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minothtime · 3 days ago

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Stucky and Angie/Peggy History reading list! (Or, a 1930s-1950s LGBT History List)

It took me a considerable amount of time to create this list. Please take just a second to “like” or even reblog my list. It makes a huge difference. I researched two different library databases, which took hours, and scoured through Amazon.

If you don't have time to read the whole list - my recommended pick overall is number 7.

I have tried to find free copies of the book when I can, but it's not easy with the newer books. Off we go!

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey

Amazon Link: Here. Archive Link: Here.

This is one of two defining gay in New York books. It’s an older book, but it has earned its place in the LGBT Book Hall of Fame. However, the book can be a bit dry. There are sometimes so many details that you lose the point of the passage. On the other hand, the details are incredibly useful, as he’s able to locate historical places by address and name the buildings around them, along with their histories. Most historians don’t bother to indicate exactly where buildings were located or where they are now. (Standing or not standing). I don’t know why more historians don’t follow this example. As a historic preservationist, it’s not that hard. There are times when the book is sexually explicit, so just be aware! Much of the book predates WWII, but two things: 1. You need to know the history that precedes it. Where did we come from? What has changed? 2. If you’re looking for Stucky history, you’re going to want the 30s and 40s, so you’re going to want the second half of the book.

2. A Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning History) by Michael Bronski

Amazon: Here. Archive: Here.

I’d be crazy not to include this book. It’s a more modern guidebook to LGBT+ history. I included the Disability History of the United States in the disability guide. This is a great introduction to LGBT+ history, and I think it provides a solid foundational understanding of the subject. Yes, WWII is mentioned, but I think the general history is great in the book. It does not shy away from difficult topics, and some people may find the book triggering as it contains blunt language to these topics that people may not be used to. However, this is the norm for minority history. Sometimes, we need to use more direct language to convey our point. The book is easy to read, so I highly recommend it. There is also a great deal of diversity between races and religions.

3. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America by Lillian Faderman

Amazon: Here. Archive: Here.

I own this book. Lillian Fadermen is literally the premiere historian of lesbian history. Like, there may be only ONE other historian that rivals her. If you want lesbian history, this is where you go. Don't let the age of the book fool you. Look at the beginning for the reasons why again. This book is actually on two of my LGBT lists because of the span it covers. This book covers everything, I swear.

With all that said, her writing can be a bit dry. Some parts of the book were a bit of a slog, but she does use a lot of primary resources, and that livens it up a bit. Her book definitely has diversity in it, especially covering Harlem. There is definitely a lot of content that would work for Peggy and Angie. It's at least three chapters worth, but I still recommend the whole book.

4. Fighting Proud: The Untold Story of the Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars by Stephen Bourne

Amazon link: Here. No archive link, sadly.

I’m actually thinking of buying this book. This is probably the easiest to read out of all the books. The tone is more conversational or story-like. The author’s preface and introduction were great. The first half of the book discusses World War I, which is almost never discussed, so that was refreshing. I recommend reading it but feel free to skip to the WWII section. He writes with great respect and reverence for the subject. It was extremely easy to read through the preview. (I used the Google Books preview.)

5. When Brooklyn Was Queer: A History by Hugh Ryan

Amazon: Here. No Archive link, sadly.

I didn’t expect to like this book, given the way the author focuses on himself sometimes, but he approaches his history through storytelling and interviews with members of the community. The information that couldn’t be gleaned from an interview came from his own investigations and subsequent historical research. The book kind of reminded me of Anthony Bourdain. It has a very rich span of history, and the last third of the book is most pertinent to Stucky, but the content preceding that is actually quite nice as well. He’s similar to George Chauncey (First pick) in that he’s able to pinpoint locations. What’s unique about this is that the book was written in 2019, so his investigations would have to be updated from what Chauncey found decades earlier. If you like Walt Whitman, you’ll especially appreciate the first chapter. I recognized many of the locations discussed in the book as they were places featured in Steve’s history, including Red Hook.

6. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis

Amazon: Here. Archive: Here.

I'm not sure how much this book pertains to Angie and Peggy, ONLY because of the discussions of lesbian bars. It's up to you all if you hc Angie and Peggy visiting these. The book is set in NY but more outside of it.

It also discusses being in the closet, but focuses more on out lesbians or at least, lesbians who didn't explicitly hide them selves. (I use lesbians in my writing just for ease. The book pertains to bisexual women as well!) The only thing that may frustrate some people is that femme women take a back seat in the book. In a book about lesbians, it would be way better to have equality. However, the book talks about the working class a lot, which is a refreshing change. That fits Angie more in terms of her job, but I'm not sure about lifestyle. Peggy is more middle class. The book is also incredibly diverse, talking extensively about African American and Latinx communities. So, honestly, you have to decide whether this book is enough about Peggy/Angie or if you're interested in that aspect of history.

7. Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II by Allan Berube

Amazon: Here. Archive: Here.

I liked this book so much that I actually bought it on Amazon after reading the preview.That should tell you all you need to know. In all seriousness, this is a great book. It's my number one pick. It’s highly respected for its high-quality research and writing. It’s a little bit technical in tone, so you may have to read carefully. I didn’t have much of a problem. I just skipped some of the acronyms, and I was fine. He conducted numerous interviews, which was wonderful. I went through the book very quickly. One thing I LOVE is that he works VERY hard to give lesbians their light in the book. It’s been very frustrating to see most of these books neglected women. Some of the book was actually humorous, and unsurprisingly, some of it was heartbreaking. I definitely recommend this book.

8. Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past by Martin Bauml Duberman (Editor), Martha Vicinus (Editor), George Chauncey.

Amazon: Here. Archive: Here.

It is another old book, but it is considered a must-read for historians or those interested in LGBT+ history. Many classes read from it.

It discusses how to research these individuals while also providing diverse chapters on various subjects from different historians. The last six chapters of the book are most closely related to Peggy/Angie and Bucky/Steve.

One of the authors for one of the chapters is actually Allan Berube, who was already included in this list. Madeline Davis also has a chapter in the book. George Chauncey has a chapter on World War I for those interested. I don’t have the time or room to discuss each chapter. You’ll just have to see it for yourself.

Important Notes: You may notice that there aren’t a lot of books about women. That is partially due to laziness and misogyny, but also the true problem that there isn’t as much easily accessible information about lesbian, bisexual, or transwomen outside of stereotypes. There are academic papers that discuss how difficult it is to write about WLW. I can prove it. However, I call some of these historians lazy as while it is true that it is significantly harder to find sources about women, I get the feeling that some of these historians didn’t even try.

A lot of the books are older, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth reading. A lot of the books have updates to them. They didn’t achieve such a high status of quality and success for nothing. For some reason, there were more scholars interested in the subject, OR they had more resources, even though we have a more advanced internet with databases.

#reference

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minothtime · 3 days ago

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for being such a beloved character in undertale, i think deltarune mettaton doesn’t get the amount of love he deserves. maybe i just haven’t looked enough in the right places, but finding stuff with him feels like such a specific niche i have to dig for even though he’s very connected to certain darkners (and even when he's involved, it's often mettaton ex). i do think it’s a result of fanon reducing ut!mettaton down to “sexy leg robot” so much that even his sweet moments in that game get brushed aside. sure, you have to get the mystery key and backtrack to even know about the diaries in his house, but what’s a toby fox game without digging for secrets? i guess you could argue we don’t know much about dr!mettaton - not even seeing him and instead having to deduce it's him talking behind the ghost family's door via his speech patterns - but the thing is that we know mettaton. we know mettaton, we know who and what he is when his dreams have come true, and in this world he's not there yet. he doesn't have that, and his words and visual absence are glaring proof of that.

(chapters 3 + 4 spoilers ahead - this is the part where i tell you that this is a very long deltarune mettaton analysis post after the cut.)

we know who he is in undertale before his stardom because of the diaries, even!

without collaging screenshots of absolutely every entry here, we know that mettaton was a ghost that lived on a snail farm in waterfall with his cousin, had dreams of being a star while living with a form that didn't feel like his, and had those dreams come true after he formed human fanclub and became friends with alphys.

deltarune mettaton doesn't know alphys. deltarune mettaton is a depressed shut-in in a small suburban town called hometown. he lives with his two cousins, only one of whom has a job, the other staying inside and not showing her face just like he does.

deltarune mettaton is a bit of a nobody.

this is the closest we get to actually seeing what ut!mettaton was like before becoming a star. it's the ugly part of what life looks like when you're depressed and don't feel like yourself. it is, for all intents and purposes, a story about being transgender. ut!mettaton is a ghost who transitions to feel like a person, his ideal body emphasizing his heart-shaped soul that looks like a human's.

(in another timeline, ut!mettaton takes a form that emphasizes his monster soul instead; it sits where the right-side-up human soul heart would be. his hair is out of his face and shows off his lack of an eye, he has giant flashing wings and an arm cannon, and as stage lights are blaring, you kill him in one hit.)

dr!mettaton isn't there yet. he's still just a ghost and hides behind the door, refusing to even show himself. he certainly has dreams of becoming big, though.

i can't talk about deltarune mettaton without talking about spamton.

of course, the connections to spamton neo and mettaton neo have been made before, but i digress. i've seen people who don't realize those connections are there, or even argue that oh, it has nothing to do with mettaton at all, actually. the thing about spamton is that he, too, has dreams of becoming a big shot. the key to that is, in his words, a heart-shaped object and a heaven-piercing workout-ready body hiding in the deep abyss of queen's mansion.

in the undertale 9th anniversary newsletter, toby fox shared some unused music rejected for deltarune chapter 2, and an unfinished extended version of Power of NEO was among these tracks. toby said that "one of my goals for DELTARUNE was for players to finally be able to challenge a 'real' version of Mettaton NEO that didn't just end in one turn . . . Eventually, the boss concept evolved to involve Spamton, and with that, the music changed as well."

youtube

however, in BIG SHOT, you can still hear the same leitmotif featured in Power of NEO - the Battle Against a True Hero leitmotif that plays when you fight undyne the undying. the concept and music might've changed, but the connections between mettaton and spamton are still very much there.

the spamton neo fight itself features a yellow soul shooter mechanic reminiscent of the mettaton ex fight in undertale. one of spamton neo's attacks features bombs alongside tiny spamtons, and one of mettaton ex's features bombs alongside tiny mettatons. in undertale, you're fighting mettaton ex in front of an audience - in deltarune, spamton neo begs and prays to a nonexistent audience as the stage lights are shattered. i also do think it's interesting that before everything, spamton takes a phone call that makes him go crazy - and during his fight, mettaton ex takes callers and decides to stay as the underground's star.

the basement robot that spamton neo uses as a body is, as we can learn from talking to swatch after the boss fight, the embodiment of a lightner's dream.

mettaton, shy as he is, went to the library's computer lab, drew up an idea of a body that feels like his in ms paint, and then deleted it. he drew up a tall body, one with giant rainbow wings, an arm cannon, and heeled knee-high boots. in this world, mettaton doesn't have the resources to have the body he wants. his best friend who's a royal scientist in another world is only a high school teacher in this one, after all, and he doesn't even know her. human fanclub has no way of forming - the internet's gone down, and mettaton doesn't have anything entertaining to do right now.

to me spamton is, to an extent, a sort of representation of mettaton’s dreams of becoming big. of course, spamton’s his own guy with his own issues that don’t relate to mettaton, but the parallels are absolutely there. you could not have spamton without the existence of ut!mettaton. you could not have spamton neo without the hopes and dreams of the little ghost lightner making a drawing in the computer lab. it’s very interesting to me that the body mettaton draws is the neo body; there’s no emphasis on the soul anywhere, but it being the no mercy version of himself reads to me as some sort of repression. mettaton doesn't have a high self-esteem; he still just thinks of himself as a monster.

at the end of chapter 2, there's a froggit in front of the ghosts' house who says that sometimes, it hears beautiful singing coming from over there, wondering if it's a ghost. if you knock and ask mewmew if you could talk to someone else, mettaton teases about you being a fan of a nobody like him, then asks if you could bring him something entertaining tomorrow.

now it's time for me to talk about mr. ant tenna.

unlike the subtlety that spamton has, tenna is, in my opinion, a walking mettaton reference. he's a box-shaped TV host wearing a red suit with a yellow tie. Live Report! literally starts playing right when the second board ends (albeit lacking the It's Showtime! leitmotif lol). if i had a nickel for every time a toby fox game had a robot TV host force a nonbinary child to do a cooking show, i'd have two nickels, which isn't much but it's funny that it happened twice.

the beginnings of Death by Glamour and It's TV Time! (along with CORE and TV World) share a pretty similar melody as well!

that's enough about tenna and ut!mettaton, though. what i want to talk about is tenna and deltarune mettaton. in the light world, tenna is a TV that's been watched less and less over the years as the dreemurr and holiday families began drifting apart. tenna is all about nostalgia compared to ut!mettaton's modernity. tenna just wants to be watched, and although later on in chapter 4 the prophecy said he would die, susie gives him hope that he'll find a new home.

after church in chapter 4, susie brings tenna to castle town. it's not his forever home, though; in the light world, this is just him sitting in a dusty old storage closet with nobody to watch him.

when you knock at the ghosts' door again, you have the option to give tenna to mettaton. Cue The Most Objectum Shit I've Ever Seen.

jokes aside, this is the best possible result for the both of them. tenna, the personification of kris' feelings about being a child of divorce, finds a new home. toriel had a parental lock on him - he'd been a family TV. his parental lock is now gone, and the first thing mettaton watches on him is the risque music videos that dess would watch back then. it’s not just about mettaton, either; as we see in undertale, the ghosts love TV. tenna has a new family to enjoy his time with. just like susie, he just needed to find the right people. i don't think i'd be wrong to say that this is a narrative about a child of divorce leaving home, growing up and moving on.

for mettaton, tenna is exactly what he needs in his life right now. remember: we know mettaton. right now, he's hiding in the dark at home and not feeling like himself. but back in undertale, it was his enjoyment of human media to be the first domino to fall leading to him achieving his dreams. in that other world, he's a star. he has a source for entertainment now; a source of inspiration. He's Seeing That TV Glow. if i'm to theorize a bit here, i like to think this is leading to human fanclub finally reuniting in deltarune. whether alphys can actually make him a body is something else, but nonetheless, it's an opportunity for them to become friends and bond over media together. at the end of the day, a pre-transition mettaton is finding happiness amidst his dealing with dysphoria. being trans isn't all about despair, after all.

bit of a sidenote with more theorizing, there's the theory going around of mettaton fusing with the TV. i think the use of not "someone," but "somebody" in this flavor text here is an interesting piece of that idea. fascinating implications for tenna too.

but other than that. speaking of finding positives: mettaton is so kind. in undertale, the side of him you see the most might be how much he adores himself (which, when you have a body that actually feels like yours? you sure do become happier and start liking yourself a lot more), but when he shows care towards people, he really means it. he decides to stay in the underground because of the positive impact he's had on everyone. at the end of a true pacifist run, he makes his way back home to waterfall and gifts his old blue dress to a fan. he cares for his best friend alphys (he thanks her for making his dreams come true, and in the alarm clock dialogue he agrees to be a literal heater for her) and his cousin napstablook and his friend shyren. he goes back and makes amends with the latter two, having left them behind and now inviting them to take the stage with him. he thanks frisk for reminding him he has fun performing with others.

in deltarune, mettaton may be sad and invisible, but he's still so kind. he still calls everyone darling and beautiful. he humors susie when she says that kris' TV has a name and sounds incredibly endeared at the idea. he's the most vulnerable he's ever been here - he doesn't like himself, he calls himself a nobody, he thinks you can't possibly be knocking at the door to talk to him - but it doesn't stop him from calling everyone sweet nicknames. deltarune mettaton is in a very different set of circumstances compared to undertale mettaton, but he's still mettaton, and the core of him is still there. he has just as a compelling story as much as undertale mettaton does and i wish it were appreciated more for what it is - a story still about being trans, but showing the aspects of what that looks like while struggling with dysphoria, and still finding trans joy within it.

#deltarune spoilers #this analysis is so good. i love mettaton <3

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