but that makes their guts less accessible too.”
“Are you excited about the new typewriter ball?” asks Jasper, and Elsa laughs, nodding her head.
“What’s that?” asks Linda, raising her eyebrows and leaning back to look at Jasper. As he swipes the vegetables from the chopping board into a roasting tin, he turns to Elsa can see his face too.
“IBM have released this new typewriter with a ball that all the letters are embossed on,” Jasper says, gesturing with his hands. “Instead of having individual hammers that strike the ribbon, you know, with those layers of bars and hammers like an organ, the ball rotates and moves to be struck by one hammer instead.”
“You can take out the whole ball to clean it at once,” says Elsa, “and that means one typewriter can easily have a bunch of typefaces, because you can just swap out the ball.”
“Oh, look at that smile,” says Linda softly. Her lips are shifted into a smile of her own. She’d been walking closer to get the chicken out of the fridge, and as Elsa stands there Linda holds her cigarette between her lips and reaches out to brush her knuckles over the side of Elsa’s cheek. It’s only a delicate touch, but it’s such a rush Elsa feels dizzy with it.
Once the chicken’s in the oven, Linda and Elsa go into the living room while Jasper makes lemonade, and when Elsa sits down on the sofa, Ido and Noam come over to sniff at her legs and then hop up to sit with her. They’re both heavy, dense animals, and they purr like engines.
“Hi, baby,” says Linda, gripping the larger of the two – Ido – and lifting him up into her lap. Elsa stares at the way he goes limp in her arms, letting her hold him like a baby and rock him in her arms, her thumb rubbing against his thick, tufted chest.
“So, um, Jasper says you’re a research assistant?”
“That’s right, I work in biochemistry – I study metabolism, effectively, the ways in which people digest different things, how quickly, and so on.”
“That’s interesting,” says Elsa, which must ring false, because Linda chuckles.
“It is to me,” she says, rocking Ido, who is looking up at her lovingly, his eyes half-closed. Noam has his big face mashed into Elsa’s belly, and is kneading at the blankets either side of them. “I love my work, I just wish it wasn’t… Ah, you know.”
“It’s hard?”
“I work with men.”
Elsa sighs, and nods her head. “I, um… On the train, Jasper stopped a man from talking to me. Like, he noticed, before he said anything or came over.”
“He’s good at that,” says Linda. “Men like Jasper are a real relief.”
“There are other men like him?”
“There’s a few knocking about.”
“Maybe I should try to find one,” Elsa says quietly, and Linda tilts her head as she looks at her, easing Ido down in her arms. He stays laid on his back, his back legs together like a bunny’s, pressing up on the underside of one of Linda’s boobs, which makes her laugh.
“I hate it when he does that, he knows it,” she says, rubbing the thick fur on his belly. “He just likes to push on it, I think – Noam’s worse, he’ll pad up to me and use his forehead to push one of them up as if he’ll find treasure underneath. It’s a bit like lifting weights for him, I suppose.”
Elsa giggles, covering her mouth, and she shakes her head, scratching Noam under his ears.
“Do you find Jasper handsome?” Linda asks.
“Sure,” says Elsa.
“No, I mean…” Linda starts, and then exhales, smiling at her kindly. “Physically, is he the sort of man you like?”
“Well, most men look the same, really,” says Elsa, and when Linda raises her eyebrows, she wonders if it’s the wrong thing to have said, if it’s not right. “Um. Sorry. I don’t mean anything bad by it. I just mean— Men aren’t like women, right? We all look different.”
“We do,” Linda allows.
“I just— All the men in the office, they get their hair cut at the same places, they wear the same suits, have similar coats. They try to look the same – we all try to look different. Beautiful.”
“You don’t think men can be beautiful?”
“Handsome, maybe,” says Elsa. “I’m not— I’m not saying I… Sorry. I think I’ve said something odd.”
“You haven’t,” says Linda. “Sometimes girls at work will talk about men, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen. It feels like they’re speaking a foreign language sometimes.”
Elsa rubs the top of Noam’s head, between his ears.
“Fools, all of them,” says Jasper as he comes back into the room. “It’s like they don’t even see Marlon Brando.”
“The man looks like a thumb,” says Linda, and Jasper scoffs.
“With lips like peaches,” he says.
Elsa feels herself blink, and she stares at the three glasses as Jasper starts pouring fresh lemonade for them, the ice clinking in each one.
“You think he has nice lips?”
“Jasper thinks Marlon Brando has nice everything,” says Linda.
Elsa doesn’t know what to make of it, exactly, because at the same time, Linda reaches out with one foot and rubs against the side of Jasper’s ankle, making him jump and shove his wife in the arm, laughing. “Horrid woman,” he calls her.
“We were just discussing what Elsabeth here might like in a husband,” Linda says, and Elsa looks at Jasper as he leans back in one of the armchairs, crossing one ankle over the other.
“We can introduce you to some people,” says Jasper.
“Men like you,” says Elsa, haltingly.
Jasper looks at her over his glass, wearing his face in that blank, neutral way he does. “Men like Marlon Brando,” he says evenly. “So the rumours say.”
Elsa looks between the two of them, tries to get a handle on it, tries to understand, really understand. “Really?”
“One hears whispers.”
“So you’re— You two are…” She looks to Linda. “You married him so that people wouldn’t know? And you know that people are— Is that why you know how women feel? Because you, because you’re… Are you and Mr Garvey—”
“Slow down,” Jasper says when Linda hiccups. “Take a breath.” He breathes in demonstratively, inhaling very slowly, and Elsa copies him automatically before taking a few gulps of her lemonade.
“It’s alright,” Linda murmurs, and she strokes over the back of Elsa’s neck, making her shudder. It’s… Nice, though. It’s nice.
“Mr Garvey is not of my inclination, no,” says Jasper. “His father was – it’s made him astonishingly liberal in this area and this one alone.”
“Why would you tell me? Isn’t it illegal? What if I told somebody?” She feels nervous, uncertain, overwhelmed by it, by the weight of the knowledge.
“What if you did?” asks Jasper, raising his eyebrows. “What evidence do you have?”
Noam puts his front paws up on Jasper’s knees, and Jasper picks him up under the armpits, cradling him against his chest so that Noam can shove his face into Jasper’s neck and purr loudly there.
“Why would I want to marry a man like you?�� asks Elsa.
Jasper shrugs. “For the same reasons Linda did, I suppose. A man is a useful shield, if you want one – you’re still young, though. I wouldn’t worry about it just yet, if it’s not a priority for you.”
“A husband, a cooperative one, can mean more independence,” says Linda. “Less harassment, albeit only slightly.”
Elsa looks at her, at her beautiful hair, at the cat sprawled in her lap. “Only slightly?”
“He wears his ring on a chain – I wear mine very obviously,” says Linda, waving one hand and showing its glint. “They still come sniffing around, inviting me places, wanting to put their hands on me.”
Jasper sighs longingly, blinking his pretty eyelashes and looking jokingly wistful, and then breaks into laughter when Linda kicks him in the shin.
“No, it’s awful,” he agrees abruptly, dropping the joking expression. “Would that you could have an all-female chemistry department.”
It’s now Linda’s turn to sigh wistfully, and Jasper affectionately pats her knee. They really look a picture like this, across from each other, both of them with their matching cats. They match one another, they really do.
“Why would you trust me?” Elsa asks.
“Why wouldn’t I?” asks Jasper. “You’re a sweet girl, Elsabeth. Kind, caring.”
“Isn’t it wrong?” she asks.
Jasper shrugs his shoulders. “Isn’t everything about the world we live in?”
Elsa hesitates, uncertain what to say.
“Would you like to play cards?” asks Linda.
That’s what they do.
* * *
It’s astoundingly easy to play with the two of them, to relax into the experience and just chat over cards and the cats. She doesn’t play cards much – the girls always want to just drink and talk and sing and dance, and that’s nice in its own way, but different to this.
She wonders if he’s ignoring it, what these people are, if that makes her awful, for ignoring it, except she isn’t, exactly. The idea of it, of Jasper being… that way. The fact that the girls were right all along, joking about it, thinking about it, knowing it.
They knew what he was just by looking at him, talking to him – is that why Jasper was so unaffected by it when she’d asked outright, even though a lot of men would be furious to be asked, would go into a rage at even the implication.
Shouldn’t she hate it? Shouldn’t she be angry, or disgusted? People say it’s disgusting, that it’s awful, but Jasper is the same now as he has been. He’s witty, gentle, soft-spoken. She wonders what he’s like, when he’s with men who are like him, if he’s the same, or somehow different.
“Let me go check on the chicken,” Jasper says, getting to his feet – both of the cats must know that word, because they follow after him with their tails up high and straight, cheerful, and he laughs as they weave around and through his ankles.
“Do you sleep in the same bed?” asks Elsa. Her voice comes out very quiet, in little more than a whisper.
“We do,” Linda says. “It’s lovely in winter – he gives off heat like a furnace.”
“What’s it… like? The— I’ve never…”
“Had sex?” asks Linda.
Elsa nods. “I’ve never even kissed a boy,” she breathes out. She’s thought about it. She’s heard people talk about it in movies, she’s heard the girls talk about it, about the actual act, and it’s never seemed… She doesn’t know that she likes the idea of being so intimate.
It’s like when the girls talk about men who are attractive, when they talk about Paul Newman and how handsome he is, when they talk about kissing men. Anita was talking about how it makes her feel when her fiancé puts his hand on her waist, how it makes her heart flutter.
Elsa’s never felt that.
“We don’t,” says Linda. “Jasper and I. We’re quite comfortable with each other’s bodies, we see each other naked, help each other dress. Jasper broke his leg a few years ago, and I helped him in the shower a lot, so we’re used to bathing together.”
“I can’t imagine it,” says Elsa. “Being close to a man like that.”
“And to a woman?” Linda asks.
Elsa’s breath arrests in her throat. “Did, um— Did your husband bring me home… for you?”
Linda slowly shakes her head. “He thought you might be like us, had his suspicions,” she says. “But we have friends, Elsa – I was serious when I said I could find someone like him to match you up with. A man inclined like Jasper, if you’re inclined… like me.”
“How do I know?” asks Elsa. “That I am?”
Linda looks at her with her dark eyes, and then she slides closer on the sofa, until their knees brush against each other, and Elsa hears a little noise come out of her own mouth, a shock running through her.
“May I?” asks Linda, and Elsa doesn’t know what she means exactly, is hypnotised by the gesture of one of Linda’s hands, so she just dumbly nods her head, dizzied, drawn in.
Linda cleans closer, and Elsa breathes in the scent of her perfume.
It’s far, far subtler than anything they wear at work – she finds it too sickly sometimes, the scents the other girls wear, too overwhelming, but this is nice. It’s sweet, but there’s a muskiness to it, a depth.
Then Linda is kissing her, and Elsa feels like she might die.
Linda’s lips are plump and soft and so, so warm against hers, the movement gentle, and Elsa feels full up with her – with the scent of her perfume and her shampoo too, with the warmth of her mouth and the lemonade taste lingering on her lips, Linda’s fingers delicately resting on her thigh. Linda’s chest is brushing against hers, and Elsa can feel the weight of them, the weight of—
“Oh, God,” she whispers, almost whimpers, and Linda’s laugh as a curl of smoke through it, so that Elsa feels hot and burning all over.
“Would—” Linda starts, and Elsa feels horribly rude because she cuts her off, but she just craves more, crushes their lips together in another hungry kiss, and this time Linda opens her mouth and they kiss each other more deeply, their tongues sliding against each other, and ohGodit’sthebestthingintheworld—
Linda cups her cheek, tilting her head to kiss her deeper, controlling it, and Elsa’s hands scramble for her, to grab at her – she squeezes one of Linda’s thighs, her head spinning with how muscular they are, how strong she must be. She’s got broad shoulders and strong arms and strong legs, and Elsa’s head spins with questions, wondering if she cycles, or if she rides horses, or if she does archery, somehow, and is some sort of warrior goddess like Wonder Woman, and—
Their lips make a smacking noise when Linda draws back.
“Is that what it feels like?” Elsa asks urgently. “When people kiss men?”
Linda laughs at her, stroking her cheek with her thumb. “It’s what Jasper feels, maybe. I’ve never enjoyed it much.”
Elsa is breathing heavily, sweat on her skin under her clothes, burning on the back of her neck. She wonders if she’s as red all over as she feels – if she’s as red as all that, she must be glowing like a beacon.
“Can I, um,” she starts, her hands trembling with anticipation. “Can I touch them?”
“Touch what?”
“Your… bosoms?”
Linda sniggers, and Elsa laughs helplessly, at herself, at the absurdity of the situation, at the intensity of her own swirling emotions, the feeling that she’s balanced on the head of a pin with a storm swirling around her. Linda takes her gently by the wrists and puts her hands on her breasts, and they’re so, so warm, and so soft, and so big, and—
“They’re magnificent, aren’t they?” Jasper asks. “A wonderful pillow my wife makes, too.”
“I’m so glad I make good furniture for you,” snarks Linda witheringly, and Elsa slowly cups her chest from underneath, feeling how heavy her breasts are – Linda’s brassiere is made of a more reinforced fabric than hers, she thinks. Maybe that’s why she’s so muscular, just so that the weight doesn’t hurt her back as much. She knows some of the girls have difficulty getting a brassiere that supports them well, that if you have a big chest, it can hurt your posture, your neck, your shoulders.
“The cat pushes these up?” she asks, weighing them between her palms like she’s two halves of a scale, and even knowing that some of the weight is being taken by Linda’s bra, they’re heavy.
“They’re very strong boys,” says Linda.
“Wow,” Elsa whispers.
“You love them now,” says Jasper mildly. “Wait until one of them smacks you in the face in the heat of the moment.”
Elsa does think about that for a second, feeling like her brain is short-circuiting somehow, that there must be steam or perhaps smoke rising up from her ears. What’s Linda’s skin like, underneath her cardigan, her blouse, her bra? Her— Her nipples?
“You are just cute as a button,” Linda murmurs. “Jasper, do you mind if we…?”
Elsa looks over when Linda trails off – Jasper is already pulling his coat on. Elsa keeps struggling to remember that he’s there. “The timer is set for an hour,” he says mildly. “I’ll drop in on Evan for forty-five minutes or so. You two… explore.”
“Sorry,” says Elsa reflexively.
“Sorry?” repeats Linda, raising her eyebrows. “Don’t be sorry.”
“Darling, what would you even have to be sorry for? Look at that smile on your face.” Jasper puts one hand on his hip, looking over at the two of them. “I did know this was a possibility.”
Elsa bites the inside of her lip, looking at Linda’s amused expression, at the affection in it. She feels searingly hot on the inside, and warm – not just between her legs, but also in the core of her, a spiritual warmth, beyond the physical. It feels, somehow, like something inside her has slotted into place, has become complete where it wasn’t before. She is smiling, she realises, her lips curved naturally into the crescent of it.
“Only forty-five minutes?” she asks, and Linda and Jasper both laugh.
“Only to take the chicken out,” says Jasper over his shoulder as he goes to the door. He’s wearing a pocket watch, she realises – no wrist watch, still. “I know from experience that Linda won’t hear the alarm.”
“Not all of us can be domestic goddesses,” Linda says dryly.
“Happy to play the Parvati to your Shiva, my dear,” he says, and winks before he closes the door behind him.
“Is it okay?” Elsa asks as the door shuts closed. “I don’t want you to think that I, that I’m treating you like a man would.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Linda murmurs, “I’m not remotely worried about that. Why don’t we kiss again, hm? Slower this ti—”
Elsa cuts her off again, and she swallows Linda’s answering laughter as the older woman curls her fingers through her hair and pulls her closer for more.
(They don’t hear the timer. Jasper teases them about it for weeks.)
FIN.
82 notes
·
View notes
Note
I was listening to another podcast at some point a while back where they had an interview with you guys to advertize re: dracula coming out. And you guys said some stuff about Lucy that hit a weird nerve with me as a history buff.
So the VA described her as polyamorous, and it triggered some conversation about how her character gets pretty maligned for it. And that last part is an adaptation issue not present in the original text.
See, victorian era courtship did not come with a presumption of exclusivity the way modern dating does. You were not off the market until you were formally engaged to be married. So the general gist of it for upper and middle class folks (like the Dracula characters most likely are) is that there is this thing called the social season. And during the season there would be all kinds of parties and events where you would meet people. And the general structure was that if you went to a dance, you should dance with a lot of different people. Get a sense of the eligible bachelors/bachelorettes. And if you were a young man, you would be expected to go and visit each of the young women you danced with that night at some point during the week after. If you hit it off, you would then start courting (visiting back and forth attending other events together etc). But, as I said above, it wasn't exclusive. So a man would court a few women, and a woman would be pretty disappointed to only be courted by one man. As the season went on couples would get engaged (anding any other ongoing courtships).
So Lucy's situation, in its original context, goes something like this: Lucy is pretty and charming. A perfect victorian maid. She has many suitors. Three of them decide she's the perfect women for them. They each want to pop the question but they are good gentlemen so they agree to all ask her the same day so she can choose between them on her own terms. She is thrilled because of course she is. Any woman in her position would be! But! Before she can make her choice Dracula comes to steal her away. She gets terribly sick and dies. But then she is not dead after all. She came back all wrong and corrupted. Even such a bright, innocent, young woman as Lucy is not immune! It's tragic what she becomes.
By the time early film adaptations roll around though, courtship was mostly replaced by dating especially in America where it hadn't been so institutionalized. And now there is an assumption of exclusivity. Those poor men being strung along by that harlot Lucy when in the end there can be only one husband. No wonder she fell victim to Dracula's charms! And like, that was the exact opposite of the point in the books. But the culture was too different by that point to read the same way. So Hollywood made Lucy an example instead of a victim.
But yeah. I heard the polyamorous comment, and had a weird mix of "yay poly representation! That rarely happens," and "put that woman back in context, or so help me!" So when I saw you guys had a blog, I had to send a little mini rant. Feel free to disregard.
Thanks for the historical context! It is hard with historical texts to keep from bringing your modern ideas to our interpretations, but as an almost completely queer crew, it was hard to ignore the subtext in:
LUCY: Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it.
That’s what we’re talking about, we’re talking about subtext in a very sexy very queer-coded book. I believe the VA you’re talking about is Beth Eyre? As a professor, she knows this too and is playing with it in her performance. And she does brilliantly.
We’re not changing the text, as we’ve said before, we’re just having fun with what’s already there.
We’ll talk some more about this in our bonus eps, which I’m very excited about.
104 notes
·
View notes
Text
idk i'm feeling kinda riled up today and i want to talk about why the fight for ofmd is so important to me.
so listen. i've been in fandoms for a loooooong time. i remember when the sheer idea of a show (that wasn't something like, say, queer as folk) having any sort of lgbt representation was a major rarity. the idea of a random character suddenly coming out in your favourite sci fi/fantasy/action show? no way in hell. and those of us in fandom kinda came to accept that. we were queering the hell out of everything we came across, don't get me wrong, but it was because the idea of a series suddenly having a character textually be queer was just…not a thing that happened most of the time.
then came the age of queerbaiting. as someone who was in the supernatural fandom from very early on, i remember how those first few seasons of the ~great destiel saga~ felt to watch. they actively hinted at and joked about their relationship! they acknowledged the elephant in the room! surely they wouldn't do that unless it meant something!!! but then of course came the years and years of the cast and crew sneering at the people who had the audacity to…listen to the words that came out of the character's mouths and have thoughts about them. and yeah, eventually (like a decade later) cas told dean he loved him, but even now the people who worked on the show seem reluctant to say that that was a romantic moment. and that's just one example that i'm more intimately familiar with! there are so many others! just straight up gaslighting queer fans so they can keep making money off of us with no intention of actually giving us what we want; all while acting like they were doing us a favour by doing anything at all.
and it sucked! it clearly sucked! but the more time went on the less surprising it became. because at the end of the day it came down to what it always comes down to; money. there's this idea (not just in media) that there are certain people who are the "default". people whose experiences are universal and easy to understand. white people. straight people. cis people. when it comes to media, stories about these people are seen as something anyone can watch and understand. but when you try to tell stories about people who fall outside of these categories? well, now you're making niche content that only people who fall into that niche will be able to identify with.
and look, i know i'm preaching to the choir here. this is tumblr. we all know there's a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in the world. my point is that the narrative around queerbaiting from an industry standpoint seemed to be "yeah, we want the ad revenue from all of these lgbt people watching our shows, but if we commit to actually making any of our characters queer we're going to isolate our straight audience and lose most of our viewers". and there was never any concrete way to disprove that. so yeah. we would occasionally be blessed by a ~very special show~ that actually depicted queerness (usually about younger people coming out, or about the tragedies that can and have faced people in our community), but the idea of branching out beyond that seemed like a no go.
and then along came our flag means death. a show about pirates that also talked about toxic masculinity and had characters who were casually queer in every different variety and also featured people with different body types who came from different cultures and who were all treated with kindness and grace. a show that didn't necessarily market itself specifically as ~a queer show~ (which, was probably in part due to trying to bury the lead which sucks, but the point still stands) but rather a fun show anyone could watch. that wasn't specifically about coming out or tragedy but was more so about joy, and community, and love. and here's the thing. here's the wild as fuck thing that happened. this show? it didn't lose all of its viewers when those last two episodes of season 1 aired and it confirmed without a shadow of a doubt that ed and stede were in love. the opposite happened. this show fucking soared into the stratosphere.
i remember the first time i saw those parrot analytics charts showing that ofmd was the most in demand new series; out performing marvel even. i was so overcome i legit broke down in tears. because it turns out all of those times i had been told to sit back and accept the scraps i was given because that was all my community was profitable enough to get, those people were wrong. we could've had this the whole time! WE COULD'VE HAD THIS THE WHOLE TIME!!! and as the weeks progressed and ofmd remained at the top of every chart, as the show continued to succeed, i felt such an immense amount of joy! those people were wrong! we can just have this and it'll do well!!!
and yeah, apparently that wasn't enough to convince the powers that be. they spent forever deciding whether to renew it and when they finally did the budget was cut nearly in half and the people at max decided they needed to oversee the show a lot more. all of this sucks. but the thing is they made season 2 and they fucking did it again! the show got even better critics scores than last time! the show was doing numbers better than season 3 of succession! the merch, only released in october, became some of the best selling merch of 2023 on the max shop! by max's own admission season 2 was one of the biggest hits of the year for them!!! like, what more is there? the show is a success!!!
so yeah. i'm not going to accept the fucking stupid excuses max gives as to why they cancelled it. saying that it didn't have the numbers (it did), or that they didn't know how to market violence (they do), or that it didn't have awards buzz (it has literally been nominated for awards and there's still active fyc ads the company itself made) just doesn't cut it. there was no reason to cancel it other than the idea that diverse media "doesn't sell". and max, by airing this show you have shown me that that fucking isn't true. it's never been true. so i'm going to keep fighting for this one until someone picks it up or until i'm old and grey because it isn't just about ofmd. it's about the belief that our stories, the stories of people who aren't "the default" are worth telling. by every metric they are worth telling. and that is something that i know is worth fighting for.
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
So since the fates decided not to give me a idk ... big gay aunt to guide me along with my sexuality realisation, I'm kind of at a loss of what to do. I'm 30 and I went off the dating market back when meeting someone online to date was considered 'novel'. Idk how the fuck to use dating apps.
So I guess I'll throw this cry for help to you, people who follow my blog apparently, in the case you have some insight? More deets below the cut oh god help me
Okay so basically - I think I am (somewhat hesitantly) ready to start looking at dating apps. I've kind of hit a point in my self-work where I think I could actually handle rejection - which was the entire reason I was holding off in the first place. Because I know I have a lot of potential "deal breakers" to contend with, getting to this point was my bare minimum.
So aside from the obvious I-have-never-used-a-dating-app-in-my-life problem, I guess my other problems are the following:
Do I disclose I am disabled on my profile? My disability is technically 'invisible' and while I absolutely could go hang out with someone at a bar or whatever it WILL knock me out for like ... two days. Especially right now where I haven't really done any big social-ey shit in a while. Idk how else I can explain that I will absolutely still want to do things with someone, I just have the energy habits of a house cat (sure I don't say nap every day anymore but sometimes I really just gotta lie in the dark ... Yeah :C )
Disability also kind of explains all the other deal breaker shit. I won't go into that. Aside from the obvious 'money ain't great' and I cannot avoid interdependence. Like I am still recovering and hoping for the best but I don't know what the end of this shit looks like. I know there is going to be permanent damage. But I also am not gonna bench myself until I'm 'well' (also because I'm touch starved and THIRTY).
Ugh, photos. Due to disability reasons (see I told you it explains everything) my irl social circle died years ago because I could just not keep up and I've had the photographic record of a cryptid for the past ten years. So now I have to basically go TAKE photos and it feels very forced. But I'm also aware apps are really visual, so idk - ideas? Tips?
Is there some obvious Lesbian space I'm missing? Am I missing the lesbian bat signal? I've joined Facebook groups for my city but they're quiet and tend to be populated by much older people (did I mention I hate Facebook?) Also apparently queer scene is kinda sucky in my city at the moment because one of our two gay bars changed ownership and it may as well just be a regular bar now. For the moment I've just been hanging out on Reddits to feel somewhat connected but it doesn't really help my irl situation and lack of social anything.
Yeah I am not selling myself here but I'd rather be honest early on and make sure anyone who isn't cut out for it or emotionally mature enough to handle that I have baggage (well treated baggage!) Is filtered out. But I also feel like putting disability right on my profile could result in a knee jerk reaction which would prevent them from even trying to get to know me. Like I do feel I have some really appealing things about me that I'm happy about, and I do think offset the bad - I've just had a rough time of it.
Augh idk. I'm lonely. And very confused. Anyways any kind of advice or insight would be highly appreciated 🥺
#kerytalk#dating#universe pls bestow me Tumblr user gf tho#good GOD dont make me try to use insta or god forbid 'X'#seeking tumblr gf who likes vidsogames but also wouldn't mind being with a girl who has the energy flux of a literal cat#yeah I know chucking myself on an app would probably dispel some anxiety but I gotta take damn PHOTOS first
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
i have this incredibly specific headcanon that aira had a phase where he went super hard into being a trans Woman but detransitioned after like a couple months, and is now gnc.
like not too long after he becomes an idol hes struggling a lot with his blossoming sense of adolescent identity and clear insecurity-complex, and of course he's in Ensemble Square which is full of gay people, and he's online a lot too in queer twitter communities and it kinda all accumulates into him thinking, MAYBE I AM A WOMAN? so he tries it.
but he has this very narrow and specific idea of what it means to Be Transgender, and to Be a Transwoman by extension, so he just throws himself in the deep end and goes full social & clothing transition immediately. tatsumi and mayoi are supportive (tatsumi is an Ally and mayoi is genderqueer in some form) and this is probably hiiro's first introduction to it but he doesnt care either and is enthusiastically supportive. pretty much everyone he knows is on board with it (except subaru and hokuto are weird about it probably but who cares about them). the Pretty 5 are overjoyed and help by taking him shopping, Arashi especially.
but while aira has an initial euphoric burst of freedom by doing this he very quickly feels very WRONG. but hes fucking committed to it now and like he knows hes not a dude, right?, and he doesnt want to be NonBinary (which is a single third gender identity and not an umbrella term at all, as everyone knows /s). and like, he does like wearing skirts sometimes, and long socks are cute. and he was already kinda feminine, he is ALKALOID's Cute One. so he's probably just not feeling anything at all and he isn't going to address it.
but arashi can fucking tell something is off and tries talking to him. he deflects and denies everything and at someone else bringing it up he only doubles down.
he is wearing FEMALE MAKEUP now! he is looking at tutorials on youtube on how to apply makeup just-so, so he can look like the Cis-Like and Conforming Trans Woman he is. and he is OWNING IT, he is a Girlboss and is now making Activist Twitter Posts talking about his transfem (because that isn't its own thing, either, it's just a synonym for trans Woman! also /s) experience which he is now suddenly an expert on.
and he is fucking miserable just having trapped himself into another stupid binary and now eichi is accounting for this in StarPro's marketing or whatever and now all of ALKALOID's fans are getting it into their heads about being special trans allies and all these things are happening and and and and.
mika tentatively comes up to him one day. he says that hes too nervous to go to pretty 5 or arashi about it, as irrational as it is considering it's fucking arashi, but he just wants aira's help to like, try on some skirts or something like he sees aira doing. no strings attached it doesnt mean anything, just to try.
aira is trying not to have a meltdown in the store while he waits for mika in the changing room. writing twitter posts with hands sweatier than they are after a live is one thing but having to physically be there and act as this ideal image of THE Trans Woman feels like he's standing there waiting for an axe to swing at his fucking head and that it's going to happen any second now. he gets these chills all down his back like some creepypasta character is about to get him. (he's still scared of the creepypastas).
mika says that he thinks the skirt is cute on him, but that he doesn't think he likes it. he says he doesn't know. he says that he doesn't like how it impedes on his masculinity.
"isn't that the point, though? you wanted to be a girl?" aira asks, hair actually wet with how much he's sweating.
"no... nyaghhhg, i don't wanna be a girl. i didn't think just putting it on would make me one, but if it does then i don't wanna wear it anymore."
aira thinks that is a weird fucking thing to say because of course if you're trying on skirts and trying to be feminine it means you're trying to be a transgirl, and he also thinks that if he has to hear mika talk for a second longer he's going to explode from fucking anger. he doesn't think to question why he's so angry, but he says something snappy at mika and it makes mika give up so it all works out and he can go home.
hiiro can tell aira isn't doing well but hiiro can go fuck himself for all aira cares. aira can't even practice anymore, he's just getting angrier and angrier with each day.
eventually he tears off all his clothes in a rage and throws out all his makeup, even the ones he'd been using before his transition. rei comes into their dorm and is alarmed to find aira burning a pile of clothes in the middle of the room. he's attempted to protect the carpet by putting it on top of cardboard. rei has to use the fire extinguisher.
after aira's calmed down a bit rei laughs out of nowhere. aira asks him what. rei says that he thinks aira is the first amab trans guy he's met. aira says he's had enough of all these fucking labels. rei asks if he wants him to inform eichi for him, in regards to the marketing. aira says yeah, thank you...
with touch of feather, aira grows more comfortable in his own skin.
sometime later, mika nervously announces to the pretty 5 that he's genderqueer. arashi helps him come out, and the rest express their support. tori says welcome to the club. (aira wonders how he didn't already know this about tori.)
"in what way?" aira asks mika after congratulating him.
"errr..." mika looks confused for a moment before realisation dawns on his face. "oh. nah, just genderqueer. i don't like all those expectations 'n all that. i just wanna do whatever feels right. that's what humans are, ain't it? just a lotta nonsense feelings."
"oh," says aira.
in retrospect, aira supposes that arashi isn't completely gender conforming and hyper-feminine either. and later, after he and hiiro get together (finally), he asks hiiro if he was still interested in him while he was trans. hiiro says yeah, he doesn't see why that would affect it, and really he was worried about him more than anything else. before aira can make some inquiry about his hometown, hiiro continues that he's been talking a lot to the other idols, so he knows a bit about the city's queer labels (and the variance & nuance in identity) now, and that he's bisexual --- well, he doesn't really like calling himself the labels very much, but that it's the best way to communicate it. aira says huh. he wasn't really expecting to hear that from him.
i think after all that aira would be comfortable just being gnc occasionally, and not worry too hard about being a Boy or a Girl.
#my words#aira shiratori#mika kagehira#arashi narukami#rei sakuma#hiiro amagi#lgbt headcanons#this is longer than i thought itd be but yeah. shrug#i dont usually use tone tags but i put them there to account for online reading comprehension#for anyone wondering im transmasc (not a guy) myself#oh right#hiiai#just in case anyone has it blacklisted lol
33 notes
·
View notes
Note
What'd Ayushmann do? Just curious since you used to love him
omg where to begin anon
I have immense personal beef with him alongside the actual fucked up things he's done, but perhaps that's for another day.
For now, let's talk about dream girl 2 which BLATANTLY boasts the ever-problematic man-in-a-dress trope-
I mean, sure, one can argue that's the whole point of the movie, but one look at the trailer will tell you it's so horribly and insensitively written this time around.
Dream girl 1 was about loneliness- specifically, male loneliness, and how all anyone ever wants is to be heard. And about how people would probably understand you if they're just given a chance. And contains the lines "nobody in this world is right. Some are just less wrong than others."
Dream girl 2 is quite literally about a man who dresses up as a woman to prostitute himself for money. No joke.
Oh, and it gets worse. None of the men actually know he's a guy. So it's pushing the message that he's "tricking them." It's not even subtext like that's literally the entire premise. A man dresses up as a woman to trick innocent men. For money.
It's transphobic, it's severely misogynistic, and it's somehow also fetishistic in the worst way possible. I mean the entire promo was based on sexual marketing. I hope it was all for nothing and the movie fucking bombs.
Also, Ayushmann Khurrana, who is literally geriatric at almost 40, romances a 24 year old Ananya Pandey.
And, yes, this is typical for Bollywood. But for a chucklefuck who once prided himself on being "offbeat" and "brave" and "non-mainstream" and "feminist" this is a very chucklefuck thing to do.
Keep in mind that all of this comes after Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (which does have its flaws, but the heart and intent was definitely there), a movie that celebrated trans women and literally was created to beat the stereotypes surrounding them. For which he pretended to be a trans ally for a whole YEAR AND A HALF as part of promotions.
So the sudden switch up with dg2 is... Appalling. To say the least.
Apart from this, he also used to post regularly about social/civic issues and problems in our country, which he entirely stopped doing once his movies bombed. And, yes, nobody should be expected to do that. But keep in mind, once again, this man's entire career was built off marginalised communities. Especially the queer community. Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan caused like a 40% jump in his ig followers. I would know, because I was there.
Which led him to receive more roles in this little niche he loved so much.
The man was cocky enough to think a couple movies would change the world, let the arrogance get to his thick fucking skull, and decided tackling controversial topics won't come at a cost. (Well, newsflash, asshole! Oppression doesn't exist because marginalised people aren't trying hard enough to get their words out. It exists because it fucking exists. No amount of your mug on the big screen would have ever changed that).
He essentially went into this niche with all the wrong intentions. Not to speak up FOR queer people, women, scheduled castes, etc, but with the arrogance that he'll actually change the mind of the masses. God complex, more or less. Or saviour complex. Or both.
A few years ago, he'd made it clear that he's an actor, not an activist.
Mf forgot that himself somewhere along the way.
So, what did he do when his offbeat movies started failing back to back?
Packed up and turned his back on the very people he hollered about and celebrated himself for representing.
Went right into the cushy arms of mainstream, problematic, cringe, crass, insensitive side of Bollywood. For money.
Fucking hypocrite.
Hope all that cowardice was worth the bag.
#literally hate that man. i hate him so much.#i used to adore and idolise him to the point that i forgot hes a moid.#wish i could take that time back#ykw lemme just tag this#ayushmann khurrana
14 notes
·
View notes
Text
[Alright, we're recording, you can begin.] OH! uh... h-hi, i'm ssc oh-five-one fo- [You can use your own name, not your code number.] Ohhhh.... My n-name is, um, Cherry. Soda...
[Hi Cherry, why don't you introduce yourself.] I'm Cherry Soda, and I am a Smith-Shimano Corporation pilot. I, um, am an ok shot, and i um, like music? [What kind of music do you like Cherry?] Mostly Breakcore?I like how fast it is, it helps me zone out... Is that not a good answer you look upset, did I make you upset? I'm sorry! [Its alright 0514, I just am not a fan of whatever you said. How about you tell people about what Smith-Shimano Corporation did for you?] You mean letting me pilot? [I meant regarding your transition, but you can talk about whatever you want.] Ah! ok. ... *papers rustling. Um, SSC- [Smith-Shimano Corporation] -Smith-Shimano Corporation actively helped me in becoming the me i wanted to be, with both medicine and gender affirming accommodations. do i read- [Yes this part here.] I think that anyone looking for a place that will encourage experimentation with gender as well as piloting a mech should report to a SS- A Smith-Shimano Corporation recruitment center.How was that? [That's good for now 0512. You're free to return to quarters]
SSC-0514 (Codename Cherry Soda) was originally part of a "Random Batch" - a batch of gene clones specifically focused or creating variation in expressed genes. These batches are useful for variety testing and as control groups for other experiments. 0514 had difficulty playing with other children, and as the years progressed developed an anxiety disorder that would get worse as time went on. At 14 her scores in pilot aptitude and general competency were low enough that the system flagged her for extradition from the pilot program and deportation to a standard colony world. While in a meeting about her failing scores she asked about a rumor she had heard about "women being better at taking heat because they are usually colder." When affirmed this to be true but negligible, she seemed sad. An onsite psychologist began meeting with her to discuss her relationship with gender, which eventually led to her deciding to transition. SSC was personally in favor of this development on account of the high rate of transgender pilots making up the ranks of LANCER pilots, as well as the optics associated with becoming viewed as The Transgender Corprostate. A researcher note at the time said: "Imagine if we could steal that title from HORUS! So many LANCER's would flock to us!"
0514 picked the name "Cherry Soda" and began medically transitioning soon after that. Her scores mildly improved, enough to secure her place in Live-Fire test scenarios. On her first sortie she was deployed as long-range support for the repossession of a VIP Convoy during a minor rebellion on SSC world Gardeniea-D12. Her Squad commander later said of her: "It was like something else, H- sorry, She was a totally different person, i was pushing up with the vanguard and by the time we reached the enemy convoy the entire guard detail was nothing but scrap. I asked her what happened and her voice was totally cold when she said she had cleared the way." Needless to say, but she received commendations for this. While her scores tend to flag in test scenarios her performance in Live-Fire scenarios are within the top 5% of all SSC pilots, putting her in the LANCER tier. On a personal level she seems excited by this, but she may just enjoy the praise.
Currently we are attempting to use her in a marketing capacity, a task she seems willing to help with. I recommend granting her Affordances with anything gender related, as long as we don't force anything on her (this would both corrupt our data and taint our image.) Test footage of her day to day life in our home facilities, as well as combat footage of her piloting is currently being recieved well, especially among our target demographics (queer people both within and without the gender spectrum) Test audiences noted "Enjoying her Pathetic Girl Swag" and "I want to buy her ice cream while shes sobbing hysterically."
She currently favors Long range combat and high mobility Chassis. She pilots a Customized SSC Dusk Wing, which She calls Amen Break. Amen Break has an onboard Comp/Con unit, who Is the only thing 0514 seems able to speak to without stuttering.
#my art#lancer rpg#mech pilot#she sucks so so bad and i love her#shes such a nervous wreck#amen break was fun to draw on attempt 14
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
I Was a Queer Salvation Army Bell Ringer
Part 3: So What Were My Coworkers Like?
I mentioned in the previous part that the Salvation Army is not a hive mind. They are an Equal Opportunity Employer and, much like the US Army for some time, their policy on queer employees is Don't Ask Don't Tell. Granted, they needed to find queer employees for their propaganda, or at least employees willing to say they were queer for the cameras. But in any case, considering the Salvation Army's reputation that they have no organization-wide interest in rectifying and the fact that I live in a very conservative area of the United States, I decided that I would keep my queer identity primarily to myself.
And like, I am generally a pretty open and out person regarding that. If you are reading this and you, yourself, are not queer, the truth of the matter is coming out is not a one-and-done thing. A person may choose to come out to certain people but not others. A person may choose to come out to a complete stranger just because that's where the conversation leads. A person may choose to come out about part of their identity but not all of it, or may use a term that more people are comfortable or familiar with.
For example, I don't typically go into all the nuances of my gender identity with others unless they have made it clear they're signed on to listen. For my day to day life, I tend to let people assume I'm my assigned gender at birth since I dress in a way that aligns with what people expect for that. (Not completely, but that is a tangent for another day.) And if someone is cool with something beyond that, I tend to go with the term "nonbinary" rather than any of the more niche terms I use for my gender. Because ultimately, that's for me. My identity is mine. I am very fortunate to be in a position where any gender-related issues I have with my body don't necessarily have to be solved with surgery, and I know this is not the case for anyone. But I am the sort of person who can let my gender be mine and not worry about correcting the majority of people who are determined to get it wrong.
So yeah, coasting through this job in the closet.
For the most part, I didn't meet a lot of my coworkers. Because I still have my normal job, the primary time I had any shifts was Saturdays, and even then I had a late start of it due to other obligations. The person I saw the most was the woman who actually hired me, the head of the red kettle program.
She was, for the most part, pretty okay. She would drive me to where I was supposed to ring for the day, we would shoot the shit, she even bought me a soda once. She also said I was valuable as a worker specifically BECAUSE I was willing to come to work on Saturdays. She even gave me a bag of plums and apples. (The plums were ok and the apples were Red Delicious, which were definitely red.)
She was also, perhaps, a bit unprofessional and a little less than moral.
She talked about other bell ringers who didn't exactly perform well behind their backs, complained about a former donor who didn't donate a car this year, and, when I wanted to go to a pay-for-entry market, insisted I just sneak in without paying using my Salvation Army apron to let me in.
She also let me know something I should have realized before but didn't fully get until she said it: the bell ringers' pay comes out of donations. Not just any donations but specifically the donations from their own kettles. Any time I went out and rang the bell, my pay was a cut from the kettle. It does make sense, it being a non-profit organization. Of course everyone's pay came from donations. But this? This just makes the red kettles glorified panhandling in my mind.
In one sense, I'm for that. Indeed, the quickest way to solve a person's financial problems is giving them money. And more of it going directly to the bell ringers, most if not all of the hired ones not being merely lower class like me but actually in outright poverty, is better than it going to an organization where the head of this program is complaining about not getting another car they don't actually need.
In another sense, it does feel a little underhanded, and added to my personal moral dilemma of working there. More on that in another entry.
And honestly, there's not really much to say about my other coworkers as individuals as I hardly saw them. One of the drivers is an obvious Trump supporter as he was never seen without his Trump 2024 hat. Most of the other people were scraping by on the cusp of homelessness, taking up residence in an apartment complex that charges rent by the week. Some had pasts that involved jail time for stupid charges (ie marijuana possession, missing a court date, etc.), job loss, or crushing amounts of debt.
I did have an unexpected conversation with one coworker that, at this point, has been my last in-person interaction with anyone involved with the Salvation Army, but I will leave that story for another entry.
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Scattered* thoughts on GAP episode 1
*I'm serious about the scattered thing, I'm not sure if any of this makes any sense.
I liked it! I will keep watching it! I didn’t watch the trailer and mostly filtered the tags, so I went into the episode pretty ignorant of the plot.
I'm going to get my complaints/concerns out of the way first.
- I think my biggest obstacle is going to be the business setting, especially a social media/marketing/influencer type business. That was the thing that... didn't ruin, but certainly lessened my enjoyment of Roommates of Poongduck 304. It’s just something I find inherently both boring and annoying. I kept zoning out or pausing and getting distracted during the business parts.
- on a related note, Lady Sam seems like a terrible boss, in a way that also makes it seem like she's bad at running a business. Now, there is a long tradition of terrible bosses in romance, and it doesn't make her irredeemable for me. Already I really like what I've seen of her outside of work! But it is a big obstacle to overcome in liking her and wanting to see her with Mon.
- The third obstacle is very much a me thing, and something I wish I could change. For the past three or so years I've really struggled with reading about or watching women as characters in romance. A lifetime of misogynistic and objectifying depictions of women suddenly caught up to me, and has made it difficult to enjoy even well written non-misogynistic portrayals, especially in romance settings. Unfortunately, this seems to extend to queer women in romance, not just straight stories. There's a very narrow range of women characters (in romance, this is mostly about romance contexts) that get past that these days, and Mon and Sam don't quite fit. That's not to say I dislike them! They do intrigue me. It's just that in order to enjoy them I have to keep pushing aside all that baggage that has accumulated.
Onward to the rest of my scattered thoughts:
- I love that so many of the cast from Secret Crush on You is in this. Perhaps it’s just another job for them, but it feels supportive. I think I did a little scream when I saw Seng & Billy's cameo. And when Sam asked, "who is the other plate for?" I just knew it would be Heng. And a second later he appeared, so I felt very proud of myself. (I only saw him in the opening credits; remember I haven't watched the trailer.) I mostly skipped Sky’s storyline in SCOY, so my strongest association with him is as Phoenix in War of Y, which means that my initial reaction is not to trust him. But I hope he does turn out to be an ally, even if I’m getting the vibes that he really does want to marry Sam.
- I really like Mon's family, especially her stepdad. The family dinner where he and Mon are conspiring about how she can apologize to her mom was adorable. And I liked the nuances and the obvious love in Mon’s subsequent conversation with her mom.
- I found it both weird and sweet how encouraging they were of her decade-long obsession with a stranger. It’s sweet that they were so supportive of her as a general principle (and of course a huge contrast to Sam's grandmother). But also it just seems very weird to encourage your child to plan out her life based on her obsession with a stranger and be so sure that she’s a good person to model based on one interaction over a decade ago. It makes sense for teenage Mon to do that, but for her parents to join in less so. Perhaps it's related to Sam being royalty? I don’t have enough understanding of Thai culture to interpret that.
- Despite the absurdity of Mon planning her life around her obsession, I enjoy it. At first I wasn’t sure if she realized it was a romantic/sexual crush, or thought it was just idol worship, but it now seems like she does. I was never a queer teenager, but I appreciate everyone on here saying that it feels like a very queer experience.
- I really liked both crash-into-you scenes. And the first time we got the trope doubled up! Mon is very good at looking up at Sam with adoration in her eyes. I like Sam's annoyance with her that is starting to be replaced by interest, or curiosity at least. And the bit with the hair caught in the bracelet was very entertaining.
- My favorite moments were any time Sam and Mar were in a scene together–their chemistry is great! So I have hopes for enjoying this series over all. That moment in the bathroom especially - the tension! Plus Sam’s incredibly awkward flirtation with Mon at dinner. Does she even know that she’s flirting? I can’t tell yet what she’s thinking.
- I like the coworkers as a group and as a Greek chorus, even though watching the terrible working environment stresses me out.
- As @thequeenofsastiel says, despite her being a terrible boss, the rest of her life makes that understandable and sympathetic. (I have no insight to add to that right now.) I really felt for her in that dinner with the grandmother - the pressure that she’s under to make the company work. I think mostly I will be frustrated if the show tries to tell me that she’s actually good at running this company despite all the onscreen evidence to the contrary.
- I did appreciate the parallel of Sam saving Mon from being run over from a car again at the end. And a second crash-into-you with even more sexual tension.
- I thought I had more thoughts about this episode on Sunday, but I can’t remember them now/don't feel like writing them out at the moment.
19 notes
·
View notes
Text
Spoilers for season one Next in Fashion!
Okay I'm going to do a Next in fashion video analysis of all the contestents the fashion the winners as well as an analysis on the show and my personal opinion.
Spoilers under cut- images of outfits for Episode one.
Next in Fashion Season one has a diverse cast of different colours both inside and out. Wether they are queer, straight black or white this is a room full of creatives in a competition giving a prompt.
The best part? That so many are proffesionals, I rarely see people who have already worked with A-listers and considered the best of the best competing against each other its like seeing the olympics but for artistic expression.
This group was full of loud, expressive and creative personalities all in one room.
So I can't really speak about culture or other prejudice- but I do want to talk about the outfits and my own opinions on who won and who went home. I disagreed with some of the judges takes and opinions while others I agreed with.
I kinda fell in love with Next in fashion but I will admit I am aware it was a mixed bag full of...issues, there were some things that I did deem problematic. But when the season expressed itself as activists, bringing awareness I would've assumed they would put things in place to accomadate that in the next season.
Overall, I think Next in Fashion season one;
Is a window into the fashion world.
It felt as if all these designers who worked with a-list celebrities were getting their voices heard. It was an insight into the fashion industry and was able to present a ton of hard topics and discussions in a way that was relatable and beliveable.
They revealed hard truths, ones I especially agree with and find understandable. Which I'll get to later, just to let you know in advanced though.
I know nothing about fashion-
but I do find an interest in it, as a creator I know I cant wear certain clothes but my characters can and find I have one ear on the fashion world but overall I dont know enough to be a professional.
So we start with the first episode: The red Carpet.
A look you can see actors, hollywood stars and influencers to wear and be interviewed on the red carpet something bold, stunning as well as jaw dropping so who did I think should've won and whose outfit was just not my idea of what I'd call great [but to remind you guys the reason I'm not a fashion person is that art is subjective what I find meh someone can love and it can be developed into an open market as long as theres a target audience and people like something then theres no such thing as bad art]
So onto the prompt: RED CARPET.
Winner: Angelo and Charles. Sent Home: Issac and Nasheli.
First off I have to say- this sucked. It was so unfair for Nasheli to leave especially since Issac was a huge tit. He did fuck all, gave Nasheli shit material and told her to make it work then said we're a team :D and when he was sent home he gave no shit- he said it was just another day! This was grossly unfair to Nasheli she should've been put on a different team or should've been asked to come next year and try again she deserved another chance it was grossly unfair that she was tripped at the finish line and couldn't have a chance to show off her talent because of an incompetent partner.
Anyway: Angel and Minju Red Carpet piece.
I loved this, I love the colour, the boy and the silouette. I find this so pretty and fell in love with this outfit on the spot 10/10 :D
Next up is : Ashton and Marco
Its a no from me 4/10, my reason is that I find this so basic, its a boring silouette feels like something someone wore back in the 2000's also that belt in the middle of her chest? I hated that when she moved it was moving and flip flopping all over the place it distracted me and made me look at her boobs even in the shot above I can see the belt moving slightly. I dont hate the dress but for a red carpet its a meh.
Next up is : Issac and Nesheli
I think the overall look the collor plus the bust and the oversized pocket at her stomach is distracting my focul point was aimed there instead of the overall look. The fabric was uncomfortable for the model to move in and couldn't go to the bathroom overall wearability was non existent. What is heartbreaking was how most voices in the show was steamrolled by their partners and most felt as if they werent heard. In this sense it's awkward because of artistic differences you dont know wether to trust your partner if their choice ends up making or breaking your chance in the competition. 1/10
Next up is farai and Kiki:
Again I love this colour and overall liked the look, when I first saw it I loved it. But the more I looked at it I thought hmm so it's more of a 7/10 personally I do think it looks more like something my mum would wear on holiday at the beach than a red carpet if I could change one thing it would be the jacket. Either have that fabric pattern at the top or bottom of the outfit OR Change the jacket to a darker purple to make it more as a gradient.
I think if it was a slightly shade darker it would be able to narrow down the focul point better- but I'm speaking as an artist on colour theory not as a pro fashion advice I am aware fashion is different so even though thats my personall opinion on the change I'm aware that sometimes peoples ideas are different to mine.
Next up is : Carli and Daniel
I might get a few raised eyebrows but this was a meh, from me. I thought it was safe I did like the colours pearing blues with browns and a soft white as the top colour theory, and structure as well as the bold move of a pant/skirt with pockets! Did look amazing. Idk I just think it was a 6/10 for me.
Next up is : Narresh and Lorena
HARD YES 10/10 I loved this outfit, I like the shape, the colours I love the back as well as the asymetrical sleeve I just- I freakin love this outfit I would want to wear this and twirl around in it.
Next up is : Julian and Hayley
I liked it at first, but yeah it does seem a bit incomplete but overall 5/10
And then theres : Claire and Adolfo
hmm Nope. NOPE. I don't like it 0/10- look art us subjective not many people will love it and I'm not one of those people, there is artistic differences and as an artist I don't like it. Other than the split at the side but it feels done before, and it feels so rubbery and stiff when the model walks, I just I cant nope.
And last but not least, Angelo And charlie.
My immiediete thought was "The matrix." Or any other 90's film. I do like the hot pink skirt just peeking out on the back but overall. Its kinda basic just another black dress I can't even love the trail when the model walked I couldn't help but think it wasn't laying right and seemed to be stiff once she dropped it. I can't help but think that the judges were too blown away by the tail drop than to actually see the dress it makes me think of x-factor when they give the golden buzzer to the child singer. Not because they were good or it was a talented song just because it was instent gratification. Overall I like it but its just meh to me 4/10....which is ironic since they're the ones who WON.
So yeah since what I LIKED and what the judges choose, just comes to show why I'm not making a career out of fashion either I'm too far ahead or tar far behind the times for what fashion even IS I just get annoyed that what I happen to like was something the judges were put off by...so let me know what YOU guys think were good tell ME which red carpet look you would rank out of 10 and let me know for the red Carpet look who YOU think the winner should've been???
I might do more episodes if this does well but if not? w/e
#Next#In#Fashion#Next in fashion#season#one#season 1#Next in fashion season one#Kiki and farai#issac nasheli#nasheli
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
BL ~ Drama Asks
I wasn’t tagged, I make my own fun ;P
( Totally nabbed from @absolutebl )
1) If you had to watch one drama forever what would it be?
My first instinct is to say one of the series I’ve watched a dozen times already, but they’re all pretty dramatic and emotional and I don’t know if I wanna live through that forever lol. So I’m gonna go with Cherry Blossom After Winter, I really adore this fluffy BL. It’s seriously my comfort series, it too sweet and I could easily watch it forever.
2) If you could change the ending of a drama which one would it be?
Anyone who doesn’t answer HIStory3: Make Our Days Count has either never seen it or has no heart, seriously, that is the top of the list of BL endings that needs to be changed! 😭 Kissable Lips is one I would change the ending of as well, still a better love story than Twilight tho.
3) Name your favorite drama and tell who your favorite character was.
I have two favourite BLs that take number one on my list, Until We Meet Again and Not Me. My favourite characters in UWMA are Dean, Korn and Win. My favourite characters in Not Me are White, Black, Sean, Yok and Gumpa. Yeah, there’s no such thing as one favourite character in my world lol.
4) Name a drama you dropped within the first few episodes ~ we all have at least one!
Check Out, I really really tried to like it but the characters were all just terrible people. Like I get that cheating happens, but when that’s the entire show, it gets a little dull.
5) Name a popular drama you've never watched and why?
SOTUS… I know, I know! This is like the BL that launched Thai BLs into the international market. And to be fair to Singto, he is one hell of an actor, he just has amazing chemistry with whoever he works with. But I’ve heard/read some pretty not good things about Krist concerning homophobic things done during filming, and that kinda soured the show for me. I’m queer and have no issue with actors playing gay for pay, obviously. But when an actor is gay for pay but rude about it, then I have issues. I grew up doing theatre, working both in front of and behind the scenes, I’ve been trained as an actor and I know nothing makes a working environment hell like an acting partner that just does not wanna be there, it makes you have to work twice as hard. Which is why I think Singto’s acting stands out so damn much next to Krist, because he was working his ass off to sell that onscreen romance. Also LBC2: A Chance To Love, again, much like Krist, Mean has had some pretty damming rumours and stories come out about him being homophobic. Also I just really dislike TinCan as a couple lol.
6) Name a drama you regret watching.
TharnType, what even was the god damned mess!? And why in gods name did I watch TharnType 2!? Can we stop MAME from writing gay stories until she’s actually met gay people? Because from the storylines I’m thinking she’s never actually spoken to a gay man in her life 🙄
7) Name a drama you thought you’d never watch but did and did you end up liking it?
Fish Upon The Sky, it looked seriously stupid but I actually ended up liking MorkPi and DueanMeen as well as their actors, I’m actually looking forward to seeing PondPhuwin pair up again in Never Let Me Go and NeoLouis in The Eclipse.
8) Name a pairing you want to see?
I’ve mentioned before in passing about wanting to see Gun pair up with either Mond or Sing, so I’ll pick differently this time. I’d really like to see Saint work with First, I know First is already kinda branded with Toru, what with them being in War of Y together after their episodes of Y Destiny. But I think if Saint wants to stop being cast as the cute lil uke he needs to be paired with someone slighter than him but equally as pretty, which is where First comes in. I’d love to see Saint as a cold tsundere type, softened by a sweet lil character played by First. Plus I think they would both go pretty ham when it came to any romantic scenes, possibly farther than Saint went with Zee.
9) Name a pairing you didn’t think had chemistry?
TinCan, I’ve mentioned them before and I swear it’s not just because I’m not a fan of Mean’s work lol. Seriously, I never found TinCan to have much chemistry at all. Also, I know BrightWin are some of GMMtv’s golden boys buuuutttt SarawatTine were lukewarm at best 🤷
10) Name a pairing you have seen in another drama that you like?
I really liked Na and Ja as a pairing in UWMA, Sorn and Sin were the only couple that didn’t have any awkwardness in their physicality, they existed within each other’s space, orbited around one another as a real couple would. So often in BLs I find couples have trouble with their physicality, both platonic and romantic touching as well as simply inhabiting another’s personal space. You can almost see them acting and that’s one thing you do not want your audience to be able to do, if an audience can feel/see that you’re acting then you’re doing your job wrong. Wise words from a director I once had, harsh words but wise lol. I would love to see them work together again but now that JaFirst have branded together since Don’t Say No, I doubt highly we’ll ever see NaJa work together again, at least not as a couple.
#thai bl#korean bl#cherry blossoms after winter#history 3: modc#until we meet again#not me#sotus#check out#a chance to love#TharnType#tharntype 2: 7 years of love#fish upon the sky#saint suppapong#first piyangkull#na naphat#ja phachara#bl thoughts#kissable lips#NeoLouis#pondphuwin
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
I posted 1,602 times in 2022
That's 504 more posts than 2021!
327 posts created (20%)
1,275 posts reblogged (80%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@hawkinsschoolcounselor
@strangertheory
@0aurelion-sol0
@tsugarubecker
@kaypeace21
I tagged 918 of my posts in 2022
Only 43% of my posts had no tags
#byler - 110 posts
#stranger things 4 - 79 posts
#stranger things 4 spoilers - 72 posts
#stranger things theories - 64 posts
#will byers - 53 posts
#stranger things - 53 posts
#will and el - 43 posts
#el and will - 42 posts
#the did theory - 42 posts
#el hopper - 28 posts
Longest Tag: 139 characters
#and i want to see where the story takes them as two nearly parallel lines who barely interact yet but are seemingly connected just the same
My Top Posts in 2022:
#3
Watching Dr Martin Brenner carefully trim his bonsai in the morning and then have a child tell him he's bad at drawing later in the afternoon...
... and hearing El's letter say that she thinks Will is working on a painting for a girl that he likes and that he's been acting weird lately...
... and then seeing Will carry the painting to the airport to show Mike but change his mind when the reunion isn't quite what he had hoped...
... only to have his conversation with Mike later that gives him the immediate courage to take his painting and put it in his bag before they leave with Argyle...
... and hearing the Party complain that Will is not around to illustrate things anymore as they look at Max's (perfectly decent, I might add!) Creel House drawing...
... and now to have the Duffer Brothers talking about how they went through many versions of Will's painting before deciding on the final one...
... as a queer artist who often pours my heart into my work...
... and as someone who has been anxiously hoping and waiting for Mike and Will to finally talk about their feelings for each other for years...
... waiting for Stranger Things 4 Volume II can be so personal!
291 notes - Posted June 26, 2022
#2
One reason that I hope that Mike is queer is that this revelation would be much more realistic to real-world emotions surrounding closeted lgbtqa people coming out to their loved ones.
Allow me to explain.
Nearly all stories in tv shows and movies these days announce to viewers what to expect, and allow audiences to know "yes, there is lgbtqa representation in this story!" and it's often a key part of the marketing. Yes, representation is wonderful. Yes, I do get a little excited when I know a story will feature something meaningful to the lgbtqa community. But step back for a moment and consider the way in which these stories are primarily for the queer community and allies. These stories aren't truly inspiring new insight and reflection or pushing non-allies and non-lgbtqa folk into challenging their current thoughts and ideas about queer people, in fact these stories that are advertised as featuring queer characters are effectively openly announcing "hey, if this isn't your thing and stories about queer characters make you uncomfortable, you can skip this!"
Now, some of you might say "but wait! What about Will!? Why are you making this post about Mike?"
Because Mike is the character that is arguably closeted and whose queerness still remains invisible to many audiences. He's the character who is probably lgbtqa but that audiences don't expect to be, because it hasn't been advertised, because he was in a dating relationship with a girl, because he "seems straight" (cue people making a list of stereotypes that people have decided apply to people and characters as if they can simply "know" if someone has feelings for someone of the same sex based on how they dress, what they do for hobbies, etc.)
And to me, there is a power and value in revealing to audiences that they should not assume a person's sexuality based on stereotypes, based on past relationships, etc. but instead allow them the space and safety to feel comfortable living their life openly as who they are and being honest about their feelings even as their understanding of themselves changes.
And if people can only accept someone's true self when that fits with their preconceived expectations of who they are and who they wanted them to be dating and who they believed them to be that was convenient and that fit with their assumptions: now that mirrors the true experience that people face and the challenge of coming out much more accurately.
Because we don't get marketing campaigns warning our friends and family that we're gay. Unlike many queer characters in tv shows, we don't get born into existence with a clear label that tells allies who we are and that tells homophobes that becoming close to us and caring about us will eventually end in a day that they feel "tricked" and "disappointed" that the person they cared about and could relate to ended up being something they didn't expect and didn't want.
Will Byers represents that all-too familiar story of the kid who got bullied for being different and for being seen as queer since he was young. If he is queer, he's not truly closeted because the world won't let him be.
Mike Wheeler represents a different queer experience that is also all-too familiar but often not represented in media in a way that genuinely brings audiences into being that character's friend or family member who assumed that they already knew whether or not he was gay or straight. Yet this mirrors what many of us experienced when we came out. People assume your sexuality, and then sometimes react badly when they feel "tricked." So yes, many of us are very emotionally invested in the way that Mike's story is being told because the indignance that we're witnessing within the fan community over his struggle to tell El that he loves her, the debate over whether Mike could be gay or not, and the way that audiences are perhaps too used to being coddled and very clearly warned by storytellers in advance that a character might be gay...
I've got a lot of feelings about all of this.
546 notes - Posted June 18, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
I struggle to see Nancy getting back with Steve.
She respects him. Yes, she finds him attractive — she always did. And she's impressed that he's grown up a lot.
But they're not a good match. The brood of 6 little Harringtons sounds like a nightmare to her but she's glad Steve has dreams and is doing well.
Regardless of whether she repairs her relationship with Jonathan or not, Nancy and Steve aren't going to be getting back together.
That's my prediction and assessment of the way I suspect they're writing the direction of those character relationships, currently.
It's realistic and important to remember that you can care about someone and respect someone and find them attractive and that still doesn't mean that you're supposed to be dating them.
2,310 notes - Posted July 6, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
#tumblr2022#year in review#my 2022 tumblr year in review#your tumblr year in review#that longest tag really does sum up my entire blog's vibe and focus and what I really care about which is el and will so I'm really happy#and you all apparently agree that Nancy and Steve shouldn't get back together? wow ahahahahaha I never expected that to be the hit post#this year was really rough for me but it's oddly comforting to look back on it with this#yes I cut out my 4th and 5th post cause this post was getting too dang long#long post
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Every now and then I think about how as a Ninth Grader I completely summed up my history teacher's lesson plan for the Entire Day and completely broke his spirit in less than two minutes.
Dear reader, I don't know How this came to pass but for whatever reason I learned So Much About the Holocaust in middle school. Not to say that kids shouldn't be taught about it, it's important to hold back the horrific conspiracy theories that try to claim it Never Happened in spite of the extensive records kept by the Nazis Themselves-- I'm getting off track, this post isn't about that.
But when I told you I had been Thoroughly Taught about the Holocaust, I mean that by the time I was in my first semester of high school, and my English teacher told us to come up with brief research questions in preparation for reading Eli Weisel's "Night", I was Out Of Questions I hadn't already gotten answered. I sat there with a blank piece of paper for about 5 minutes, before eventually landing on "why the jews, specifically?"
I knew that other minority groups had been persecuted under Nazi rule, from the Romani people to the disabled to queer people to eventually Pretty Much Any Religion, because that's what Fascism Does (Thanks, 7th grade world history), but in the majority of the propaganda I'd seen, The Jews were marketed as The Threat. The big thing dragging Germany down. So I set about my research, as we had Two Full Class Periods to put this project together.
The answer I got to with some surface level googling boiled down to things I'd already heard, but wasn't satisfied with. That Hitler never got into Art School. That he might've had a Jewish grandmother he disliked. None of it answered why the group he scapegoated Had to be the jews, and I had 10 slides to fill, so I had to dig deeper.
I eventually laid out a rough timeline, beginning with Judaism's black sheep status as the first monotheistic religion in its region, to slavery in Egypt, to the Christkiller conspiracy, to the fact that insular jewish communities, particularly with their cleanliness practices in personal hygiene, food preparation, and funerary practices, were not as affected by the devastation of the Black Plague (thanks again, 7th grade world his), to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the first world war, the german politicians who did so Happening to be Jewish, and the economic impact of the war reparations, which comfortably filled out my presentation as I capped it off with the scapegoating required to soft pitch fascism. I got my A and then moved on to actual English work for the rest of the semester without incident.
Fast forward to my second semester of my 9th grade year. My American History teacher was a real wad. Not as a teacher or anything, he wasn't too harsh a grader, very dedicated in making sure you got down the notes, but he had the habit of coming in after the fact to make sure his own opinion on the matter was very well known. He was also the kind of teacher that would ask the question he intended to answer and be real smug as he corrected your "wrong" answer. For example, when he taught us about The Great Depression, the kids in my class, when asked, ended up placing blame with the economic policies of Herbert Hoover. He went out of his way to defend Hoover, claiming "he simply believed too much in the free market" and going on to detail the specific economic practices that contributed to the crash. None of my class liked him.
So one fine April Morning, right as we were set to start talking about World War II, he asked us a question. "Why the Jews?" I felt like I'd been given the tools to finally humble this man. I let some of my classmates answer first, giving him the surface level answers I'd found a few months ago. Art school. Grandmother. One kid who'd been paying attention even brought up the Treaty of Versailles. My teacher's smug smile only grew wider, "Well, yes, but there's more to it than that..." As if there was nothing that brought him glee like correcting Children who hadn't yet been taught. He waited for us to run out of answers. He always did. I raised my hand.
"There's actually a longstanding history of antisemitism, basically as old as the religion itself, so Hitler scapegoated the Jews to get the gentile majority on board with his authoritarian policies."
His face fell. I think the man actually Deflated a little. He put away the projector screen, revealing he'd drawn an extended version of the timeline I'd laid out in my powerpoint a few months ago on the whiteboard.
"Well, I guess you can go home. For the rest of you..."
I don't think he ever emotionally recovered.
1 note
·
View note
Text
I kinda refuse to believe that older men are less misogynistic than men my age and I also refuse to believe a lot of this "growing misogyny problem in young men" research. I think the scale and visibility of it is all very new, but I don't think the attitudes are.
Like, you're not seriously telling me the generations that grew up with Girls Gone Wild and Tucker Max books and the OG Men's Rights Movement and "DR PEPPER MAX IT'S NOT FOR WOMEN" and "Smear the Queer" and Howard Stern videos and hypersexual Rock music videos and shitty Pop Punk songs that spoke of young women in such entitled and manipulative ways are any more accepting or well adjusted than your average Andrew Tate fan. Like it wasn't Zoomer and Millenial men that killed Kitty Genovese or Elizabeth Short. Ted Bundy was born in 1946. Misogyny has always been around and men and boys have traditionally always leaned more conservative than women and girls, because one of the basic standards of patriarchy is promising men and boys rewards and hyper-autonomy as long as they keep selling their souls to be good little cogs in the capitalist machine because that's what "real men" do (and if you're straight-- which a lot of these guys are-- you really want the capital and typical trappings of masculinity anyway, because those things are the quickest ways to get a girlfriend or a wife and "win" the game), while women aren't really promised anything but basic survival needs, and only if they're under the thumb of a man while doing so. It's also why war drafts were so enticing and successful in years past; if you're a good little meatshield, a good little worker bee, there'll lines of treasure and toys and games and women waiting for you hand and foot and you'll be revered as an honorable and respected warrior in Vallhalla / Heaven / Paradise / etc.
It's all a very meticulous system. Nothing has changed, everything is still moving exactly the way it's supposed to, this is just how it's always been. I'm sure if you went back to any high school during the Reagan or Bush years, most of the boys there would say they lean conservative or moderate as well. The only reason younger men acting more on these he-man misogyny-homophobia sprees now is because the trappings their fathers and grandfathers were promised are no longer viable realities and they're feeling betrayed about it. In the 70s you could go to school and college for cheap, then spend an entire week doing nothing but going to concerts and meeting cute girls because shows were 8 bucks a pop. The modern job market is garbage, college is getting more expensive, alienation is more common than ever with stagnant salaries forcing people to pick up longer shifts and take on anywhere from 2-4 jobs, leaving no time to socialize. The standards for masculinity remain the same as they were in the 50s, despite this. Boys are turning to guys like Andrew Tate and Kevin Samuels, because those guys are the embodiment of capitalist patriarchy and falling into that mindset reads, to them, as the quickest easiest and most "correct" way to achieve standards of manhood that are as highly regarded from the average person as they are outdated in this desolate economy we all find ourselves trapped under. It's very much the "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars" monologue from Fight Club.
Spiraling into despair about it and turning it all into a big generation war or whatever just seems so....pointless to me? Like men are not becoming-- nor have they ever been-- uniquely evil and stupid. They're groomed by the trapping of western white supremacist capitalism. Seeing it as some unique new slight on reality with no solution just seems so blatantly wrong to me.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Charcherry Weekly - Issue 151
Its quiet, too quiet. The weight of an entire world is on my shoulders, and its possible that a certain vacationing executive might be throwing wrenches into the whole operation. This is Mage of Light Nick Card, and I have some news to share.
On the 20th, rpgmaker.net began its annual pride month game jam, with the theme of queer awakenings. Your dear newsletter writer has entered into this ten day event, with the intent to build a game with the potential to recover the lost world of Plit.
As it stands, I have spoken with Warlock-Wizard Grey about the location, and they weren't able to give much information, aside from a brief anecdote about the age of old magic that they had grew up in. Having spoken to Korosian president Thoren Emit a day or two after, I was given a more comprehensive overview. However, the night between interviews, I had dreamt of my edgy kirby oc after reading an abridged planescape guide. I am convinced that dream was important, though I am currently unsure what it means.
Meanwhile, I have begun assembling and cleaning up an action battle system in rpg maker 2003 (with maniac's patch for string pictures). It seems to work well enough at the moment, though it could use some more features. So far, the plot seems to involve Kale Ominoi fighting his way through a dream while grappling with the grief of losing his home.
The game jam is set to end on the 30th, though I am personally hoping an extension is given, because ten days is not very long to work on such an important game.
Meanwhile, there is some news from voidco. There has been an announcement of a "Dungeon core 2", said to be a spherical core instead of a cube shaped one. According to a trusted source, Dungeon core 2 is supposed to be pilot tested in a location identified as "Plit", despite being said to be in an unknown solar system but with no world even being present there. Hyacinth, if you can, obtaining a more precise location for this pilot program would be appreciated.
It is unknown if this has anything to do with nebulous rumors regarding an upcoming trip that Page of Void Dylan is reportedly planning on taking. One source says that he is going to "Pilt" (it is unknown if this is a typo or a coincidentally named location) while another says he is taking a vacation to another dimension. Regardless, it is highly likely that he will be away from the office and also equally likely to cause trouble wherever he might go.
In lighter news, This week had Father's day and the Summer Solstice, which went about with minimal incident.
On planet Korous, Thoren Emit has reported that work on the construction of the capital city is underway, and that a functioning government with various elected members is being built as well. It is unknown when construction will be completed, but it sounds as if developments are going well.
This week’s known market stands in Desertia Town:
-Katie’s potion stand (*CaFAI filling in for Katie when unavailable)
-shinyjiggly pokesnacks stand (ran by Rufus)
That should hopefully do it for now. I'm gonna try to get my sleep soon. I'll need it if I'm going to be able to work on this game.
https://letssosl.boards.net/thread/385/charcherry-weekly-issue-151
1 note
·
View note
Last Seen Blogs
hueroom
HueRoom
chocolatemilkk
now its time to sit back and enjoy creation
sandpit-skye
I do not exist do not perceive me
hammyhq
HAMMY HQ
lilmisscookieslut
Cookie The Slut