#I’m legally on record as being married to a woman

[ladykailitha]

Sweet Home Indiana Part 1

Hello! And welcome to this fun little fusion that I came up with here. If anyone can find the post about gay legal troubles after gay marriage was legalized (I think was originally about polyamory divorces) let me know so I can link here, too.

Summary: Eddie is a successful tattoo artist in Seattle and is engaged to be married to Chrissy. Only there is one problem. Well, technically three. You see, back before the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was a right and not a privilege Eddie had gotten married in a couple of different states to different people. But now that's it's legal, he's a bigamist and he has to get his exes to divorce him. Which is easy enough for two of the three, not so much for the third. You see the third just isn't just any ex, it's the ex. Steve Harrington. So now he has to go down to Hawkins and try to convince the person he thought he was going to spend his life with to divorce him. Something much easier said then done, especially when Eddie finds himself falling back in love.

EDDIE IS GAY IN THIS BUT THERE ARE REASONS OKAY!

****

Eddie’s life was good. Let it be said that it was really good. He knew that. But he had regrets. Didn’t everyone?

He regretted how his band broke up. It wasn’t his fault, but he hadn’t seen the cracks when they had started to show. He hadn’t seen how tired Jeff was getting or how fucked Gareth was. He hadn’t seen that Brian was only phoning it in every night.

So when it all fell apart after a concert in Seattle, he was left holding the pieces of his band and his broken heart. He had gotten a job as a tattoo apprentice and had worked really hard to get his own chair.

He had friends. Good ones. Jeff had stayed in Seattle, too. Gareth had gone into rehab and had moved to a small village in the south of France. Brian had gotten married and moved back to Indiana where he became a teacher and lived a quiet life. The life he had always wanted.

Then there was Chrissy. He loved her so much. They had met when she came into the tattoo parlor to get a tattoo covered. She wanted to cover the name of her ex-boyfriend with a purple violet. Eddie had smiled at her when she asked.

It was some of his best work, if he was honest.

She was a legal assistant that had just gotten her paralegal degree and was trying to get a work visa.

She had come over to the USA from Barbados. A little island country in the Caribbean.

He didn’t know how she could stand living in damp Seattle after being born on sun-soaked shores under glistening palm trees. But Chrissy was adamant that she loved being in Washington where it rained almost all the time.

Eddie was on a mission. One that he had sworn to Chrissy that he would do today.

He walked into the county clerk’s office and applied for a marriage license for him and Chrissy.

“I’m sorry Mr. Munson,” the clerk told him, “but our records show that you have not one, not two but three marriages in three different states.”

Eddie’s eyes went wide.

“What?” He would remember that, surely.

“To a William Hargrove in Hawaii, a Thomas M. Hagan in New York, and Steven J. Harrington in Massachusetts,” the woman said, holding up her reading glasses in front of her face to read off the list.

“But those were only legal in the state they were preformed in, right?” he asked, furrowing his brow in confusion.

The woman shook her head. “Not since the Supreme Court ruled that it was legal for gays to get married. It’s cause a lot of trouble for a lot you people, let me tell you.”

Eddie knocked his knuckle on the counter and licked his lips. “Shit.”

She grimaced sympathetically. “I’m sorry, but before you can get a marriage license in the state of Washington, you’ll have to provide divorce decrees from all three of your exes.”

Eddie pounded on the counter this time with his open palm. “Thanks.”

He walked away and he heard her call out, “Next!”

Shit, shit, shit.

This was going to be hell, he could feel it.

****

Chrissy had fast food waiting for him when he got home from work.

“Did you get the license?” she asked, handing him his food and drink.

Eddie buried his head in his hands. “No, because stupid gay marriage legalization made all gay marriages legal, no matter what state you preformed them in.”

“Oh.”

She sat down hard. “So your three marriages suddenly count?”

“Yeah,” Eddie murmured. “I don’t even know where any of them are. Like I assume Steve’s still in Hawkins, because he’d never leave, but the other two? I have no fucking idea.”

She patted him on the shoulder and said, “We’ll find a way. The law firm has investigators on staff for this very reason. It might take a while, but we’ll find them.

Eddie nodded. “I’m sorry.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and sat down on his lap. “I’m not. You didn’t know. Otherwise you would have taken care of it when Obergefell v. Hodges went through the Supreme Court.”

Eddie nodded, but he pursed his lips, his hands up around her waist to hold her steady.

“Let’s just eat and I’ll start work on it tomorrow,” she murmured. “Okay?”

“Mmk,” he muttered.

****

Three weeks later, Eddie had in hand two of the three annulments. Billy had sent his back with a little note that said, “With pleasure.” Tommy had merely sent his back without comment.

That was a relief. He was no longer bound to either of those two assholes. He wasn’t even sure what possessed him to marry them in the first place.

Well, okay. He did. He was far away from home, lonely and willing to connect with anyone who would fuck him.

He was getting ready to call Chrissy to her the good news when the phone rang under his hand.

Eddie frowned at it for a moment, before he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Eddie? Eddie Munson?” the familiar voice sounded through the cell phone.

“This is he,” he replied, still confused.

“If you want to divorce me, you asshole,” Steve spat, “then have the fucking courage to tell me to my face.”

“Steve?” Eddie asked, his confusion still there, but for a different reason now. How did he get his number?

“Yeah,” Steve hissed. “Remember me? The man you left for fame and fortune? How is that going, by the way?”

Eddie gritted his teeth. “You know full well we broke up, I know Dustin still talks to you.”

He could hear Steve snap his fingers. “That’s right. You broke up. And until you tell me to my face you want to do the same, you take your annulment and shove it up your ass.”

“Stevie...” Eddie pleaded.

“Don’t ‘Stevie’ me,” Steve growled. “Fuck you.”

And the phone went dead then Eddie turned his phone around to see that yes, Steve had disconnected the call.

“Fuck.”

****

Eddie called Chrissy with the news. Two yeses and a ‘fuck you’.

“All right, Ed,” she said. “There is more to this than you’ve been telling me, so you are coming over to my apartment with the annulments you got and you are going to spill. Capeesh?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” she huffed and then hung up.

Looked like today was hang up on Eddie day. He sat down at the table both annulments spread out in front of him and buried his head in his hands.

After a few minutes of allowing himself to break down, he picked up the papers and grabbed his keys, wallet, and cell phone.

Time to face the music.

****

Chrissy opened the door with a scowl, but softened when she saw how miserable Eddie looked.

He handed her the annulments and she put them her bag to take to work so that they could be filed with county clerk.

“Tell me about Steve Harrington.”

So Eddie did.

He told her about how they had bonded over a bunch of kids. Kids Steve had used to babysit, but once they got into high school came under Eddie’s wing as leader and DM of the D&D club called The Hellfire Club. How they had gotten together and when Massachusetts made it legal, him, Steve, Jeff, and Steve’s best friend Robin all drove out to Boston and Steve and he got married in a little court house.

“My Uncle Wayne was pissed he wasn’t there,” Eddie said. “But it was spur of the moment thing. We drove all night and got there that afternoon. We put on little suits and let the judge say his words.”

“That sounds sweet, so what happened?”

He let out a shuddering sigh. “Gareth graduated from high school and we got an offer to record an album in New York.”

“Why didn’t he go with you?” she asked gently.

Eddie rubbed his nose. “Because the kids still had two years left of school. He wanted to be there for them. A couple of them didn’t have good home lives and he wanted to make sure they had someone they could count on. We fought about it. Hard.”

“I’m sorry, cher,” she whispered giving his arm a squeeze.

“God,” Eddie said, his voice cracking. “The things we said to each other. It was bad, Chris.”

“And now he won’t sign the papers?” she asked.

He shook his head. “He told me the only way he’d sign anything is I came back to Hawkins and handed it to him myself.”

Chrissy nodded. “All right,” she said, “here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to get a proper divorce degree written up, making sure it’s worded so he knows you won’t be going after any assets he has and then you are taking a week off of work and going down there and facing him. Because holy fucking hell, Ed, he deserves some kind of closure as do you.”

Eddie let out a heartbreaking sigh. “I don’t know if I can face him, Chris. God, I put everything else before him and broke his heart. He always wanted this big wedding. A beautiful reception where all our friends and loved ones were there. A beautiful grey morning jacket with a proper boutonniere and saying his vows across from the one he loved. And instead he got an empty court house and broken promises from a screw up like me.”

She wrapped her arms around him and let him sob into her shoulder.

“Which is why you need to go down there and give him that closure,” she murmured, “so that he can have all that with someone else. Someone who isn’t afraid.”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, just let me know when it’s ready and I’ll take one of my vacation weeks to go to Hawkins, Indiana.”

Chrissy winced. “Maybe don’t sound like you’re going to your funeral, yeah?”

Eddie scoffed and rolled his eyes. As far as he was concerned he was going to a funeral. Maybe not his own, but the death of the first real relationship he ever had and if somehow he made it out alive, he was never going to be the same again.

****

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

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[coochiequeens]

A woman wanted to have a relationship with the child she gave birth to. And the men's response "was to insist that their son had no mother — only a surrogate — and that the child’s identity was as part of a motherless family." But the kid was created from her egg. She is the kids biological mother.

5 June, 2024 By Julie Bindel

This article is taken from the June 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

There is a contradiction at the heart of the international surrogacy industry. Its participants pretend that surrogates’ feelings for the children in their wombs do not exist, whilst simultaneously trying to prevent them acting on those feelings. Many commissioning parents broker the babies in jurisdictions that allow restrictions on surrogates’ rights.

In the UK, this contradiction was recently laid bare in a Family Court case (citation number: [2024] EWFC 20). A gay male couple were engaged in a long-running legal battle with their son’s surrogate. Rather than vanish after handing over the child, she wanted a role in the boy’s life. The men’s response was to insist that their son had no mother — only a surrogate — and that the child’s identity was as part of a motherless family. There was “no vacancy” for her to occupy in his life, they claimed, and it was prejudicial to gay families to suggest otherwise.

At the start of this story, G, the surrogate in question, was a 36-year-old single mother of a teenager and naive about what surrogacy entailed. The commissioning parents were friends of her sister but not people she knew. Aged 43 and 36 and married, they were members of an agency, Surrogacy UK, and very familiar with its protocols — which included a “getting to know you” period — and support. However rather than go through the agency, the men chose to fast-track the process with an independent arrangement with G.

Following a failed transfer of a donor egg, the trio decided to use G’s own egg. The men agreed that G would have contact with the child, but none of the parties properly considered the implications. The relationship between the three deteriorated during G’s pregnancy. G gave birth to a boy in September 2020.

After the birth, G would not initially consent to the parental order, under which she would lose parental responsibility as she feared being cut out of the child’s life. But during a lengthy online hearing in which she was alone and unrepresented — unlike the men — G was pressured by the judge to agree to the parental order along with a contact agreement called a child arrangements order.

After obtaining parental responsibility, the men quickly reneged on the agreement. When G turned up at their house for a pre-arranged visit they threatened to call the police. She recorded the meeting. The Family Court judge later declared of the recording “what was said has rightly been described as ‘horrendous’”. The men told G she was “harbouring a desire to have an inappropriate relationship” by wanting the boy to recognise her as his mother and accused her of having “rejected the role of surrogate”.

In January 2022, the men refused to allow G to visit her son and applied for the contact agreement to be changed. G then made her own application for the parental order to be overturned. She won her case in November the same year. This restored her parental responsibility for the child and removed it from the man who was not the child’s biological father.

The men redoubled their efforts to remove G as a parent, this time applying for an adoption order. During court proceedings, they claimed their son’s identity was that of a child of same-sex parents being raised within the LGBT community and that he belonged to a “motherless family”.

As a lesbian who came out in the 1970s, I’m only too aware of the history of demonisation of lesbian and gay couples. Parents who conceived children in heterosexual relationships were often denied custody and contact if they came out as gay after separation. Foster and adoption agencies were openly prejudiced. But times have changed, and same-sex parents are now a common sight at the school gates in some parts of the UK.

Claims that the children of same-sex parents are disadvantaged in some way have largely been defeated with an expanding body of evidence (e.g. Zhang Y, Huang H, Wang M, et al., BMJ Global Health, 2023) showing their outcomes are similar to those of heterosexual families. Gay rights are robustly supported in most public institutions and private organisations. For a gay couple to call on historic prejudice to justify excluding a mother from a child’s life is unforgivable.

In any case, the men’s argument was fatally — and obviously — undermined by its own logic. If the boy did not have a mother, there would be no need for the court case.

As the jointly-instructed clinical psychologist in the case recognised, the driver of the men’s case was the “elephant in the room” — G’s existence as the child’s legal and biological mother — and the men’s fear of her maternal bond with her son. The men had difficulties “accepting the reality” of the child’s conception, the psychologist found, and considering what sense the boy might make of the situation as he grew up.

“They have strongly held to the surrogacy agreement and the narrative of [G] being a ‘surrogate’ because in that narrative there are no, or hardly any feelings from the surrogate for the baby,” the psychologist wrote. He described the men as attempting an “erasure of the mother”, which he said was not in the child’s best interest as it did not reflect reality.

Refusing an adoption order that would likely have resulted in cutting G from her son’s life, the court ruled that G should have direct and unsupervised contact with him. The judge criticised the men for blaming G for everything that went wrong. The judgment also raised questions about how an adoption order would be explained to the boy, given it would have been made without his mother’s consent.

To some extent, history repeated itself in this case. There are multiple examples of legal battles involving lesbian couples who created a child with the help of a sperm donor who later inconveniently insisted on contact or on playing the role of father.

As the Court of Appeal ruled in one such case in 2012: “What the adults look forward to before undertaking the hazards of conception, birth and the first experience of parenting may prove to be illusion or fantasy. [The couple] may have had the desire to create a two-parent lesbian nuclear family completely intact and free from fracture resulting from contact with the third parent. But such desires may be essentially selfish and may later insufficiently weigh the welfare and developing rights of the child that they have created.”

What’s concerning in this case is the language used — the “erasure” of the mother

Contested surrogacy cases are little different from these wrangles and, indeed, from any other contact disputes. What’s concerning about G’s case, and what makes it different from the case of the lesbian parents above, is the language used. The psychologist explicitly referred to the men’s attempted “erasure” of the mother. They simply refused to acknowledge G’s existence in any of the forms in which she fulfilled a maternal capacity: legal, genetic and as the person who gave birth. They were supported in this illusion by the professionals who weighed in on their behalf.

In the space of a few years the term “motherless” has moved from an emotive description of absence to a positive identity argued for in court. This shift is entirely consistent with the narrative that surrogacy participants feed to the public.

When celebrity couples introduce their surrogate children on social media, the women who gave birth to them are rarely mentioned. The new babies are “welcomed” as if they have been sent by special delivery. That is in line with the attitude of the international surrogacy industry, which reduces the role of the birth mother to that of a “carrier” or rented womb.

For commissioning parents, it must be very easy to regard the woman who bore their child for nine months as a mere service provider, someone to be gratefully forgotten as soon as the final instalment is paid and the product handed over.

Meanwhile, parts of the NHS are determined to de-gender childbirth, routinely referring to “birthing parents” rather than mothers. As an example (there are multiple) the Royal United Hospital Bath’s “information for families” on labour induction refers to dads, but there is no mention of mothers — only birthing parents.

Feminists have long campaigned for gender-neutral language to reflect roles that are indeed, or can be, gender-neutral. But the uncoupling of sex from the necessarily female processes of pregnancy and childbirth is a step towards a dystopian future. In 2015 Victoria Smith wrote, “Gender-neutral language around reproduction creates the illusion of dismantling a hierarchy — when what you really end up doing is ignoring it.” I would go further. Gender-neutral language around reproduction — just like any language that obscures reality — reinforces and helps establish hierarchies of oppression.

To the men, G was simply a surrogate womb to a motherless child. But to G and to Z, she was his mother. As the psychologist said, “‘Motherlessness’ does not exist. The child was born from two people, biologically, and from three people, psychologically … The mother certainly played a part, biologically and psychologically, in the conception of the child.”

The case — unremarked and unnoticed by the media — will do nothing to change popular opinion of surrogacy. It is likely to encourage intending parents to explore dubious overseas jurisdictions, where surrogates have fewer rights. The surrogacy profiteers will continue to cheerlead wealthy couples in their exploitation of impoverished and naive women.

As for the word “motherless”: in time it may lose its negative connotations and become solidified as an identity. Will it become a badge that straight children can use to signal their connection to LGBTQ+ community? Or an oppression card that can be deployed by the children of wealthy men to explain bad behaviour towards women? Either way, Disney and Dickens are going to need a lot of rewriting.

[adultswim2021]

Moral Orel: “Abstinence” | January 18, 2009 | Unaired Special

Abstinence, “the nearly lost episode of Moral Orel”, or “episode 14 of 13” was an episode of the show that was left in an incomplete state thanks to Adult Swim cutting down the episode order. The audio for the episode was recorded, at least mostly (some characters might be scratch tracks, but I’m not certain), but the animation hadn’t been done. So, some people who worked on the show took it upon themselves to animate the radio play using “Orel’s Movie Premiere” style claymation. 

I’m glad they did it, because this is a worthy episode to have exist, even if it’s not 100% a “real” episode. This actually comes pretty damn close to being as satisfying as watching a normal episode. I wish we lived in the alternate universe where Dino manages to talk Adult Swim into letting him animate the show this cheaply in exchange for more episodes.  

This episode takes place during season two (with a post-Nature scene at the end). Doughy has long been neglected by his parents, who simply give Doughy a few bucks and ask him to stay out all day so they can neck with each other. They are now requesting Doughy stay out overnight. Not used to non-daytime activities, Orel encourages Doughy to just do what he does and walk around trying to help people. Doughy keeps encountering people trying to have sex with each other and manages to cockblock them all.

This leads to Doughy getting a job cockblocking actual roosters from impregnating the farmer’s chickens. He loses this job because Ms. Censordoll’s campaign to illegalize succeeds. Doughy winds up working for Ms. Censordoll as a masked superhero that goes around breaking up congress everywhere. 

This one has a very funny joke at the beginning, where Doughy and Orel are waving goodbye to a busload of gay men, and remarking how it was a big mistake bussing them into Moralton. Do you think the show was cleverly going to show the gay dudes in another episode to explain the beginning of this one? And, don’t you think it’s sad they left on the bus and we didn’t get to watch them walk away (hubba hubba). I also laughed at the farmer’s extremely dumb and convoluted reason for not caging his roosters (it’s basically so he can say a dumb thing when asked why he’s not caging his roosters). 

EPHEMERA CORNER:

Moral Orel: The Unproduced Scripts

A couple of scripts for episodes have been shared online. I remember Dino posting one on his Myspace page. The episodes are: 

Raped: This episode was going to be a late season three episode. The original arc for the season was meant to include Arthur Puppington, Clay’s father, moving into Orel’s bedroom while he waits to die of some painful life-ending disease.

Miss Sculptham finds that she is still pregnant post-abortion. That’s because she had twins, and only managed to kill one of them. So she arranges a visit to the prison to talk to Cecil Creepler’s (the guy what raped her) cell-mate to find out what his whole deal was (you know, being naturally curious about the father of her future child). This leads to her deciding to marry this man, even though he’s spending the rest of his life in prison. Orel is being a bitch about it, and celebrates when the guy backs down. The end of the episode is Sculptham falls in love with a woman and is denied for a marriage license, because “this is America”. She can get married to an actual convicted rapist, but not to another woman. 

I was about to comment on the time and place in which this episode was produced, but then realized: I have no idea how legal gay marriage actually is these days. Weird guys have been fighting over the stuff a lot lately. It took a weirdly long time for gay marriage to become any kind of legal here, and it’s still contentious. I just have a vague sense of reading it in 2009 and it feeling very pointed and topical. Pretty weird that it still sorta might be.

This episode was sorta billboarded in Alone, where we learn about Scultham’s rape and her abortion. There also a reference to this in “Abstinence”, where one of the encounters Doughy puts a stop to is one between Creepler and Scultham. 

Narcissism is the other “lost” episode. I never actually read this script before tonight, and I don’t know what the origin of this one’s leakage is or if it’s liberation was acrimonious or not. This one is another Putty-centric episode and is basically a follow-up on the events of Sundays. Putty becomes so obsessed with Florence and uninterested in other women that it makes him attractive. He unceremoniously beds all the hotties of Moralton and doesn’t feel a thing the entire time. His obsession with Florence is simply because she’s disappeared, and Putty doesn’t know where she went. When he finally finds her, she’s lost weight and is generally happier. It appears they get together by the end of the episode. 

I think Arthur is also in this episode, but I forget. I remember Oral mentioning him in a funny bit where he says he would do unto others with his Grandpa, who is currently dying in his bed. Orel says his Grandpa would probably let Orel die in his bed if things were the other way around. 

I found a thing on the Moral Orel wiki where Dino apparently posted the synopsis for the some of the unproduced scripts. I’d been looking for this to quote and kept coming up dry, so now that i found it, I’m just gonna paste it here in this post. The links link to pages on the wiki, and the scripts I described are available on their respective pages:

1. Easter: "Orel's Grampa (Clay's father) comes to Moralton to tie up loose ends before he dies. He ends up sharing Orel's bed as his death bed for the last ten episodes, giving Orel good advice. (happens during the Sacrifice episode)." 2. Nurture: "Shapey and Block nurture each other and grow emotionally." 3. Narcissism: After cutting it off with Florence, Putty becomes disillusioned with all women. This makes him incredibly attractive to all the females in Moralton and he becomes the most available bachelor in town, f***ing tons of *****. This makes him even more bored with every lady out there. He starts picturing Florence as he's f***ing everyone. When he finally runs into Florence, she is dating someone else and is really really thin. Putty's disappointed in her appearance. He's been picturing fat Florence, and even though she's prettier on a shallow level, longs for her previous look. She explains that she got so depressed when he stopped seeing her that she didn't feel like eating. He happily tells her now that he's back and she can get fat again. She is insulted by his self-centered attitude and tells him to go away. In the end, I think he probably wins her back though by showing he really cares. 4. Untitled: "Bloberta and Officer Papermouth accidentally bump into each other late at night, both reaching into the garbage can outside Nurse Bendy's apt. and simultaneously grabbing the "Sonny" Teddy bear. Papermouth chivalrously let's Bloberta keep it, and this starts off an affair between the two of them. It ends up being very good for the both of them. Not sure how Clay reacts. Didn't get very far on this one." 5. Untitled: "I wanted to write the continuing saga of Orel and Christina, but never got to it. No solid ideas on this." 6. Raped: A script for this episode was briefly put on Stamatopoulos's MySpace blog. It expanded on Miss Sculptham's trauma over being raped. She would take the kids on a field trip to prison to meet the man's cellmate and strike up a brief relationship with him. 7. Death: "Orel's Grampa finally dies. Orel doesn't find too much solace from anyone and becomes a Goth kid, getting heavily into the Christian Death Metal band: Multiple Godgasm. Don't want to say much more about this, on the remote chance that there will be a Moral Orel movie, I'd like to use a lot of this story."

And that’s it for Moral Orel. Unless you count the special. Unless you count the Frankenhole Bumper where he cameos. Unless you count Australian DVD releases. But you can COUNT on me… blogging about it!!!!

[mwplanet]

Win or His Loss?

Inside the controversies surrounding Drake and 21 Savage’s latest album, “Her Loss”

By Karissa Cruz

Cover of “Her Loss”

Photo via Spotify

Amidst the release of Drake and 21 Savage’s new album, several controversies have arisen between Drake, Vogue Magazine and other artists. Several artists are said to have been disrespected and thrown shade at throughout the chart-topping album, “Her Loss”. Artists like Megan Thee Stallion have fallen victim to the controversies surrounding the Torontonian artist's brand-new release. In addition to Drake receiving backlash for his shots at other artists, Vogue Magazine also filed a lawsuit against him and 21 Savage for their fake Vogue promotion poster. Despite the growing arguments with regards to the integrity of the album occurring on social media platforms, the album’s rapid success has evidently continued to overpower. 

November 4, 2022, marked the release of Drake and 21 Savage’s brand new collaboration, “Her Loss”. Streaming on all listening platforms, the love rap album features several themes - women, partying, misogyny, and money. Merely minutes following the release, multiple songs from the album blew up on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram. Over 70k creators from all around the world have recorded themselves lip-synching to songs like “Rich Flex”, comedically mimicking how they think Drake and 21 Savage must’ve looked whilst recording in the studio. However, the success of the album is not solely due to the catchiness of certain songs, in fact, its success is primarily the result of the gossip associated with its lyrics and covert references.

Within minutes of the release of “Her Loss”, Drake and 21 Savage set gossip sites and pop culture news aflame due to references ranging from Serena William’s husband, ​​Alexis Ohanian, to old quarrels within the rap industry, to an insult towards Megan Thee Stallion’s foot injury caused by Tory Lanez. 

Back in 2015 before Ohanian and Williams were together, Drake and Williams were exclusively dating. They broke up in 2015, and she later started seeing Ohanian in May of that same year. When she married Ohanian in 2017, Drake began to throw bitter shots at the couple. In “Her Loss”, specifically “Middle of the Ocean” at 3:35, Drake calls out the Reddit founder in the lyrics; "Sidebar, Serena, your husband a groupie; He claim we don't got a problem but; No, boo, it is like you comin' for sushi". Ohanian responds to the subtle diss in his tweet, saying, "The reason I stay winning is because I'm relentless about being the absolute best at whatever I do - including being the best groupie for my wife & daughter." This is not the first time that Drake has made subtly bitter comments towards Williams in his songs. He previously insulted the Olympian’s tennis career, claiming that he could beat her in a match in his 2013 track, “Worst Behavior”. 

Despite the disrespectful nature of the rapper’s lyrics, the jab at Ohanian and Williams’ relationship was not the main issue that occupies pop culture websites and gossip columns nowadays. Rather, Drake’s controversial covert remark towards Megan Thee Stallion, whose foot was allegedly shot by Tory Lanez back in 2020, has taken the spotlight. The rapper, Tory Lanez, is currently facing “one count of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and one count of carrying a loaded, concealed firearm in a vehicle”, according to a statement made by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. According to police reports, Tory was having an argument with a woman - identified as “Megan P” in a criminal complaint - in a SUV on July 12. As the woman exited the car, she was shot multiple times in the foot. Megan Thee Stallion, formally known as Megan Jovon Ruth Pete talked about the car incident during an Instagram Live on her verified account. She later posted a photo of her wound, which was deleted slightly after. In October 2020, legal authorities charged the rapper with felony assault, but he pleaded not guilty the following month. He is currently placed under house arrest as he waits for his trial after allegedly shooting Megan and assaulting the singer August Alsina in August 2022. If convicted, Lanez faces a maximum sentence of roughly 23 years. Amidst the allegations made against Tory Lanez and Megan’s public complaints, Drake threw his own shot at Megan through his lyrics in his new album, specifically in his song “Circo Loco”; “This b---h lie 'bout getting shots, but she still a stallion.” The singer responded to the underhanded insult on Twitter. She called Drake “lame”, and claimed that such conspiracy theories were weak and that they lacked proper facts or receipts. Artists like Sweetest Pie and other listeners shared their distaste for Drake’s biased lyrics against Megan. 

Like previous tracks, Drake’s songs have a history of calling out people who he feels have wronged him through his lyrics. Evidently, the success of his collaborative album with 21 Savage is not solely due to its acquired traction and fame on social media platforms like TikTok, but a large part of it is the controversies surrounding the lyrical references themselves. His album is no doubt a fan favourite, but the issues that it set aflame have definitely caused a divide amongst his supporters and supporters of those he covertly mentioned in his music. 

[dayinhistory]

January 5th: Pope Clement VII Says No

Henry the VIII should be a name that most recognize, thanks to him being the reason that England split from the church and him having six wives. (Thank you Broadway musical SIX for being entertaining as well as a good look into history in a fun way.) But what event caused the split, or is at least attributed by many to cause the split? Well, Pope Clement VII specifically forbidding Henry from divorcing his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

From an American stand point, Henry is played out to be a horrible man who is more worried about getting an heir to the throne, and blaming his wives for not helping him with that, thus going out and trying to find a woman who will give birth to a “legitimate” heir. I’m going to say this first, I still don’t think he’s a good guy….he just doesn’t seem to be as terrible as the American education system plays him out to be based on the research I’ve done for this episode. I could be totally wrong though.

Anyway, the basic story goes that Henry was concerned by his failure to produce a legitimate heir, and wanted to find a way to end his marriage in a manner consistent with his faith. Doing so was extremely important for political reasons as if he had violated Catholic doctrine, he risked disgrace and condemnation by the pope. It’s actually been recorded that Henry was a fairly devout Catholic; he had believed his marriage was against the biblical injunction forbidding marriage with a brothers widow.

That didn’t exactly go as planned; Clement said no in a letter on January 5th, 1531. Though Clement most likely would have done so if it weren’t for the fact that Clement was scared of Charles V, current Holy Roman Emperor. How does Charles play into this? Well….Catherine was his aunt, and Charles had strong feelings of familial honor and barred any concession to Henry’s Wishes. Due to Charles role into the issue, and with Clement being former literal prisoner in 1527-28 of Charles, he never dared resist him in any form after.

Henry’s attempt to break his marriage legally were pretty much doomed from the start unfortunately. Which, as we all know, did not exactly stop him from continuing on. Though he did not want to due to the fact he knew it would lead to excommunication, and meaning supporting Martin Luther who he despised, he decided to send Catherine off and marry Anne Boleyn.

Though he was separated from the Catholic Church and the Church of England now took it’s place, Henry prided himself on his learnings and gave much time and thought into the new religious structure. With the exception of a pope in the system, he didn’t give up on many of the main tenets of which he grew up with.

Sources:

Michael de Ferdinandy. “Charles v | Biography, Reign, Abdication, & Facts.” In Encyclopædia Britannica, February 20, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-V-Holy-Roman-emperor. Morrill, John S, and Geoffrey R Elton. “Henry VIII | Biography, Wives, & Facts.” In Encyclopædia Britannica, August 17, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-VIII-king-of-England.

[frizzle-tales]

“Thanks…” Jiyeon said softly as she took the orange juice. She took a big sip, pausing at the crunch between her teeth.

A seed.

Jiyeon sat there with tight lips, her eyes shooting away when Namjoon glanced her way, and when both men were distracted by Nara attempting to eat, she quickly swallowed it. The poor woman went through enough already, she really didn’t need any more punishment.

For the remaining of the breakfast, Jiyeon didn’t dare to look at Nara or speak to her, unsure if she would even be allowed to, and Jiyeon didn’t want her into even more trouble, so she only spoke when spoken to, and kept mostly to herself.

“Is that all, miss Jiyeon? Is the food not to your liking?” Namjoon pried.

“No, no, that’s not it, it’s just, I am not feeling so hungry today.” Jiyeon lied, and luckily for her, the male left it at that.

—

‘Jiyeonnie. I’m not going to take us home just yet.’

“Where…” Before Jiyeon could finish the sentence, Taehyung spoke up. At his second question, Jiyeon was taken aback, what was happening? Why was he suddenly so eager on refreshing the rules? “Uhm, yes, to be obedient and quiet…to not speak unless spoken to” She trailed, before listing a few other things she could remember.

At the threat of ending up just like Nara, Jiyeon shook her head. “No sir— Taehyung, I wouldn’t want that…” Would the twisted man really go that far or was he bluffing? Either way, she wasn’t about to find out for herself.

After Taehyung threatened her some more and barked more orders at her, Jiyeon was finally allowed to enter the vintage shop with him, and as he ordered, she didn’t let go of his hand and stayed by his side.

Him allowing her to pick a treat was a surprise and she did as she was told. “May I have the blueberry, ma’am?” Jiyeon asked, despite not being in the mood to eat. Surprisingly despite skipping out mostly on her earlier meal, she didn’t feel hungry, on the contrary… she felt quite nauseous.

“The two of you are such a lovely couple, are you dating?” The woman asked as she took the money from the order.

“We are engaged, we will get married… soon.” Jiyeon answered when she felt the woman’s eyes on her, internally keeping her fingers crossed that the woman wouldn’t ask for the exact date, and fortunately, she didn’t.

“Oh how lovely! You know, we have some wonderful classic songs— wait, I will play some for you.” The woman suggested as she inched away from the counter. “This is personally one of my favorite, 40 years ago all the ladies insisted on wanting this classic to be played…” The older lady rattled on as she took the record out of the case and popped it into the player. “I also adore this one, me and my husband had this at our wedding day…” and like that, some songs were played until the woman left the couple alone. “If you need anything, do let me know!” She smiled before stepping away to help another customer.

“She was right, those are some nice songs…” Jiyeon stated in an attempt to start a conversation, sipping on her tea, the muffin in a take away bag in her pocket. Maybe she’d be hungry later.

[🎙️]

Engaged.

Taehyung’s nearly raised his eyebrow as he glanced down at Jiyeon, watching the lie spill from her lips.

Her lie was pretty flawless. Not only that, but she was so quick, beating him to answering the shop owner before his lips even parted. It was almost like she wanted it to be true.

Although hearing the sound of her voice mutter those words, it made his mind wander. Wonder what it would be like if she truly was his fiancé, his grandmother’s ring on her finger, the legal entwinement between the two of them.

When the lady offered to play some records for them, he politely raised his hand. “Please, we wouldn’t want to be a bother.”

“Nonsense!” She waved her hand, dismissing his — unbeknownst to her — feigned concern.

“That’s very kind of you, thank you. Maybe we’ll finally find a song for our wedding, jagiya.” With their hands locked together, Taehyung twirled her around, spinning her back into his chest. While the shop owner put on a record, he leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Aren’t you being so sweetly polite. That’s a good girl.” He hummed. “But what did I say about drawing attention to yourself? Pull it back.”

The couple listened to the tune of the songs, chatting with the elderly women before finally being let go to look around the shop.

“They had lovely melodies.” Taehyung agreed, slowing down in front of the rows of records. “Is that a type of song dreamt for your future wedding, Jiyeonnie?” He partially teased her, but found himself partially asking out of intriguing curiosity.

Flipping the records, the killer found himself wanting to bring some sound to his almost always silent estate. Just because she wasn’t allowed to rot her brain with TV doesn’t mean it had to be crickets, no?

Taehyung found a few he liked — a mid of some jaz, some classic hits, and a few instrumental — and kept them under his arm as he led Jiyeon towards the books.

Again, he couldn’t help but think of just how good the girl made him look the last night. Aside from the incident in the kitchen which made her look like an utter clutz — she was on her best behaviour, meek and polite. She even showed up Nara more than which, which was more than amusing to him, given how long she’s been in Namjoon’s clutches.

“Take a look. You can pick out 2 to keep yourself occupied when you have downtime at home.” He let her have a small bit of free reign to look amongst the bookshelves, and when she chosen her 2, he looked them over. “Not this one, pick a different one.” He handed it back to her, not finding her choice of book up to his standards.

While Jiyeon looked for another book, one that he would find satisfactory, a certain section caught his eye, and after reading a back of a few different books, he also chose one to bring home.

After their selections were made, the killer paid for the items, making sure to leave a generous tip in the jar near the till.

“Thank you!..” The woman started to exclaim before trailing off. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Taehyung.” He offered a kind smile. “And my fiancé is Yeui.”

“Taehyung and Yeui, it was a pleasure meeting you both. Please, come back again. I’d love to hear what you think of those records.”

“Oh, I’m certain we will.” He offered a friendly smile, looking over the shop, before leading Jiyeon out.

They definitely will be back.

—

Once home, Taehyung locked the door behind them before slipping off his jacket, hanging it up on the coat rack.

He cleared his throat, to catch Jiyeon’s attention. “Go have a shower before you start your to-do list, hm?” He nodded in the direction of the stairs. Not as a suggestion, but shoo her off, to solidify his instruction.

“Here.” Before she went to scamper off, he handed the 3 books he purchased to put away on her way upstairs.

[briamichellewrites]

62

Mike and Bria were laying on her bed when he rolled on top of her. She ran her fingers through his black hair. He kissed her before resting his head on her shoulder. If he could, he would never leave the comfort of her bed. He would never leave her because she was safe. She was his best friend and he never wanted to lose that. Her body was warm and he felt protected. Like he was a child again and his mother was rocking him to sleep after waking up from a bad dream. That was a long time ago.

He was no longer a little boy but a man. A man with a broken heart, who wanted someone to take care of him and protect him. He looked at her and smiled. What was he going to do? He didn’t know. Was he going to date Rob or Chester? He laughed. If they asked him out, he would give them a chance. He didn’t think of himself as being attracted to men.

But, he wasn’t going to rule it out, either. Love was love. His brother was gay and their family accepted him for who he was.

“Chester… Rob. Maybe Brad or Phoenix. I can’t see Joe being gay or bisexual.”

“If Phoenix is who I remember, then he and I should get along great together.”

He laughed. “I’m pretty sure he is. Are you going to tell them about what you’re doing?”

“I don’t know. It depends on how they will react. Who knows about it?”

“Me, Joe and Chester. That’s it. They respect that it’s not their secret to tell.”

Brad and Rob were not happy about what she was doing. They had so many questions. How was it different from prostitution? It was different because she wasn’t selling sex. That’s what made it legal. She described how it worked in detail. The men she met never got her phone number because all communications were through the website. All men who signed up had to submit to a background check.

She had to sign a non disclosure agreement because some of the men she was dating were high profile. That meant their identities were confidential. All the money she made went into her bank account. How was it different than being a gold digger? A gold digger to her was a young woman who tricked a wealthy older man into marrying her. She then took his money. An escort was a companion for a night or a weekend. Why would he hire an escort, instead of finding a random girl?

If he was high profile, like Johnny Depp, he would be worried about leaks to the media. An escort had confidentiality. It was better to have repeat customers. Has she ever had bad dates? She had one where a guy was obsessed with talking about himself and she had to pretend to be interested in him. Thankfully, he only paid for one date. They laughed.

Other than that, her dates had been wonderful! They were gentlemen and they asked her what was allowed. Could they kiss her? What were her limits? Things like that. How much was she making? It depended on the date. She gave her prices, which they were stunned to learn. One thousand dollars to fly her out? Yeah. She had gone to Paris for a weekend. That didn’t include her accommodations or spending money.

She wasn’t going to do it forever. It was just until she found something better. She would quit after a year or two. Were any of the guys married? If they were, that was their problem. Not hers. Okay. After their conversation, they went back to where the other guys were getting ready to record. Chester was nervous about seeing her.

Was she still upset with him? He didn’t want to ask her in front of everyone, so he got out his phone and texted her.

No, I’m not still upset. I love you but you need help! I’m okay with smoking weed with you. I’m not okay with whatever you were smoking the other day. I won’t tell Mike or anyone else because that’s something you need to do. I will always be here for you. Can you come over later? – Bria

I love you too. Thank you. I’ve been using drugs since I was eleven. I’m not ready to get clean. What I need right now is someone who won’t push me into rehab but is just there for me. Please be that person. I’m sorry for getting you involved in this. That was my fault. Yeah, I’ll come over after work. Is Mike going to be there? – Chester

He caught her looking at the message. She then looked up, looked over at him and shook her head. No, he wasn’t going to be there. Okay. She got up and went over to Mike. He nodded when he heard she would be hanging out with Chester. That was fine with him. He was going to get a hotel room anyway. The previous evening had given him insight about what he needed to do. He was going to take his name off the lease of the apartment he and Anna were renting.

He was then going to see if he had enough for a small house. Eventually, he had to tell his parents that the relationship was over. Would he admit fault? Yes, he would. Even if they were disappointed with him for cheating. One affair didn’t take away the other. They both cheated. Why did he cheat? He didn’t have a good reason.

Because it was Bria. The woman he was in love with. They wouldn’t understand. Phoenix had come in and joined them. He was joking around with Bria. She called him an asshole, making him laugh. Just as Brad was calling everyone over, he got a text message from Phoenix asking to hang out.

Yeah, I can do that. Where should I meet you? – Mike

Come over to my place. – Phoenix

What did this mean? Two guys having a beer and hanging out or did he want more? Bria wouldn’t mind if they hooked up because they weren’t officially dating. His mind told him to not overthink it. Later, he got his answer. After saying goodbye to everyone, he went out to his car and drove over to Phoenix’s. It wasn’t a long drive. He turned on the radio to drown out his thoughts and anxiety.

Phoenix let him in. He played it cool, as they went to the kitchen. His heart was beating in his chest. Phoenix was acting not like himself. He was visibly nervous, so he asked him if he was okay. After coming over to him, he kissed his lips. Mike was surprised. When they pulled away, he apologized.

“Phoenix…”

“I’m gay. I’m tired of pretending to be straight. I knew that you would understand. I just want to know if you will be my first.”

“I do understand. I’m open to experimenting. Yes, I will.”

He smiled before kissing him again. Chester and Bria were laying in bed together after hooking up. She ran her fingers through his hair. I love you. She loved him, too. He kissed her again before laying his head on her chest.

@zoeykaytesmom @feelingsofaithless @alina-dixon @fiickle-nia @boricuacherry-blog

[novelconcepts]

It’s really something else to try to focus on finances and yard work and whether or not we need a new roof, all while the constant threat of a fascist removal of any and all rights i hold dear just, uhhh, hovers stage-right of things. Really just. The kind of adventure that most has me craving boredom, tbh.

[lokigayforhela]

I'm imagining Hela and r as humans, and they are married and rich and someone calls reader Mrs. Odinsdottir, ohhh I would think of it as very fancy

A/N: I gotta be real honest here. I finished this prompt WEEKS ago and really thought I had already posted it, but I saw the ask still in my inbox today and went “Hm.” So please have it now! Enjoy~

WC: 1170

Rating: PG for implied shenanigans~

TW: None

You’d only officially been married to Hela Odinsdottir for all of two hours, and already you were feeling a bit like a fish out of water.

To be fair, you’d known as long as you’d been dating Hela that she was, in the most polite way of putting it, a trust fund baby who had gone on to build her own success. Which meant that she had been drowning in money for as long as she’d been alive. It didn’t bother you, in the least. She erred on the more humble side about it all, and was never one to overly brag about her wealth, and the wealth that she had come from.

Okay, perhaps that was a terrible lie.

More aptly put, Hela didn’t brag about her wealth to you, and more importantly, she never made you feel any lesser than her for not having the same advantages that she’d had throughout her life. In all honesty, from the time you’d become serious, she’d insisted that what was hers was yours, and had taken any and every opportunity to absolutely spoil you in any and all ways that she could. And you certainly weren’t going to complain about that.

Even your wedding had been such a grandiose display of wealth that you’d joked with some of your friends and family that you felt vastly unprepared to enter social life as Hela’s wife. You knew how cut-throat and catty some of New York’s more wealthy citizens behaved, and if you were being honest, that wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to become, and you certainly hoped Hela would never go to that extent either.

But you had to admit, the wedding had left you feeling like an absolute princess, and you weren’t going to let anyone or anything ruin your day.

“Mrs. Odinsdottir?”

Initially, you ignored whoever was speaking to you, as it hadn’t quite registered in your mind that you, too, were now Mrs. Odinsdottir, and it wasn’t until they took a step closer and repeated the title that you realized that she was, in fact, speaking to you.

You smiled a little sheepishly and immediately turned to look at the woman. “…sorry, I… sort of forgot that I’m Mrs. Odinsdottir now, too,” you admitted, grateful when the woman laughed along with you.

“I understand. And actually, I was hoping that I could get a few words from you on how it feels to be marrying into one of NYC’s wealthiest families? For the magazine spread we’re running on the wedding?”

She pulled a handheld recorder out of her bag, and you blanched, having completely forgotten that that was a thing, floundering as you tried to recover.

Luckily for you, you were saved by your wife approaching, two champagne flutes in hand, one of which she offered to you. “Go on, Mrs. Odinsdottir,” she teased, letting you know that she’d overheard the entire conversation so far. “I’m invested in what you have to say.”

You settled against her side as she wrapped her free arm around you, and smiled a little nervously at the magazine reporter. “Ah… It’s daunting. To be quite honest. I mean, yes, I’ve been involved in the scene for as long as Hela and I have been dating, but there’s something more… nerve-wracking, about actually somewhat legally having a stake in it.”

Hela made a slight impressed expression, and looked over at the reporter, who was nodding along.

“So you still feel a bit like an outsider looking in, you’d say?”

You laughed softly, aware of Hela’s gaze fixated on you. “I mean, wouldn’t you be? There’s a lot to keep track of, a lot to be involved in. Fundraisers, charity balls… who’s dating who, and who inherited what. It feels a bit like they’re all waiting for me to slip up and say the wrong thing. Or worse, I think they think I’m going to try and take Hela’s money and run with it.”

“And would you? I mean, theoretically speaking, of course. If you had the chance.”

You only smiled, turning your head to look at Hela and smiling even more when you met her gaze. “Never. I love Hela. Not her money or inheritances or family. Just Hela.”

Hela hummed softly, and you couldn’t resist the urge to kiss her gently, despite being a little shy at having such a close audience.

“And what do you say to that, Mrs. Odinsdottir?”

The reporter held the recorder in front of Hela now, who only smiled coyly as she downed her entire glass of champagne in one sip.

“I say that I’m the luckiest woman alive. And that I don’t know what I did to deserve Y/N, but I sure am grateful that someone up there decided to reward me for such good behavior.”

You rolled your eyes playfully as you all laughed, and you took a sip of your own champagne as you watched the reporter switch off her recorder and tuck it back into her bag.

“Thank you, both. We’ll send over a mock-up of the article and photos we’ll be using for your approval before we send it to the editor. And congratulations to you both, again.”

You smiled and nodded while Hela raised her empty glass toward her in a mock toast, and once the reporter had walked away, she turned back to look at you, wrapping both arms around you.

“Well, well, Mrs. Odinsdottir. What a lovely interview you gave.”

You rolled your eyes, but couldn’t stop smiling as Hela kept looking at you. “Please. I hardly even knew what to say without making a fool of myself.”

“Well, the good news is that you didn’t. In fact, you made me very proud. So proud I think you’ve earned a nice little reward, so how about we… ditch this reception…” Her grin grew absolutely mischievous as she let her free hand trail down the curve of your waist to settle at your hip. “…and go find somewhere a little more… secluded… to do our own celebrating, hm? We have the entire presidential suite to ourselves.”

“Oh, yeah? Plenty of room for exactly the sort of shenanigans you had in mind, right?” you teased, seizing the opportunity of a nearby waiter to set both of your empty glasses on as they passed by.

“Oh, yes. All sorts of shenanigans. In the bathroom… In the bedroom… The kitchen… Balcony, if you’re feeling risqué enough.”

You hummed out a quiet laugh. “Deal. On the exception that we get a few more glasses of champagne in us so we’re just the right amount of tipsy.”

“Why, darling, it’s like you don’t know me at all. We’ve got a whole bar upstairs for our private usage.”

You grinned. “Then what are we waiting for? Race you!”

You picked up the skirt of your gown enough so that you could scurry in the direction of the elevators, the sound of Hela’s heels clicking behind you the only sign you had she was giving chase.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

I'm just curious (still learning) at what point after 1100 AD would Joe and Nicky been in actual danger due to homophobia? At what point would they have to start lying to people about the nature of their amazing relationship, just to stay safe? Thanks!

(This is in reference to this post, in which I skimmed over like 900 years of sociological changes in identity formation in very very broad strokes.)

So. Here’s the thing. As “western” queer people in the modern world, I think we highly associate safety with being able to be out of the closet. Can I kiss my partner in public or walk down the street holding hands without fear of encountering hate speech or physical violence? Can I tell my friends, family and coworkers about my relationship without fear of social ostracization or economic consequences?

But that’s a very modern perspective. Between “pride parade!!” and “we will definitely be murdered if anyone finds out we are lovers,” there is...A LOT of space for different kinds of historical queer experience.

So it’s not so much that Yusuf and Nicolò could be safely “out of the closet” in 12th century Baghdad but not in 19th century London. It’s not quite as far from that as you might think. But they wouldn’t have thought about it that way.

In the first few hundred years of their existence, the Islamic world was...full of contradictions when it came to homosexuality. You had a strong taboo against adult men being the receptive partner in penetrative sex, but you also had poets--like, the most famous poets of their times--writing tons of homoerotic poetry about desiring young men and boys, and that was normal and even celebrated. (If you’re familiar with the sexual mores of ancient Greece...lots of similarities here.) You had clerics writing about how there should be harsh punishments for “sodomy,” but in practice in everyday life very, very few people were ever actually disciplined in the legal system for something like that. And other forms of sexual activity between men, like kissing and various forms of non-penetrative sex, were just...not a big deal. At the same time there was kind of an unspoken “don’t ask, don’t tell” social contract around sex between men. Like, we know this thing is definitely happening, and we’re not going to talk about it, and that’s what makes it socially acceptable to continue happening. So you can have a society that in the written, religious record looks fairly intolerant toward sex between men; in practice is actually quite tolerant; where everyone sort of knows things about certain people, but where no one is really “out” in the modern sense of the terms.

At the same time, pretty much everywhere in the world at this time but definitely in the Middle East, casual touch between men was much more normalized. Two men holding hands or linking arms when walking down the street, sitting pressed up next to each other, falling asleep with your head on your male companion’s shoulder...a whole range of things that look decidedly snuggly to our modern gaze would have been totally acceptable between friends of the same gender, and would not have been considered sexual in any way. (This is still true in much of the Middle East today.)

So you can easily imagine a scenario where, like, Nicolò is lounging with his head on Yusuf’s shoulder, eating dates and listening to some saucy Abu Nuwas poem being recited, and then they go back to their private quarters and they have as much sex as they want. Are they “out”? Not really. Is anyone bothering them about how they’re living their lives? Not in the slightest. Do some people in that room see them and know? Probably, but that’s their private business and we’re not gonna talk about it. Frankly that sounds like a pretty sweet existence for a 12th century queer.

To be fair, they have a few advantages. They’re men, which means no one will really question them traveling together, without wives or families. They can easily say they’re friends or business partners and no one will really give it a second thought. I’m sure having to break off contact with their families was sad, but it’s also the case that there’s no one around asking when they’re going to get married to a woman and have children so we have someone to inherit the family business. It gives them a kind of freedom that a lot of other queer people around them wouldn’t have had.

I think once they meet up with Andy and Quynh, they do do things like pretending to be two married couples traveling together. But that’s more because of sexism, because two unmarried women traveling with two men who were not their husbands would turn some heads.

In Europe at the time, Christian theology is pretty not-into all kinds of non-procreative sex, but sex between men is not necessarily viewed as a worse sin than, say, masturbation, or sex between men and women out of wedlock. And it’s like, a category of sin that a lot of people are doing all the time, so if you were to confess such a thing to your local priest, you would be told to do penance but the consequences would be fairly mild. And many of the same things regarding casual touch hold true. Various rituals of kissing, including men kissing men on the mouth, are used as greetings, to seal contracts, and as part of mass.

Medieval Europe also had a concept variously called passionate, romantic, or chivalric friendship--close relationships between two people of the same gender that could be long-lasting, physically affectionate, emotionally intense in a way we would today read as romantic, and (allegedly) celibate. Were some of these passionate friendships actually queer relationships with a sexual component that just wasn’t talked about? Probably. Were some of them what we would define as queerplatonic or homoromantic asexual relationships today? Probably. Is it even useful to try to stuff these experiences into modern relationship categories? Debatable. The point is...the borders between what was defined as friendship, romance and love were different. Two men who traveled together, slept in the same bed, shared resources, were emotionally intimate with each other, and otherwise entwined their lives would not necessarily have been assumed to be sex partners in medieval Europe. And (I think this is the important part) Yusuf and Nicolò would not necessarily have seen being perceived as passionate friends as “hiding” the true nature of their relationship or as assigning some lesser value to it.

In terms of how they are perceived in public, I think things really don’t start to change until the early 20th century. It’s a gradual process, but over the first half of the 20th century, more or less, affectionate touch between men becomes defined as “gay” and a mainstream (straight) masculinity that is concerned with defining itself as “not gay” emerges. Affectionate touch, and then any show of loving emotion between men, gradually becomes less and less acceptable, to a degree that probably seems absurd to two 900-year-old Mediterraneans. (The absurdity is really well-expressed in the van scene, which is literally like “Bro is it gay to [checks notes]...express concern about the well-being of the person you were just violently kidnapped with?”)

Like, on the one hand, you have queer people talking openly about their sexuality in ways that were not an option at earlier times in their lives. But at the same time you have to be careful holding hands walking down the high street now because someone might chuck an empty beer bottle at you. Must’ve been a real wild transition for them.

[smol-and-grumpy]

Legally Yours - Ch. 01 (Prologue)

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: Dean Winchester tops the list of hottest entrepreneurs 2020 and yet, there’s still something he wants but can’t have because, in order to get that, he would have to settle down and get married. She agrees too quickly because she wants to secure a more comfortable life for her and her daughter. Will she be able to help Dean get what he wants without losing herself in the fake story they spin up to deceive his father and the world?

Chapter Warnings: None. Maybe the end will get your heart racing.

WC: 1796

Beta’d by: @deanwanddamons​ <3

Series Masterlist ~ SPN Masterlist

Buy me a coffee

Y/N’s sitting at her desk as she types an answer to the inquiry from a customer, when her friend Donna practically slams a glamour magazine over her keyboard. 

“Have you seen this?” The blond woman asks. 

“Jesus, Donna! I haven’t saved that document yet! God!” She picks the magazine up and tosses it to the side as she continues to finish the document on her screen. 

Donna’s still waiting, staring at her and she wonders if that woman has nothing else to do. Y/N’s sure Donna has plenty to do, they always have a lot of work and that’s why she gets home so late and sometimes, Liv would already be asleep. Sometimes, when she’s lucky, Liv was awake and she’d read her a bedtime story of princesses who are rescued by a heroic prince.

As soon as Y/N is finished, she turns around in her chair, to see her friend still staring at her instead of doing her own work. 

“What is it?” She asked with that added annoyed nuance to her tone of voice.

“Look!” Donna lifts her chin to point towards the magazine she slammed in front of Y/N just a moment before, “Have you seen it?”

Turning back around to her desk, she picks it up, “Donna, I’m not reading those mags, so no, I haven’t seen it. Why?”

Instead of answering her, Donna only grins. The grin that shows her dimples. The wicked one, “Page twenty-six,” 

With raised eyebrows and that little spark of curiosity which Donna had added to her interest, Y/N rifles through the pages until she reaches page twenty-six. 

There’s a picture of a man who stares right at her. He’s wearing a perfect suit. His one hand fakes the adjusting of his cufflink on his wrist. It’s a total male model pose. Well, he looks like one, so she can’t really say that anything’s out of the ordinary. 

At a second glance, though, she realizes that he looks familiar. His face is a little scruffy, but that makes him look edgier, makes him look more handsome. He’s smiling bright, showing his perfect white teeth. There are crinkles around his emerald eyes, seven on his right side, and she knows she shouldn’t even be counting them, so she ignores his left side. And she definitely can’t help but notice the freckles across his face. 

Oh, she thinks.

Oooohhhh.

“Is that..?” She asks with a frown that gets deeper between her eyebrows because she’s just not sure? She hasn’t seen the man that many times in real life. 

“Ya! Our fucking boss! The icy King!” Donna shouts, “Isn’t he dreamy? My god, I wanna eat him up! And he doesn’t look as icy and distant like he always does,”

“Donna!”

“What? Only telling the truth here! Read what the headline says!”

Her friend is right, though, Mr. Winchester’s normal aloof and cold persona isn’t captured in the picture. He’s known to be the icy King in the company. Instead, he looks kind of welcoming and warm. Y/N eyes go to the top of the page, and she can’t lie, it’s hard to concentrate on the writing when there’s a good looking man staring her down.

The headline is in all caps.

 DEAN WINCHESTER, HOTTEST ENTREPRENEUR 2020

 She frowns, as her eyes leave the magazine to look back at her friend, “That’s what you wanted to show me?” 

“Duh! There’s also a whole article about him being the center of attention everywhere he goes,”

“Well, that’s not really surprising, is it? Looking like that?”

“It also says that he has a fiancée.”

“That’s also not surprising,” Y/N shrugs, “I mean, seriously, look at him. Who wouldn’t want to marry that?” She didn't. At least not when they say that he’s cold-hearted. But again, she’s not the norm here because every female is gushing about him. 

She closes the magazine loudly, deciding that she shouldn’t waste more time. She wants to get home on time today. Liv went on a field trip with her school and she wants to hear her little girl telling her about how exciting it was. Y/N still has a lot of work to do and also a meeting with her supervisor later. The sleazebag.

“So, can I go back to work?” She turns to Donna, “I have a meeting with Raphael in about twenty minutes.”

“Ew,” Donna cringes her nose.

Y/N rolls her eyes, “Exactly,”

“Will you tell him off?”

“I already did,” She sighs, “Multiple times,”

“Why don’t you just go to HR?”

Donna knows what happens. What always happens when she has a meeting with Raphael. He’s always trying things with her. Accidentally brushes his hand against her breast or her ass. He once told her to sit in his lap as he was showing her the numbers of her performance. It wasn’t the first time he suggested it, and she doubts that it will be the last time either. He tried to kiss her more than once, but knowing that they are in an office environment, he didn’t dare to force her too much. He also offers to drive her home almost every week, and she’s slowly getting tired of it, not to mention creeped out.

At their last meeting, he made her hang up a picture frame in his office. His hand rested on her hips to supposedly support her, but they traveled further down until he kneaded her ass in his palms. She immediately got down from there, and left the room wordlessly. 

She knows another secret about Raphael, though. One she could use against him, but she just doesn’t know how just yet. Y/N knows and has got proof that he’s been skimming money. He takes it out of the customer’s account. Not a lot, a small sum that customers wouldn’t notice is missing, but in the end, it’s probably a whole lot when he does it to all the customers he’s supposed to look after. 

Again, she can’t really bring that up because she’s sure that he’ll spin it around and Raphael is good at that. With a push on the button of his keyboard, he could reverse everything and she knows that. 

“I can’t go to HR,” Y/N lowers her head and mumbles to her friend, “Because they won’t believe me,”

And that’s the truth too. The Head of HR is Duma, a woman who occasionally fucks Raphael. They have a friend with benefits thing going on, even if she’s married with children. Duma will never believe her because Y/N’s sure that Raphael can spin this perfectly to fit his narrative. 

Besides, what can she possibly tell? It’s her against him. It’s like a mouse against an elephant. She’s only an accountant and is replaceable, whereas Raphael is a member of the leadership team. And who will be let go? She doesn’t think it’s going to be him and she needs the job to survive. 

Y/N watches as Donna’s lips start to curl up, the white teeth of the woman are visible, as she drums her fingers annoyingly on her own desk.

With a frown, she asks her friend, “What?”

“I have an idea,” Donna says and pulls up her outlook calendar. 

She types in something, and then a calendar appears with a lot of colorful blocks. 

Oh no. She has quite the idea of who’s calendar it is even if she can’t read the name from where she’s sitting, which is too far away because she doesn’t want to give the impression that she’s not working. And it’s stupid that they can do that. They have quite an open calendar policy at the office. Everyone can send and block meetings for everyone, even for the icy King. 

“Donna, no!”

“Why, Donna, yes!” Her friend grins, “He has an open window right now. The meeting in the boardroom is in ten minutes. You should go tell him what you know. If someone can change anything, it’s him, right?”

Donna’s not wrong, she isn’t. But Mr. Winchester is what? At least four tiers above her if not five. Why should he care what a simple worker in his company is thinking? Why should he care what the hell she goes through every day while he earns enough profit to fuel his expensive and glamorous lifestyle?

“He wouldn’t believe me,” She shakes her head.

“You can tell him about the money skimming, I bet he won’t be happy to hear that.”

“Ugh,”

Donna stands up and walks over to her, braces her hands on the chair Y/N’s sitting on, “What’s the worst that could happen, huh?”

“That I get fired?”

“Meh,” Donna squeaked, “I doubt that. You’re doing a great job. Your records are great. And besides, if they do that, you can go and file a lawsuit against them. Besides, who knows, if you go to HR, Raphael will fire you before the icy King does.”

True, but still. 

“Now go get your ass up to the executive floor. Maybe take him a coffee, I heard he likes it black,”

“Oh, just like his heart?”

“Ya, maybe I wouldn’t tell him that?” Donna chuckles.

 *

 Y/N’s on her way to the elevators. She can’t believe that she’s really doing it. But Donna’s right. She can’t go on and live like that. It’s already hard to part from her child every morning and to get bullied at her job and being sexually harassed should not be the norm. She just fucking wants to earn enough money to keep her kid and herself above water.

God, she’s really doing it! 

Fuck.

There are six elevators lined up in the foyer. Three on each side. Only one goes up to the executive floor and also one is reserved for Mr. Winchester’s penthouse on the top floor. Everybody knows that. 

To get the elevator to run up to the executive floor, Y/N would need to have a card with a chip, which she doesn’t, and she feels stupid to have just realized it. And now she’s standing here, lost, with a hot black coffee in a lidless plastic cup that almost burns her fingers off.

Ugh. 

She’s so fucking stupid.

Well, she could still try, couldn’t she? She jumped over her own fear and has come this far. She definitely shouldn’t give up now. 

Her finger hovers over the buttons. Closing her eyes and exhaling loudly, she gives the button a push. Standing back, she waits, her heart is drumming loudly against her ribcage.

And she doesn’t even have to wait long because not even thirty seconds later, the elevator dings and opens up to reveal a man in a nice suit staring back at her.

It’s him.

Ch. 02

Please share your thoughts with me, I’d love to hear your feedback.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Misread Details, Part Two

CW: Described death of whumper, BBU, implications of pet whump, references to noncon, dehumanization, sadistic whumper

Part One: Nanda | Part Two: Brute | Part Three: Robert

The Unsolved Murder of Henry “Brute” Hanlon and the Box Boy Killer

r/LetsTalkTrueCrime

•Posted by u/oshaycanyousee

2 weeks ago

I’m back, r/LetsTalkTrueCrime! I really appreciated the questions and discussion under my last write-up, and a few of you really encouraged me to keep working to provide a part two to my Serial Killer Box Boy series, so here it is!

In Part One, we looked at the mysterious death of Nathaniel “Nanda” Benson, who died of cardiac arrest due to an undiagnosed heart defect (and likely head trauma played a part) and was found at the bottom of the stairs inside his California home. The only valuable possession missing from his property was his legally-purchased Box Boy, who fled the city wearing Nathaniel Benson’s shoes and using his money to buy a bus and then train ticket. 

The last confirmed sighting of the runaway Box Boy (and Benson’s possible killer?) was in Red Hills, California, a large-ish city a couple hours south of Benson’s house by train. 

Questions remain around Benson’s death: did he suffer cardiac arrest and fall down the stairs? Did the Box Boy push him, with the shock of the trauma and injury leading to the heart attack that killed him?

Is the Box Boy merely a witness to a tragic but natural death, or the prime murder suspect?

And most importantly: If he wasn’t guilty, why did he run?

Less than a full calendar year after Benson’s death, the question of where the Boxie went after Benson died was answered… but even that answer only opened up more questions, and the sudden death of a second man places even more uncertainty into the story of a Boxie who might simply be an innocent victim - or who could be a serial killer whose makes a victim out of those who give him shelter.

Which leads us to the story of Henry James Hanlon, known to nearly everyone - including his wife - as “Brute”.

Henry Hanlon was born in a small town in Texas, but moved to Red Hills, California after finishing a stint in the Air Force. 

His parents, James Hanlon and Estella Hanlon, maiden name Brickers, had had their first child, Henry’s older brother William “Bill”, right out of high school, born six months after their wedding day. Henry came three years later, and his sister Roberta “Bobbie” one year after that.

Henry was a perfectly normal, cheerful little boy, always toddling after his older brother and trying to join in the games of the older kids in town. His parents recalled him as the quintessential “middle child”, always resolving disputes and quietly getting things done. He received his nickname of “Brute” in fifth grade, when a classroom bully was harassing a female friend of Henry’s and Henry decided to take action. The only information I could really hunt down on this was some old school records that I found on a message board, and I can’t really verify if they’re real, but they suggest that the bully was sent home injured and Henry received a three-day suspension.

After that, it seems, anyone and everyone - even teachers - called Henry Hanlon “Brute”, and he never seemed to mind.

He received perfectly average grades, enlisted in the Air Force, served without distinction but without any significant incidents, and afterwards he moved out to California, where he settled into Red Hills (then a city with a thriving industrial district that was slowly beginning its slide into something rougher) and took a job with a manufacturing company, working in their warehouse.

“Brute” dated around a bit, but it wasn’t until three years after his move that he met the woman he would marry, Ellen Patricia Barry. She was a few years younger than him, and they met at a local bar that both were known to frequent. One of Brute’s former coworkers told police that Brute was big into pool and poker, both of which he would engage in when he went to the bar, and that he met Ellen during one of the poker nights, and that Brute stated that how easily she beat him was one of the reasons he was interested in her romantically.

Ellen claims they first spoke while playing pool, not poker, and also claims she’s never played poker in her life. Why Brute would have told his coworkers a different story is unclear. 

They dated for about a year before they wed at Grace Baptist Church on a sunny summer day in 20XX. Ellen’s father gave her away while Brute’s little sister was the maid of honor. A year later, Brute’s daughter Elizabeth was born, and a couple years after that, their son Daniel.

The Hanlons lived a charmed life - they owned a cute three-bedroom cottage home (bought and given to them by Ellen’s parents as a wedding gift) in a good part of town with a little white fence around the property and a yard big enough for the children and dog to play in. Ellen was part of the local PTA and active in her church, and Brute himself had the appearance of a man totally content with everything he had.

But Brute Hanlon had a secret.

Ellen continued to believe he was employed by the manufacturing company, but he actually left his employment there years before his death. Instead, he seems to have transitioned into making his money “under the table”. Ellen wouldn’t discover any of this until after his body was located… in a secret house he’d never told her about, in one of the roughest parts of Red Hills.

Without her knowledge, Brute purchased a two-bedroom home with cash directly from its previous owner that was badly in need of repair in the Pauls Mill neighborhood. Once a “company town” from the 1930’s - 1950’s that was absorbed into Red Hills as it grew in the 60’s, Pauls Mill today is the kind of neighborhood where everyone knows if you belong there, or don’t, and it’s best if you belong.

Brute performed a few very cursory repairs to keep it livable, laid down some new carpet, and then used it as a kind of secret base for the unsavory activities he didn’t want Ellen or the children to know about.

While his family believed he was at work at the factory, Hanlon was in fact hosting poker games, selling illicit narcotics and unlicensed firearms, and generally making quite a bit more money than he had with legal employment entirely under-the-table. He would spend his day making connections (and money) through these activities, then go home right at 5 pm sharp to his loving family, eat dinner at 6 pm, help his kids with their homework and hear about their day, and settle in for an evening playing the loving husband and doting dad.

Somewhere during this time period, Brute told Ellen he was setting up a “poker night” with his friends again, now that the kids were school-aged. 

What he did instead was drive down to the corner of Holt and McCormick streets, known to all locals as the Red Hills “red light district”, and pick up prostitutes, usually simply meeting with them in his car, but occasionally taking them to a nearby motel.

After his body was found, police showed his picture around to a variety of the individuals who make their living at Holt and McCormick, and more than a dozen locals immediately recognized him. 

Some described him as a regular customer who wasn’t particularly special or notable beyond the simple fact that he never tried to renege on payment and could be relied on to always be looking for someone on a particular night of the week… but others, almost entirely male, said he could be violent. A few described being injured enough that they had to seek medical treatment after meeting him. The same individuals stated that he insisted on using dehumanizing and insulting language to speak to them during these encounters, and that he was often unable to perform unless he did so.

One individual, who gave his name as “Mix”, mentioned that the last few times Brute had engaged his services, he had brought along a collar and insisted Mix pretend to be a Box Boy. 

During this time period, Brute continued to be an active, involved, and loving parent. 

He was home right on time every night except “poker night”, attended his chlidrens’ recitals and baseball games on the weekends. He often took them to the Red Hills Zoo, local parks, and even did a weekend trip to Berras to see the Berras Aquarium, stay overnight in a hotel as a family, and then visit a redwoods park before returning home.

Six months before his death, Brute’s visits to the red light district abruptly stopped. Instead, he apparently met with a local prostitute, engaged his services, and took him home… for good. 

The best record we have is that one woman, Needie Brandt, remembered seeing Brute leading a shorter, angular young man to his car one night, and described the young man as “one of those runaway Boxies, collar and all. Poor thing was half-starved”. 

Runaways, especially Romantics, are picked up by police from time to time in Red Hills. Most Romantics don’t really know any other way to survive, so prostitution is a common way to make ends meet. Needie said the young man had been seen around the area for a couple of weeks, right alongside the rest of the working people in the red light district, and that after this one night she saw Brute Hanlon lead him into the car, she didn’t see him again.

Asked if she remembered a name, Needie only shrugged and said that even if she did, it wouldn’t be a real one. Which is probably a good point. 

Somewhere in here, Brute began to date outside of his marriage while his family believed he was out with friends playing poker. He took dancing lessons with one Susan Krieger, had a serious relationship with a Lucy Graham, and was apparently occasionally taking a Natalie Dorn out for dinner.

Ellen was never informed about these out-of-wedlock interests. 

Brute’s family knew nothing. When his eldest son went to state with marching band his freshman year of high school, Brute Hanlon was right there cheering him on.

Then, just two days later, he presumably went right back to brutalizing the Box Boy he was keeping in his secret second home.

We don’t have a record of what exactly transpired within the house after Brute took the runaway Box Boy in. What we do know is what the police found later on.

On October 18th, 20XX, around midnight, Ellen Hanlon called police to report her husband missing after he did not return from his regular poker night. His car was located in the parking lot of an abandoned FoodMart, but a friend of Brute’s came forward to say he often parked there and carpooled with friends when going out.

None of Brute’s possessions were inside, and it didn’t appear the car had been touched by anyone but Brute himself when it was dusted for fingerprints or signs of DNA. Brute’s friends who knew about his secret activities weren’t telling, and Ellen and the children didn’t know anything about their seemingly loving husband and father’s double-life. 

At first, the trail seemed like it would go cold, and investigators were frustrated that they had so little to go on.

Then, on October 29th, 20XX, Brute’s neighbor (who apparently asked that his name not be given) called the police department complaining about how the small two-bedroom house next door had begun to smell “like something died in there”, and that he hadn’t seen his neighbor leave or return in days, which was very unusual.

When police arrived, the front door was unlocked. Officer William Keys, the first one inside, later described the smell as “unmistakable. I knew exactly what we’d find the second we walked in that door.”

He was right.

What they found was the bloodied and decomposing body of Henry “Brute” Hanlon, lying on his back in the middle of a small unremarkable living room, on a dirty and stained carpet. He had been viciously stabbed more than fifty times. One even went so far into Brute that there was an exit wound through his back. Medical examiners would later state that at least seven of his wounds would have been directly fatal, but that he had died within the first few and most of the wounds were technically post-mortem.

The murder had been committed by someone who had a very personal reason for the killing. Investigators believe this individual was “absolutely enraged”.  

Next to his body was the murder weapon, along with a set of buckles and strips of leather that mystified the officers. These were eventually identified as modified leg braces, but rather than straightening bent or injured legs, they forced the wearer to keep their legs at nearly right angles, which would ensure they had to crawl rather than walk. They appeared to be homemade.

Bloodied smears and footprints led the officers down a hallway and to the bathroom, where there was evidence someone had showered, changed clothes, and then left.

The same neighbor who informed police about the smell also remembered seeing, on October 16th or 17th (later determined that it was likely the 17th, the day that Brute did not return home from “work”), a young man wearing an oversized coat, sweatpants, and a too-large t-shirt walk out of Hanlon’s house and down the street. The young man was on the short side, the neighbor said, had an angular face, and a visible scar at the corner of his mouth and another along the side of his face. He had the collar of the coat flipped up, and the neighbor doesn’t recall if he wore a collar or not.

He had dark eyes, and short but shaggy dark hair that seemed to have been cut hurriedly and unevenly, and he waved at Hanlon’s neighbor without pausing or speaking as he walked past.

Tests on fingerprints and DNA located within Brute Hanlon’s secret second home would reveal that the Box Boy who once ran from Nathaniel Benson after his death was the exact same one who ran from Brute Hanlon after murdering him. The Boxie’s fingerprints were all over the murder weapon… and everywhere else, too.

Within Brute’s home, more knives were found, along with what looked like a badly-crafted homemade whip and some other supplies. A few of the things investigators found appeared to be essentially identical to what was found in Nathaniel Benson’s home. Other things were different (“animalization” was mentioned in some of the reports, but what I’ve been able to find is seriously vague for some reason). 

Possibly related, a series of dog leashes purchased from a local pet-supply store were found throughout the home, but there was no evidence of an actual dog. In the home’s main bedroom was a perfectly normal queen-sized bed that was clearly Brute’s, with a small side table, a large dresser, and an attached bathroom. 

There was absolutely nothing outwardly out of the ordinary, besides the room being very plain and impersonal. Makes sense, since Brute almost never slept there. 

In the second bedroom, however, there was army-style cot with a thin blanket and sheet, three folded shirts on the floor, two sets of bloody metal handcuffs hanging off the cot’s frame at the top and bottom, and a bucket next to the bed. Two metal bowls, clearly of a style meant to be a dog’s food and water bowls, were next to the door. One still had water in it. The window was painted and nailed shut, and bars had been installed over the windows.

Investigators determined the bars were on the house when Brute Hanlon purchased it and had been installed by the previous owner. No reason for that installation was ever given.

Investigation revealed trace amounts of evidence of blood, but nothing much. However, the living room and dining area both showed poorly-cleaned bloodstains that were much older than Hanlon’s murder, including discolored patches on the walls.

A contract for a 24/7 “master/slave” style relationship was found in the top drawer of the dresser, signed ‘Pet’ at the bottom, and with Brute’s name alongside it. However, both signatures match Hanlon’s handwriting, and the Boxie is not believed to have actively signed it, as he would be illiterate at best. Plus, Box Boys are not legally allowed to enter into any contract, anyway, since they can’t understand obligations at that level, so even if he had signed it, it wouldn’t have been considered remotely valid.

I mean, not that those contracts are legal, but... you get my point.

Also located in that drawer were more than one hundred photographs showing the Boxie in a variety of compromising situations and positions. Several of these photos had Brute himself clearly visible in them, and a few had other individuals who have since been identified as Brute’s associates in his more illicit activities.

Interrogations of those associates led to more than seven further arrests for illegal gambling, the production and sale of illicit drugs, and illegal weapons sales. Those interrogations are also how we know about what Brute Hanlon was up to in-between Little League games and Girl Scout meetings.

Those associates claim that Brute kept a “secondhand Box Boy”, muzzled him so he couldn’t speak whenever guests were over, and that often ‘poker night’ simply turned into a game where the assorted guests and Brute himself repeatedly assaulted the Boxie. The associates claimed they thought the entire thing was consensual, but frankly… given the overwhelming evidence that the Boxie had to be kept restrained and was often seriously injured by these assaults... that’s doubtful.

Ellen and her children, who had previously been very visible and spoke often to local news stations about Henry’s disappearance, withdrew after his body was found and his second, secret life revealed - and have never given a single public statement or made a public appearance since. 

Ellen moved her children out of Red Hills, moving back in with her own parents, briefly, in northern California. Where they went after that is unknown, but they appear to have left the state and Ellen may have changed her surname. Investigators are firm in their belief that Ellen knew nothing about her husband’s secret life.

I would give my right arm to know what his son and daughter think about it, and if they ever suspected what their devoted dad was up to when he wasn’t at home.

So, what happened to the Boxie after he left the house and disappeared down the block from the witness who saw him?

In short… no one knows for sure.

After murdering Brute Hanlon and cleaning off the evidence that must have been all over him, the Boxie simply fades away. He could have been anywhere, doing anything at all. There is a brief sighting of him on CCTV footage at the local bus station, where he is in line to buy a ticket… and then abruptly looks up, apparently noticing the camera and looking directly into it, then turns and walks quickly away.

The footage is grainy, but the Boxie does appear to be wearing his collar.

He isn’t seen in Red Hills again.

Instead, he reappears one more time before his final murder and disappearance… more than a year later, in a little town right along the border with Nevada.

Part 3 will go into how the investigation into the death of a quiet little oddball named Robert Weber reveals a basement full of skeletal bodies. But our Boxie isn’t the cause.

Instead, Robert Weber’s murder solves a series of related murders police had been stymied by for more than a decade, and a Box Boy who may have been meant to be Weber’s next victim instead turned accidental vigilante with a final killing of his own.

Or maybe I should say, his final killing so far.

-

@astrobly @finder-of-rings @burtlederp @whump-tr0pes @raigash @eatyourdamnpears @orchidscript @doveotions @pretty-face-breaker @boxboysandotherwhump @outofangband @whumptywhumpdump @whumpfigure @thehopelessopus @downriver914 @justabitofwhump @butwhatifyouwrite @newandfiguringitout @yet-another-heathen @nonsensical-whump @oops-its-whump @endless-whump @cubeswhump @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @whumpiary 

[astrognossienne]

scandalous star: katharine hepburn - an analysis

“I'm a personality as well as an actress. Show me an actress who isn't a personality, and I'll show you a woman who isn't a star.” - Katharine Hepburn

I guess this is why she’s so lauded to this day. Frankly, I think Katharine Hepburn quite overrated as an actress. Nonetheless, for over fifty years Hepburn was a successful actress on the stage and on the screen, delighting audiences with her energy, her grit, and her determination. Her work was in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and earned her various accolades, including four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. She received a total of 12 Oscar nominations for Best Actress—a number surpassed only by divine Cancer actress Meryl Streep. She was named the greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute. However, the mystery to her enduring popularity in life and in death, lay just in the aforementioned quote. The novelty of Hepburn’s appeal was not in what she did but in what she was. Her unconventional lifestyle and the independent females she played on screen, represented the emancipated woman. With her starved, whippetlike grace and overbearing intensity, she herself appeared slightly mad. But the same characteristics also made her seem—as George Cukor, the director, had gambled—a distinctly new type of woman, poised between the nervy and the nervously overwrought. This, in turn seems to be why so many women still adore her.

Indeed, she was in her own words “enormously lucky” to have the parents and upbringing that she had, and she remained close to her family throughout her life. However, the suicide of her beloved older brother marred her secure, picture-perfect, idyllic childhood; a true earth and water dominant, the incident made the teenage Hepburn nervous, moody, and suspicious of people, and she shied away from other children, dropped out of Oxford School, and was tutored privately. However, she overcame this tragedy and revealed a ferocious work ethic in its wake. She also had a well-known strange and masochistic 20-year romance with married actor Spencer Tracy. On and off screen, Hepburn never conformed to the traditional star image. A true earth and water dominated creature, she was known for being fiercely private, and would not give interviews or talk to fans for much of her career, distancing herself from the celebrity lifestyle, uninterested in a social scene she saw as tedious and superficial. She was a strong-minded, independent woman, she lived her life and her career to suit herself. In the process she has entertained millions, and somehow managed to do so without compromising her beliefs.

Katharine Houghton Hepburn, according to astrotheme, was a Taurus sun and moon. She was born in Connecticut to wealthy, progressive parents. Her father, Dr. Thomas Hepburn, was a urologist who worked toward the public recognition and treatment of venereal disease; her mother Katharine Houghton, campaigned for legal birth control and led the battle for woman suffrage in Connecticut, and later campaigned for birth control with birth control activist Margaret Sanger, but was always home in time for tea. In a sprawling house in Hartford, these high-minded individuals raised six exceptionally bright children who swung on the birch trees in the back yard and won blue ribbons for diving and tennis and anything else that was up for the winning. The young Hepburn was a tomboy who liked to call herself Jimmy and cut her hair short. The family was so immoderately strong and fearless and happy that there was never any need to mention the suicide of Mrs. Hepburn’s father or of her father’s brother or even of Dr. Hepburn’s own oldest brother—Uncle Charlie—since there was nothing to be done about these matters. In March 1921, Hepburn, 13, and her 15-year-old brother Tom were visiting New York, staying with a friend of their mother's in Greenwich Village over the Easter break. On March 30, Hepburn discovered the body of her adored older brother dead from an apparent suicide. He had tied a curtain tie around a beam and hanged himself. The Hepburn family denied it was suicide and maintained that Tom's death must have been an experiment that had gone wrong. Hepburn became more withdrawn and for many years she used Tom's birthday (November 8) as her own. It was not until her 1991 autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life, that Hepburn revealed her true birth date.

In 1924, she attended Bryn Mawr college. It was the first time she had been in school for several years, and she was self-conscious and uncomfortable with her classmates. Hepburn was drawn to acting, and after performing the lead role in a production of The Woman in the Moon in her senior year, and the positive response it received cemented Hepburn's plans to pursue a theatrical career. After graduating in June 1928, she moved to Baltimore, Maryland and studied with a voice coach to deepen her shrill voice. Hepburn appeared in a number of plays with a summer stock company. In 1932, she was asked to read for the lead in the Greek fable The Warrior's Husband, which proved to be Hepburn's breakout performance. A scout for Hollywood agent Leland Hayward spotted Hepburn's appearance in The Warrior's Husband, and asked her to test for the part of Sydney Fairfield in the upcoming RKO film A Bill of Divorcement. Director George Cukor was impressed and wanted to sign her to a contract. Offered the role, Hepburn demanded $1,500 a week, a large amount for an unknown actress; strangely enough, Cukor encouraged the studio to accept her demands and, even stranger still, they signed Hepburn to a temporary contract with a three-week guarantee. Critics praised her performance in the film, and she became an instant star. Hepburn had been married in 1928 to the social and well-to-do Ludlow Ogden Smith, who had changed his name to Ogden Ludlow because she did not want to be Kate Smith. The marriage actually lasted about three weeks before the couple separated, but they were not divorced until 1934. They remained friendly afterwards. She was also romantically inovled with eccentric businessman and millionaire Howard Hughes.

A return to the Broadway stage in 1934 led to a role in a flop play, The Lake. However, she starred in a film called Morning Glory, which garnered her first Best Actress Oscar. In 1937 an important exhibitor placed an advertisement in a trade paper and described Hepburn, along with various other female stars, as "box office poison." RKO's indifferent response led Hepburn—at a cost to her of over $200,000—to buy out her contract from the company. Shortly thereafter she was rejected for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in the film version of 1939′s Gone with the Wind (however, she was good friends with the one who landed the role: Vivien Leigh). Hepburn, determined to re-establish herself, returned to the Broadway stage, playing the lead in a successful production of The Philadelphia Story. Having invested in the production, she controlled the screen rights, which she ultimately sold to Metro Goldwyn Mayer in return for a tidy profit and the studio's guarantee that she would play the lead in the film version. She did, and the film was a critical and a commercial success. Her Oscar nomination was but one demonstration of the dramatic way she had re-established herself in Hollywood, California. Hepburn's next MGM film brought troubled actor Spencer Tracy into her life, with whom she began a relationship that lasted over two decades, until his death in 1967. Although separated from his wife, Tracy never divorced her. His romance with Hepburn was a quiet, tender, tortured, and very private affair. In the 1960s Hepburn interrupted her career to care for the ailing Tracy. They were a team professionally as well as personally. Their last film together, the controversial Sidney Poitier race-relations vehicle Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, was to be Tracy’s swan song and he died shortly after the film was released. Hepburn won her second Oscar for this film, thirty-four years after her first, and she went on to win two more, the all-time record: for The Lion in Winter (1968) and On Golden Pond (1981), a final “Tracy movie”, with the equally flinty Henry Fonda filling in as the old curmudgeon and Hepburn succeeding to the role of the saintly wife. Although Hepburn suffered some significant injuries in a 1985 automobile accident, and illnesses usual to one of her years, she golfed, cycled, and swam in the sea into her nineties. Hepburn provided some new perspectives on her personality and the roles she played on stage and screen in her autobiography, published after she retired from performance. She died on June 29, 2003 at the age of 96.

Next week, I will focus on her mate, the self-immolating actor who she chose to suffer for: Aries Spencer Tracy.  

STATS

birthdate: May 12, 1907

major planets:

Sun: Taurus

Moon: Taurus

Rising: Scorpio

Mercury: Taurus

Venus: Aries

Mars: Capricorn

Midheaven: Leo

Jupiter: Cancer

Saturn: Pisces

Uranus: Capricorn

Neptune: Cancer

Pluto: Gemini

Overall personality snapshot: She could be torn between a lazy, sensual self-indulgence and a deliberate, even stoic, self-control; between an almost mystical love of nature and a matter-of-fact cost accountant’s approach to life. She was naturally a sensualist, with a keen, raw enjoyment of the tastes and scents of foods, the sounds of music and the countryside, the textures of things, the visual delights of life and art. Yet she sought to be in command of the changing material world, and that included her own body, a tendency that could lead her to deny her own feelings and desires. For above all she sought certainty and security for herself and her loved ones. In all she did, she wanted to get down to basics, to the practical certainties and self-evident realities. She wanted to define things, lay foundations and simplify. She became impatient with abstract theories and yet be as rigid and dogmatic in the way she believed things should be done as any theorist. Her criterion was: does it work? She was a hands-on teacher who believed in the power of experience and in what she could directly see for herself. She had a deep understanding of some of the basics that made the world go round, such as pleasure, sex, security and money. This made her excellent at business matters and equally gave her a gift for therapeutic work and counseling. She was at her happiest and most creative when she was doing work that both expressed her loving care of others and brought pleasure, and yet also produces tangible results. Careers or pursuits that brought out the best in her included cooking, music, painting, creating a home, nursing, counseling, teaching or indeed building up a business around her own interests.

Whilst she very much lived in the here-and-now, she also liked to feel that the foundations she was laying will be of permanent value. She had the rare gift of real common sense, and whether in the area of psychology, business, art or science, she could always be depended on to offer sound, well-grounded, straight-from-the-shoulder insights. She had a rather slow, steady, dependable approach to things, and a quiet, even shy, manner. This made her dry, tell-it-as-it is, often bawdy sense of humour all the more surprising. She was a deeply grounded individual with great reserves of practical kindness, and her sheer sanity and stability can be enormously reassuring to those who know her. In consequence she became the proverbial rock to your friends, on whom all depended. Her tea was served in mugs not in cups, in the kitchen not the sitting room. She enjoyed what was in front of her and she dealt with the problems, often those of other people, with a quiet stability and directness of spirit. All this made her occasional outbursts of seemingly uncontrollable rage all the more mystifying. Such rages, when they occurred, were the consequence of her habitual calm and desire for order which demanded that she kept the dark side of life at bay. Hence when her accumulated angers and irritations did break through, she had little experience of coping with them. Because she could be so understanding and supportive of others, the great risk for her was that she would be treated as Atlas, the support of the world, so that her own needs were constantly neglected. When this happened she may have found herself retreating into illness to attract the attention and support that she too needed to receive.

She had dark, brooding looks with thick, abundant hair and strongly marked eyebrows that framed the most important feature of her face, her eyes. Her eyes had a piercing, penetrating quality. Overall, she gave the impression of quietly contained power. Her movements were controlled, and her clothes were chosen for their dramatic value. With her commanding personality, she was able to instill fear and apprehension if she wished. She held a lot of hidden rage and passion within her, which had to be released. She was ambitious without being ruthless. She became deeply involved in her work, wanting to work at the highest level. Work and leisure may have been (and was) indivisible, especially with her work being artistic or creative. She was well suited to her career as an actress, since it promised and delivered publicity as well as a scope for showing off. She needed love and emotion, and her sense of compassion led her to help others, as she was very protective. However she could sink down into the depths of self-pity at times, although normally she was of good humour. She didn’t react well to a hostile and competitive environment, in fact she preferred to stick to private endeavours where she could protect herself. She was quick to go on the defensive, rather than the offensive, when dealing with adversaries and adverse situations. She had a strong sense of purpose and was very sincere. Her shyness often prevented her from expressing himself properly, and she put great emphasis on emotional self-control, which made her more vulnerable than usual. At times, she was her own worst enemy, because she relived past errors over and over again, which gave her a negative outlook on life. She could be hypersensitive and moody, needing quiet and solitude.

She belonged to a generation with a rational and logical attitude to life. There was a conflict between tradition and convention, and the experimental and unconventional. As an individual, she had to learn to strike a balance between the erratic and the conventional. As a member of his generation, she had the ability to come up with original ideas which could be of practical value. Members of her generation were emotionally sensitive and extremely conscious of the domestic environment and the atmosphere surrounding their home place. Also, as a member of the Cancer Neptune generation, she felt a degree of escapism from everyday reality, and was very sensitive to the moods of those around her. Hepburn embodied all of these Cancer Neptunian ideals. As a Gemini Plutonian, she was mentally restless and willing to examine and change old doctrines, ideas and ways of thinking. As a member of this generation, she showed an enormous amount of mental vitality, originality and perception. Traditional customs and taboos were examined and rejected for newer and more original ways of doing things. As opportunities with education expanded, she questioned more and learned more. As a member of this generation, having more than one occupation at a time would not have been unusual to her.  

Love/sex life: She was a Capricorn Martian lover who knew exactly what she wanted from sex. Unfortunately, she seldom let herself have it. Even though her approach to sex was straightforward and forthright to the extreme, her energies were often misdirected and her efforts self-defeating. Love was often like a punishment for her. The good news: that’s the way she liked it. The really odd thing about her sexuality was her optimism. No matter how much trouble love brought her, she never lost her confidence or her taste for sexual adventure. She was among the most energetic and demonstrative of this lover type. She tended to be competitive and sometimes a little pushy where sex is concerned and she was not afraid to go after a challenging relationship. It was this ability to shake off the past and believe in love all over again that was her most charming quality. Of course, some might call it her most foolish quality. Indeed, despite her feisty feminism and patrician background, Hepburn devoted herself to loving and taking care of the belligerent, alcoholic and very married actor Spencer Tracy, going so far as to sleep on the floor outside his hotel room when he was on a bender and unwilling to let her in.

minor asteroids and points:

North Node: Cancer

Lilith: Cancer

Vertex: Gemini

Fortune: Scorpio

East Point: Scorpio

Her North Node in Cancer dictated that she needed to develop the more caring and compassionate side to her personality and try to place less emphasis on the materialistic aspects of her life. Her Lilith in Cancer meant that she was too sensitive and resorted to nasty emotional manipulation, games, and pulled all sorts of shit to reclaim the power they felt they lost. Vertex in Gemini, 8th house reveals that she had an all consuming need to communicate with her partner. Here, intimacy was equated with communication on a daily basis, whether the conversation involved daily matters or deep issues of a psychological or spiritual nature. If her partner was prone to innuendo and subtle gestures she wouldn’t notice, she required that communication be verbal and straight to the point. She had an internal yearning for an inseparable union with and total commitment from another, come what may. This need was so intense that she may have fantasized all manner of unspeakable actions and reactions if the final dream, once attained, was even threatened. The dark side is that when the reality of her partner didn’t fit this model (and it rarely did totally) she had a difficult time adjusting if faced with a breach of contract of any sort. Once badly hurt there was a tendency to become jaded and guarded in future relationships, thereby passing up the opportunity to explore interactions which might just fulfill out intense needs perfectly. Her Part of Fortune in Scorpio and Part of Spirit in Taurus dictated that her destiny lay in cultivating ambition and power as she fearlessly delved into the unknown. She attempted to use her power wisely. Her joy was found by stripping away the outer layers of experiences and getting to the core. No plan or plot was too complex to use in her pursuit of happiness and success. Her soul’s purpose asked her to create and comfort for herself and those around her. She felt spiritual connections and the spark of the divine in the tangible things around her—what she could taste, touch, smell, see and hear. East Point in Scorpio dictated that she was more likely to feel the need for self-control, personally identifying with a sense of mastery.

elemental dominance:

earth

water

She was a practical, reliable woman and could provide structure and protection. She was oriented toward practical experience and thought in terms of doing rather than thinking, feeling, or imagining. Could be materialistic, unimaginative, and resistant to change. But at her best, she provided the practical resources, analysis, and leadership to make dreams come true. She had high sensitivity and elevation through feelings. Her heart and her emotions were her driving forces, and she couldn’t do anything on earth if she didn’t feel a strong effective charge. She needed to love in order to understand, and to feel in order to take action, which caused a certain vulnerability which she should (and often did) fight against.

modality dominance:

fixed

She liked the challenge of managing existing routines with ever more efficiency, rather than starting new enterprises or finding new ways of doing things. She likely had trouble delegating duties and had a very hard time seeing other points of view; she tried to implement the human need to create stability and order in the wake of change.

house dominants:

7th

3rd

8th

Her attitude towards partnerships with other people was emphasized in her life, whether on a personal or on a business level. It also revealed her marriage partner. It indicated how she dealt with other people and how her relationships with others affected her. Also had the propensity to attract enemies, and the effect that they had on her life was an issue. Short journeys, traveling within her own country were themes throughout her life; her immediate environment, and relationships with her siblings, neighbours and friends were of importance. The way her mental processes operated, as well as the manner and style in which she communicated was emphasized in her life. As such, much was revealed about her schooling and childhood and adolescence. She loved the totality of the human experience and embraced the whole cycle of human life, including birth, sex and death. Her darker side, and the complexes and emotions that she preferred to keep hidden, even from herself was a theme throughout her life. Her ability to undergo deep personal transformations and spiritual regeneration was also highlighted.  

planet dominants:

Mercury

Sun

Jupiter

She was intelligent, mentally quick, and had excellent verbal acuity. She dealt in terms of logic and reasoning. It was likely that she was left-brained. She was restless, craved movement, newness, and the bright hope of undiscovered terrains. She had vitality and creativity, as well as a strong ego and was authoritarian and powerful. She likely had strong leadership qualities, she definitely knew who she was, and she had tremendous will. She met challenges and believed in expanding her life. She had luck, and believed in expansion, integration, and growth. She could also be excessive and lazy. She reached out beyond herself and expanded her consciousness. She loved travel, was fairly religious, and liked to integrate herself into the larger social order—church or religion, community, and corporation. She had intellectual and spiritual interests in the most.

sign dominants:

Taurus

Capricorn

Scorpio

Her stubbornness and determination kept her around for the long haul on any project or endeavour. She was incredibly patient, singular in her pursuit of goals, and determined to attain what she wanted. Although she lacked versatility, she compensated for it by enduring whatever she had to in order to get what she wanted. She enjoyed being surrounded by nice things. She liked fine art and music, and may have had considerable musical ability. She also had a talent for working with her hands. She was a serious-minded person who often seemed aloof and tightly in control of her emotions and her personal domain. Even as a youngster, there was a mature air about her, as if she was born with a profound core that few outsiders ever see. She was easily impressed by outward signs of success, but was interested less in money than in the power that money represents. She was a true worker—industrious, efficient, and disciplined. Her innate common sense gave her the ability to plan ahead and to work out practical ways of approaching goals. More often than not, she succeeded at whatever she set out to do. She possessed a quiet dignity that was unmistakable. She was an intense, passionate, and strong-willed person. She was not above imposing her will on others. This could manifest in Hepburn as cruelty, sadism, and enmity, which had the possibility to make her supremely disliked. She needed to explore her world through her emotions.

Read more about her under the cut.

Katharine Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist and a doctor who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a child, she was very close to her brother Tom; at 14 she was devastated to find him dead, the apparent result of accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. For many years afterward, she used his November 8 birthdate as her own. She became shy around girls her age and was largely schooled at home. She did attend Bryn Mawr College, where she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions. After graduating, she began getting small roles in plays on Broadway and elsewhere. She always attracted attention, especially for her role in "Art and Mrs. Bottle" (1931). She finally broke into stardom when she took the starring role of the Amazon princess Antiope in "A Warrior's Husband" (1932). The inevitable film offers followed; after make a few screen tests, she was cast in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), opposite John Barrymore. The film was a hit, and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed her to a contract. She made five films between 1932 and 1934. For her third, Morning Glory (1933), she won her first Academy Award. Her fourth, Little Women (1933), was the most successful picture of its day. But stories were beginning to leak out, of her haughty behavior off- screen and her refusal to play the Hollywood Game, always wearing slacks and no makeup, never posing for pictures or giving interviews. Audiences were shocked at her unconventional behavior instead of applauding it, and so when she returned to Broadway in 1934 to star in "The Lake", the critics panned her and the audiences, who at first bought up tickets, soon deserted her. When she returned to Hollywood, things didn't get much better. From the period 1935-1938, she had only two hits: Alice Adams (1935), which brought her her second Oscar nomination, and Stage Door (1937); the many flops included Break of Hearts (1935), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), Quality Street (1937) and the now-classic Bringing Up Baby (1938). With so many flops, she came to be labeled "box-office poison." She decided to go back to Broadway to star in "The Philadelphia Story" (1938), and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights, and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars. The film version of The Philadelphia Story (1940), was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, who won her third Oscar nomination for the film, was bankable again. For her next film, Woman of the Year (1942), she was paired with Spencer Tracy, and the chemistry between them lasted for eight more films, spanning the course of 25 years, and a romance that lasted that long off-screen. (She received her fourth Oscar nomination for the film.) Their films included the very successful Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957). With The African Queen (1951), Hepburn moved into middle-aged spinster roles, receiving her fifth Oscar nomination for the film. She played more of these types of roles throughout the 50s, and won more Oscar nominations for many of them, including her roles in Summertime (1955), The Rainmaker (1956) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Her film roles became fewer and farther between in the 60s, as she devoted her time to her ailing partner Spencer Tracy. For one of her film appearances in this decade, in Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), she received her ninth Oscar nomination. After a five-year absence from films, she then made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), her last film with Tracy and the last film Tracy ever made; he died just weeks after finishing it. It garnered Hepburn her tenth Oscar nomination and her second win. The next year, she did The Lion in Winter (1968), which brought her her eleventh Oscar nomination and third win. In the 1970s, she turned to making made-for-TV films, with The Glass Menagerie (1973), Love Among the Ruins (1975) and The Corn Is Green (1979). She still continued to make an occasional appearance in feature films, such as Rooster Cogburn (1975), with John Wayne, and On Golden Pond (1981), with Henry Fonda. This last brought her her twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win--the latter currently still a record for an actress. She made more TV-films in the 1980s, and wrote her autobiography, 'Me', in 1991. Her last feature film was Love Affair (1994), with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and her last TV- film was One Christmas (1994). With her health declining she retired from public life in the mid-nineties. She died at 96 at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. (x)

[samwisethewitch]

Coping with religious trauma

CONTENT WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS DISCUSSIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS, TRAUMA RECOVERY, AND HOMOPHOBIA. The advice in this post is intended for an adult audience, not for those who are legal minors.

A lot of people find their way to paganism after having traumatic experiences with organized religion, especially in countries like the United States, where 65% of the population identifies as Christian. (This number is actually at an all-time low — historically, the percentage has been much higher.) Paganism, which is necessarily less dogmatic and hierarchical than the Abrahamic religions, offers a chance to experience religion without having to fit a certain mold. This can be extremely liberating for people who have felt hurt, abused, or ignored by mainstream religion.

To avoid making generalizations that might offend people, I’ll share my own story as an example.

My family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons, when I was nine years old. The Mormons are an extremely conservative sect of evangelical Christianity that places a heavy emphasis on maintaining a strong community that upholds their religious values. The problem with that is that Mormon values are inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic. As a teenager in the Mormon Church, I was told that as a woman, my only purpose in life was to marry a (Mormon) man and raise (Mormon) children. I was discouraged from pursuing a college education if it meant delaying marriage. I was not allowed to participate in the full extent of religious ritual because I was not a man. I was not allowed to express myself in ways that went against Mormon culture, and I kept my bisexuality secret for fear I would be ostracized. I didn’t have any sort of support system outside the Church, which inevitably made the mental health issues that come with being a queer woman in a conservative Christian setting much, much worse.

I left the Mormons when I was seventeen, and by that time I had some major issues stemming from my time in the Church. I had been extremely depressed and anxious for most of my teen years. I struggled with internalized misogyny and homophobia. I had very low self-esteem. I had anxiety around sex and sexuality that would take years of therapy and self-work to overcome. I wanted to form a connection with the divine, but I wasn’t sure if I was worthy of such a connection.

I was attracted to paganism, specifically Wicca, because it seemed like everything Mormonism wasn’t. Wicca teaches equality between men and women, with a heavy focus on the Goddess in worship. It places an emphasis on doing what is right for you, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. It encourages sexuality and healthy sexual expression. Learning about Wicca, and later other types of paganism, helped me develop the kind of healthy spirituality I’d never experienced as a Mormon. Although Wicca is no longer the backbone of my religious practice, it was a necessary and deeply healing step on my spiritual journey.

I’m not sharing my story to gain sympathy or to make anyone feel bad — I’m sharing it because my situation is not an uncommon one in pagan circles. The vast majority of pagans are converts, meaning they didn’t grow up pagan. Some had healthy upbringings in other faiths, or no faith at all, and simply found that paganism was a better fit for them. Others, like myself, had deeply traumatic experiences with organized religion and are attracted to paganism because of the freedom, autonomy, and empowerment it offers.

If you fall into this latter category, this post is for you. Untangling the threads of religious trauma can be an extremely difficult and overwhelming task. In this post, I lay out six steps to recovery based on my own experiences and those of other people, both pagan and non-pagan, who have lived through religious trauma.

While following these steps will help jumpstart your spiritual healing, it’s important to remember that healing is not a linear process — especially healing from emotional, mental, and spiritual trauma. You may have relapses, you may feel like you’re moving in circles, and you may still have bad days in five or ten years. That’s okay. That’s part of the healing process. Go easy on yourself, and let your journey unfold naturally.

Step One: Cut all ties with the group that caused your trauma

Or, at least, cut as many ties as reasonably possible.

Obviously, if you’re still participating in a religious organization that has caused you pain, the first step is to leave! But before you do, make sure you have an exit plan to help you disengage safely and gracefully.

To make your exit plan, start by asking yourself what the best, worst, and most likely case scenarios are, and be honest in your answers. Obviously, the best case scenario is that you leave, everyone accepts it, and all is well. The worst case scenario is that someone tries to prevent you from leaving — you may be harassed by missionaries or concerned churchgoers, for example. But what is the most likely case scenario? That depends on the religious community, their beliefs, and how involved you were in the first place. When making your exit plan, prepare for the most likely scenario, but have a backup plan in case the worst case scenario happens.

Once you’ve prepared yourself for the best, worst, and most likely outcomes, choose a friend, significant other, or family member who can help you make your exit. Ideally, this person is not a member of the group you are trying to leave. Their role is mainly to provide emotional support, although they may also need to be willing to run off any well-meaning missionaries who come calling. This person can also help you transition after you leave. For example, you might make a plan to get coffee with them every week during the time your old religious community holds worship services.

Finally, make your strategy for leaving. Choose a date and don’t put it off! If you have any responsibilities within the group, send in a letter of resignation. Figure out who you’ll need to have conversations with about your leaving — this will likely include any family members or close friends who are still part of the group. Schedule those conversations. Make sure to have them in public places, where people will be less likely to make a scene.

If you feel it is necessary, you may want to request that your name be removed from the group’s membership records so you don’t get emails, phone calls, or friendly visits from them in the future. You may not feel the need to do this, but if contact with the group triggers a mental health crisis, this extra step will help keep you safe.

Of course, it’s not always possible to completely cut ties with a group after leaving. You may have family members, a significant other, or close friends who are still members. If this is the case, you’ll need to establish some clear boundaries. Politely but firmly tell them that, although you’re glad their faith adds value to their lives, you are not willing to be involved in their religious activities. Let them know that this is what is best for your mental and emotional health and that you still value your relationship with them.

Try to make compromises that allow you to preserve the relationship without exposing you to a traumatic religious environment. For example, if your family is Christian and always spends all day on Christmas at church, offer to celebrate with them the day after, once their religious commitments are over.

Hopefully, your loved ones can respect these boundaries. If not, you may need to distance yourself or walk away altogether. If they are knowingly undermining your attempts to take care of yourself, they don’t deserve to be in your life.

During this time, you may find it helpful to read other people’s exit stories online or in books. One of my personal favorites is the book Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther. Hearing other people’s stories can help you remember that other people have been through similar situations and made it out on the other side. You will too.

Step Two: Seek professional help

I cannot overstate the importance of professional counseling when dealing with trauma of any kind, including religious trauma. Therapists and counselors have the benefit of professional training. They are able to be objective, since they’re approaching the situation from the outside. They can keep you from getting bogged down in your own thoughts and feelings.

I understand that not everyone has access to therapy. I am very lucky to have insurance that covers mental health counseling, but I know not everyone has that privilege. However, there are some options that make therapy more affordable.

There may be an organization in your area that offers free or low-cost therapy — if you live in the U.S., you can find information about these services by checking the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine or visiting mentalhealth.gov. You can also look for therapists who use a sliding scale for payment, which means they determine an hourly rate based on the client’s income. And finally, if you have a little bit of extra cash you may want to look into therapy apps like BetterHelp or Talkspace, which are typically cheaper than in-person therapy.

If none of those options work for you, the next best option is to join a support group. Support groups allow you to connect with other people whose experiences are similar to yours and, unlike therapy, they allow you to get advice and feedback from multiple people. These groups are often free, although some charge a small fee.

Finding the right group for you is important. You’re unlikely to find a group for people recovering from religious trauma but, depending on the nature of your trauma, you may fit right in with a grief and loss group, an addiction recovery group, or a group for adult survivors of child abuse. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you may be able to find a queer support group. (The LGBTQ+ club at my college was an invaluable resource in my recovery!) Depending on your area, you may also be able to find groups for specific mental and emotional issues like depression or anxiety.

Make sure to do your research before attending a meeting. Find out what, if anything, the group charges, who can join, and whether they use a curriculum or have unstructured sessions. See if you can find a statement about their values and philosophy. Make a note of where meetings are held and of who is running the group. Some support groups meet in churches and may or may not have a religious element to their curriculum. It’s best to avoid religious groups — the last thing you need right now is to be preached to.

Getting other people involved in your recovery will make you feel less alone and prevent you from getting stuck in your own head. A good therapist, counselor, or support group can help you realize what you need to work on and give you ideas for how to approach it.

Step Three: Deprogramming

“Deprogramming” refers to the practice of undoing brainwashing and reintroducing healthy thought patterns. This term is normally used in the context of cult survivors and their recovery, but deprogramming techniques can also be helpful for people recovering from a lifetime of toxic religious rhetoric.

To begin the process of deprogramming, familiarize yourself with the way organizations use thought control to shape the behavior of their members. I recommend starting with the work of Steven Hassan — his BITE model is a handy way to classify types of thought control.

The BITE model lays out four types of control. There’s Behavior Control, which controls what members do and how they spend their free time. (For example, requiring members to attend multiple hours-long meetings each week.) There’s Information Control, which restricts members’ access to information. (For example, denying certain aspects of the group’s history.) There’s Thought Control, which shapes the way members think. (For example, classifying certain thoughts as sinful or dirty.) And finally there’s Emotional Control, which manipulates members’ emotions. (For example, instilling fear of damnation or punishment.)

Here’s a simple exercise to get you started with your deprogramming. Divide a blank sheet of paper into four equal sections. Label one section “Behavior,” one “Information,” one “Thought,” and one “Emotions.” Now, in each section, make a list of the ways your old religious group controlled — and maybe still controls — that area of your life. Once you’ve completed your lists, choose a single item from one of your lists to work on undoing.

For example, let’s say that in your “Information” column, you’ve written that you were discouraged from reading certain books because they contained “evil” ideas. (For a lot of people, this was Harry Potter. For me, it was The Golden Compass.) Pick up one of those books, and read it or listen to it as an audiobook. Once you’ve read it, write down your thoughts. Did you enjoy it? Why or why not? Why do you think your group banned it? What was in this book that they didn’t want you to know about? Write it down.

Once you’ve worked on the first thing, choose something else. Keep going until you’ve undone all the items on your lists.

If you want to go further with deprogramming, I recommend the book Recovering Agency by Luna Lindsey. Although this book is specifically written for former Mormons, I genuinely believe it would be helpful to former members of other controlling religious groups as well. Lindsey does an excellent job of explaining how thought control works and of connecting it to real world examples, as well as deconstructing those ideas. Her book has been a huge help in my recovery process, and I highly recommend it.

Step Four: Replace toxic beliefs and practices with healthy ones

This goes hand-in-hand with step three, and if you’re already working on deprogramming then you’ll already have started replacing your unhealthy beliefs. This is the turning point in the recovery process. You’re no longer just undoing what others have done to you — now you get an opportunity to decide what you want to believe and do going forward. This is the time to let go of things like denial of your desires, fear of divine punishment, and holding yourself to unattainable standards. Get used to living in a way that makes you happy, without guilt.

Notice how each step builds on the previous steps. Therapy and deprogramming can help you identify what beliefs and behaviors need to be adjusted or replaced. Your therapist, support group, and/or emotional support person can help you make these changes and follow through on them.

These new beliefs and practices don’t have to be religious — in fact, it’s better if they aren’t. If you can live a healthy, happy, balanced life without religion, you’ll be in a better position to choose a religion that is the right fit for you, if that is something you want.

Your new healthy, non-religious practices may include: mindfulness meditation, nature walks, journaling, reading, exercise, energy work, learning a hobby or craft, or spending time with loves ones — or it might include none of these things, and that’s okay too. Now is the time to find what brings you joy and start doing it every day.

Step Five: Ritual healing

This is an optional step, but it’s one that has been deeply healing for me. You may find it helpful to design and perform a ritual to mark your recovery.

Note that when I say “ritual,” I don’t necessarily mean magic. Rituals serve a psychological purpose as well as a spiritual one. They can act as powerful symbolic events that mark a turning point in our lives or reinforce what we already know and believe. Even if you don’t believe in magic, even if you’re the least spiritual person you know, you can still benefit from ritual.

You might choose to perform a ritual to finalize your healing, or to symbolically throw off the chains of your old religion. It can be elaborate or simple, long or short, joyful or solemn. It might include lighting a candle and saying a few words. It might include ecstatic dance. It might include drawing or painting a representation of all the negative emotions associated with your old religion, then ritually destroying it. The possibilities are literally endless. (If you’re looking for ritual ideas, I recommend the book Light Magic for Dark Times by Lisa Marie Basile.)

One type of ritual that some people find very empowering is unbaptism. An unbaptism is exactly what it sounds like — the opposite of a baptism. The idea is that, if a baptism makes a Christian, an unbaptism makes someone un-Christian, no longer part of that lineage. It is a ritual rejection of Christianity. (Obviously, this only applies if you’re a former Christian, though some of the following suggestions could be adjusted to fit a rejection of other religions.)

If you’re interested in unbaptism, here are some ideas for how it could be done:

A classic method of unbaptism is to recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards under a full moon. (For a non-Christians version, use a significant prayer from whatever religion you have left.)

Run a bath. Add a tiny pinch of sulfur (a.k.a. brimstone) to the water. Get into the bath and say, “By water I was baptized, and by water my baptism is rejected.” Submerge your entire body under the water for several seconds. When you come back up, your unbaptism is complete. (You may want to shower after this one. Sulfur does not smell good.)

The Detroit Satanic Temple has a delightfully dramatic unbaptism ritual. For a DIY version, you will need holy water or some other relic from the faith you were baptized in, a fireproof dish, a black candle, and an apple or other sweet fruit. Light the candle and place it in your fireproof dish. Toss some holy water onto the flame (not enough to extinguish it) and say, “I cast my chains into the dust of hell.” Take a bite of the apple and say, “I savor the fruit of knowledge and disobedience.” Finally, declare proudly, “I am unbaptized.” You can add “in the name of Satan” at the end or leave it out, depending on your comfort level.

Personally, I’ve never felt the need to unbaptize myself. I’ve ritually rejected my Mormon upbringing in other ways. Maybe someday I’ll decide to go for the unbaptism, but I’ve never really felt like I needed it. Likewise, you’ll need to decide for yourself what ritual(s) will work for you.

Step Six: Honor your recovery

Our first reaction to trauma is to hide it away and never speak of it again. When we do this, we do ourselves a disservice. Your recovery is a part of your life story. You had the strength to walk away from a situation that was hurting you, and that deserves to be celebrated! Be proud of yourself for how far you’ve come!

You may choose to honor your recovery by celebrating an important date every year, like the day you decided to leave the group, the date of the last meeting you attended, or the date you were removed from the membership records. Keep this celebration fun and light — get drinks with friends, bake a cake for yourself, or just take a few moments to silently acknowledge your journey.

If you feel like having a party is a bit much, you can also honor your recovery by talking to other people about your experiences. Share your story with others. If you’re feeling shy, try sharing your story anonymously online. (Reddit has several forums specifically for anonymous stories.) You’ll be amazed by how validating it can be to tell people what you’ve been through. `

Another way to honor your recovery is to work for personal and religious freedom for all people. Protest laws with religious motivations. Donate to organizations that campaign for the separation of church and state. Educate people about how to recognize an unhealthy religious organization. Let your own story motivate you to help others who are in similar situations.

And most of all, take joy in your journey. Be proud of yourself for how far you’ve come, but know that your recovery is a lifelong journey. Be gentle and understanding with yourself. You are doing what is right for you, and no god or spirit worthy of worship could ever be upset by that.

[imaginesforjohnnydepp]

Damaged Goods (Johnny Depp x fem reader)

for anon @kittenlittle24 @evelynrosestuff

“You are enough just as you are”--- Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

WARNINGS: mentions of self doubt, therapy

Johnny shifted uncomfortably on the brown leather couch. His new therapist, a woman with brown skin and dark curly hair sat in a chair in front of him, legs crossed, her pen flying across a legal pad bound in black leather. If there was one thing Johnny hated, it’s opening himself up to other people, especially strangers, but here he is, basically telling his entire life story for what had to be the millionth time to his therapist Heather, the therapist you recommended to him; Johnny waited for Heather to finish jotting down notes before she continued: “So tell me about your relationship to Y/N. You’ve known her for over thirty years? So far it sounds like she’s been a constant in your life.” Johnny stopped his movement as he tried to think of the words to describe the relationship between you two. Yes, you’ve known each other for over three decades, have stuck by each other through every major life event: marriages, divorces, parenthood, and everything in between.

Your lives were so intertwined with each other it was hard to tell when one left off and the other began. He loves you, of course he does, but he didn’t know what kind of love he felt for you until very recently. While there were some moments of the more-than-friends variety, nothing ever happened, and now Johnny wished something had happened because it would mean he wouldn’t have married her. Johnny looked up into Heather’s waiting eyes. Waiting for an answer.

“Y/N’s my... friend.” At this point, Johnny knew that Heather sensed the hesitation in his answer, how it took just about thirty seconds just to come up with a response, but she just nodded, pen in hand, scribbling on the pad. “So I take it you never told her how you feel?” All he could do was shake his head no; Johnny didn’t think he could ever go through with it. He’d think you would only see him as a friend, and he didn’t think of himself to be good enough for you.

After another forty five minutes, the session was over and Heather gave him a bit of “homework” to do: talk to you about his romantic feelings for you, he wouldn’t know unless he said something. Once at home, he checked the time, deciding on the best hour to call you, and if he called now, Johnny would probably catch you on a break. Like everyone else in the world, you were learning how to adjust on how to work for home, but thankfully you answered on the third ring. Meanwhile, you were holed up in your apartment, trying to cool off from an argument you had with a coworker on Zoom about a rough draft of an article you finished late last night. Some of it touched up on the ruling of Johnny’s UK trial, not all of it, but you and this coworker could not come to an agreement.

In an effort to calm down, you decided to run a few errands. You were putting away the few groceries you picked up when your phone rang, you let it ring twice to see who was calling and picked up on the third when you saw it was Johnny; he was probably calling to tell you how his first therapy session went. “Hey you! How’d it go today?” You had recommended Heather to him yourself; you went to her in the late nineties when you became a single parent and she proved to be a great help. “It went pretty good. She gave me a bit of homework,” he replied and you could hear the air quotes around homework in his voice.

“What kind of homework?” You’d done a similar exercise when you went to Heather. She made you do journal entries which would be reviewed every session and helped you find a support system so you could connect with other people in your situation. “Actually, she wanted me to talk to you. You came up a few times.” You put away a box of your favorite cereal and a package of coffee before sitting down on the couch.

The words just started pouring out of him, you’ve been friends for over thirty years, and that he’s in love with you, and how you deserved so much better than him and can do so much better than him. He just had to get this off his chest. Johnny kept going on and on about being “damaged goods”. In that instant you started seeing red. Johnny really believed that he wasn’t good enough, started to believe every online article that tore into him.

Most of all you hated Ashley* who planted those seeds in his head in the first place and you could still hear her voice in those recordings. You felt like punching something or someone. “Johnny, listen to me. You are not damaged goods or whatever the fuck she told you. You are good enough and I’m going to keep telling you that until it sticks in your head. Do you understand me? You are wonderful, perfect, stunning, beautiful, the absolute complete opposite of what she said. You, Johnny Depp, you are enough as you are, and I love you. I always will. Now get your ass over here so I can tell you all of this to your face.” You could practically see the smile creeping on his face as he answered, “I’m on my way. And Y/N? I love you.” You smiled and answered back, “I love you too Johnny.”

[drabbles-of-writing]

Can we get more new age shenanigans of Luz and the detective/journalist?

ask and you 2 shall receive

Eda, chugging spiked apple blood: hows the detective stuff going Luz, face-down on the floor: I’m so going to get the FBI called on me Eda: welcome to the club!

the townsfolk have no idea of Luz’s Masterful Avoiding The Authorities Plan so when interviewed they give Very blunt and honest answers all confused like “you didn’t know this?? it happens all the time” meanwhile Luz keeps insisting that the crackhead shit the townsfolk is telling everyone wasnt THAT bad.

Detective: so the locals say your often seen with a group ranging between eight to eleven individuals. who are they, exactly? Luz, hanging upside down on her chair and without a care in the world: 🎶and I’ve got friends on the other siiiiide🎶 Detective: what does that even MEAN

since Luz is no help whatsoever and threatening her with legal action doesn’t do shit, the detective decided to spy on Luz to try and learn what kind of people shes associating with. in the first two nights he’s learned of four of her friends. a guy who appears to be excited about absolutely everything and not understanding social norms, another guy with green hair whos just as crackheaded as Luz but twice as sweet, a woman with a fishhook earring that everyone apparently fears getting pummeled by, and a dog with a smooshed in face that seems to communicate like any other canine but somehow Luz seems to understand what hes saying. he brings this evidence to Luz and demands answers n she just shrugs n goes “oh them? yeah they’re my friends. met them in the cult n they escaped with me” n ofc the detective then asks if he can see them for interviews and is momentarily unnerved when Luz laughs at him and is then thoroughly annoyed when she responds with “most of them wouldn’t go near you with a fifteen foot pole. the rest would give even more confusing answers than me” and left it at that.

the Detective at one point showed up at Camila’s house to ask her a few questions and was VERY thrown off-guard to open the door and see an old lady with rats-nest of hair just Hangin on the couch. they held eye-contact for a few seconds before she bolted out the nearest window. Camila ofc had to answer a few questions but her rule is that if the questions aren’t specific, she won’t give full answers. so he leaves basically only knowing that her name is Eda and shes Camila’s kind-of-gf and thats it. later overhears Luz complaining under her breath “damnit, moms gonna kill me” and turns out Eda is also her mother in a sense so that was some stuff for the Detective to piece together.

Luz is having a Rough Day w the Detective and is very clearly being a Dumbass In Distress™ and Amity basically Teleports over. since the Detective knows little to nothing about Amity (other than she hangs w Luz’s group), considering shes often too busy to visit the human realm, he IMMEDIATELY nabs her and starts shooting off endless questions. Amity works as a Council advisor and dealt w Lilith & Eda a lot so, you best believe she took it all in stride. He also notes a fancy ring shes wearing. Detective: are you married? Amity, oblivious to Luz trying not to laugh yeah?? obv Detective: may I ask who your husband is? Amity, who has had to hear questions like this since Forever, grabbing the Wheezing Luz n holdin her close: well I don’t have a husband, so my wife will have to do Detective: I- Detective @ Luz: YOUR MARRIED??  Luz, smug: I literally have a ring, dude Detective: well yeah but it has those funky designs on it!!! and your covered in odd tattoos n weird ear piercings!!!! I thought you were just being fancy!! Luz: its on my fucking ring finger

anyway needless to say the Detective bugged Amity a LOT about interviews upon learning this dumbass he deals with is somehow married to a rather sophisticated and put-together woman. Amity is very Elusive however and its a miracle in of itself if anyone can nab her for questioning. the Detective just stared @ Luz like “how tf did you get legally married??” n Luz calmly explains it was a good few years after she came back to the town and about a year or two before she started up the public appearances. so THEN the Detective had to figure out that Luz had been in the town long before the police had ever known, Camila was aware, Luz had been busy with something before now she wouldn’t disclose, and despite the fact she had no legal records whatsoever even after she came to the town she got married and has a marriage certificate, albeit written in a way the Detective had never seen before. Luz is lowkey enjoying him lose his mind trying to figure this out