#Jane Austen the woman who probably had to reject her own love of her life for similar reasons did not write for you to do this

[sailforvalinor]

If this is how Hollywood is gonna treat Anne Elliot, they better not even GLANCE at my girl Fanny

[lostbbygorl]

SECOND CHANCES (LEVI X F! READER):

AU: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE BY JANE AUSTEN

~~~~

The breeze was cool. Just what Y/N L/N needed to clear her head after all the drama that had happened prior to this moment! Christa and Mr. Smith had split up, Mr. Ackerman confessed his love and desire to marry Y/N only to get rejected, and Y/N learned the truth about someone she greatly respected. Christa was in Ermich, on a much deserving holiday, whereas Y/N was in Utgard, the enemy base! But was he, Mr. Ackerman, really an enemy anymore? He had opened her eyes, and his motives may have caused damage, but Y/N would’ve done the same thing, right?

Y/N rested her head on the gazebo tree towering over her. She silently marveled at the beauty of Utgard river. The water was clear and glimmering under the sun’s golden rays. Small flowers of the brightest hues peeked from emerald bushes of fresh grass. On occasion, baby butterflies, amber and sapphire in color, would flutter by, sitting on the flowers. The smell of nature and strawberry jam had distracted Y/N from the fear of running into Mr. Ackerman for a good 1 hour. That’s right, strawberry jam!

“ Y/N, dear, you’ve hardly touched any of the food. You suggested we have a picnic. Are you devoid of an appetite?”, Y/N’s uncle, Mr. Theo Magath asked.

“ Oh no, I’ve eaten loads”

“ Have some more scones, you’ve gotten thinner since the last time we met, darling”, her aunt, Mrs. Lucy Magath joined.

Y/N quietly nibbled on a scone.

“ Y/N, is something troubling you?”, her aunt asked.

“ Not at all”, Y/N lied.

“ Don’t try that tosh with me, missy. I can see right through you. You’ve been terribly quiet this whole trip! I won’t pester you any further, but just know that your auntie is willing to listen to you, should you desire to seek me out, okay?”, her auntie soothed, to which she hummed as a response.

“ Say, Lucy, doesn’t Mr. Levi Ackerman live around here?”, Mr. Magath suddenly asked, getting Y/N’s attention.

“ He resides in Utgard castle, about 10 minutes walking distance from here, yes”, Mrs. Magath answered.

“ I hear there’s certain wings in Utgard castle that’s open for visitors. I also hear that the Ackermans have a magnificent lake absolutely brimming with salmon, and I’ve a good mind to see it”, Mr. Magath said. Y/N was uneasy. Anywhere but Utgard castle!

“ Please, can we not?”, she pleaded.

“ Why, dear? Is it because you know Mr. Ackerman? Is he a nasty man?”, her auntie implored.

“ No, it’s just that-”, she stuttered, shaking her head. He’s not so nasty, she thought.

“ It’s just that he’s so-”

“ So what?”, her uncle questioned.

“ He’s so rich”, Y/N said weakly. Her uncle and auntie frowned in confusion. What had gotten into their niece?

“ Now, Y/N. Don’t be a snob! Refusing to see Utgard castle or Mr. Ackerman because of his riches that he didn’t ask for”, Mr. Magath joked. His wife chuckled, but his niece still looked uneasy.

“ Oh, come on now, dear. I’m really eager to go! Besides, I bet a rich man like Mr. Ackerman has business in Ermich. He’s probably not home at the moment”, Mr. Magath argued. And so, the trio walked to Utgard castle. Mr. and Mrs. Magath gossiped on their way to the castle, but Y/N remained quiet, hoping with all her might that Mr. Ackerman wasn’t home.

Once she reached the castle though, a majority of Y/N’s worries vanished. The colossal building was white with dark blue painted towers. Some of the windows were made of stained glass. The trio walked towards the wing open for visitors. A short, plump, middle aged woman greeted them warmly. She had sparkling brown eyes, and white streaks in her auburn hair.

“ Welcome, visitors, to Utgard castle. I’m your host, Martha Somserset”, she beamed.

“ Utgard castle has been the home of the Ackerman family for many generations. Currently, it’s the residence of Mr. Levi Ackerman and his younger sister, Ms. Isabel Ackerman”.

The maid cheerfully guided them through the castle, showing them all the most popular sites. To say that the interior was beautiful would be a gross understatement! Red velvet curtains hung above the large windows, and the marble floors gleamed under the light of a massive crystal chandelier. Ceramic vases boasted expensive flowers, and every wall held an impressive oil painting. The paintings were of previous members of the Ackerman family. Y/N chuckled to herself, noticing that all of Levi’s ancestors had the same serious expression as he did, all except one. Only one painting had a smiling subject. The painting was of a slim, elegant, raven haired woman. Her aura was warm, and she strikingly resembled Levi.

“ Ah, admiring the late Mrs. Ackerman, are we”, Martha smiled. Y/N nodded.

“ This is Mrs. Kuchel Ackerman. She was Levi’s mother, and a breath of fresh air indeed”, Martha said fondly. Y/N found herself smiling too! Who would've thought a man like Levi had such an amiable mother?

“ Mrs. Ackerman was very close with her son. Levi was absolutely shattered when she passed. He hasn’t been the same since”, Martha explained.

“ Levi takes after his father more, but he has his mother’s golden heart. I assisted Mrs. Ackerman with Levi’s delivery, same with Isabel”, she continued.

“ Levi is a perfect gentleman. Never once has he mistreated a servant. He’s so independent, always cleaning up after himself no matter how much I tell him to leave his dirty work to me”, Martha chuckled. Y/N was absolutely shocked! Was Martha talking about a different Levi? She knew that Levi wasn’t as bad as she made him out to be, but was he really this good?

“ Anyways, enough of my blabbering! Let me show you people the statue room”, Martha interrupted Y/N’s thoughts. The young girl felt butterflies erupt in her stomach! The same sense of affection and giddiness she felt back when she read his letter returned- this time with much more force!

The statue room was a sight to see indeed! Incredibly realistic sculptures made of Parian marble filled the room. All the statues were of members of the Ackerman family, and some of them were hundreds of years old. But the statue that caught Y/N’s eyes the most was a life sized one of Levi.

“ This one is of Mr. Levi Ackerman. Isn’t he handsome?"Martha gushed.

“ Yes, I suppose he is”, Y/n replied with a fond gaze and rosy blush.

The more she wandered the castle and heard Martha’s praises of Levi, the more her affection for him grew. At one point, Y/N got lost in the castle as she had wandered off on her own. Y/N was trying to find her way back to the group when all of a sudden, beautiful piano notes started playing, stupefying her and luring her to its direction. The music was a soft, soothing melody so well played, Y/N had goosebumps. As if in a trance, Y/N walked towards its source, stopping in front of a large wooden door that was open just a crack. She peeked through the crack, noticing slender, fair fingers press on the keys of the piano. She peeked further, now seeing a full figure. The pianist was a girl with fiery red hair tied in a ponytail. She had amber eyes, and was about Sasha’s age. Her gown was a lacy ivory one. Suddenly she stopped playing and got up from her seat.

“ Levi!”, she squeaked in delight, jumping at the man, startling him.

Levi twirled her around- and smiled! Y/N had never seen him do that before! She didn’t even know he was capable of it!

“ Hello, Isabel”, he patted her back affectionately.

“ Yes, hello, brother. But first tell me who that girl is peeking at us from outside the door”, Isabel demanded. Y/N widened her eyes as she made contact with Levi. Without much thought, she sprinted to the exit of the castle. I’m not ready to see him yet, she chanted in her head as she ran. She panted outside the castle, totally out of breath. To her dismay, she heard footsteps catch up with her, and then stop behind her.

“ Ms. L/N. It’s a pleasure to see you again”, came Levi’s voice.

“ Um, yes, hello, Mr. Ackerman”, Y/N replied awkwardly.

“ Sir, please don’t be offended by my presence outside the piano room. I had no idea you and your sister would be there and Ms. Martha said this place was open for visitors-”, she began frantically.

“ I’m not bothered by it at all, ma’am”, Levi cut her off.

“ I’m just glad to see you here. And yes, some parts of the castle are open for visitors. I hope Utgard castle impressed you”, he said.

“ Oh, yes! You have a lovely home. Actually, I came with my uncle and auntie. They’ll be out in a minute”, she explained.

“ Levi, who’s this? Are you alright?”Isabel's voice interrupted them. She walked up to the duo.

“ Yes, Isabel. Isabel, meet Ms. Y/N L/N”, Levi introduced. Isabel’s eyes started twinkling, and she pleasantly shook hands with Y/N.

“ Ms. L/N, it’s so wonderful to finally meet you”, Isabel said.

“ Levi has told me so many good things about you. My, you’re just as beautiful as he had described to me”, she giggled cheekily. Both Levi and Y/N started blushing.

“ He said you’re the smartest and most interesting lady he’s ever been acquainted with. He also says you play the piano better than anyone else he knows”, she continued smirking.

“ Isabel, shut up”, Levi hissed in her ear, causing her smirk to intensify.

“ Oh my! I had no idea Mr. Levi enjoyed my terrible playing so deeply. He was joking, Ms. Isabel”, Y/N laughed, hiding her nervousness.

“ My brother doesn’t joke about such things. I insist you play with me this evening”, Isabel returned

“ Y/N, there you are!”, Mr. Magath exclaimed, running towards her.

“ We were looking all over for you”

“ Sorry, uncle, I was lost. Uncle, meet Mr. Ackerman”

“ Nice to meet you sir, please call me Levi”, Levi bowed. Y/N had never seen him this polite before. She expected him to curtly nod and be on his way. Isabel curtseyed and introduced herself before talking with Mrs. Magath.

“ A fine home you have indeed, Levi. I just saw your lake. Me and my wife are most impressed by it”, Mr. Magath complimented.

“ I’m glad you enjoyed your trip here. The lakes have recently been filled with grown salmon. Can I persuade you to go fishing with me later this afternoon?”Levi requested. Mr. Magath enthusiastically nodded.

“ Splendid. I’m inviting your whole family to Utgard castle for lunch and tea. Isabel and Y/N can play the piano, and you and I can fish with Mrs. Magath”, he said.

“ Oh, you boys go fish by yourselves. I’ll be with Ms. Martha”, Mrs. Magath said.

“ See you at 1:30 PM. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some business to see. Lovely chatting with you all”, Levi bowed again, lingering on Y/N before walking back to the castle, his arms linked with Isabel’s. Y/N couldn’t stop grinning even after he left. He sure had changed for the better! And this time around, Y/N didn’t force herself to see only his flaws. She was beginning to return Levi’s feelings! Levi had taken every criticism Y/N had made to heart. He vowed to improve himself. And so, even though he was awfully nervous and not used to such spontaneity at all, he made conversation with complete strangers and invited them to his home. Anything to see Y/N. Anything to spend time with her. Anything to win her over.

The afternoon wasn’t awkward at all, much to Levi and Y/N’s surprise. Levi and Mr. Magath were getting along famously, and Mrs. Magath was laughing with Ms. Martha. Isabel reminded Y/N of her younger sisters at home- and of herself! She was a bright, cheeky young girl with a fondness for music. Soon, the duo talked to each other as if they were old friends!

That night, Y/N went to bed with a smile on her face.

[badly-done-indeed]

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Edited by June Sturrock, Broadview Press, 2003. 

In last week’s post, I criticized Fanny Price for not having a backbone. I maintain that position, but something interesting happens as we move toward the novel’s close: Fanny starts developing the backbone she has been lacking, and she is criticized for that, as she is criticized for everything. Below is her uncle Sir Thomas’s explosive reaction to Fanny’s refusal of Henry Crawford’s proposal of marriage:

“‘I had thought you peculiarly free from wilfulness of temper, self-conceit, and every tendency to that independence of spirit which prevails so much in modern days, even in young women, and which in young women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offence. But you have now shewn me that you can be wilful and perverse; that you can and will decide for yourself, without any consideration or deference for those who have surely some right to guide you, without even asking their advice. You have shewn yourself very, very different from anything that I had imagined. The advantage or disadvantage of your family, of your parents, your brothers and sisters, never seems to have had a moment’s share in your thoughts on this occasion. How they might be benefited, how they must rejoice in such an establishment for you, is nothing to you. You think only of yourself, and because you do not feel for Mr. Crawford exactly what a young heated fancy imagines to be necessary for happiness, you resolve to refuse him at once, without wishing even for a little time to consider of it, a little more time for cool consideration, and for really examining your own inclinations; and are, in a wild fit of folly, throwing away from you such an opportunity of being settled in life, eligibly, honourably, nobly settled, as will, probably, never occur to you again. Here is a young man of sense, of character, of temper, of manners, and of fortune, exceedingly attached to you, and seeking your hand in the most handsome and disinterested way; and let me tell you, Fanny, that you may live eighteen years longer in the world without being addressed by a man of half Mr. Crawford’s estate, or a tenth part of his merits.’” (volume III, chapter 32, pages 323-324)

Now, we don’t have time to unpack all of that, but let’s try. First and foremost, I think it’s laughable that Sir Thomas is so convinced that Fanny has all these good and virtuous personality traits. Do I think she’s a good sort of young woman? Sure -- she’s arguably the most morally upright and conservative of Austen’s heroines. But who in this house, excepting perhaps Edmund, can claim to know Fanny at all? She rarely speaks unless spoken to (which, disgustingly enough, was a positive trait at this time), and she certainly doesn’t speak up to contradict anyone when she does get the courage to speak. Functionally, she’s a doormat, and Sir Thomas has assigned these virtues to her because she has never given him any reason to suppose her otherwise -- but she has never given hardly any of her family the chance to know her true self at all.

I think it’s also important to talk about money here. Sir Thomas seems to measure happiness only in wealth. He cannot fathom why Fanny wouldn’t immediately accept this match with Henry Crawford that would prove so advantageous to her family. Fanny is a smart woman, so I’m sure that most of what Sir Thomas is saying has crossed her mind during the process of Henry Crawford trying to woo her, even before he formally proposed. But because she is smart, she knows that Henry is not a man to be trusted, that he is only trying to win her affections to prove a point and does not genuinely care for her. He has charmed just about the entire Bertram family, and in Sir Thomas’s eyes he can do no wrong (at least at this point in volume III -- boy, is he in for a shock later!). Sir Thomas continues to rant about how disappointed he is in Fanny until she’s sobbing in front of him. 

A part of the reason Fanny rejects Henry, though I’m not sure how big a part, is that she is in love with Edmund. Her love for another coupled with her distrust of the one trying to win her heart for fun is a strong enough force to reject Henry. Would she have had the nerve to do it had she not been so attached to Edmund? Who’s to say? I’m not sure how strong Fanny’s backbone is at this point in the novel, but at least by its end she has one.

[sheofthebookandsong]

Jane Austen Characters Who Deserved Better

I am having myself an Austen day while in lockdown, so here I shall present to you a list of all the Austen characters who deserved much better than they got in the narrative (yes some of these may be controversial):

(1) Colonel Brandon - The age gap with Marianne may have been a tad creepy, but this man is still a selfless sweetheart who deserved better than Marianne settling for him as her second choice. 

(2) Charlotte Lucas - She marries Collins. COLLINS. Need I say more?

(3) Lydia Bennett - You can all fight me on this one. Is she thoughtless? Yes. Selfish? Yes. Immature? Yes. But she is also 15, has had awful parenting so is lacking in good role models, and at the end of the day she is just as much Wickham’s victim as Georgiana was. Poor girl’s gonna be stuck in an awful marriage forever because of stupid decisions she made as a teenager. 

(4) Fanny Price - She’s not only the heroine but also literally the only likeable character in Mansfield Park. And she marries her idiot cousin Edmund, who she thinks she’s in love with because (a) he’s the only person who’s ever bothered to be even mildly nice to her, and (b) she’s seen nothing of the world. Plus, he fails to even notice her romantically until about the last three pages of the book, because it takes him that long to notice that Mary Crawford is Bad News, which Fanny has known THE ENTIRE TIME. Seriously, get this girl somebody who’ll give her all the love and appreciation she truly deserves. And who can give her a good orgasm without it being creepy AF because he’s her COUSIN. 

(5) Miss Bates - We all know Emma has a mean streak, and that Miss Bates can be overly talkative and annoying, but at the end of the day Miss Bates is not only harmless, but she goes out of her way to try and help people and be a sweetheart. And Emma publicly humiliated her. I think my True Austen Love Knightley sums it up best: ‘Badly done, Emma.’ 

(6) Anne Elliot - She made a mistake turning Wentworth down. She screwed up big time. And she knows it. She lives with that mistake for eight YEARS, eight years in which she’s largely ignored and taken advantage of by her shallow, selfish family, eight years in which she sinks into melancholy and worries that she’s completely missed her chance - yet still she does her best to take care of everyone around her, even when she’s given no thanks or appreciation at all. Thank god she, unlike most of these characters, got the PROPER happy ending with her soulmate that she deserved. She got her second chance. 

(7) Mrs Smith - This woman had to suffer SUCH a fall from grace; widowed, very ill and sunk into poverty on the death of her spendthrift, irresponsible husband, and betrayed and refused financial assistance by somebody she had considered a close friend. And yet, she somehow manages to remain optimistic and gracious. What a legend.

(8) Bonus: Young Stringer from ITV’s adaptation of Sanditon, played by the wonderful Leo Suter - This one doesn’t really count because the series is very loosely based on Austen’s work and Stringer is more Andrew Davies’s creation than Austen’s. Nevertheless, Stringer is a pure, kindhearted, ambitious and talented architect, determined to become a self-made man, much in the same vein as Persuasion’s Captain Wentworth. And instead of a happy ending, he got rejected by the woman he fell in love with, and had his hopes and dreams destroyed when the town he had worked on so hard went up in flames, taking his beloved father’s life with it - and while they were mid-argument as well. He may not truly be Austen’s character, but NOBODY deserved better, or was treated worse. JUSTICE FOR STRINGER.

And I love Catherine Morland with all my heart and probably relate to her more than any other Austen character - but even I have to admit that all of the characters in Northanger Abbey are utterly ridiculous and cause all of their problems with their own stupidity. 

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk - sorry it got a bit long but I have a lot of feelings XD Let me know if there’s anyone I’ve missed out, or if you want to fight me on any of these, and I shall be more than happy to oblige!

P.S. I will forever love and stan Jane Austen - but not only did she hurt all of these characters (ok, except for Stringer), but she also publicly dissed the wonderful and badass Paget family. So I have learnt to take everything she said with a large pinch of salt. #ProtectThePagets

[claudia1829things]

"LITTLE WOMEN" (2017) Review

"LITTLE WOMEN" (2017) Review There have been a good number of adaptations of Louisa May Alcott's 1868-69 novel, "Little Women". Although it was not the first adaptation ever made, the first one I had ever seen was the two-part 1978 miniseries that aired on NBC. But the most recent adaptation I have seen also aired on television. It was Heidi Thomas' three-part miniseries that aired on the BBC in 2017.

For some reason "LITTLE WOMEN" - or at least this adaptation - has failed to win any acclaim in compare to the 1994 and 2019 movies. At least with the American press. The British press, on the other hand, seemed very impressed by Heidi Thomas' adaptation. Frankly, this situation seems like a case of national pride - a British television producer adapting a famous American novel. As for the American press - what can I say? Was this version of "LITTLE WOMEN" really that mediocre? Or was this a case of American journalists resenting the very British Heidi Thomas adapting Alcott's novel? I certainly had some quibbles regarding "LITTLE WOMEN". In an effort to be more politically correct, the miniseries featured two minor African-American characters - a badly wounded Union soldier and a wig maker in Concord, Massachusetts. I had no problems with the wig maker's presence. But I definitely had a problem with the presence of the wounded black soldier being nursed by Mr. March, the four protagonists' father, during the miniseries' first half hour. "LITTLE WOMEN" began right before Christmas 1861. The Union Army did not begin recruiting black soldiers until the mid-July 1862. The 2017 miniseries also featured another historical blooper. Sometime during the second episode, one of the characters mentioned the Battle of Ball's Bluff being recently fought. This is impossible, considering the battle was actually fought at least two months before the story began. I had a few other quibbles regarding "LITTLE WOMEN". As much as I had enjoyed his performances as the March family's neighbor, Mr. March, I must admit that I found Michael Gambon's American accent rather sketchy. Thomas made a mistake that many other adaptations made - she allowed one actress, namely Kathryn Newton, to portray the youngest March sibling, Amy. Newton is an excellent actress, but there were times when she seemed a bit too old to be portraying a pre-teen and later early teens Amy. The 1949 MGM movie allowed Amy, as portrayed by the 16-17 year-old Elizabeth Taylor, to be older than Beth. The production barely got away with this. But only the 1994 movie had cast two actresses to portray Amy - Kirsten Dunst (who was roughly 11 to 12 years old when that movie was shot) and later, Samantha Mathis. One last problem - or should I say quibble - bothered me about "LITTLE WOMEN". Hairstyles. Especially the hairstyles worn by one Josephine "Jo" March. I understand that Jo is considered the "tomboy" of the March family. And I could understand the casual or loose style in which she wore her hair during the first half of the story . . . and inside the family home. But there were times when she wore her hair in a similar manner when she was outside. And "tomboy" or not, I just cannot see Jo being so relaxed with her hair - at least not in public and not during the 1860s. Sometimes, I feel that this effort to portray Jo as a "free spirit" went a little too far. The American press had more problems with "LITTLE WOMEN". The main theme behind their dissatisfaction seemed to be criticisms of the production's "faithful" adaptation of Alcott's novel. In other words, the miniseries is a stridently conservative adaptation. It lacked - at least according to Sonia Sariya of "Vanity Fair" magazine - progress. Critics accused the miniseries of following Alcott's novel by allowing all of the sisters to adhere to the social dictates of mid-century United States. As I write this, I am trying to so hard not to punch my fist through my computer screen or scream in frustration. "LITTLE WOMEN" is an adaptation of a novel that was published in 1868, not 1968 or 2018. Or perhaps they were pissed that Jo ended up married to Professor Bhaer, which did not happen in Alcott's original ending (before it was changed). I keep forgetting that many of today's feminists believe that the only way a woman can achieve her dream or be "fulfilled" is by avoiding matrimony altogether. I also find it odd that none of these critics have demanded the same fate for the protagonists featured in any of the Jane Austen adaptations, including the recent movie, "EMMA". So, why dump this nonsense on this particular production? Because it was a British adaptation . . . of an American novel? I came away with the feeling that the overreaching theme for "LITTLE WOMEN" seemed to be personal self-satisfaction for its four major protagonists. This adaptation featured the first time Elizabeth "Beth" March, third and most reserved sister, being portrayed as someone who suffered from social anxiety disorder, instead of mere shyness. I had once come across an article on the Internet that claimed the recent 2019 movie adaptation had finally done justice to the youngest March sister and not portray her as a villain. I could only shake my head in confusion. I have never regarded Amy as a villain. Certainly not in this or any of the other adaptation of "Little Women". Yes, Amy could be vain, coddled and a bit spiteful. But she had to struggle to overcome some of her negative traits and at the same time, develop into a strong-minded woman who knew what she wanted in life - to become an artist and live a life beyond genteel poverty. The same could be said for the oldest March sister, Margaret "Meg". She starts out as a young woman, who is already regarded as ideal in the story. Some have criticized Meg for her desire for domestic bliss. Superficially, I believe there is nothing wrong with this. After all, it is a woman's right to choose what she wants in life. However, like Amy, Meg also harbored a desire to be both socially acceptable and wealthy. I never had a problem with Amy attaining this position, because I have always suspected she was emotionally suited to such a lifestyle. I believe Meg was a different story. I believe Meg had to learn to attain her desire for domestic bliss in a way that suited her, instead of Amy. And she had to realize that kowtowing to her great-Aunt March's demands for all of the March sisters to marry the "right men" (namely wealthy) and take their places within the upper-classes was not the way. At least for her. Meg's encounter with Laurie's British upper-class friends, the Vaughns, may have finally allowed her to question her previous desire to be socially acceptable. While viewing this miniseries, it had occurred to me that Josephine "Jo" March might the most complicated of the four sisters. Many admire Jo for her artistic ambitions to be a writer and her independent spirit. But I thought Heidi Thomas did an excellent job in conveying how Jo can sometimes be her own worst enemy. Despite her ambition to be a novelist, she was willing to waste her literary talents to create cheap melodramas to help support the family. Initially, I saw nothing wrong with this. However, Jo seemed doomed to continue wasting her talent with writing cheap melodramas. She probably would have continued this path if her parents and Professor Bhaer had not encouraged to take a chance and embrace her true artistic potential. Another aspect of this production that really impressed me was how Heidi Thomas made Jo's rejection of Laurie's marriage proposal more plausible. Clearer. This was especially apparent in scenes that featured Jo's quiet rejections of Laurie's romantic overtures, her final rejection of his marriage proposal and her conversation with her mother on why Laurie could never be the right husband for her. But it is obvious that Jo's biggest problem was her fear of losing her family - not only to death, but also to love and marriage. This explained her hostile attitude toward Meg's romance with John Brooke. Jo seemed to be afraid of growing up. And she seemed to dread that growing up would eventually mean losing her sisters. "LITTLE WOMEN" features some differences from Alcott's novel. Did these changes hurt the miniseries' narrative? Well, I some issues with Thomas' erroneous mentions of historical events of the Civil War. On the hand, I thought her portrayal of Beth suffering from social anxiety disorder was something of a masterstroke. The miniseries did not feature a great deal of Alcott's religious additions to the story . . . something I did not miss. There were other aspects from Alcott's story that was also missing - the family newspaper, the Pickwick Club, and the sisters' amateur dramatics. But honestly? I did not miss them. Earlier, I had criticized some of the hairstyles worn by actress Maya Hawke, during her portrayal of Jo March. However, I certainly cannot criticize Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh's costume designs. I do not regard them as among the best 1860s costumes I have seen on television or in the movies. But I thought they were pretty solid, as shown in the image below:

Knowing that this adaptation of Alcott's novel was a British production, I thought Susie Cullen's production designs did a first-rate job in converting the Ireland locations into mid-19th century Massachusetts, New York City and Great Britain. Considering the miniseries was shot in Ireland, perhaps Ms. Cullen's job proved to be easier than I had originally assumed. I certainly enjoyed Piers McGrail's photography for the miniseries. I found it beautiful, thanks to the colorful and sharp images. One of the best aspects of "LITTLE WOMEN" - at least for me - proved to be its cast. The 2017 miniseries featured solid performances from supporting players that include Julian Morris as John Brooke, Meg March's future husband; Helen Methven as the March family's housekeeper Hannah; Adrian Scarborough as Amy’s teacher, Mr. Davis; Kathleen Warner Yeates as Aunt Carroll; Richard Pepple as a local Concord wigmaker; along with Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Mei Bignall as the visiting Vaughn siblings. But there were supporting performances that impressed me. Dylan Baker gave the most memorable portrayal of Mr. March, the sisters' father, I have seen on-screen. It helped that his character was never in danger of being pushed to the background, unlike other adaptations I have seen. Mark Stanley gave a very charming and intelligent performance as Professor Bhaer, the German scholar whom Jo befriended while working as a governess in New York City. Stanley made it very easy for me to see how Jo would find Professor Bhaer so attractive. I really enjoyed Angela Landsbury's portrayal of Mr. March's aunt, Aunt March. The actress did such a marvelous job in conveying the character's forthright and controlling nature. Michael Gambon's portrayal of the Marches' neighbor, the elderly Mr. Laurence. Gambon did an excellent job of developing the character from a reserved and forbidding man grieving over a recently deceased child to a wise and compassionate friend and grandparent. If I had to choose my favorite on-screen Mrs. March aka "Marmee" I have seen, the honor would go to Emily Watson. I really enjoyed how Watson portrayed Marmee as this wise, yet pragmatic woman struggling to keep her family together. Another excellent performance came from Jonah Hauer-King, the story's "boy-next-door" who became a close friend of the March sisters. I cannot deny that Hauer-King gave one of the most complex performances in the miniseries. He did an excellent job in conveying the positive aspects of Laurie's personality - including his charm and loyalty to the March famiy; and the character's more negative aspects - namely his impatience, his inability to understand Jo's intellectual pursuits and his own quick temper. Naturally, I had to turn my attention to the four actresses who portrayed the March sisters. Thanks to Thomas, actress Annes Elwy was given the opportunity to portray the reserved Beth March from the prospective of one suffering from social anxiety disorder. And Elway did an excellent job of conveying Beth's emotional disorder and the struggles she endured to overcome it. Earlier, I had complained that Kathryn Newton was too old to portray Amy March during the first two years of the war. And I stand by this complaint. But I cannot deny that I ended up enjoying Newton's performance of the ambiguous Amy anyway. And I am thankful she did not make the mistake of exaggerating her performance to portray a character seven to eight years younger - something that many actors and actresses tend to do. Someone had once complained that Willa Fitzgerald's portrayal of the oldest March sister, seemed "too mature". And I do not understand this complaint. Meg was not only the oldest sibling, but possessed a personality that led her to occasionally behave like a "quasi parent" to her younger sisters. And Fitzgerald did a first-rate job in portraying his aspect of Meg's personality and her role within the March family hierarchy. As for Maya Hawke - questionable hairstyle aside - I truly enjoyed her performance as the story's main protagonist, the artistic and tomboyish Josephine "Jo" March. She did a superb job in capturing the many complex textures of Jo's personality. More importantly, Hawke also did an excellent job of developing Jo from this gawky and outgoing personality to someone forced to grow into adulthood - even if a little reluctantly. It is a pity that Hawke's performance was never acknowledge with an acting nomination of any kind. In fact, it is a pity that very few have been able to truly appreciate this adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel. The three-part miniseries seemed to be overshadowed by two recent adaptations - Gillian Armstrong's 1994 film and Greta Gerwig's 2019 production. I am not putting these two films down. But as far as I am concerned, Heidi Thomas' miniseries strikes me as worthy as those two films. In fact, I feel it is just as worthy as other adaptations of the novel - including the 1933 film and the adaptation released in 1949. I honestly did not believe I would enjoy this adaptation as much I did. And I have to give kudos to Heidi Thomas for creating a superb adaptation. She was aptly supported by excellent direction from Vanessa Caswill and a first-rate cast led by Maya Hawke. I look forward to viewing this adaptation in years to come.

[cherubcow]

“Wild Mountain Thyme” (2020) Movie Review

This was a beautiful one :)

The script moves very quickly with a lot of meaningful dialogue that doesn't really get center stage in the direction (like, for example, a character will say something poetic that you can easily miss if you're not paying attention; like, "I'm half-dying with living for you"), so it may get better with multiple viewings or better with the subtitles on. I suspect that this understating of dialogue was part of why this movie isn't doing well right now (current Rotten Tomatoes: 27% critics / 44% audience); people may just not have heard what the actors were saying.

Another factor may be that this movie rejects the cynicism that's become mandatory in America cinema. The central character, Rosemary (Emily Blunt), actually believes in love, which has become something rejected by the American (pseudo?)-intellectual class. This puts her character in contrast to NYC American Adam (Jon Hamm), who considers marriage in terms of beneficial contracts. Adam is, nevertheless, enchanted with the romanticism of Ireland, being drawn to Rosemary and to farming even though he has no rational reason to pursue business in Ireland (a "blood from a stone" situation). So it's both a matter of city versus country and of its underlying rationalism versus romanticism — a good bounding for a story, particularly in times when overzealous declarations of most "rational" practices can reduce one to imagination-stifling thoughts.

(( Spoilers ))

This overly self-absorbed thought pattern emerges through Anthony (Jamie Dornan), who, like Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" character, finds himself all too concerned with what is correct or whether or not he is right to even want the things that he wants. This is summed nicely in one particular exchange between Rosemary and Anthony:

[Anthony]: (Speaking of manual labor that Rosemary has been doing alone) "It's a two-man job." [Rosemary]: "Or one woman." [Anthony]: "Yup, that's the world now. Men are useless." [Rosemary]: "It's not so." [Anthony]: "What?" [Rosemary]: "Men aren't useless." [Anthony]: "What's a man for now? What's his place?" [Rosemary]: "That's for you to say." [Anthony]: "I'm not talking; maybe the quiet around the thing is as important as the thing itself."

This exchange points out the difficult position men (and people in general) have been put in by today's social conventions. Perhaps some would like to think that adherence to social convention ended in Jane Austen's time, yet here Anthony finds himself threading a needle. All the roads have been closed behind him, and he feels like he has no voice. People cannot even talk about the things that ail them, because pitfalls emerge at every step. Like the crows above them, no amount of answering to the mob will produce clarity of action. But Rosemary tries to guide him:

[Rosemary]: "Do you still hear the voice in the fields?" [Anthony]: "I dunno." [Rosemary]: "It's not a modern idea." [Anthony]: "I'm not a modern man." [Rosemary]: "You have the farm." [Anthony]: "I do?" [Rosemary]: "Are you happy?" [Anthony]: "No." [Rosemary]: "Why not go ahead, be happy?" [Anthony]: "I— I don't know how." [Rosemary]: "There is no one left to catch you laughing, Anthony." [Anthony]: "True." [Rosemary]: "How many days do we have while the sun shines?" [Anthony]: (Looking at the weather) "It's not shining." [Rosemary]: (Looking at Anthony) "I believe that it is."

The "voice in the fields" speaks of Anthony's romantic desire for freedom, and it is revealed near the end that the voice tells him not just, "Go," but, "Go to her." Meaning, Anthony knows that he loves Rosemary and wants to be with her despite the obstacles that others and he himself construct, but, like the fence was revealed to be in this particular scene, his "Notes from Underground" social conscience is the great barrier between himself and Rosemary. And he wants to be able to love her *not* because a marriage would be useful or to otherwise manage the practical considerations of a farm — he is instead *waiting* to clear his conscience of these worldly affairs so that he can look directly at her. Essentially, like many people trapped in Hamlet inaction, he is waiting to be forgotten and to die.

It later takes a concerted effort by Rosemary to break Anthony from this mental trap. Comedies have all the time in the world, but the timeline has to be compressed into tragic logic because Adam will be arriving to propose marriage. Rosemary hints that she cannot wait for Anthony forever. They've arrived at a Thanatos / Eros crossroads where Rosemary can either kill herself with a hidden shotgun (albeit not immediately), due to the burdens of isolation, or end up like Fiona — pulled away from Anthony by the world and another marriage opportunity. Rosemary has Anthony's ring, so she knows that he wants to marry her, so she wants to help him work through his conscience to find her. The metaphoric "fences" will remain, but it's not hopeless:

[Rosemary]: "We say what's meant. Life is here. We name it."

Like I mentioned with the cynicism above, American culture has attempted to crush this level of devotion. The very idea that someone could love someone this much for so long has been treated with general critical derision. But the story alleviates this perspective through Anthony's own incredulity, Emily Blunt's performance, and a charming Irish backdrop.

Even so, the movie has its issues. A lot of the scenes were directed like one might direct a theater play rather than a movie. Errors like the actors having to move in overly blocked (positioned) ways or the lines being too melodramatic for the moment occur. Of the blocking issue, one scene in particular was the near-end scene of Anthony and Rosemary in a home together. 

There was a little too much attention on standing and sitting here, with the object awareness being a little too simplistic — the sort of imagery which works on stage but not on film. Like, "[Oh, you sit now while I stand. Then I tell you to sit, and you sit. When you stand, I notice how tall you are.]" These make sense on stages where the script fell together with basic props like a table and chairs, but in a real home they end up feeling artificial. These sorts of scenes should have been re-worked when this story was brought to screenplay.

The background music was also often problematic. In many scenes it was just *too* responsive to the on-screen events, which speaks of low production value. This seems to fall on the musical direction of Amelia Warner, because much of the Irish folk music (which was good) was already incorporated into the script. Those organic moments made sense and worked, like Emily Blunt singing the movie's title song in probably the most emotional scene of the movie.

And casting issues cannot be ignored. This was not exactly a "Waking Ned Devine" (1998) Irish story that recruited mainly unknown or lesser known quirky actors from Ireland and Scotland. Christopher Walken, for instance, should not have been in this movie, though his performance did come together for the pub singing scene. Weirdly, Emily Blunt gave the best performance in this movie, and she's from Britain. Jamie Dornan is Irish, so that made sense, but while viewers could believe Emily Blunt's loving glances in his direction, whenever Blunt and Dornan actually touched each other there seemed to be no chemistry. Those scenes looked more like two actors not sure how real vs. respectful they should be and defaulting on the side of "[make just enough contact to get us to the cut]." This falls to both casting and (again) to direction. A better cast may have had chemistry, and a better director could get the actors to show that chemistry. Personally, I think they should have gone full local and hired only unknown actors and actresses from Ireland. Extra points if even the American character had been played by an Irishman pretending to be American ;D

Still! All said, despite these issues, it has a very strong script. *Reading* the words really shows how much was here. Long though this review may be, it doesn't show just how much material was in this script. And Emily Blunt's performance can't be ignored; it was really her movie. So I'd ignore the current rankings and recommend this for a good romantic movie with clever dialogue and a few moving moments :)

[weepylucifer]

Let’s Go in the Garden - Ch. 10

We change the POV characters - several times.

I woke up from confusing dreams about Nightingale undoing his top button and/or wearing one of Bev’s pencil skirts sweaty and with an uncomfortable half-hard-on. Beverley, half-awake herself, tried to nestle against me, but it was so hot in our bedroom that this just made me groan.

“Too hot,” I complained.

“Come swimming with me,” she murmured in my ear, and that I did.

It was a very special kind of experience, being with her in her river, as she kept me from sinking, as we didn’t even have to come up for air. Feeling her body against mine, familiar to me and yet unusual with her new little bulge. That was our baby in there, the new life we had made together.

It’s enough to get a guy a little sappy, is what I’m saying.

And for many wonderful moments I was nowhere but with her, doing nothing but this.

Then David whispered in my mind, Try not to think of me and Thomas when you make love to her, and of course it was like being told not to think of a pink elephant. I remembered him saying that, wondering one second why he’d ever think this would be an issue, when being with Bev like this had me feeling so good, so complete and content, and the next second I was back to Nightingale’s top button and the sheen of sweat beneath his collarbone and the feeling of him atop me, and David and his lips and his kind, sad eyes, and the concept of Nightingale and David and how it would feel to witness that.

I groaned into Bev’s mouth, and I felt her gripping me tighter. We were in her river. Did she know what I’d been thinking? I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her closer, nuzzling against her shoulder, drowning myself in her and only her.

—-

Thomas woke as he always did, with a gasp and a start, like breaking the surface of deep, dark, troubled waters. He’d dreamed of the war again. This was nothing special after such a long time.

He wrenched his eyes open and lifted himself up on his elbows, attempting to replace the images behind his eyelids of the mangled forms of his school friends with the familiar, calm, tranquil view of his bedroom. Gradually and in fits and starts, his breathing calmed.

He peered at his alarm clock, which showed ten minutes after seven in the morning. “Surely not,” he muttered out loud to himself and laid back down. He could remember, vaguely, a time when getting up in the morning had actually been accompanied by joyous anticipation of what the day might bring. Nowadays, distressingly often, Molly still had to badger him into getting up at all.

Well, he had about twenty minutes until she’d come around to loiter in the doorway and stare menacingly. So Thomas took stock. Extremities: attached. Heart: working. Magical ability: intact (he cast a small werelight and extinguished it again). Mysteriously sustained eternal middle age: yes, still. That strange bubble of heavy nothing that had made its home within him sometime after the war and rarely ever totally went away: yep. It was still there and still numb, like an atrophied limb. Generalized existential dread: the usual. But there was… oh boy, there was something else, wasn’t there?

David, he thought. David.

David’s face just yesterday after their fight. David… not trying any longer. He wasn’t usually one to back out of a fight. Maybe Thomas had… pushed too hard.

But what else would he have done? It was… so much at once, after such a long time of nothing at all. Why would David not just let him be? To process the new state of things at his own pace? Was that too much to ask? Why did they have to settle everything now? They would get lots of time to themselves when Peter took paternal leave. Wasn’t that soon enough to figure things out in peace? Ugh, but David was always trying to get into things and break them open and apart and assemble them anew until they suited his tastes. But Thomas wasn’t one of David’s damned experiments. He resented being broken apart and reassembled. Things had been working fine when David had still been dead to the world, resting in peace or, as the people of his faith preferred, his memory a blessing. Thomas had always rather liked thinking of him like that: his memory a blessing.

(Well, he’d thought that of late. Once David’s absence had stopped smarting every day like a phantom pain. Once he’d settled into how things were, and it all started to feel less… close to him. The bubble of heavy nothing had eclipsed the raw pain. The bubble of heavy nothing had eclipsed a lot of things.)

And now David had given up on him, indomitable David. There was… a kind of hurt to it. It simply had been inconceivable up until now that this was something David could do. It had always been Thomas-and-David, it would always be Thomas-and-David. What was the point to the continued existence of Thomas and David as two independent things, not one whole, united, together? They were but a few rooms apart, and yet they seemed further from each other than at that time when they’d been on different continents.

He’s been back a week and I’m already taking him for granted, Thomas realized. But what was he supposed to do? Go to David and apologize? Let David inside, let David crack him open like some kind of geode for all the world to see his insides? It is that or letting him slip away.

Noiselessly, the door cracked open. Molly let herself inside.

“I’m up, I’m up,” Thomas hurried to assure her as he rose. She had a way of communicating Get your sad arse out of bed without ever utilizing words or, that approach failing, prodding him with the feather duster. Her jabs to the rib area were downright vicious.

Thomas threw on a robe and hastened to the en-suite, where Molly only appeared to him anymore when genuine need commanded it.

—-

David woke up with the tempest in his chest not having quieted even a bit. He’d caught a few snatches of unsatisfactory sleep, and if anything, he felt more tired than the previous night. The memory of the fight with Thomas continued to plague him, the icy and complete rejection in Thomas’ eyes. There was nothing for it now, simply by not being there when he should have been, when it would have counted most, he had lost Thomas forever. And trying to come on to Peter, well, that had been a harebrained idea which clearly nothing was going to come out of.

What was he going to do now? Where was he going to go next, now that no one wanted him here at the Folly? It suddenly occurred to David that there was nowhere else for him to go. The war had robbed him of all his close friends, and time would by now have taken his family away. Mother, father, great-uncle Aaron, great-auntie Tzipporah, even his baby cousin Ruth was most likely either a very old woman or dead now. David suddenly remembered that he’d left them all with the impression that he’d killed himself. This they had not deserved. Had they rent their clothes? Had they sat shiva for him? Would Thomas and Peter know the correct things to do, all the little rites to perform, in case…?

He shook himself. Here he was, getting all morbid again. He couldn’t die now. But he found himself gripped, again, by the urgent wish to get away, to flee to somewhere no one knew his face or what he’d done. Somewhere he could rest, somewhere he could truly be at peace.

But he couldn’t do that either: not with the inhibitor cuffs. Besides which, maybe once was justified, but twice… was simple cowardice. (And he’d never forgive himself, if he ran again but left Thomas to stew in his misery.)

He was backed into a corner here.

For one very silly moment, he considered simply… staying in bed. Sequestering himself in his room and wasting away into nothing. Then he’d be out of everybody’s hair.

But frankly, David wasn’t the sort of person who wasted away, and Molly wouldn’t let him anyhow. So he got up, sighed deeply, and faced another day.

—-

Nightingale hadn’t done up his top button today either, seeing as the heat persisted. I found him in the breakfast room, a half-cleared plate in front of him, staring listlessly at the newspaper.

“Morning, sir,” I said - trying not to show how much his top button upset me. His tie was a bit loose, and he hadn’t parted his hair as accurately as usual - a sign that the end of times had clearly not been cancelled yet.

He looked up like someone coming back from a long mental journey. “Ah. Good morning.”

“About yesterday,” I said.

Nightingale put the paper down. “Yes?”

Your boyfriend tried to kiss me.

“We should really follow up on the theatre ghost.”

Your boyfriend tried to kiss me and I almost didn’t stop him.

I was glad I hadn’t said that - Nightingale looked relieved to turn his thoughts to our investigation. I didn’t want to make things even more complicated.

“By all means,” Nightingale said. “I don’t suspect it actually is a ghost at all, do you?”

It was probably purely rhetorical, but I was tickled pink to be asked for my opinion.

“A person dressed as the Phantom doesn’t necessarily equal actual phantom,” I said. “They’ve got a huge room full of costumes. Our ghost could have simply grabbed one.”

“Quite so,” Nightingale agreed. “What we felt weren’t the sort of vestigia you’d expect from the place, they were specific to a live person.”

I nodded, feeling something like relief at watching the life seep back into Nightingale as the discussion got more animated. He stopped pushing his kedgeree around on his plate and actually loaded up his fork.

At that point David entered.

If anything, David looked worse than yesterday. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all. He looked like he’d either caught the flu extremely badly or spent the night sobbing hysterically into his pillow. He looked like shit, is what I’m getting at.

Nightingale dropped his fork and stood up, like the gentlemen in a Jane Austen movie adaptation will do when the beautiful leading lady enters. (Don’t ask me how I know about Jane Austen movies, okay? I watch them for the architecture. Those manor houses, you understand.)

“David,” Nightingale said.

David didn’t meet his eyes. He shuffled over to the buffet and began filling a plate. “Good morning, all. Not to worry, I’ll be quick.”

He sounded… like nothing. He sounded dead.

Nightingale opened his mouth, doubtlessly to say something really, really, really stupid. Oh, fuck. Then his eyes wandered from David to me and he snapped his mouth shut and sat back down. I suppose he had decided that whatever he was going to say or do was not going to happen in front of an audience.

“You said you first felt that glamour in Ms. Watley’s dressing room,” Nightingale said to me, visibly fumbling for his composure.

I nodded. “Do you think she’s the ghost?”

“For now, I think we should pay her another visit.”

David looked up from where he was shovelling food onto his plate, apparently having listened in. “I could be of help,” he offered. “If I provided…”

I made throat-cutting motions in his direction, hoping to convey a general sentiment of “Dude, just don’t.”

Nightingale’s hand clenched around his fork. “No. No more tampering with the investigation.”

David nodded stiffly, hunkering down again into his bodily retreat. “I see. I’m sorry.”

Nightingale blinked, once more opening and closing his mouth. “Look, all I meant to say–”

“If you’ll excuse me.” David poured himself a cup of coffee, put it and his plate on a tray and headed for the door. “I’ll be taking this down to the basement.”

I watched his retreating back and I just… had to say something. This didn’t sit right with me. This didn’t sit right with me at all.

What came out of me was, “You’re going to eat in the lab? Isn’t that unsanitary?”

He barely turned his head towards me. “I don’t have any sensitive experiments on at present. How could I? And I do clean up, you know.”

“I can bring you some… disinfectant down.”

David was already pulling the door shut behind him.

“Well,” I said. “That went colossally to shit, huh?”

—-

“Well,” Peter said. “That went colossally to shit, huh?”

Thomas kept his mouth shut, because he wasn’t in the habit of snapping at his apprentice, and he wasn’t going to start today. Peter had come in just earlier with that loose, relaxed air, and smelling faintly of Beverley Brook’s glamour, in the way that made it indubitably known that he’d gotten lucky this morning. And Thomas had pursed his lips and thought, Good for him, and only that, good for him, because there were some sentiments one simply did not voice, not even in the privacy of one’s own head.

“Peter,” he said, keeping his tone polite, “I’m going to suggest you mind your business, yes?”

Across the table, Peter looked surprisingly rebellious for a moment. “I just…” he picked nervously at the tablecloth, most likely entirely without noticing. He huffed with momentary frustration. “I give a shit, you know.” Belatedly, he added, “Sir.”

Thomas was tempted to ask what about. He didn’t. Cruelty towards Peter was far from him. And with Peter, probing even the slightest amount towards any hint of his deeper emotions constituted a cruelty. In that way, he reminded Thomas of the boys he’d grown up alongside at Casterbrook. Of himself a long time ago. All the posturing, all the har-de-har, rugby and explosions and machismo. It seemed tiring, after tasting of the tenderness that came with spaces populated by men of the grecian persuasion. He’d have stayed wed - stayed shackled - to that kind of mindset forever if it hadn’t been for David, and the realisations that arrived with David. David had cracked him open (yes, once before) and taught him to be gentle.

In all, David had made him a better man before making him worse. But Thomas still didn’t like to dwell on the ‘worse’ part, not even 75 years later. It had been war. Things had been done in war that had been, if ugly, necessary.

David had been looking summarily horrible just now. He’d been looking horrible more or less constantly since he’d been back, like he’d spent his every unobserved moment crying his eyes raw. It ripped fiercely at Thomas’s heartstrings, seeing him like this. He had to do something - he knew not what, but something - before the day was out.

But work - duty - came first.

Peter picked out the actress’s address, and off they went. In an admission to the weather, Thomas left his suit jacket at home and rolled up his shirtsleeves (Peter observed this keenly, and not for the first time, Thomas wondered what on earth he was thinking that constituted a look like that). The heat was stifling, even driving with the windows down, and Thomas was sure he was leaving armpit stains on his shirt, and internally this bothered him more than perhaps it should. If only it was acceptable to attend work in more casual attire, such as, for example, a light sundress.

But he wasn’t quite that far gone yet.

—-

Cora Watley lived in a tiny studio apartment probably reflecting her actor’s salary. She had said that this was her first time playing a lead. She hadn’t been in the business long, and the kind of money she earned showed it.

She looked from Nightingale to me and asked, “What do you want from me now?”

Dull shock wasn’t that unusual of a response to being greeted at the door by two policemen. It didn’t even necessarily connotate guilt. Police at the door is rarely a welcome surprise for anyone, and most people possess some weird baseline guilt deep down when looking a cop in the face. Maybe Ms. Watley was involved in the murder, maybe she was only dreading another boring hour of answering questions, maybe she was thinking “Gosh I hope they don’t know about me illegally downloading music/that I smoked weed once in eighth grade/that I’m cheating on my partner with the cleaning lady”.

And yes, cleaning lady definitely applied here, as the humongous rainbow flag covering one wall of the bedroom/living room/kitchen conveyed. Nightingale looked at it and his face… softened, and he almost-smiled, and I thought, well, if Ms. Watley wasn’t flat-out the murderer, she had Nightingale on her side now. Solidarity, or something.

“We don’t want to bother you for long,” Nightingale told her. “We simply have a few follow-up questions regarding the scene of the crime.”

Ms. Watley didn’t ask us to sit down. The only opportunities for doing so would’ve been her bed, a bean bag in a corner and a singular kitchen chair. I knew I’d have to leave the chair to Nightingale if it came to it, and I didn’t want to sit in the bean bag. The bed was right out.

Ms. Watley didn’t sit down either. She leaned against her dresser, crossed her arms and said, “Okay?”

She said this with a pretty obvious question mark, “Okay?” It said in one word that she had already been asked tons of things, and did we really have to bother her at home for this? But she’d comply because what else was there to do, and thank us to be out of her flat quickly.

Nightingale decided to be direct. “Since you’ve started working at the theatre a year ago, have there ever been any rumours regarding a theatre ghost?”

“A… ghost. Really?” The actress cocked her head in bewilderment. “Like, I don’t know. I guess there’s always superstition and stuff with actors. But how is that in any way relevant?”

“I beg your pardon?”

While Nightingale gave the actress his famous emotionless face, I took a stealthy look around the apartment. There was no esoteric paraphernalia here. Apart from the rainbow flag, there was a collage on the opposite wall made up of posters advertising plays at different locations in and around London; I assumed these were plays that Ms. Watley had appeared in. The tiny bookshelf was crammed full of scripts and treatises on acting technique, accompanied by a little mainstream fantasy. A book of folklore that I vaguely knew: it was in the Folly’s mundane library, but it wasn’t the type of book that was exclusive or difficult to get. I still made a mental note of it.

“I mean, how is this relevant to the murder,” Ms. Watley said. “Like, what kind of thing is that to ask for a police investigation?”

“It’s purely a matter of routine,” Nightingale assured her - once again.

“We’re just covering all our bases,” I threw in. “It helps us gain an understanding of our crime scene. The dynamics at play between the actors, possible motives. Sometimes a ghost isn’t… necessarily a ghost.”

The actress’s frown deepened. “What, like sometimes it’s an old man in a costume? Like in Scooby Doo?”

Nightingale looked blank, of course. I said, “I wouldn’t have thought Scooby Doo, exactly.”

Ms. Watley snorted. “You’re completely lost with this, aren’t you? You haven’t got a single clue, and now you’re asking people about ghosts?”

I exchanged a look with Nightingale. If it worked as an excuse and let us ask our questions, so be it. But I didn’t want to make us look bad, either.

I settled for simply leaving it uncommented. “So you wouldn’t say you’ve ever noticed anything ghost-like, or anything at all strange or unusual around the place?”

“No,” Ms. Watley said - maybe a bit too vehemently. Then, after a moment of contemplation, she added, “You know, they say a lot of crimes go unsolved.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably nothing. I just… actually, I hope you find whoever did this to Deirdre. She was never… you know, she never did anything to anyone. She was a nice lady with a kooky hobby, and that’s all. This should never have happened to her.”

“And do you know why it did?” Nightingale asked - softly, but in the way that hides steel underneath. “Anything at all?”

A beat passed, and I thought, maybe…

“No,” Cora Watley said. “No idea. I realize this just sounded… super weird and possibly incriminating. I just think it’s… not fair, karmically.”

“You’re a believer in karma?” Nightingale asked.

“I’m not fond of the concept of bad things happening to good people,” Ms. Watley said, and that seemed to be all.

(”An idealist,” Nightingale summed up later, but I wasn’t so sure. We were both in agreement that something seemed majorly fishy here, and I was convinced that at some point, if not the whole time, we might have simply been lied to.)

Nightingale wanted to head back to the Folly, probably to check on David finally. But we weren’t done yet.

We went back to the theatre, but found no one there and all doors shut. I had to check on my phone to see why.

“It’s Sunday.”

Nightingale blinked. “My goodness, is it?” He checked for himself and shook his head. “Well, well. Goes to show what happens once you let yourself get all wrapped up in…” He interrupted himself abruptly. “I suppose there’s nothing for it.”

“We’ll have to catch our suspects at home.”

Nightingale blinked. “Hmm? Oh, certainly, certainly.”

—-

Mr. Sheen, the director, wasn’t home.

(“He’s at his hunting club,” his wife told us, just a slight touch bitter. “I swear to god, the place is falling down around his ears and what does he do? Spend his every free minute at the damned club.”

“The place is falling down around his ears?” I inquired gently. “So it’s true that the theatre is struggling financially?”

Mrs. Sheen snorted. “Struggling? The owners are flat broke.”)

But we did manage to catch the janitor, cleaning lady and night watchman for a chat. All of them denied any knowledge of a ghost or any rumours concerning a ghost, and recommended we maybe ask the actors, as this seemed to be a sort of actor thing. To them, as they all swore up and down, the theatre had been a perfectly ordinary workplace until the murder had happened there. Mr. Singh’s wife brought out samosas. It was nie. They were good samosas.

Following our tip-off, Nightingale even called his new actor friend. He went out of my earshot to place the call, and returned with the news that there were no helpful rumours abound among the actors, either. We had seen the theatre ghost - but no one else seemed to have ever heard of it.

Either that, or they simply didn’t want to talk to the police about it.

We were just about to quit for the day and make our way back to our respective homes when my phone went off. It was the reply from Zach Palmer I had been awaiting: he had asked around a bit and found the person selling enchanted crystal balls to the public.

—-

The seller was a shlubby white dude sporting greasy white-dude-dreadlocks who tried to get us to call him Ainsel, but whose actual name turned out to be Darren Wendell, significantly less magical. He had apparently been sold not just one but half a dozen artifacts which all, it turned out, had something a bit wrong with them. Zach knew him on a kind of friend-of-a-friend-of-a-cousin-basis.

According to him, he’d gotten these items from a mystery source - he refused to name them. That was something I’d have to come back and check up on, but the murder naturally took priority. Yes, he admitted, the items were enchanted to elicit desire to obtain them - the overwhelming greed I’d felt from the vestigia. “How else are they supposed to sell?” he asked, and I shook my head and didn’t get into it with him.

But there was something else wrong with these objects, something a bit outside of Wendell’s sphere of competence. These enchantments had been attached to the items when he’d gotten them. He showed me a voodoo doll that was rumoured to actually work. A flask of perfume that smelled like your deepest desire (To me, it carried the scent I had come to associate with Bev’s river. Nightingale sniffed it and made a face.). A book that mildly possessed the reader, who got compelled to read it in one sitting. A mirror that was supposed to show your future self, which Nightingale looked into and claimed it had to be broken. A little music box which played a melody that would put anyone listening right to sleep. So far, Wendell had only sold the crystal ball.

“Demi-monde seem less affected by the enchantment,” he told us, “they just… react less than outsiders.”

“So what on earth compelled you to sell to a woman who was completely unaware what she was dealing with?” I asked.

Wendell shrugged and gestured at his assortment of… stuff. “They wouldn’t sell on the goblin market.”

I turned to Nightingale. “What’s the law on this kind of incident?”

“How do you mean?” he inquired.

“I mean, selling hazardous magical artifacts to people with no qualifications to handle said artifact… endangering the public… surely there’s some rule or regulation to deal with that?”

Nightingale looked blank again. Of fucking course.

“Seems like one more item to add to your list,” he said, in a tone as if he or the universe in general was doing me a favour. It cost me a Herculean effort not to groan out loud.

—-

The Folly was quiet, very quiet. David couldn’t remember it ever being this silent here. Before the war there’d always been somebody milling about: the other researchers (none of his quality, but good chaps anyhow) in the surrounding laboratories, the fellows upstairs having their little convivals in the smoking room, and then of course the commotion of everybody meeting up for meals. Then later it had been people practicing in the firing range and gym, prior to being carted off to learn the uses of mundane weaponry within the army’s basic training (David still had rather pleasant memories attached to boot camp, revolving around Thomas in his PT gear). And after the war… the survivors, who had gradually begun filing out, leaving the Folly and the arts and wisdoms behind, unable to stay, too haunted by the empty rooms, the empty spots at the dinner table. (And then David, too, had reached his limits and had had to leave.). Groaning and yelling and whimpering at night, and yet still, at the very least a sign of life at all, and better than nothing.

David told himself not to be silly. Sure, they didn’t make a sound, but Molly and Foxglove were still very much within the building. He wasn’t alone. And Thomas would be back in the evening; Peter too, perhaps, if he didn’t go to see his orisa. It was simply… unusual for the Folly to be so quiet, that was all.

(Was this what Thomas had lived with for the last seventy years, this silence?)

David shook his head, hoping maybe to dislodge the cobwebs that these thoughts spun in his head. He focused back on his experiment.

Yes, there was an experiment: one of the very few he could conduct without actively using his magic. What he was currently putting through the works, clamped under his microscope, was a single, pale hair.

Oh yes, a single hair, one that he’d been so very fortunate to pluck off the back of a chair. Much could be told by a single hair.

(Of course when he’d developed this procedure first, long ago, before 1930 even, David hadn’t asked himself why. Hadn’t asked himself how people would abuse it. Hadn’t fathomed yet of Nazis, of what they would use his research to inflict on the demi-monde.)

(For the nth time he ground his teeth and cursed them, the ones that had built Ettersberg on the grounds of his knowledge, knowledge he had shared freely, for the benefit of all, a scientific Commons…

“Bullshit,” he whispered harshly.)

That was what Thomas had never understood: the scope of the betrayal. How they’d stripped him off his selfhood and butchered his work, and butchered hundreds of thousands utilizing his work in the name of their twisted, blood-thirsty nonsense ideology. How parts of the accursed mountain had smelled so faintly of his magic, or something born of his magic. How many of these self-proclaimed Aryans would have recoiled had they known that their instruments of torture were based on the discoveries of a queer Jew? How many would have pragmatized, and justified, and rationalized, and had in fact done so…?

Oh, some at Abteilung Geheimwissenschaften had known. For that there existed not a sliver of doubt. David knew their names, their faces, as they’d known his.

Here he had to pause, and brace his hands on the lab table, and calm his breathing until the nausea faded.

A fine red mist.

In retrospect, so much of it was covered by a fine red mist.

But he managed to shake himself out of it and return to the pale artificially-blonde hair.

The results were clear.

“Gotcha,” David muttered.

He could contribute. Now Thomas might as well get off his high horse about it.

He reached over for the flat rectangle they called a telephone nowadays. So many different uses to it, and you could carry it around in your pocket. The future was splendid.

He sent a text message to a number he had acquired on the same day he’d managed to pinch the hair.

I know what you are.

Oh dear, that sounded unduly menacing. Menacing was unnecessary.

That is to say, I know in which way you are different, David amended. And I think I know what you are doing.

I know you’ve been going it alone, and this cannot continue. You’re handling something you barely understand. I can help you.

And then, he waited.

He waited two minutes, three, five. Then, he got his answer.

What are you? she had written. Really.

I’m with the police, David fibbed a bit. Well, in a wider sense, that was true.

This time, he had to wait almost fifteen minutes for his answer. It felt like an eternity, and he was awfully fidgety by the time it arrived.

I want to meet.

“Good.” David nodded to himself. He shrugged out of his lab coat and went to follow his lead.

—-

Thomas did not consider himself a timid man.

He had walked through bullet hails and shrapnel rain without sustaining a scratch. He had killed Nazis in about every way a person could kill another, including with his bare hands and, one one occasion that still came back to him in the odd nightmare, with his teeth. He had lived risking complete ruin for the horrendous crime of his loving since he’d been a sixth-former. Cowardice was not a trait Thomas considered himself guilty of.

And yet, how his heart pounded in his chest as he made his way down the steps, along the hallway up to David’s lab.

Once, long ago, it had been normal and natural for him to go here, to pop in for a chat with David, or just to watch David work. Then, for decades, he hadn’t gone here at all. He’d willed himself to forget this room existed.

Now it still felt strange, visiting here. Normalcy had not yet returned to them. And how could it have? But Thomas wanted it to, he found. He wanted to settle things with David, and they would. They would talk, in depth, about everything, just so.

There was no light on in the lab. For a second, something black and frenzied wrenched again at Thomas’s heart - for a second, he feared the worst. But surely not. Certainly not. He couldn’t be too late twice over. This time, a second time, he knew his mind would not bear it. It had been hard enough to come back from the first time. A repeat of it would push him past what he could in sanity endure.

He opened the door and found… nothing. David wasn’t there.

And what did Thomas feel? Something sinking. Something between relief, disappointment and trepidation.

Which was nonsensical. David was simply somewhere else within the building.

As if on cue, he heard a rustle behind him. He turned, but it was only Molly.

“Molly, splendid,” Thomas said. “Do you know where David is?”

She procured something from the folds of her dress and gave it to him. It was a piece of paper - a note.

Thomas took it and read it. In David’s loopy handwriting, it said, “Actress is a demi-fae. Will get back to you later.”

What?

[thejaneaustenproject]

Is Sense and Sensibility Romantic?

I think most modern women who read Jane Austen would say that they read because of the romance. The romance of the marriage plots, the romance of a time gone by, and the romance of imagining handsome gentlemen in coats and hats riding horses through the countryside and declaring their love for plucky, witty women.

Even if that isn’t why you read Austen I think we can probably agree that that is the general perception of Austen. But reading Sense and Sensibility this time, I couldn’t help but ask the same question over and over again:  “Is this story romantic?”

In talking about her own writing Jane Austen says:

But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter.

- From a letter from Jane Austen to Prince Leopold.

Let’s talk about the relationships in the book. When Marianne presumably meets and falls in love with Edward, a torch that she carries through the rest of the book and eventually results in marriage, Austen never actually gives any specifics on how that romance developed. Edward has no dialogue and no particulars are given, no romantic scenes are sketched out for us. Austen just says that they begin to form an attachment.

I know we all have the image of sexy Alan Rickman from the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility as Colonel Brandon (if you don’t think Alan Rickman is sexy then get off my blog! JK, but seriously I don’t understand you at all.) but let’s shake that image off and just go off the of the text. Marianne is 16/17 when she meets Colone Brandon, who is 35! When I was younger I was really swept away by May / December romances, but I’ve been to a lot of therapy and worked through a lot of daddy issues and now as a 30-year-old woman it feels less charming and more creepy. Marianne never really seems to be in love with him. Again there are no scenes of Marianne falling for Colonel Brandon. She just kind of fulfills the neighborhood expectations and marries Colonel Brandon. Jane Austen tells us that they are happy but we never see that they are happy or in love.

So it seems that the marriages are the thing, not really the romance. So far, in both Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility there is no real dialogue of the declarations of love. Jane Austen just tells us that these guys showed up and proposed, but we don’t get to hear what they actually say.

But all that is about to change dear readers! We are going into Pride and Prejudice! We have romantic declarations that are rejected, we have the wittiest dialogue and the dreamiest leading man.

So what do you think readers? Is Sense and Sensibility romantic and I just don’t get it? Are you a Marianne or an Elinor?

[boy-at-a-bus-stop]

chapter n°4! I just finished it today and i didn’t want to wait... So here it is. I’m not sure if i’ll be able to keep posting new chapters at this pace, but I’ll do my best. I want to make progress with this story, so... this chapter is quite different from the last one, but i guess you’ll come to see that rather fast... i hope you’ll enjoy it nevertheless and thank you for reading <3

Four

As I entered my car I took a closer look at my cellphone and saw that I had five missed calls and ten text messages, all from the same person: my dad. I sighed. Okay, yeah, maybe I should have taken a look at my phone a few times during the last two days. Now I had to face this. I decided to call him before driving home. The phone had barely even rung when my dad picked up.

"Where have you been for the last two days?", was the very first thing my dad said when he picked up his cellphone. No 'Hello', no 'How are you?', he was clearly pissed. I sighed. "At a friend's place, Dad,..." "At a friend's place?! What friend?! Do I know this friend?! So that's why you didn't look at your phone for one second?! And that's why you didn't sleep at home and didn't tell me what was up? You must've been busy then, with your friend, huh?", he almost screamed into the telephone though I could hear that he was trying to stay calm. He wasn't succeeding, though.

"Yes, dad. At a friend's place. And I don't think you know him, not yet. But he's a friend of Bob's. I am 18, almost 19 years old. I earn my own money, I pay my own rent. I don't have to ask you if i'm allowed to sleep at a friend's place, i'm old enough to decide things like this myself", I said, gritting my teeth. “And even if we weren't just friends this would be none of your business”, I added in a low voice, kind of hoping he didn't hear it. Sometimes I just feel like I have to say something but I don't want the other person to hear it, if that makes any sense at all.

"You may be 18, but this is a big city, Allison Dana (yes, he even used my middle name), I don't think you're aware of how dangerous it is here for a young woman like you!", my dad said, now he didn't really sound mad anymore, he sounded worried. He had always been very protective of me, I knew this side of him. "Dad, I know what you mean, but there's nothing to worry about. You really need to stop worrying that much. And I'm sure you wouldn't act like this if I wasn't a girl... I'm good, I spent some great time with a friend. Calm down! ", I said, trying to make him feel better but still make my point of view clear to him. "Yeah... yeah... okay... but, you really got me worried, you know? Could you at least send me a short message when you don't sleep at your apartment next time? I was knocking at your door like crazy yesterday because you didn't respond to any of my messages, I'm sure I woke up all your neighbors...",my dad now said, a lot calmer than before.

"Yes dad, I'm sorry I got you worried. I'll send you a text message next time, but please stop worrying that much, you're a bit overprotective and you're definitely overreacting", I said in a soft voice, again trying to make my point but make also make sure he felt better. "Yeah, okay... So you're going home now?" I smiled for myself, "Yes, dad, i'm on my way home", I said. "Okay... Then I wish you a good night, and... I love you", I heard him mumble at the other end of the line. "I love you too, dad, good night" I hung up and waited a few minutes, still shaking my head a bit. I didn't even want to know what he had been doing when he was my age, the few stories he had once told me (he had been a bit drunk when this happened) were more than enough. But maybe these things were  the reason for the overprotective behavior, for his tendency to overreact and worry way to much about my safety. I'm sure he had his reasons. And I don't want to sound like he was trying to control me, he really wasn't. He just couldn't help but try to protect me from anything and everything and yeah, sometimes it got on my nerves but it was bearable. And he learned to deal with the fact that I am living my own life now and that he couldn't and shouldn't always protect me but let me make my own mistakes and learn my own lessons. Still thinking about what had just happened I finally started the engine of my car and drove home.

I opened the door to my apartment and switched the lights on. “Home sweet home..”, I sight to myself. It wasn't exactly MY apartment, I lived here with my friend Sophia who I knew from high school, but at that time she was on vacation in Brazil to visit some relatives. But to be honest I didn't exactly mind her not being in LA. She's a sweet girl but she could get on my nerves sometimes. And I don't mind spending some time alone so I didn't complaint about having the apartment for myself for a bit.

So I walked in, put off my shoes as I always do and went over to the sofa. Our apartment didn't really have a hallway, you just came in and stood in the living room. It was a beautiful apartment, both Sophia and I really cared about keeping it clean and tidied. The living room was quite big, about twice the size of Josh's living room. I didn't feel like watching TV so I just grabbed the book nearest to me and began to read. It didn't really surprise me that it was one of my favorite books, “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, since Sophia didn't enjoy reading so I'm the only one who  owns books in this household and I only buy books if I really like them. Most times I just borrow them from the public library, if I really enjoyed them I sometimes buy them but most times I don't feel like reading them again. However it's completely different with “Pride and Prejudice”, I just love this book so much, I think I read it more than six times already, and I enjoy ever single word of it whenever I read it. So it didn't really surprise me when I found this copy of it on the small table in front of the sofa. Just as I reached chapter 19 (the chapter where Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth, she rejects him and he decides to ask her again later) – the chapters of this book are very short and read rather fast – I felt my phone vibrating on the sofa next to me. I sighed, assuming it was my Dad who had texted me – I mean who else would text me at 9:00 pm. on a Sunday – as I picked up my cellphone and opened the text message.

To my surprise it wasn't my dad who had texted me, it was Josh. Seeing that surprised me and made my heart jump a little bit with excitement. Okay, maybe more than just a little bit, but let's not focus on this right now, there's still plenty of time to discuss this topic. The (short) message read:

Hi, I just wanted to make sure you came home safely. J...

His text made me smile for two reasons: 1.) I found it very nice and also kind of cute that he felt the need to check on me (or he was at least slightly interested in my well-being) and 2.) he had “signed” his text message – yeah, only with one letter, I know, but still – as if he hadn't sent me a text message to my cellphone but a proper letter, as if he had to make sure I knew who had sent this message even though he obviously knew that I had his phone number. So I texted him back:

yeah, i'm good. p.s.: you don't need to “sign” your text messages, I got your phone number so I know it's you :)

I hit send and put my phone back on the sofa. Just about five minutes after I picked up my book again and continued reading my phone vibrated again.

Oh, okay... see you tomorrow, goodnight

For a few seconds I thought about how and if I should respond. Then I just typed the very first thing that came to mind:

goodnight J, see you

This is not really a genius reply, I know, but well, I never said I was genius, so... And yeah, I know how childish this must seem. It's just, I knew that Josh didn't like his name at all (he had told me when we talked about family that day) so I thought, 'why not use this kind of nickname he had already given himself in a way by “signing” his text message with just a J ?'. And it seemed like the perfect moment to try it without embarrassing myself.

I put my phone back onto the sofa and read a few more pages but I soon felt how I became more tired every minute.

I don't remember falling asleep (I mean, there's nothing really to remember about falling asleep, right? It just kinda happens, it's not an active process...), but I got woken up the next morning by someone knocking on the front door loudly. It really made me jump and it took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. “Ally! Ally, are you awake?”someone shouted outside the door, probably the same person who knocked. “Yeah, yeah, i'm awake, i'm on my way...”, I mumbled though it was obvious the person outside couldn't hear it. I guessed it was Bob and I turned out to be right when I opened the door.

“Good morning...”, I murmured,  looking at him. “What do you want?”  Bob kept quiet for a few minutes, staring at me with big eyes. “What's up?”, I asked, confused by the way he looked at me. “You look a bit... uhm... well... ”, was all he said. Only just then I realized that I was still wearing yesterday's - or better said the day before yesterday's -  clothes and make up , or better said the rest of it. I hadn't cleaned my face or brushed my hair in two days and the majority of the make up I had put on two days ago was probably smeared into Josh's bed sheets and onto the sofa. I had totally forgotten about this until Bob 'told' me. “Yeah, whatever...”, I said, “We do have a doorbell, by the way. Why are you here? What's the matter?” “I'm sure you have a spare key for the studio, don't you? I forgot the one your father gave me at home and it would take me ages to drive there and get it and then drive back here and I really got work to do, so...”, Bob responded, looking a bit uneasy. “So you just woke me up because you're too stupid to bring the keys with you”, I concluded. I wasn't even that mad at him, I just wanted him to know that I was kinda upset.

“Yeah, kinda...”, he said, looking down at his feet. “You're lucky. I do indeed have a spare key and i'm nice enough to let you in, but please make sure this doesn't happen again”, I finally said after a few minutes of silence. I walked back in and got the spare key along with my normal keys – our front door locked as soon as it fell shut and I didn't want to lock myself out of my apartment, of course. Bob was standing in the hallway and only as we went over to the studio I realized Josh and John were both nowhere to be seen. I thought I shouldn't be surprised hat John wasn't there. “Where's Josh? Don't you need him to record some tracks today?”, I asked, a bit confused since Josh and I had talked about seeing each other at the studio that day. “He'll come later on, I just wanted to do some vocal demos and I don't need him for this, so I told him he could come in later today”, Bob explained to me as I locked open the door. “Oh, okay... I'll come over in about an hour, I guess it's obvious I need to do other things first...” I turned around to leave when I heard Bob speak up. “ Ally?”, he said hesitantly. “Yeah?”, I turned around again, wondering about what else he had to say. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be an asshole”, he said, and it was obvious to me that he really meant what he said. I gave him a small smile “It's okay, don't worry about it”

I went back to my apartment, locked the door open and went straight to the bathroom. I locked the bathroom door behind me even though Sophia (obviously) wasn't at home and the front door locked automatically when it closed so you couldn't get in without a key. Of course you could get out without one, though. I still don't know how this kind of a door lock is called, but I hope you understand what I mean by this weird description. I looked in the mirror to see that my make up was indeed smeared all over my face and I was pale as a ghost but all in all I didn't look as bad as I had expected after Bob's reaction. I brushed my long dark hair and and then decided to take a shower. After a few minutes and brushing my teeth under the shower I felt like a new person. I never had the goal of looking perfect, I mean, of course like dressing up sometimes, doing my make up and so on. But I never did it for anyone but myself. I still don't. I'm not the most confident girl (or better said woman) ever, but most of the time I just don't care what people think about me if they don't really know me. I mean, they'll think whatever they want, no matter if I do my make up and hair or if I don't. People think whatever they want to think, not what I want them to think. I can't really do anything about it, so why even care? I'd rather focus on my well-being and my physical and emotional health. But I guess that's enough of useless information about me so let's go on with this story. I mean, you're not here to read my everlasting inner monologue, right?

So after showering and so on I just put on some comfortable clothes, ate a banana for breakfast and headed over to the studio. The studio had a normal door lock – it would have been quite impractical if it didn't - so I didn't have to take the spare key with me again. To my surprise Bob wasn't alone in the studio – there were three men and two young women I didn't know as well as Josh and Bob. “Hi”, I said in a low voice as I came in, obviously confused. “Hi Ally!, Bob said and then introduced me to all the people didn't know already. I don't remember their names to be honest. I'm not that good with names in general and this was a long time ago. Plus I didn't meet any of them again after the recordings were finished. I just remember that that one of them was called Josh as well... They all played one or more instruments on the record (one of the women did some backing vocals, I believe), I think you can look up who i'm talking about, i'm just too lazy to do so right now. And there's no need to do since so we didn't talk much and as I already said, I didn't see the again after the recording. Plus they're not that important for this story.

They talked about what they would record in the next days, it seemed like there was a lot to coordinate. Josh had already recorded most of the guitar and drum parts but there was still an awful lot to do. I hadn't really realized how far from finished they were until that day. Because the other Josh and one of the guys I don't remember the name of (Kevin, maybe? I don't know) had the most to record (the other Josh did some bass tracks and a few more things, and Kevin or however his real name was did four of the drum tracks) they'd record all of it within the next few days. The other guy just played guitar on one track so he could do that real quick, the woman doing some backing vocals had to wait anyway and I don't remember what the other woman played but it was just on one song. Bob said he just wanted to focus on recording the most important parts so that he could start doing first vocal takes soon.

“So we'll just do it this way and after the instrumentals we can start doing the vocal and backing vocal tracks”, Bob said, looking at the backing-vocal-woman (I'll just call her that, that's shorter than describing who I mean) and Josh (Josh-Josh, not the other Josh). I felt myself becoming uncomfortable when Bob said this. I mean, Bob just acted as if it was crystal clear that Josh would sing backing vocals on the album even though he knew that he really didn't want to and as far as I knew Bob couldn't have guessed that I had persuaded Josh to at least give it a try. Josh wouldn't have told him. And I hadn't told him either. So Bob just assumed that he could force him to sing on the record, I looked over at Josh and saw that his level of discomfort was at least a hundred times higher than mine. I felt myself getting mad at Bob, this was not fair. He couldn't just do this. Bob knew that this situation would lead to Josh putting himself under a lot of pressure to do what Bob wanted just because he didn't want to come across like a fool in front of all the others. He knew it. And that's exactly what he wanted. Bob wanted Josh to sing, no matter how uncomfortable it would make him feel and no matter if Josh himself wanted to.

After the one-song-guitar-player and the two women had left Josh, the other Josh and the guy I'll just call Kevin went to work. Bob just acted as if he hadn't noticed Josh's discomfort though that was literally impossible. Josh himself still seemed to be absorbed in his thoughts, he didn't talk much. My anger towards Bob seemed to grow with every second and I just felt like I had to talk to him, tell him that I didn't agree with his way of handling things.

“Bob? Can I talk to you for a second? In private?”, I asked with a firm voice, making sure he knew that there was no way he could avoid this talk. I couldn't just let him act like this and pretend it was normal and right. I just couldn't. And I wasn't afraid of telling him that I felt this way.“Yeah, sure”, Bob said. We left the room and I closed the door behind us. “What's the problem?”, he asked me as soon as I had closed the door. I couldn't quite believe that he said that. He really was asking me what my problem was? Had he really not noticed? This was literally impossible. “What the problem is? Are you blind?”, I hissed. Bob looked at me, seemingly amused. “No, I just really don't see a problem here”, he said. “Do you find it right so force Josh to sing? To pressure him like this? This is not fair, it's not fair to act as if he had no say in this” “You know what? You're right. You're totally right. But I think you forgot something: Life isn't fair. And this is MY record, if I want him to sing then he will sing. I don't have the time or nerves for this unnecessary drama. Who cares if he feels comfortable singing? I don't ask him to sing lead on any songs, it's just backing vocals on a few songs. If that's too much for him, he can just leave and waste his talent”, Bob now responded, speaking a bit louder than before.

“I think you forgot something yourself: He's playing almost all the instruments on this record, it's HIS record, too” “I could have other people playing the instruments, you know? There are so many people who are waiting to get a chance in this business, he's not the only one. But I asked Josh because I believe in him, I think he's very talented and that's why he's here. And if I want to help I have to show him how things work. The music business is a hard business, I'm not sure if you're aware of this. I really can't treat him with kid gloves. He can't just cherry-pick his way through life, that's not how things work”, Bob said in a stern voice. “Yeah Robert, I'm perfectly aware of this. I actually talked to Josh about this yesterday. He said he'd try to sing. He's just afraid of embarrassing himself. But maybe it would be better to talk to him and encourage him, show him your support instead of just telling him what to do”, I argued.

“You know, I'm not here to be a nice person. I'm here to make a good record and i'll do whatever it takes to do exactly that. You can be nice to Josh if you want to, and you know I'm nice too, if i'm not working, but just let me be an asshole if I need to be one, okay? I'm not doing this for fun” Bob seemed upset but also a bit amused at the same time. I just shook my head, not really knowing what to say anymore. I think we had gotten to the point where he knew he had won this argument since he had good reasons for doing what he did and this was just his way of handling this situation and because he knew that, he didn't really take me seriously anymore. I decided to not try and discuss this with him any longer, I had said everything I had to say. We'd see how the situation would develop.

I turned around and walked to the other end of the room and stood as far from Bob as possible in this rather small room. I was trying to calm down a bit, my heartbeat always gets fast when i'm in a discussion. I don't like confrontation in general but I don't really avoid it. It doesn't make sense to avoid it because if you always avoid conflict you'll never actually get what you want and it will just leave you bitter and unhappy. It took me some time to learn this and to learn to stand up for myself and others and to just stand my ground but I must say that it's worth it. Fights and discussions and arguments aren't nearly as scary to me now as they used to be. It's something you really need to practice. I guess that's why it's so important to fight with your parents when you're young. You can have bad fights with your parents, but they won't ever stop loving you. That is if they're caring parents, if they're not, well, then you're fucked. But for real, I see family as kind of a place where you can prepare for social interaction and situations you'll have to face later in your life without really risking anything. I mean, friends can turn their back on you. And they will, sometimes they just do, even if you never fought. It's just normal. But family will always be family. And this fact can on the one hand really be scary somehow, but it can also free you from a lot of pressures and give you the opportunity to try things, to really argue and sometimes to even go too far. Or at least that's what it should be like from my point of view. I hope this made sense to you. But now let's go back to the story.

“You're only doing this because you have a crush on him, right?”, I heard Bob say behind me and it made me snap out of all my thoughts. I almost choked on the sip of water I had in my mouth when he said this. I coughed a few times and tried to catch my breath.

“What did you just say?”, I asked as I turned around. “You're only doing this because you have a crush on him, right?”, Bob repeated what he had said. “No, what? Why are you thinking..? How did you come to believe that..? What?”, I stuttered, perplexed by what he had asked me. “I'm just being a nicer person than you are and the only thing you think of is... You just assumed I had a crush on him because I care? I'm sorry to disappoint you, I just care about the people around me in general. That concept's called 'being a decent human being' by the way, maybe you should try it some day”, I then added. Bob was holding up is hands in defense,”Okay, sorry if I hurt your feelings, ma'am. In this case in misinterpreted something. But if you're sure you're not having a crush on him, then... then that's pretty sad” I was confused for a moment, not understanding what he meant.

“What? Why sad?”, I asked, still surprised and confused. A cocky smile formed on Bob's face as he put his hand on the door handle of the door to the recording rooms. “Because the two of you would definitely make a good couple”, he said and before I could respond in any way to what he had just said he opened the door and disappeared.

[bellabooks]

The Case for (Imagined) Queerness in the Works of Jane Austen

As 12 years of mandatory English classes taught us, a book’s impact and importance depend on a ton more factors than just “what the author decided the plot should be.” Every story is contextualized and processed by its individual readers. And if you think you understand the power of this reader/text relationship like the bookish queer youth does, oh boy are you out of your league. There’s an entire ocean of characters out there, and so shamefully few of them are non-hetero. Fan fiction, fan art and extensive Tumblr analyses abound trying to engineer Queer Subtext for any book, movie or television show you can imagine. LGBTQ folk are experts at collecting scraps of dialogue, stray looks or ambiguous moments, pinning them to the cork board of Accidental Queer Representation and connecting them with the red yarn of, uh, Extremely Biased Interpretation? Much like the metaphor in that last sentence, these cobbled-together narratives are often flimsy at best, but we stand behind them with conviction. See? I’m a weathered professional at holding together a trembling, papier-mâché construct despite all evidence to the contrary! Plenty of heteronormative franchises and stories have been given new life by the queer reader’s re-programming, but I have felt mostly alone in my bold quest to Gay Up the works of Jane Austen. These stories all at least partially revolve around the stirrings of Heterosexual Love in the hearts of young women and naturally have been favored mostly by my exceedingly hetero, female-identifiying peers. Therefore I have taken it upon myself to do this heavy lifting on behalf of the Queer Agenda. I have labored intensely for many years, and now at long last I present my findings on a few of Jane Austen’s most notable works.   Mansfield Park for Queer Youth Ah, Mansfield Park. The story of a mousy, impoverished heterosexual young woman fending off the advances of a wealthy and charming young heterosexual man in order to ultimately commit to an austere and boring heterosexual young man. Or is it?   Exhibit A: Mary Crawford, The Original Girlcrush   When Miss Mary Crawford and her wealthy and charming heterosexual brother Henry move into the neighborhood, young Fanny Price and her better-off cousins the Bertrams find their lives turned upside-down. Perhaps not quite in the way you would think. Miss Crawford’s beauty did her no disservice with the Miss Bertrams. They were too handsome themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown complexion, and general prettiness. (Chapter 5) The first half of this excerpt is a very informative piece of intel on the lives of conventionally attractive, straight women. (Finally, Taylor Swift’s #girlsquad makes sense!) The second half, however, is queer as hell if you just believe hard enough. “Almost” as much charmed? Come on, Austen. Just give it to us straight. (Uh, no pun intended.) Everyone is in love with Mary Crawford, which is beautiful and tragic. The Bertram daughters are bound by custom and convention to marry men, but in the depths of their hearts, they clearly yearn to leave it all behind and run away with Mary.   Exhibit B: Wait, Is Mary Crawford after Edmund or Fanny?   The ongoing flirtation between Mary and Edmund is explicit enough. While they turn out to be ill-suited for one another, the initial sparks between them cannot be denied. Only slightly more subtle, however, is Mary’s fascination with Fanny which leads the two women to spend the majority of their free time together. Such was the origin of the sort of intimacy which took place between them within the first fortnight after the Miss Bertrams’ going away—an intimacy resulting principally from Miss Crawford’s desire of something new, and which had little reality in Fanny’s feelings.”(Chapter 22) Mary, girl, we’ve all been there. Experiment away! Bless Jane Austen for this completely unintended example of much-needed bisexual representation.   Exhibit C: Fanny Just Wants a Beard I have always found protagonist Fanny Price’s rejection of rich, effusive and affable Henry Crawford in favor of her stoic and dare I say withholding cousin Edmund Bertram to be one of the most frustrating heterosexual choices in literature, which is already full to bursting with the baffling entanglements of straight people. Ostensibly, Fanny has chosen a life of quiet morality as worth more to her than indulgence and having fun and being happy. And at first glance, the moral of this story seems to be the bland and inoffensive message that it’s actually okay for straight women to love solemn contemplation and quiet alone time and reading indoors on a rainy day. Oh, and being sexually attracted to one’s first cousin too, obviously. But is there perhaps a more original and insightful takeaway from this novel? Of course there is! Arguably, a queer reading of Mansfield Park is the only thing that would explain why in the end, Fanny falls for the least threatening or exciting man she has ever met. It also explains her intense discomfort with male attention. (She’s described in Chapter 21 as “almost as fearful of notice and praise as other women were of neglect.”) She’s not looking for sex appeal or chemistry, because she knows she will never find them in a man, nor does she want such a thing. The best case for Fanny is a dependable and amiable enough life partner with whom to pay the bills, share in life’s various duties and sleep in separate beds. Edmund is certainly that.   Emma, Obviously in Denial   In addition to having the most personally relatable protagonist I have ever encountered, Emma is coincidentally also the easiest of Jane Austen’s works to jam into a queer-shaped mold. You can read a good 85% of this novel as the story of a lady-loving lady in very deep denial struggling with the heterosexual inclinations of all the women she cares for. Unfortunately things go a little off the rails when Emma finally realizes her love for Mr. Knightley, which is difficult to handwave away seeing as how it is actually a rather compelling Heterosexual Romance. We’ll just ignore this minor detail that is arguably the culmination of the entire novel and focus on the rest.   Exhibit A: Feelings? For Men?   We are often reminded in this book that Emma has little to no interest in ever marrying. And why would she? She does not lack for money or status. Her only reason to marry would be True Hetero Love. “I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.” (Chapter 10) Okay but is it not your nature to be in love or to be in love with men? Maybe this requires just a bit more introspection, Emma. Indeed, let us examine Emma’s attempted quasi-relationship with Frank Churchill. Emma realizes that she feels left out of all the fun watching her friends fall in love and circle through flirtations and makes the decision to get a crush on Frank with the aim of adding a little excitement to her life. (Relatable!) She notices that there seems to be something missing in her feelings for Frank, but she boldly soldiers on through the motions of being In Love so as to better fit in. Eventually, even Emma, queen of self-delusion that she is, cannot continue to pretend to love a man as anything more than a friend. But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and, pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults; and farther, though thinking of him so much, and, as she sat drawing or working, forming a thousand amusing schemes for the progress and close of their attachment, fancying interesting dialogues, and inventing elegant letters; the conclusion of every imaginary declaration on his side was that she refused him. Their affection was always to subside into friendship…When she became sensible of this, it struck her that she could not be very much in love. (Chapter 13) Because “I can like Men if only I just try hard enough” has always worked out!   Exhibit B: I Only Sabotaged My Best Friend’s Relationship For Her Own Good   Who among us hasn’t vehemently encouraged our dearest friend Harriet to turn down the advances of a perfectly lovely boy whom she likes very much ostensibly because he’s not good enough but actually because lurking in the deepest recesses of our subconscious, we could not bear to see her with someone else? This is so classic, I could rest my case right here. I probably spent my entire teenhood trying to subtly manipulate my secret lady crushes into dumping their boyfriends. “I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to ‘Yes,’ she ought to say ‘No’ directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and older than yourself, to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I want to influence you.” (Chapter 7) I would never tell you what to do! I’m just saying maybe think about it. And while you’re thinking about it, think about the fact that you’re thinking about it. If you really loved him, would you even need to think about it? Makes you think, doesn’t it?   Exhibit C: Serial Monogamy   On the topic of Harriet, let’s take a closer look at a pattern of behavior Emma seems to set up. She was exceedingly close to Mrs. Weston, her old governess-turned-best-friend before this woman had the nerve to move out and get married to a man. Emma, drowning in sorrow at the loss of this relationship, cannot handle being single and working on herself for a while, therefore she immediately turns her faculties to selecting herself a new girlfriend. When Emma decides that Harriet shall be her next life partner, she cleaves to her wholly and immediately. Harriet must accompany Emma on all her errands, must call on her nearly daily and must attend every party Emma attends as well. The poor girl doesn’t know how to exist without being in the constant company of a woman who adores her. Have I mentioned how relatable Emma is enough times yet?   Pride and Prejudice and Homosexuality Yes, Pride and Prejudice is perhaps the most Heterosexual piece of literature ever written at first glance, but please! Do not doubt my ability to make Austen’s most enduring triumph Extremely Gay. I told you I was a professional. By the time my case is finished, you will see that Pride and Prejudice is one of the queerest classic works in the canon.   Exhibit A: Uhhh, Why Do Darcy and Bingley Have to Be Together All the Time?   Darcy has Pemberley. Bingley has enough money to buy any property he pleases. There is no reason these boys need to follow each other from estate to estate, attending parties together, traveling to all the same boroughs. Darcy, if you hate the country so much, why don’t you just go live at home in your home that you own? You know, the home that everyone constantly talks about how incredible it is? The home you can just ride a horse over to right now? That home? Darcy gets a lot of guff for convincing Bingley not to propose to Jane. And yeah, that screams Jealous Secret Crush on Darcy’s end. But one must also wonder why Bingley would have been so very easy to persuade. If he truly wanted to marry Jane, I think it would have taken more than a slight nudge from his platonic best bud to ghost her the way he did. I mean, he didn’t just stop answering her texts. He moved himself and his family out of town. However, it doesn’t seem quite so inexplicable to dump one’s beard at the urging of one’s Secret Boyfriend now does it?   Exhibit B: Everyone Is Gay for Georgiana   “I really do not think Georgiana Darcy has her equal for beauty, elegance, and accomplishments; and the affection she inspires in Louisa and myself is heightened into something still more interesting…” (Chapter 21) I swear to God, no one in this book will ever shut up about Georgiana Darcy. We get it! She’s so very beautiful and kind and charming and talented! The Bingley sisters practically salivate over her. Lady Catherine admires her in her own grumpy old elitist way. Elizabeth finds her fully delightful. Everyone is obsessed with Georgiana. She’s like the Shane McCutcheon of Regency England.   Exhibit C: Relax, Elizabeth, People Get Married.   Elizabeth has decidedly no interest in marrying the human embodiment of Oblivious Mansplaining, Mr. Collins. Elizabeth’s best friend Charlotte Lucas, however, seems to think the constant stream of ignorant babble is worth the cash money. So she locks it down, infuriating Elizabeth. She had always felt that Charlotte’s opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins was a most humiliating picture! And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen. (Chapter 22) Lizzy. We get that you weren’t into him, girl, but why are you, like… so upset about this? Could it be that your dearest partner and secret love Charlotte has accepted a Heterosexual Union. And immediately after you yourself made such a display of rejecting one? Ouch!   Sense and Sensibility   Guys, I tried with this one. I really did. But all the women in this book are related and also obsessed with dudes. I thought I could stick it to the straight people, but I must regretfully concede that this task is beyond even my expertise. If anyone has a queer angle on this one though, please contact me immediately. We queers have always been around, even when every offshoot of culture has tried to erase us from existence. Yeah, it’s super fun to retroactively barge our way back into old literature. But it’s also a much-needed assertion that we exist, we matter and we deserve to see ourselves. Even in light-hearted novels about manners and marrying rich and falling in love with one’s first cousin. Ashley Chupp is a Chicago-based writer, crossword enthusiast and frequent crier at the local Trader Joe’s.   Gif 1: fibu.tumblr.com Gif 2: teenvogue.tumblr.com Gif 3: BBC Gif 4: bringmybooks.com http://dlvr.it/PZ94CB

[gretchensinister]

Mostly About Being Queer, And A Little Bit About Why Trying To Police That Word Is BS

Hey everyone, I know that this might seem like kind of an odd time to post something like this essay about my identity, given other real-life stuff, but I actually wrote it a couple weeks ago and just finished reading it over now. And I still want to say the things in it, so I am.

This is a long piece, about 6000 words.

All this is kind of a knot in my mind, so forgive me if it doesn’t come out like a 5-paragraph essay.

Right. I’m going to start off with sexuality. If you follow me you probably know I’m asexual. I didn’t know about asexuality until my time on tumblr, and I first noticed conversations about asexuality shortly after I created my blog, in early 2013. Luckily, this was during a time when the posts I saw were mostly either explanations of what asexuality was, memes and jokes about being ace, and posts stating clearly that the A in LGBTQIA+ (and other versions of the acronym that included the A) stood for asexual, not ally. The atmosphere I encountered at that time was highly inclusive. Remarks that aces shouldn’t be in relationships with allosexual* people, and suchlike, were met with wide rebuttal.

All this was incredibly important to me for a number of reasons. First, learning that asexuality was a possibility freed me from the stress of an assumed future which included a sexual relationship with a man. Which was especially a relief since I had never met a man in real life, in person, that I had wanted to have sex with. Also, at the time of learning about asexuality, learned about the split attraction model, which is used to describe situations in which romantic orientation and sexual orientation are different. (I didn’t think that much about my romantic orientation at first, though.)

Anyway, the point is that I was so relieved that there was a recognized, non-pathologized “none of the above” option for sexuality. There was no point in the future in which I would need to spend needless time and effort using medical means to make myself feel sexual attraction. I didn’t need to care about sex!

However, however: the split attraction model had some other interesting consequences. Let’s back up. Previous to learning about asexuality, I assumed I was straight, because that’s what you do in a heteronormative society. But given my lack of attraction to men, I did wonder if I was, perhaps, attracted to women.

I should note that at this time I was living on my own in a “blue dot” city, was in grad school for literature, and had recently participated in planning and presented at a Queer Poetics conference. The environment was about as comfortable as it could be in the 2010s for a woman to discover she was a lesbian.

So. Before I knew about asexuality, I carefully considered if I wanted to have sex with women. I did not. So, I concluded that I must be straight. But with the split-attraction model, things changed. Now, knowing that romantic attraction without sexual attraction was a possibility, I could look at my feelings for certain close friends I had over the years in a different light. Using the possibilities provided by the split-attraction model, I was able to see that a few of these friendships had transformed into crushes of various strengths and durations. The knowledge of asexuality and the split attraction model allowed me to recognize that my feelings had been real and romantic even though they had no sexual component.

I should pause here for a moment, because I’m not getting the sequence of events quite right. There was something else that was going on at the time in which I was learning about asexuality.

I was also getting to know a woman (@marypsue) through tumblr, and we rapidly formed a friendship. When she, rather reclusive with selfies at the time, sent me one via sumbit, my heart skipped a beat. She was so much more beautiful than I could have guessed. I expressed this in an awkward way and we continued our friendship—all quite regular things, like writing each other stories, sending each other cards and letters, and generally being oblivious and ridiculous. We talked about meeting, and when an incident caused her to be absent from tumblr for a while (something that scared me maybe as much as I’ve ever been scared) we exchanged emails to have a more reliable means of communication with each other. Some more time passed. She mentioned on a few occasions having a crush on someone. She clarified that she was interested in women. This was notable info for me, but I thought it was for all the wrong reasons. I was so glad of our close friendship that I didn’t like to think of becoming secondary to whoever she ended up dating. (Because obviously the person one dates should be one’s closest friend, I thought—and, also, that of course as soon as she revealed her crush that person and she would become girlfriends at once. After all, she was and is wonderful.) I even, in the preliminary part of this process, wondered if, based on our communication, her crush was on me. But no, I told myself. I wasn’t a possible romantic prospect for her. And by even thinking she might have a crush on me, wasn’t I doing that bad thing that straight girls did? That is, learning that another girl wasn’t straight and then immediately assuming she was interested in me. After all, I didn’t have any romantic interest in women, did I? (And if I did, so what? I was open about being ace. Who would want me as a partner? And, and, I lived so far away from her. Of course her crush would be someone she saw every day.)

She sent me a necklace, among other gifts, for my birthday. By fortunate coincidence, I was reading a Jane Austen novel at this time (I forget which one) and while it wasn’t my favorite, it did include an episode in which one of the characters debates whether or not she should wear a necklace a young man gave her, as this would imply a romantic attraction between them. I was getting ready for work one day and I saw the necklace within that context. And then, basically, I shrugged and put it on anyway.

This was after I had sent her a long, rambling email from work, stating my wish to talk to her much more than tumblr made convenient. And I included my phone number with that email. When she first texted me, her reply was much more nervous than I had expected. After all, hadn’t I already argued, very convincingly to myself, that she could not possibly be interested in me?

Well, soon enough we were always texting each other good morning, as well as a great many other things. I talked to some other friends a lot in this stage, trying to find out if our conversations indicated friendship or something else. (I think I already knew it was something else.)

Anyway, the point of all this is that when I realized my feelings were indeed romantic, I felt giddy and nervous, because as it was, this was my first romantic relationship. But it all felt very natural, and our growing relationship made me happy.

Knowing that I was ace helped me feel free to explore what I felt towards women (and this one woman in particular). Learning about the vast spectrum of ace identities helped me become aware of the huge variety of ways of being in the realms of sex and romance. It was a good experience for me, because at that time, I did not see posts arguing that certain queer identities were actually wielding all the power of the peri-cis-heteropatriarchy and should be removed from queer groups. Rather, there seemed to me to be a joy in the discovery of queerness. So many people who knew they did not fit the power-position definition of straight (but found it difficult to determine if their attraction to the same or seeming-same binary gender was real and serious) were now finding that they (we) were not broken or sick, that we were part of a community, and the community was larger than we could have hoped for. We’re here, we’re queer, and there’s so many of us.

And this was so good, because once you realize you’re not going to get an A+ at the whole Straight thing, you’re desperate to find out you’re not alone. Because in a heteronormative society, there’s no partial credit in straightness.

And so, what I want to emphasize here is that when I, or anyone else, realizes that they’re not completely fulfilling power position straightness, it’s terrifying in our particular society. And all of us need a community we can go to in order to talk about our shared experiences—and about the experiences we don’t share, but distance us from power position straightness nevertheless. In the queer community, we should be working to validate many, many different ways of being in the realms of sexual orientation, desire, and action (and gender, but I will get to that in the next section) so long as, after careful consideration, they are determined to do no harm.

Exclusionist arguments against all aces and aromantics are wrong, just as exclusionist arguments against bi people, pan people, nonbinary people, and any number of microlabeled people are wrong (and, yes, I have seen all of this). They all stem from a rejection of ways of being that the exclusionists don’t understand, a habit of rejection that comes straight from the peri-cis-heteropatriarchy. Exclusion harms our ability to understand the full range of human experience, and it is not something that should be present in the queer community. If the idea grows that some identities are not to be discussed, that “queer” must have limited boundaries, we’ve not only taken the wheels off this community, but we’ve broken the axles and drained the gas tank as well. Forward movement becomes impossible.

I love being ace. I love being queer. I love how the discussion of many, many different kinds of sexuality allowed me to find a community, better understand myself, and find a wonderful girlfriend.

 Now, to talk about gender: if you’re online late at night or closely follow my blog in general, you probably know that I have been questioning my gender. I have not been questioning my gender as long as I have known about my asexuality, but I realized last week that it’s been at least two years since I have been thinking consciously and intensely about my gender. (This is, of course, disregarding everything in my childhood and early years of adulthood that could have been taken as signs. I am not interested in building a narrative of always-knowing, because I honestly didn’t. I still don’t know anything now.)

I began to question my gender after I began to make an effort to erode transphobic patterns of thought in my own mind. And as I worked on that, I ran into the question: how do I know I’m a woman? All my previous answers to this question had relied on transphobic assumptions. I’m a woman because I have a vagina (well, some women don’t). I’m a woman because I have breasts and a vagina and I don’t wish to change this (well, non-op trans men and non-op trans women exist). I’m a woman because I’m not a man (well, what about nonbinary people?). I’m a woman because I’m fine with “she” pronouns (there are many nonbinary people who use “she” pronouns). I’m a woman because I was assigned female at birth and I’m fine with “she” pronouns (there are nonbinary people that fit this description, too). I’m a woman because external society tells me I am, and I haven’t found cause to struggle against that (in a way that seems to be different from the way other women struggle with gendered expectations, anyway).

All of these answers left me unsatisfied. Trans women face incredible struggles to be seen as full and real women. If someone told me I wasn’t a woman, it would cause me distress, but not because a statement like that went against something I fundamentally knew about myself, but because it would mean that I was now being perceived dramatically differently, and that I doubtless would be expected to act differently, dress differently, and just plain be differently. I desire no such drastic changes in my life in regard to my gender, so the change itself would be the problem, not any particular fundamental identification with womanhood, which I cannot find or define within myself. I fully accept that a person’s understanding of their gender comes from within; however, this was a frightening understanding for me, because when I tried to look for gender within myself, I found nothing clear.

I believe in a world that didn’t demand that people have one of two genders (and, even though some small changes have been made, the vast majority of spaces I have been in function on a two-gender model, so let us not deny this) that I would never have picked any. I don’t know how differently I may have acted, or dressed, or felt in this gender-chill world—everything else would be so different to begin with. Or, no, I can say something. I probably would have felt different in this way: I wouldn’t have had to deal with the persistent nagging feeling that I was failing at being a girl, and that I really needed to care about this a lot more than I did.

Now, I know there is discussion to be had here: there are other aspects of myself that could easily have made me feel like I was failing at being a girl even though I was still a girl. I’m asexual. I fail the peri-cis-heteropatriarchy’s “girl” requirement of “is sexually attracted to men and only men.” I’m fat. I fail the peri-cis-heteropatriarchy’s “girl” requirement of “meets current beauty standards as defined by holders of privilege.” However, I have spent enough time reading in the queer community and the fat acceptance community to see plenty of queer women and fat women who are clearly confident that they are women. True, some of them write of their struggles to be seen as women given queer antagonism and fat antagonism, but for them these struggles seemed more focused on demanding to be recognized as the women they knew they were, rather than worrying about being recognized as women because that was “normal.”

You see, that is a significant part of my experience. I have often worried that I was pretending to be a girl, and that sooner or later I would mess up so spectacularly that everyone would find out and there would be some kind of disaster. I was just coasting along in this girl thing on the presence of my vagina! Somewhat an irrational fear, I know. After all, the kind of people I had most to fear would no doubt see my vagina as the final word on whether I was a woman or not.

And yet, I still feel as though I am faking being a woman in some detectable way, even though no one has accused me of such a thing, and it seems unlikely to ever happen.

(I remember reading the theory of gender as performance, and thinking, yes, that’s exactly it! All of gender is just a performance, as false as any theatrical costume! But then the theory went on to state that even if gender was performative, that didn’t mean that it could be taken off like a costume, or that it could be chosen. How confusing! My gender as a woman seemed to be as loose as a costume or any other item of clothing, and I certainly felt that to be a woman was a conscious choice I had to make, rather often, or else I would somehow (my thoughts were not clear on the mechanism) stop being a woman.)

And, now, I think that perhaps the reason I felt as though I was faking being a girl and woman is that I am not in fact a woman. This is a consideration that took me a long time to come to (as you can see in this very long post) for a number of complex reasons. I would now like to discuss these. At first, the main barrier was the ordinary cissexism that says that everyone is born either a boy or a girl and then they stay that way for their whole lives. But after identifying this pattern of thought as something to be continuously rejected, other barriers appeared.

Until a few years ago, I had no idea nonbinary identities existed outside of science fiction. (That is, it seemed being neither male nor female was something only open to aliens.) Again, it wasn’t until I joined tumblr that I heard of identities outside of man and woman as real identities that human beings could be. (Or—well, that is not exactly the case. I seem to recall reading of cultural third genders in some place like a National Geographic, but I correctly identified that these genders were not genders I could use to understand my own experience (I’m white).) I don’t remember exactly what the first things I heard about nonbinary genders were that weren’t part of specific cultures. Perhaps it was an explanation of the term genderqueer. I remember at some point thinking that it seemed like a lot of work to be nonbinary, doubtless because every image I saw of a person identified as nonbinary was a carefully presented and groomed, slightly-masculine androgynous person. It took quite a long time before I saw anything that mentioned that someone could be nonbinary without that look or a desire for that look.

And yet. And yet, in with all the vital information about strategies to reduce body dysphoria, the idea grew that some desire for significant physical change was a necessary part of every non-cis experience. Again, it took me a great deal of time to see anything that suggested otherwise. I was floored when I first read that there were trans men and trans women who did not undergo surgery not because they could not get the surgery, but because they did not want to. Now, I do not want to imply in any way that gender affirmation surgery is not necessary and life-saving. However, I do want to record that it was revelatory to me when I learned that in even some cases it was not desired.

So where was I, after all this? Still in an unclear space. I didn’t find myself having any particular trouble existing as a woman, though I wished again and again that I could live in a world where gender wasn’t that big of a deal. I also ran into another stumbling block (which, I am sure, has served as a lifesaver in others’ situations). The issue I found was this: whenever nonbinary genders were discussed in detail, many, many genders were listed and defined. So many! I read these lists carefully, open to the possibility that I might very well find a gender that matched my experience somewhere there. But I never saw anything that quite fit. So what could I be? No doubt just a cis person doing something appropriative. This was disappointing to me, but, well, I couldn’t take an identity that didn’t fit me just because…I saw other people being trans and other people being nonbinary? Because I wanted to distance myself from the transphobic acts of cis people? These were the suggested motives of the dreaded interlopers, anyway.

But there was one comic I couldn’t forget. It describes the protagonist’s experience not of gender dysphoria, but of gender euphoria. Without exploration, the protagonist would have been able to live without suffering as cis, and yet the protagonist finds peace and joy in new pronouns and presentation. If that was possible, then…oh, but no. I still had no name for what I might be, and no other pronouns seemed better than “she.” (I think, currently, that this stems from my wish for my gender not to draw attention. As long as I keep “she,” most people won’t say a thing—and I can continue to feel like the world’s laziest spy.) And in any case, the only nonbinary #relatable thing I really liked was the gender of the day blog. And I felt guilty about even reading those posts when other people reblogged them, because when I went to that blog to check it out, it was stated specifically that cis people should not follow or reblog. And what else could I be? I had no name for what else I could be. The closest thing was agender, and even that wasn’t quite right.

But the thing is, I don’t want a word for my gender. I don’t want to pick a word and have it give any sort of information about my gender to anyone else. I think, if pressed to pick one, I would choose nonbinary or genderqueer, because these are the broadest terms. But otherwise…I would rather leave the form blank, and fuck whatever data you were trying to get! (Though, this also depends on context, of course. As for face-to-face interactions, everyone who assumes gender will assume I’m a girl. This doesn’t bother me much, because most of the time, I want my gender to be less noticeable; I don’t want people to think about it. Luckily, for everyday wear, the range of possibilities already allowed to me is sufficient for my wants. Of course, my work also includes a gender-neutral uniform, and my previous job didn’t involve talking to the public face to face. Before that, I was in academia. I haven’t been tested very hard on this point.) And it also doesn’t bother me much because I consider myself woman aligned? Woman-adjacent?

I’m not sure exactly what term to use. The term woman-aligned makes me a bit uneasy, since I have seen it used in many cases to, effectively, police which nonbinary people were woman enough to call themselves lesbians. (And to police if women in relationships with nonbinary people could still call themselves lesbians. It got nasty very quickly.) And these arguments always seemed to take place without much input from nonbinary people. Luckily, I’ve seen less of that lately, but that’s because I’ve been carefully curating my online experience. I know others will have seen this kind of thing as well, though, which is why I want to explain what I mean by woman-aligned.

What I mean is that I have lived my entire life being perceived as a girl and woman, and assuming this perception was correct because I knew of no other options (and knew that masculinity was not right for me at all). I will face similar struggles in regard to my body image as a woman, and since I do not see any pressing reason to tell any doctor that I am nonbinary, I will face the same medical system issues that a cis woman would. My tastes run frequently to feminine things/things considered feminine, and I feel a personal interest in defending these things against the idea that masculine things/things considered masculine ought to be considered better/more worthy. Perhaps…(I am having trouble working out exactly how to phrase this without excluding any women)…perhaps another way to say this is that in my current society, which demands a division between men and women in so many areas, I will have experienced/be on the woman’s side far more often than not. Ah, I don’t know if that’s good either.

In a conversation with a friend, I likened gender to air pressure. Society’s ideas about the genders of the people that comprise it are like the general, external air pressure all around us. For cis people, their internal air pressure is in equilibrium with the external air pressure. For trans and nonbinary people, that equilibrium is not present. Either the air pressure is not what was expected, or something else is enabling us to hold our shape other than our own internal air pressure. This last is how I feel. In my experience, gender seems wholly external to me. I would not have had a gender if society had not demanded that everyone be a boy or a girl. In this experience, then, since gender as others experience it and as society demands it be experienced is foreign to me, I find being perceived as a woman and sharing many women’s experiences to be more surreal than odious. The negative things I experience due to the perception of me as a woman would be negative experiences for anyone, and I am glad to join in the fight against them, even if my understanding of myself tells me that I am not strictly a woman.

And aside from all of this, because I don’t want to have this conversation with everyone, I’m going to continue to occupy a woman’s space in the world. People say I’m a woman, and that’s close enough for strangers, so…I’m woman-aligned.

You will notice that throughout the gender portion of my post I have avoided referring to myself as trans, and that I have used the phrase “trans and nonbinary” to refer to everyone who is not cis. I have done this because of fallout from certain terminology arguments and the relative newness of my courage to claim even nonbinary for myself. Frankly, even though the widest definition of trans includes everyone whose gender is different from the one they were assigned at birth, I don’t feel like it would be useful to other people if I claimed the label trans. The fact of my nonbinary-ness is easy to hide—it’s not likely to lead to an emergency. (Yes, I know this is kind of fucked up—I’m not claiming a term because it’s easier for me to be closeted.) Still, I feel that if I, with my particular nonbinary experience, claimed the label of trans, it would muddy the issues faced by trans women and trans men, and all nonbinary people who cannot easily remain closeted. I have no need to access hormone or surgical treatments. When I buy menstrual products, or makeup, or any kind of clothing (because there’s a cultural trope of women buying clothing for their partners who are men, buying some clothes from the men’s section is, oddly, a way in which the true nature of my sexual orientation gets another smokescreen thrown over it) I do not risk outing myself. I have never felt in danger while shopping. I also don’t feel like trans is a word for me to use because I haven’t experienced dysphoria. I feel like if I used the word trans to describe my experiences, I’d be asking for sympathy based on suffering I have not shared in. I recognize that this is messed up, too! Didn’t I reject dysphoria as a qualification for determining if one is cis or not at the beginning of this section? I don’t want trans people to suffer. I think it would be better if dysphoria were treated as soon as possible. Transness absolutely should be able to exist without suffering. Pain isn’t part of transness, it’s part of being trans in a cissexist society. So perhaps that is a better reason for me not to claim trans? It is realistic to acknowledge the violence and other difficulties that trans people face, and to acknowledge that I don’t face this same violence.

Honestly, I don’t know how to approach this. I would hope the trans community is about more than suffering; I would hope that the trans community would continue to exist even in a time after transphobia has been eliminated. But I don’t know if I can say anything about it. I don’t know if my experiences are enough to count. And even though I know some of this comes from transmedicalist gatekeeping, I don’t know if all of it does. In this, I feel as if it is more important to exclude myself than to go somewhere I turn out not to belong. This is a painful way of thinking, but I cannot let it go (yet?).

However, I am more than willing to claim the label nonbinary. A nonbinary existence best describes my experience, and I would gladly fight anyone who would deny that part of my experience. I am not a man who hasn’t come to terms with that yet. I am not a woman (all the time or totally) who just has a complicated relationship to her gender, or is trying to distance herself from the pain of misogyny, or is trying to distance myself from femininity out of internalized misogyny. I mean, I do have a complicated relationship to my gender, but my gender is not “woman.” Realizing that I’m nonbinary doesn’t protect me from misogyny, as most misogynistic acts are directed at those perceived as women without consideration of the true gender of the victim. (Honestly—would any misogynistic act be stopped if the victim spoke up and said, “excuse me, I’m actually nonbinary.” I can only imagine the situation getting worse, if the person committing the misogynistic act even knew what the victim was talking about.) And I am not trying to distance myself from femininity, even though I know that I probably still have some internalized misogyny to work through (like mold, it requires constant vigilance to eradicate, and it is unwise to assume it is completely gone as long as the conditions that gave rise to it in the first place still exist). I love many feminine things, but not because of my womanhood, because womanhood is something I don’t really have. I feel at peace when I think of myself with no inherent gender, not because I think there is anything bad about being a woman, but because I don’t think that being a woman really, truly describes me.

Ultimately, I know that with the limits of language itself and with my limited skill in using it, there will be some things in here that are not 100% clear. I ask that you accept this, and assume good faith on my part. I will be glad to answer any questions asked in good faith as well. Really, what I want is to be taken at my word regarding my internal experiences. I understand that they are not familiar and comprehensible to all, but I ask those who find it unfamiliar find it within themselves to accept that there are ways of being unknown to them. I don’t need everyone to understand me, but I do want everyone to accept that I am who I say I am.

This is where gatekeeping does no good and some harm to me, by the way—nonbinariness is either ignored, looked on always as a stepping stone towards coming out as the other binary gender, or considered a symptom of some other societal wrong rather than a complete identity on its own. And the, even in groups that otherwise have much less gatekeeping than others, there is the issue of, as I mentioned before, the seeming assumption that every gender will be named, that there is a word for every gender (and that if the word is not known yet, surely it ought to be found or coined as soon as possible), and that with everything we know about gender now, we actually know everything about gender. And the thing is, we absolutely don’t. We didn’t know everything about gender 100 years ago, we didn’t know everything about gender 50 years ago, and 50 years from now we’re going to know different things about gender than we do today. That’s the thing about trying to understand a social construct in a society that’s constantly changing. And, yes, I do think all societies are constantly changing, because they’re made up of a group of people whose total collection of individual members changes every day. Honestly, I doubt we’ll ever fully understand gender, because people are unique and unpredictable. There’s always going to be something about ourselves that we don’t fully understand, and for some people, that thing is going to be gender. And, fundamentally, that’s all right. As long as we take the word of a person about their gender and don’t try to make them be another, this doesn’t have to be a source of strife. Instead, it can be a source of joy in the vast variation of human experience.

That’s where I want to go with this. Definitions are important, but only insofar as they describe something. Definitions should not be used to build walls to keep out people that can’t find any definition that really fits them in the first place. Sometimes there is no definition, and indefinite words are needed. Words like queer, and questioning. Sexuality and gender pose complex questions in today’s world, and we must be able to accept that sometimes these complex questions will have complex answers. We must also be able to accept that sometimes people will want to signal that their answers are complex without going into the full answer. So. Queer. Questioning. They’re good words, complete in themselves. The encompass ways of being new and old and they allow for instability in categories. Or flexibility, rather than instability. Better say that there will always be instability in definitions as long as people are people, and words with some give to them will always be necessary.

We also need to have space for everyone who isn’t sure what word they need yet. The narrative of always-known supposes words exist for every variation of human experience (they don’t). I want everyone who is questioning to be welcome in the kind of queer community I want to be in. I want them to be welcome no matter what they eventually discover about themselves. The permission to question oneself in regard to one’s sexuality and gender—that must exist in the queer community, because it doesn’t exist in mainstream heteronormative society. And isn’t it better to have the chance to question ourselves rather than not? I know that being able to question my sexuality and gender has made me a happier person and allowed me to question the structures of heteronormative society, as well.

Questioning is important. Questioning means more people who have the capacity to understand. If we tell everyone to stay away from the queer community until they’re absolutely sure they belong, then we only end up driving away people that need the conversations we could be having with them. Like it or not, there are thousands upon thousands of people out there whose genders and sexualities don’t fit exactly into any definitions we have so far. The boundaries of queer must be fuzzy, since the boundaries of straight (the kind of straight that encompasses the full privileges of that category) are strictly and violently policed.

In fact, I argue that the boundaries of prestige-straightness are so rigidly policed, and that it remains so physically and psychologically dangerous for someone to admit to themselves at all that they cannot function within the prestige straightness framework, that if they come to understand themselves as any non-straight identity—if they are able to come out to themselves—the they are most certainly truly queer. Furthermore, the more people that recognize that they belong to the queer community, the better it is for everyone else in the queer community. Larger groups can leverage more power, and that is what is necessary to dismantle the peri-cis-heteropatriarchy. Fuzzy boundaries help us. A greater chaos factor in definitions will help us.

And that’s where I’m going to wrap things up. I’m asexual, perhaps best described as panromantic, and nonbinary. But even more than that, I am queer and questioning. I want a larger community. I encourage questioning, and I trust everyone to choose the labels or non-labels that best describe themselves. You’re not a faker unless you deliberately chose to be so. It’s all right if your understanding of yourself changes, and it’s all right if it stays the same. Stay true to yourself first.

We’re here, we’re queer, and there’s probably so many more of us than we now realize.

 *I have heard the argument that allosexual should not be used as it puts gay and straight people in the same category. Well, so does the word cis. So does white. So does women. All of these are useful categories in certain contexts, so in a similar way “allosexual” as the opposite of “asexual” will also be useful in certain contexts—for example, when talking about asexual experiences in contrast to allosexual experiences. It’s exactly as blunt and useful as cis, or white, or women, or men, as a category.

[the-haven-of-fiction]

The Prize, Ch. 6

Summary: AU Tom, set in early 19th c. London.  Madeleine and Tom have known each other since they were teenagers (her brother is married to his sister). Can they overcome their fears and choose each other?  

Genre: Romance/Angst/Drama

Rating: T (non-explicit sexuality)

Author’s Notes:  Okey dokey, folks, here ya go.  I wish I could write it the way I see it.  Have your imaginations at the ready in order to make up for what I lack in skill.  Reminder that this is all just for fun.  If you want a period masterpiece, go read Jane Austen.  ;)

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5

Concentrate, you fool.  

He focused on the distant sound of the wind whipping around the inn, the periodic muffled footfall of servants and guests in the passageway, the sharp snapping of the fire.  Anything in an attempt to somehow separate himself from the soft rustling of her nightgown, the smooth scraping of the blade against his whiskers, the melody of her voice and giggles as she related the latest practical joke the boys had planned for Cassie and her fiancé.

He was grateful that she had carefully placed her wrapper across his thighs after taking a short look at the ancient hat rack and hooks on the wall and deciding that she didn’t trust their strength.  She kept adjusting the angle of his head as she began shaving him, her warm hands and the intoxicating scent of roses driving him wild.  Unable to muster more than perfunctory “Mhms” as his part of the conversation, she chattered on as she went about the task and didn’t seem to be aware that he had barely said a word since she entered the room.

Through the fog of the accident, the aches in his shoulder and body, and the effect of the wine, his mind was a jumble of fear and hope.  He tried to keep his eyes closed, but all he saw then was the image of her in the carriage, when he couldn’t rouse her, and the feeling of helplessness overwhelmed him anew.  

He would open his eyes and there she was, safe, in front of him, fingers splayed out on the side of his neck, one hand holding the razor, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, her smile shining down on him like the first warm rays of spring.  It was only a glimpse, he knew.  A glimpse into what a life with her would be.  This was exactly the type of common, everyday domestic scene that he had been imagining with greater frequency in the weeks since the ball. It was so familiar to him now.  He would catch himself daydreaming about her a dozen times from sunrise to sunset, each new cycle magnifying both his affection for her and his jealousy of Mr.Kingston.  The latter was a new and uncomfortable sensation for him.  In a strange way, he wished that he could consult her about it. No matter the problem, he could always rely on her calm judgment and rational way of thought.  More and more he saw how her presence had a tempering effect on him, how he depended on her as a confidant.  

She dipped a cloth into the hot water and wiped away the remnants of lather.  A few drops of the lavender oil were shaken into her palm and she rubbed them together.

This time when he closed his eyes, there was no fear; he only felt her, her hands on his face, gently patting and massaging, thumbs making slow tantalizing circles over his cheekbones.  It took every ounce of strength not to turn his head just so and lean forward to press his mouth to hers.  The useless arm was a blessing in disguise he realized.  It prevented him from doing something he might regret later.  The nails on that hand were digging into his palm, the muscles tense from being tightened into a fist for so long.  He was nearly shaking with the effort of controlling himself.

“There, now,” she proclaimed in satisfaction, stepping back to observe her work.  “All smooth and ready for slumber.”

The loose muslin of her nightgown had become hitched under an arm and was pulled taut across her abdomen, cupping the globes of her breasts for a few seconds – the sight making his palms ache to support their weight- before she lifted her hands to push some strands of hair off his brow and the gown fell back into place.  He should have looked away before then.  He should have.  

And then before he knew what she intended, she stooped and placing both hands on his curly head, tilted it forward, kissing his brow with the barest touch of her lips, and whispered “Thank you for saving me tonight, my hero.”

He dared to hope.

For a second.

His eyes flew open and met hers; and in that second, he thought he saw something.  But it was the merest flash of an undiscernible kind and she spoke before he could give it a name.

“Although,” her voice returning to a regular level and taking on that teasing quality, “you’re probably going to be an insufferable braggart and act as though we were beset by highwaymen and you were forced to fend them off with your bare hands in order to do so.  What a tale you will weave for the boys.”

She laughed again, tweaked his nose, and left the room in haste, leaving him frustrated and confused, with her wrapper still draped over his lap.

Bewilderment was added to his mental and emotional turmoil the next morning when she greeted him at breakfast as if nothing had happened the previous night.  She was her usual self, pleasant to all around her and a delightful companion during the meal.  During his fitful tossing in bed after she had shaved him, his imagination had run wild with thoughts of her and Mr.Kingston.  He pictured her marrying the man, kissing him, sharing his bed. It was intolerable.  Continuing in this way was not an option.  He had to do something.

But what about her?  What was she thinking?  The possibility of rejection loomed over his visions of declaring himself and her welcoming him with open arms.  

The doctor had been kind enough to stop by his room that morning and check on his shoulder. Before he departed, he assisted Tom with his waistcoat and cravat while he shared a prescription for any pain and recommended keeping the arm in a sling for several days.  Tom was relieved for his help, thinking perhaps that Madeleine would appoint the business of dressing him to herself.  He didn’t think he could make it through another ordeal like that.  The thought drove him to consider riding the rest of the way to the estate on horseback, even with only one arm available.

She frowned at him when he mentioned it to her, her expression reminding him of the way his sister looked at her children on occasion.

“Of course you can’t do that, you’re a one winged sparrow right now, you silly man.”

He was forced to be resigned to another hour or two in a closed space with her and mentally braced himself for whatever might occur; however, his worries were in vain as she fell asleep within a few minutes of being seated in the carriage, which surprised him more than a little.  Supposing that she would be somewhat hesitant, considering what had occurred the day before, he had made sure to enquire about her physical state, searching her face and eyes for any sign of fear.  She was fine, she assured him, just anxious to be home for a day or two and then to return to London.  

“And you?” she asked in a low tone as her brows knit together in concern, “Were you able to get some rest?  Do you need anything for the pain?”

No, you infuriating woman, I did not rest.  And you are what I need for the pain.  You.  Your kisses would be the sweetest balm.

So many months had passed since he had been into Sussex with her that he had forgotten how much it suited her.  In spite of how much she enjoyed being in town with her family during the season and her pleasure of what the bustling city offered in the way of amusements, there was a marked difference in her countenance when she was on her own estate. Left to her by an aunt who had never married and did not have an heir, it held many fond memories of childhood for her and she was thrilled to call it her own as an adult.  

He loved seeing the change in her face when they crossed the last hill and the stately Elizabethan mansion appeared in the distance.  Childish glee lit her and she invariably signaled the coachman to halt so that she could walk the last mile or so, as long as the weather permitted it.  The fresh air and views were a balm to him as well and he joined her for the ramble.  She stopped a few times to gather some early wildflowers and couldn’t help but place a blossom or two in her hair.  While she loved the rainy days that gave her a reason to stay lounging about the library all day with her precious books and maps and letters, she equally loved the clear skies, basking in the sunshine like the old cats who had the run of the grounds.

Any tenants or servants who crossed her path as she approached were delighted to see her.  Warm greetings were offered, inquiries made after the health of their respective families, all manner of sincere niceties were exchanged.  He was full to the brim with a sense of pride in her: pride that she was so loved, pride that she was so respected, pride that the sight of her inspired such reactions. It was new and confusing.  Why should he feel this way?  He had no right to the sensation, yet he could not deny or ignore it.  Different, so very different from the affection and admiration that he had carried for her over the years.  Nothing about her had changed; the change was in him.  The same vision was before him, but a veil had been lifted and he saw with absolute clarity for the first time.

She was so beautiful, so gay, so full of life and laughter that he again had to restrain himself from reaching for her.  The urge was becoming as natural to him as breathing and over the last 24 hours, every repressed tendency that he’d been able to master for years was threatening to overpower him.  He had to do something.  No matter the risk.  He couldn’t wait any longer.  He would do it here, now, in this paradise of gardens that held flowers she tended and rooms that bore her fingerprints.  

He knew her nature. There had never been occasion on which he had seen her display any kind of cruelty or disdain for another person’s feelings.  The teasing nature he so loved never reigned in times of earnest entreaty from someone, most particularly from those she loved; regardless of their status or age, she was always consistent in the manner of compassionate response given to them. He would simply have to trust in that confidence, that she would listen to his avowal of his great regard for her with the same benevolence; and were she to return his affection in kind, he was convinced that they could face any opposition, familial or otherwise, united in hearts and minds.

[phoebeboard]

DSA: Act 3, Scene 1

RADA Preliminary Audition

Starting with RADA was, in the end, probably a good idea. However, I did come out of it feeling as though it would have been nice to do my first audition there with a clearer idea of what I was doing. Just because I like it there so much.

Everything I did on the audition day was deliberately planned, to avoid getting too stressed. A combination of planning my outfit the night before, getting to London two hours early, knowing where to go (pretty much), strategic timing of my anxiety meds, eating wisely, leaving problems at home, and not rehearsing were all meant to limit the chances of last-minute nerves. On the whole, this was successful.

I took my mum with me, because London alone is pretty scary, and she insisted on killing time by going to the British Library so she could do something or other, so I busied myself with their museum of all the really impressive stuff they have there like a book of Jane Austen’s own writing and a Shakespeare first edition and Bach’s hand-written well-tempered clavier. They had some sort of event on, to do with Harry Potter and mythology or something, and there were images of Fawkes the phoenix everywhere. Since Phoenix is a nickname I use, and so far have associated it with good luck, I took that as a sign that things would go well. I mean, a kid was even walking around with a stuffed phoenix toy, and even though there was a bunch of HP merchandise, that was the only thing I actually saw anyone with.

Co-incidence? I think not.

Anyway, we finally got there, and CAN I JUST SAY there is one entrance to RADA on one street, then you follow that street up and round the corner there is a giant Waterstones, and then turn the corner again and there is another entrance to RADA. I mean, I might be able to study somewhere that close to loads of books? Yes please.

So, first of all, I went in the wrong door. We weren’t sure which side was where we were supposed to go in, and we chose the bigger door. Apparently, it was the smaller door. So a lovely person at the café area told me to basically walk right through the middle of the building and use a button to ask the reception guy to let me in. Fortunately, this meant I didn’t actually have to introduce myself to the guy at reception face to face, he just asked what my name was and handed me a sticker with “RADA Audtions” on it which flat out refused to stick to my jumper.

There was one other girl in the waiting area and THANK GOODNESS I actually went over and had the guts to sit next to her, because we talked for a fair majority of the 1/2hr I was waiting there. She, and another girl that sat with us, had both auditioned at RADA once before and were both working in a planned gap year now after being at school the year before. We talked about other schools and what we were doing at the moment and secondary schools and all kinds of things.

One thing I discovered was that if you talk about some of the things you might need to bring up in the audition with other auditionees, it actually helps you loosen up about the interview questions. Don’t try to intimidate them, but the kinds of responses you get from them about stuff you’re doing or stuff you want to tell the panel kinda helps you feel more confident about saying them later.

Eventually, when everyone had arrived, we were lead off to a room I swear I’d already seen in a picture during my research (this is why looking for pictures of the school helps!) only there was an unexplained bed at one end of the room, and a big table in the middle for us to sit round. The woman who brought us there said her name really fast, so I missed it, but I think she would probably have been the person who sent out the emails. Anyway, she talked for a while about the audition process, handed us our forms, got us to write our audition pieces on the sheet added to the back, and got us to check everything on the forms was in order. Then she seperated them into two piles and said each group would be in a different building for their audition.

The number of people we had was pretty unusually small. There were four in one group (including the two girls I’d been chatting with), and three in the other (including me). The first group were wisked away by a runner (a graduate of the school) pretty quickly but it was about half an hour before myself and the other two remaining auditionees were picked up. This was another talking opportunity, which I lapped up. Any chance to make friends before the audition starts is 100% worthwhile. We made jokes, discussed pieces, auditioning in general, where we lived… etc. I was pretty glad they thought I was older than 17, when we discussed concerns about being called “too young”, because at least if I seem older to them then that’s one more point towards having enough maturity to be considered for the course. Again, these chats build confidence, because everyone is just like you. In fact, they were ALL younger than I expected, and just as excited and nervous as me.

When we were FINALLY brought to the Chenies St building, we were brought upstairs and into a long narrow corridor with a couple of fold-out seats (which I went for straight away, as my audition was going to be the third and last one). We were there for a good half-hour again, partly because there were only three of us so the panel was taking their time. Another girl came out of her audition pretty soon after we arrived, and she was buzzing about how nice they are (just as everyone else was). Loads of students of the school were also in and out of the door at the other end of the corridor and many of them said “good luck”.

My favourite experience of that was this one guy who came right up to us and said, “They’ve seen a lot of shit people today, and they are tired. They don’t want to see shit people. Just don’t be shit, and you��ll be fine. You’ll do great.” Whoever that guy was, he has given me the advice on which lies the foundations of every audition I do from now on. Thank you, kind stranger.

The first audition of the three of us was a really lovely bubbly girl with short black hair, and she seemed excited but that familiar expression of “what the hell am I doing” was most definitely in her eyes. We waited patiently for it to be over, and when it was, she came out smiling and proud of herself. She was another one of the many who said how lovely the panel were (one of whom had actually come down the corridor earlier) and she wished us luck, so I wished her luck on her results and before I knew it, the next person had gone and I was the only one left.

Being alone for a moment helped a lot because I was able to focus in peace, not worry about what anyone else thinks, and just make sure I was confident and ready to go. The wife of the guy on the panel came up to me while I was standing there, actually, and she told me her husband would be really nice to me which was nice of her. I was called in soon after, and the confidence in my walk was really unexpected.

The panel reached out to shake my hand, and so I shook theirs and smiled as they introduced themselves. There was a woman and a man, both of whom were very attentive and kind. They offered me a seat in front of them and I can’t for the life of me remember what they asked but they asked a couple of questions before I started as well as after the monologues. 

The monologues were fine, although there were obviously things I couldn’t do as well as I wanted to. I was un-nerved by how much my Leah monologue dragged after a while, and so I made a little more of some of the pauses just to try to regain interest. I’m not sure if it worked though. I am proud of what I did, but I know it wasn’t my best, and yet I also know I was fully immersed in the characters and that is the most important thing.

Afterwards, I sat back down to answer more interview questions at their request, and touched on the fact that I was going to Hamilton (which was absolutely amazing), I was able to talk about Tartuffe and the theatre I performed at which was certainly beautiful and one of the panel seemed familiar with the village it was in so we discussed that. I said my A Levels were going well, without a second thought, but I realised I wasn’t being completely honest so I explained that it’s still possible to get an A* or something but that it’s not my priority anymore. I think they understood that. I also said I was applying for RCS and LAMDA, and I got the dreaded “what actors are your favourite?” question, to which I had prepared a pretty well-thought-out response with a few examples of actors whose kind of work impresses me and has impacted me as an actor but pointed out that they don’t on their own represent the variety of actors I admire. They mentioned the fact that the Leah monologue was “dangerously long” and advised me to actually cut it down for future auditions. They actually said they chose not to stop me part way through because they understand how helpful it is to get to the emotional end of the piece but warned me I won’t always get that treatment. I thanked them, and will definitely be taking that advice now that I have a bit of time before I’ll be using it again.

I can only hope that my answers reflected how much work I put into researching possible interview questions, and how much I want and perhaps even deserve a place. I also hope that the feeling I got of being firm and confident in everything I said was actually something that they saw, and that it actually benefitted the success of the audition.

I left smiling, feeling confident and prepared to face whatever comes next. My other auditions are still pretty far off, but I may hear back from RADA quite soon. Whatever happens, this has been a really useful experience, one that I will make use of regardless of whether I get a rejection or recall this year.

[fangirlmomentsandmytwocents]

1001 Dark Nights Discovery Bundle 12 Release Day Launch

    We are absolutely thrilled to bring you the Release Day Launch for 1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Twelve, brought to you by 1001 Dark Nights. Introducing Discovery Authors Nazarea Andrews and Megan Erickson, the Bundle contains 6 novellas, including novellas from New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors Alexandra Ivy, Laura Wright, Lorelei James, and Lara Adrian! Grab your copy of this incredible bundle today!

    About 1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Twelve:

From New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors Alexandra Ivy, Laura Wright, Lorelei James, Lara Adrian, and introducing Nazarea Andrews and Megan Erickson. Six Dark Tales. Six Sensual Stories. Six Page Turners. KAYDEN: A Bayou Heat Novella by Alexandra Ivy Kayden is obsessed with revenge after his parents disappeared when he was just a cub. Now the gorgeous Hunter has discovered the man responsible for betraying them – Joshua Ford – and it’s time for payback. Beginning with the kidnapping of Joshua’s daughter, Bianca. But last thing he expects is to be confronted with the horrifying realization that Bianca is his mate. Will he put revenge before his chance for eternal happiness? SIMON: Bayou Heat Novella by Laura Wright Sexy male model, Simon refuses to give up his exciting life in New York City to return to the slow heat of the Wildlands. For a decade, many pantera have tried to capture the rogue Diplomat and bring him home, but all have failed. Now it’s Tryst’s turn. The hard, brilliant, and gorgeous, Hunter is the ultimate tracker. But can the admitted beast-girl of the Wildlands capture her prey without losing her heart in the process? STRUNG UP: A Blacktop Cowboys Novella by Lorelei James Rancher Creston Grant retreats from the world after he loses the love of his life….Can his former flame, rodeo cowboy Breck Christianson prove he’s a changed man who can give Cres a second chance at love? MIDNIGHT UNTAMED: A Midnight Breed Novella by Lara Adrian For Breed warrior Ettore Selvaggio, stealth assassinations are only one of his specialties. The last thing Savage expects to find behind enemy lines is a woman he once adored. It’s been years since Savage last saw Arabella Genova. Years he’s strived to banish to his past, along with the fierce desire he once felt toward Bella and the irresistible calling of her blood that stirs in him even now, despite the fact that she belongs to another male. DIRTY SEXY SECRET by Nazarea Andrews Even when you know better…. There are a million reasons why Hazel Campton is off limits: she’s a journalist. I’m a cop. Oh, and she’s my foster sister. My secret is I didn’t care. I haven’t stopped wanting her since I slept with her the night before she left.  She’s trouble. Always has been.  It’s hard to resist the thing you’ve always wanted…  Growing up with Brandon Archer means I know him. Good. Bad. Everything in between.  It’s just never mattered.  My secret? That night. The one I stole, that’s kept me from Archer and Green County, for four years.  Now I’m home, and nothing has changed. Except me. And not in the way that means a damn thing.  Because I still want him.  Everything can change with a knock at the door… Secrets. Everyone has them. Archer. Me. This town.  Perfection only runs surface deep in Green County. When there’s a knock at me door, it’s a familiar face all covered in danger, and all those secrets we hide? They’re about to come tumbling out.  BITE THE HAND THAT BLEEDS by Megan Erickson Roxy heads below the streets of Mission City to a vampire club, determined to give up her blood in exchange for much-needed cash. She has no idea that the handsome, brooding vampire she meets there will awaken desires she didn't know she had, and will change her life forever...

Every Dark Nights tale is breathtakingly sexy and magically romantic.

Experience the 1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Twelve Here…

  Amazon | Amazon UK | Amazon CAN | Amazon AU

                  About the 1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Twelve Authors-

Alexandra Ivy is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. From Alexandra: “I’m not exactly sure when I fell in love with books. Probably on my mother’s knee listening to her read Dr. Seuss to me. I do remember that I was barely old enough to cross the street by myself when I discovered the delights of the local library. Could anything be more wonderful than spending summer days surrounded by stacks of Nancy Drew mysteries? Over the years I fell in love with Victoria Holt, Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, and J.R.R. Tolkien just to name a few. I read poetry, essays, biographies, and plays. In fact, I read anything I could get my hands on. Years later (no, I’m not admitting how many) I’m still an avid reader, and my tastes are still as varied as they were in my youth, which I suppose helps to explain why I enjoy writing regency historicals under the name of Deborah Raleigh, as well as my contemporary paranormals as Alexandra Ivy. For now that is enough to keep me busy, but who knows what the future might hold! I do have a few other loves in my life besides reading and writing, the most important being my unbelievably patient husband, David, and my two sons, Chance and Alexander. Without their constant support and belief in me, I never could have been able to follow my dreams. They are truly my heroes.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

       Laura Wright is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. From Laura: “Unlike many of my peers in the writing world, I wasn’t a writer or a reader until I left high school. During my youth I was into theater, song and dance, commercials and boys. I loved romance surely, but I had never read a romance novel until my late teens. With that said, I remember the day I did like it was a moment ago – my aunt gave me the Jude Deveraux novel, Knight in Shining Armor and I couldn’t put it down until the very last word. Then I went straight to the library and got another – then another until I’d read everything she’d ever written. After that, it was McNaught, Howard, Schone, Kleypas, and the Silhouette line, Desire. I instantly loved those emotional, sexy reads, so much so that I began to carve out ideas for my own stories, themes that were unique to me and moved me. In 1997 I enrolled in UCLA extension writing classes, met my mentor and critique partners and since have never stopped writing. I was committed then and I still am now; the need to tell my own romantic stories a full on obsession. My first manuscript was rejected, and though the second one was as well the editor who’d rejected it wanted to see something else from me. I had something (note to authors; always keep working, even after you’ve sent in a proposal) and sent it right away. The day I got the call telling me Desire wanted to buy Cinderella and the Playboy was the best day of my life. That is until I married my husband, and had my two beautiful children. But I must say, writing is much like motherhood – tough, grueling, surprising, delicious and for me, a dream come true.”

Website | Facebook

       Lorelei James is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author of contemporary erotic western romances set in the modern day Wild West and also contemporary erotic romances. Lorelei’s books have been nominated for and won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s choice Award, as well as the CAPA Award. Lorelei lives in western South Dakota with her family…and a whole closet full of cow girl boots. From Lorelei: “Why do I have a particular fondness for all things western? Well, I’m a fourth generation South Dakotan, living in the Black Hills, which is chock-full of interesting characters, including cowboys, Indians, ranchers, and bikers. The geographical diversity of the surrounding area showcases mountains, plains, and badlands. Living in and writing about rural settings gives me a unique perspective, especially since I’m not writing historical westerns. Through my fictional world, I can show the ideals and the cowboy way of life are still very much alive.”  

Website | Facebook | Twitter

       Lara Adrian is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 internationally bestselling author of the Midnight Breed vampire romance series and seven award-winning, historical romances, previously released under the pen name Tina St. John. Lara’s Midnight Breed series is available in hardcover, mass market paperback and e-book through Random House, and in limited edition through Doubleday Book Club, Rhapsody Book Club, Book of The Month, and the Science Fiction Book Club. Unabridged audio editions are available through Tantor Media, Random House Audio, Amazon, iTunes, etc. Lara’s new releases regularly appear on all of the key bestseller lists including including the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Indiebound, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, etc. There are more than 2 million copies of the Midnight Breed novels in print in the United States.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Nazarea Andrews (N to almost everyone) is an avid reader and tends to write the stories she wants to read. Which means she writes everything from zombies and dystopia to contemporary love stories. When not writing, she can most often be found driving her kids to practice and burning dinner while she reads, or binge watching TV shows on Netflix. N loves chocolate, wine, and coffee almost as much as she loves books, but not quite as much as she loves her kids. N is a self-professed geek and enjoys spending her spare time lost in her favorite fandoms and can often be found babbling about them on social media. She lives in south Georgia with her husband, daughters, spoiled cat and overgrown dog. She is the author of World Without End series, Neverland Found, Edge of the Falls, and The University of Branton Series. Stop by her twitter (@NazareaAndrews) and tell her what fantastic book she should read next.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Megan Erickson is a USA Today bestselling author of romance that sizzles. Her books have a touch of nerd, a dash of humor, and always have a happily ever after. A former journalist, she switched to fiction when she decided she likes writing her own endings better. She lives in Pennsylvania with her very own nerdy husband and two kids. Although rather fun-sized, she's been told she has a full-sized personality. When Megan isn't writing, she's either lounging with her two cats named after John Hughes characters or... thinking about writing. For more, visit meganerickson.org    

Website | Facebook | Twitter

       FGMAMTC 

Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents

Website / Facebook / Twitter / Google+ / Pinterest / Goodreads / Tumblr / Bloglovin' / Instagram

var addthis_config = {"data_track_addressbar":true};