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[renaultphile]

either David Blaize and Laurie or David and Frank discuss the Phaedrus!

Thank you for the ask @nurseadriansbrother - now I remember why these WIP tag games are so terrifying!

So I might as well confess that I created the WIP of David Blaize and Laurie yesterday and it was inspired by various interesting conversations on Tumblr (!) I have been wanting to do a David Blaize or TC crossover fic but it's going to be a while before I work up the courage. I love the Ralph/Frank pairing in Lilliburlero's fic so much I couldn't emulate that and it occurred to me that maybe Laurie might find some inspiration from an older David Blaize. Maybe he's an aspiring writer, sends out some letters to established writers, and David, being an amiable fellow, actually responds.......I do feel Laurie has strong DB echoes but they seem to have got lost. He just seems so depressed for most of the book. Maybe some emotional satisfaction from someone enthusiastic but a bit less invested? So, given the premise and subject-matter of this WIP it is at high risk of disappearing up its own backside, but anyway.......

And while I was writing this I realised that I have always wondered why TC Dave is always Dave and not David. I find it so casual and modern, it always jars a bit. But......David 🤔 could it be that there was a tiny little kernel of DB energy in Dave that got lost somewhere along the way. He always makes me feel so sad 😭

[renaultphile]

WIP tag game - thanks for the tag @gayskogul!

Here goes......

Let me see, no pressure tags for @mildredmost @tigerballoons @argyleheir @nurseadriansbrother @telltaleangelina @rottenlaertes @eclare1000 @spudodell @rheaitis and anyone seeing this who would like to create a hostage to fortune by revealing their work(s) in progress......

[renaultphile]

I voted someone else because of this reason too

I can't bear the thought of something Ralph does as 'earnestly dull', and I can't imagine Mary bringing herself to say it, but I think she is evil enough to have Laurie think it (because he doesn't know it's Ralph) and now it's boring it's way into my head like a parasite.......and I do have this head-canon of Ralph being an excellent draughtsman but not an artist. OMG having a little meltdown here......

ok, Charioteer mutuals, this has been on my mind for a while...

[renaultphile]

‘Get to know me’ tag game.  Thank you for the tag @rottenlaertes and @nurseadriansbrother!

Do you make your bed?  Always air it first though!  Plus it’s a duvet so not exactly arduous……

Favourite number?  Has to be seven

Current job?  Public sector, can’t say more than that!

If you could go back to school would you?   Totally – it’s wasted on the young!

Can you parallel park? I can’t even drive!  But I am a very good backseat driver (apparently!)

A job you had that would surprise people? I once got free entry to a ball playing keyboards in a student band.  Yes it was downhill after that……

Do you think aliens are real?  100%  My favourite theory that I’ve seen is that they are so big we can’t see them!

Can you drive a manual car? No and not even an automatic either! I'm waiting for the driverless car technology

What’s your guilty pleasure? Anything sweet (literally and figuratively).

Tattoos?   No, too scared of pain, and too indecisive.

Favourite colour? Anything turquoise-y or aquamarine-y

Favourite type of music? Anything eclectic (I know that's cheating, sorry!)

Do you like puzzles?  Love puzzles but they can’t be too difficult.

Any phobias? So many to choose from but heights is a big one, following by enclosed spaces.

Favourite childhood sport? Swing-ball (you know with the tennis ball on a string that goes round….never mind)

Do you talk to yourself?  Constantly in my head.

What movie(s) do you adore? Lawrence of Arabia, The English Patient, Dune.  I do also like movies without sand dunes. 

Coffee or tea? Mostly coffee, pot of tea if I’m out though.

First thing you wanted to be growing up? There was this counsellor who used to do a phone-in and solve people’s problems in five minutes flat and for a long time that’s what I wanted to be!

Sorry I was late to the party so I think everyone's been tagged!!

[renaultphile]

And if anyone is having withdrawal symptoms, there is a lovely fix-it fic from @mildredmost https://archiveofourown.org/works/11602998

oh btw girls Black sails dropped on netflix recently.... I watched it (aside from the last couple of episodes bc i didn't want it to end lol) a couple of years ago but i can confidently say that it's some of the best queer period tv show fun I've seen in YEARS

[renaultphile]

Morning and Evening shipping, by William Thornley (Active 1857-1898

[renaultphile]

Ralph's Letter and A. E. Housman: TC Literary Analysis, pt. 2

here’s my promised comparison of some of the lines in Ralph's suicide note to various stanzas of Housman's poetry- it started as just a comparison with “Shot? so clean, so quick an ending,” but then I thought of similar stanzas in other poems. I hope this doesn't come off too much "Guy who has only seen The Boss Baby, watching his second movie: Getting a lot of 'Boss Baby' vibes from this..." but I think the parallels are there.

I am sorry that there seems to be no way of writing to you more quickly than by the post, if one is to avoid people reading it I should have liked you to know sooner that you are not to blame for this in any way.

Now to your grave shall friend and stranger With ruth and some with envy come: Undishonoured, clear of danger, Clean of guilt, pass hence and home. Turn safe to rest, no dreams, no waking; And here, man, here's the wreath I've made: 'Tis not a gift that's worth the taking, But wear it and it will not fade.

The real reason I am getting out is that I can see no future for me at sea, and can’t fancy myself in a shore job. I have had something of the sort in mind ever since Dunkirk. I swear that is true.

Oh you had forethought, you could reason, And saw your road and where it led, And early wise and brave in season Put the pistol to your head.

I am sincerely sorry for the harm I have done to you and to this boy. You had the right idea in the first place, knowing yourself best, and I came along and bitched up your life in every way. I can see now that I was wrong even at school; I should either have gone the whole way, which in those days would probably have shocked you and put you against it all, or shut up about it altogether.

Souls undone, undoing others, -- Long time since the tale began. You would not live to wrong your brothers: Oh lad, you died as fits a man.

The fact of the matter is that if I hadn’t met you again, and had gone on as I was, I might have drifted past the point where a step of this kind ought to be taken, and I would rather have it like this.

Oh soon, and better so than later After long disgrace and scorn, You shot dead the household traitor, The soul that should not have been born.

Just lately I have been happier than I ever had the right to expect, and as one goes round the world one sees that happiness is hard to come by and seldom lasts for long.

LVII: You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over; You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover. 'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never; I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.

IV: If death and time are stronger, A love may yet be strong; The world will last for longer, But this will last for long.

Good luck to you, Spud. We always agreed that right, left, or center, it is still necessary to make out as a human being. I haven’t done it but you will. Goodbye.

II: I see the country far away Where I shall never stand; The heart goes where no footstep may Into the promised land. The realm I look upon and die Another man will own; He shall attain the heaven that I Perish and have not known.

[renaultphile]

Kenneth Branagh in A Month in the Country (1987) dir. Pat O'Connor

[renaultphile]

Today's news headline

[renaultphile]

@alovelywaytospendanevening Thank you so much for this analysis, you write about the book so beautifully! I felt the same about Duane in the sense that I was sure he had multiple reasons for being in the book and given the wide cast of characters it seems right that at least one other man in the book would be same-sex attracted. I must say I had forgotten quite how pointed the references were! And I guess it might have felt dishonest to Case not to have a male character making the choices Duane did. I thought the use of his PoV was so clever and interesting, I loved the way his feelings are not entirely clear but as you say obsessive, and then expressed tangentially through his sense of loss and yes I laughed to myself at Fred's assumption that he wouldn't hear from Duane again. Alarm bells ringing for me on that one! I would love to think that they might have some kind of dialogue.......I think I have another ask in me, which given my URL you might be able to guess 🤔

I would really like to hear all your theories on Duane Higgins in Wingmen! I also find him an intriguing character 🤔

It all comes down to the notion that he was in love with Jack, but didn’t realize this.

Unlike Fred and Jack, he isn’t fully homosexual — maybe he's even mostly attracted to women. Gay men simply can’t be unaware of their nature, even when trying to repress it, because we’re attracted to only one gender. There's only one option. But the situation is more complicated when it comes to guys like Duane. He was raised and lived in a deeply heteronormative society, where the possibility of same-sex romance wasn’t even considered. So he never considered the possibility of being attracted to Jack, and was satisfied enough to be friends with him while pursuing women on the side. The text itself explains a little about the social rules that Jack and Duane, as two adult men, were expected to follow in their interactions:

"He figured he felt as deeply for Jack Hardigan as he did for any man or woman alive. He never considered using the word “love” to describe the emotion—love being what mothers felt for sons and vice versa, what occasionally fathers felt for sons, and what infrequently and with great caution one felt toward a younger member of the opposite sex." [...] "the two had managed to hang together like husband and wife, or more accurately, like twin brothers." "Despite the closeness between these two, they had not corresponded while they were apart. Attachment for another man is not something two grown men easily admit, so Duane was flabbergasted and secretly overjoyed when the orders came for his transfer to Jack’s squadron."

That all changed when Fred entered the scene, though. Yeah, Duane was envious of Fred’s accomplishments as a pilot, but that’s only part of the issue, the part he allowed himself to admit. He was mad. Mad at Jack for breaking the social rules of male behavior. Mad at Fred for (successfully) pursuing Jack and creating this whole situation. And, deep down, he was beginning to get mad at himself for never having had the courage to try anything with Jack when he had the chance to. Notice that, despite being obsessed with finding out the truth about their relationship, he never threatened Fred and Jack. He knew this could ruin Jack’s life, and he didn’t want that. He was just mad this was happening, and couldn’t stop thinking about the matter.

The character is a representative of this “grey area”/bisexual kind of man. How many of them are there? Most of them spend their entire lives defining themselves as nothing but straight, simply because that's the pattern. In a society more open to accepting different sexualities, like the Western world is starting to be, they could’ve had very different trajectories.

The epilogue raises other questions, too. Was Duane conflicted about the end of his marriage? And he certainly reflected on his feelings for Jack in the post-war years. Did he ever try to approach another man? Fred doesn’t expect to hear from Duane after the funeral, but that’s his (very biased) take. We know he never liked Duane. But what if he saw in Fred someone he could confide his hidden feelings?

By the way, thanks for all the questions. I never had the chance to discuss Wingmen before, so I’m very glad to reply!

[renaultphile]

More on the pressure gauge

@eclare1000 I just posted on this, in terms of what the metaphor might mean and I realised there is another meaning which should have been staring me in the face - the sexual one!

This was triggered by reading this line from the hospital corridor:

"If you feel like company you can ring me up."

I don't know when company became a byword for something else (as in the Stephen Sondheim musical) but, well there is this from Bunny threatening to throw Laurie out of the car:

"I should hate to force my company on anyone who felt like that about it."

And now I'm seeing it everywhere in that little hospital scene. Ralph gives him his number (he's a gentleman, he doesn't ask for Laurie's). And he says 'There's nothing difficult or complicated or anything. I'm there when you want me.' And suddenly that sounds not like an offer of friendship, but an offer of something with no strings, as described by Laurie after the Wedding Night:

"He had offered all he had, as simply as a cigarette or a drink, for a palliative of present pain."

And then to Laurie 'What a silly boy you are.' which he says 'as if someone were flirting with him at a party' which is interesting - not as if he is flirting but as if someone is flirting with him.

I think this might be a parallel to when Laurie keeps inadvertently giving signals to Ralph at the Wedding. I am sure Ralph is not *actually* trying to proposition Laurie, but everything he says seems to have a double meaning.

Or perhaps Mary is just having a lot of fun with her readers.

But anyway - sometimes you have to let off that steam, Laurie!!

[renaultphile]

The Pressure gauge thing in The Charioteer

@eclare1000 I might be about to embarrass myself badly here, but I went to look this up and of course, it opened such a can of worms 👀

On one level I felt it had a literal meaning and was one of Ralph’s typical slightly odd sayings.  He refers not just to screwing down the pressure valve (so not able to let off steam) but also smashing in the gauge (so not able to even see how bad it’s getting).  A perfect description of Laurie at times.

But a couple of things occurred to me.  One was that this also feels like a perfect description of Ralph.  And the way he says ‘there’s no future….’ - I know it’s a figure of speech he likes to use but it’s always a bit chilling.

After that little speech, Ralph says: “But a person who knows you will understand that. No one's going to hold it against you afterwards."  I feel so strongly that Ralph is doing that thing someone identified recently of saying the words he wishes someone would say to him!

There are a couple of other references to releasing pressure too.  In the car, Laurie thinks ‘he could release the pressure of so much uncommunicated experience’ to Ralph but they are interrupted and he loses the impetus to talk about Andrew.

And in the ‘break-up scene’, he says

‘Some instinct was saying that anger would do all he needed, release this intolerable pressure and drug him and give him the impetus to escape. He waited to be angry at what Ralph would say.’

And of course he can’t be angry at Ralph at that point.

Until finally…….

‘At first it had seemed not to matter what one said, the thing had been to get it over; but now he felt anger rising in him, pent, aching anger from hidden places, the blind undischarged poison of guilt and conflict and suppressed resistance.’

I just love how a very practical and slightly muddled figure of speech so perfectly foreshadows that near-tragic confrontation at the end...…….and Laurie couldn't do that thing - 'a person who knows you will understand'. Because he doesn't yet know Ralph. That is still to come.....

[Edit - more thoughts on the double meanings here]

[renaultphile]

@nurseadriansbrother @ralphlanyon on the suicide letters, I did a Tumblr poll a while back and was shocked to discover the majority view was that there was no letter for Alec!

My thought was the mention of Alec in Laurie's letter was just a plot device but he still got his own letter. Since then I've thought it might be more that Alec was around for at least one other failed attempt(?) and he said in a fit of pique "If you pull that stunt again don't you dare write me a letter!". Although now I wonder if it is a reflection of the depth of their relationship, as if it's superfluous, whereas the letter to Laurie is so formal - it's the most heart-breaking thing about. I can totally imagine him rattling off a formal letter or two, and then facing up to the need to write Laurie a letter that would make everything clear. But anyway....just as an experiment I had a go at what Ralph's letter to Alec might look like.

@ralphlanyon: i also love the symmetry/mirror symbolism of ralph’s left hand and laurie’s right leg being injured! laurie observes that ralph wrote “two or three letters.” my headcanon is that ralph wrote a letter to his commanding officer informing him that his death was a suicide and not something suspicious. i’m not sure that he wrote alec a letter, since he tells laurie to pass on his apology to alec - if he had written alec a letter, he could have just told him himself.

your commanding officer theory sounds right to me. i feel like ralph would perhaps be too ashamed to write alec a letter, if that makes sense (and alec and ralph haven't been on the best of terms on ralph's side, and i think he'd carry a lot of guilt because of that as well). it's definitely intriguing to think about that potential third letter though... Renault loved her ambiguity! ;)

and omg yes that's lovely, how didn't i catch that? coming together to support each other and create one whole, perfect body... <3 it's a beautiful foreshadowing of the ending, too (which i personally really love).

[renaultphile]

Thank you so, so much @alovelywaytospendanevening this feels so spot on as a description of the book and what makes it such a great read. I did notice what felt like a special quality about it, and yes, the lack of homophobia, the directness of it, and I thought he very cleverly spiced it up with a bit of light-hearted heterosexual sex but used it to make a point, while giving the women some agency. And I honestly can't imagine more explicit sex for the romantic heroes would have added anything. I think he did that thing that Mary Renault talks about, wrote the characters and situations so well that the sex needs no adornment. The bit where Fred seeks Jack out for an assignation at the BOQ! Job done! And I find Duane intriguing too. Will send you an ask on that one when I can formulate it in my head.

I just wanted to say thank you so, so much for the Wingmen recommendation 💖 I doubt if I would have found this book by accident and I loved it so much!! I have just finished the book and I am struggling to string a sentence together right now, still processing. So I thought I would ask you your thoughts on the book and why you like it so much!

Oh, I'm so glad you liked it!

While The Charioteer is probably my favorite novel ever, Wingmen is not far off from the top spot. As a historian, I always say good historical fiction can teach you a lot, and I did learn by reading Wingmen. The author clearly knew the stuff he was writing about: the aircraft, the dates, the battles, the Navy lifestyle, the whole war effort... It's all detailed and realistic, a really immersive experience. Even if the romance is the main draw, this is a true military fiction work.

And the romance. I love Fred and Jack. Case wanted to raise the bar for gay characters in the genre, and he achieved this. Notice that in spite of the period and the prejudices, this isn't a story about homophobia — it's a war story with a love affair. Yeah, Fred and Jack eventually suffer from prejudice, but the main point is that they are warriors. A warrior couple, as Eric Patterson described them, willing to sacrifice themselves for each other, and whose love was built around a strong sense of mutual respect.

Despite the realism, the plot isn't just a bunch of events following each other. It works in a carefully crafted crescendo, it has rhythm, and it's very satisfying to follow. The battle scenes are incredible; I remember being so tense when I was reading them for the first time! The author is also never dismissive towards women or Japanese people (despite some characters presenting period-typical takes), which is refreshing for a 1970s book of this kind. He was cautious when it comes to love scenes between the main characters, but that can be excused (particularly if you’re used to Mary Renault).

And I have to say I find Duane Higgins a fascinating character. Unlike Fred and Jack, you never really know what is going on inside his head (but I have some theories!).

[renaultphile]

Spring is in the air - Ralph and Laurie

I have wanted to write about Laurie getting back in the water ever since the re-read and those beautiful dreamy passages describing the river Cherwell in Oxford. Well, I tried....Hope you enjoy 😎

[renaultphile]

Anything's possible, Jamie, except feeling nothing. That's never possible.

Second Best (1994) — dir. Chris Menges

[renaultphile]

California Prunes, 1941