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eye-may · 6 months ago

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Any tuggoffelees headcanons perhaps? 😸

Also, I love the way you write things, it's pretty addictive to read.

tuggoffelees occupies at least fifty per cent of my mind palace at any given time so yes I definitely have hcs that Id love to share lmao. in all likelihood I could rave and gush until the end of time but I'll valiantly contain myself within the bounds of tumblrs character limit lmao

also thank you!!! ;w;

Tugger Is A Selective Ass Listener

Mistoffelees is really the only cat that Tugger unhesitatingly listens to. the latter has a notorious predisposition for disobedience and contrarianism, even, sometimes, towards Old Deutoronomy. it's more common though to witness Munkustrap telling him to do something or other, only to have to face down Tugger's bottomless pugnacity. (and that's his brother...if it's Skimble or Asparagus or Jelly or any of the elders...let alone a peer like Bombalurina...forget it lmao. they hardly even try after a certain point). however...if Mistoffelees echoes the command or chastises Tugger for not listening, or encourages him to obey...nothing gets Tugger to pipe down and comply faster. it's a mystical phenomenon that is known to many cats in the junkyard. a few of the kittens might even speculate that it can be attributed to Mistoffelees's magic, like he's using hypnosis...but the truth is, of course, that Tugger is just very, very whipped.

Vitriolic Best Frienditude

I see their relationship as embodying the "vitriolic best friends" trope in the most wholesome sense i.e., there's plenty of ribbing, teasing, good-natured spats, comedic disagreements, scathing nicknames. it's just one layer of their unique dynamic that contains multitudes lmao. in plenty of other instances, they coexist in companionable silence, especially since Mistoffelees is characteristically on the quieter side (and sometimes seemingly hesitates to talk at all). but the two of them read each other's signals so well --- the silences are never awkward, the vitriol is never genuinely hurtful.

Tashing

Tugger, contrary to his reputation, is not a "touchy-feely" cat. in fact, if you could see past the veneer of prurient mischief, you'd see a cat that's actually rather aloof...a little cagey, even. so unless the context is ✨romantical✨, he's not as likely to seek out tactile affection and cuddles per the average Jellicle. also sometimes nuzzling messes up his mane!! there is, of course, one (1) cat that can impulsively nuzzle/hug/cuddle the Tugger, even foregoing permission, and that's Mistoffelees. granted, Mistoffelees rarely seeks out those kinds of interactions (unless he's cold lmao) but there's an unspoken understanding that a physical display of affection from Mistoffelees is something that is very soothing to Tugger. there have been enough instances where Tugger gets riled up about something, only to be calmed by Mistoffelees materializing behind him, wrapping his arms around his neck, nuzzling him, purring. (incidentally, when he does this...his feet don't reach the ground lmao so he's kind of just planted on Tugger's back like a spider or a koala or smth).

on the other end, Mistoffelees isn't as guarded when it comes to tactile mores of the felinological sort. but Tugger takes certain extraneous liberties lol such as using Mistoffelees's head as an elbow rest, randomly lifting him, ruffling his head fur, etc.

They Will Do Crimes For Each Other (deadass)

they are protective of each other in different ways. Tugger's protective streak is more archetypal, more obvious. loud and conspicuous. a threat toward Mistoffelees, verbal or otherwise, is tantamount to a declaration of war. Tugger is slower to resort to offensive combat than Munkustrap or Alonzo...but if Mistoffelees is in the picture, it's on sight!! meanwhile, Mistoffelees is more of the 'quiet and dangerous' ilk of protector. he keeps more levelheaded, which in a way...makes him more of a terror. severe slights against Tugger may result in Mistoffelees wielding his magic in ways that he never does otherwise. and I don't mean in an explosive, violent way...I mean like, he'll turn up his beguiling tactics to the utmost degree. he'll play psychological games. he'll unleash his 'eccentric confusions' in a ruthless fashion. it's...about as close as he ever comes to using his magic in a way that's comparable to Macavity's tactics.

The Incomprehensibly Fateful Initial Meeting (or: Tugger acquires a new accessory)

Mistoffelees's arrival to the junkyard constituted a formative turning point for Tugger while he had been struggling with ingratiating with the Jellicles after the difficult process of detaching himself from Macavity. their initial introduction was very emblematic of who they are as cats; Tugger, in a bad mood after he lost something as seemingly superficial as his bandana down a storm drain and being touchy/irate as a result...and Mistoffelees, that eccentric new kitten, mystifying the younger cats with his little magic tricks. Tugger was encouraged to go say hi to him, be friendly, help welcome him...and Tugger probably would have shirked such pleasantries with some hot shot kid who's got the leading members of HIS fan club in a tizzy. but the Rum Tum Tugger IS a curious cat...and he'd have been remiss to admit that he wasn't dying to know what the big deal about this new arrival was.

he approaches the group of cats and kittens who are crowded around the tux in time to see him complete a sleight of hand card trick. the small audience erupts in cheers and claps. one of the kittens, noticing Tugger's arrival, encourages him to let Mistoffelees perform one of his tricks for him (he'll be amazed!). Tugger, of course, being too cool for school, is like mmm nahhh...but the kittens BEG him to give it a shot, and Tugger, used to appeasing his fans, concedes. Mistoffelees smiles ambiguously at him, and Tugger kneels down to his height, waiting for whatever ostensibly amazing feat of trickery is coming. Mistoffelees doesn't say a word to him; in fact, Tugger hadn't heard him talk at all up to that point. instead, the tux soundlessly reaches for somewhere in the vicinity of Tugger's ear, which causes the latter to reel back instinctively. he plays off his dramatic reaction a bit with an unsettled smile, but then declares that he doesn't allow for touching of his glorious mane. Mistoffelees is visibly taken aback; he recoiled when Tugger did.

of course, the kittens come in clutch again. Etcetera most likely is particularly insistent ("aw come on Tugger, just let him!!!") and, once again, Tugger's arm is proverbially twisted into resignation. he tentatively resituates himself in such a way that allows the quiet illusionist to conduct the trick. Mistoffelees reaches, combs his paw into Tugger's hair and seems to just play with it for a minute. Meanwhile Tugger is just sitting there like O_o. but then, Mistoffelees draws back, withdrawing his paw...and, with it, comes a long beautiful strip of fabric with leopard spots that match Tugger's own fur pattern around his chest and arms and feet. the kittens, of course, are rapt...and, admittedly, so is Tugger. his disposition flips like a coin. he's smiling (a genuine smile!), impressed, his previous reservations forgotten. when Mistoffelees hands him the bandana, Tugger examines it, and even extends verbal kudos to the magician. he can't figure out how it was done!

He goes to hand the bandana back, thinking it belongs to Mistoffelees, that it's something he typically uses for such tricks. but Mistoffelees, still wordlessly, nudges it back towards him. Tugger is confused for a second, but quickly realizes that Mistoffelees means for him to keep it. he's almost sort of touched...he had JUST lost his bandana, and as if coming in clutch, this random cat he doesn't know gifts him a new, honestly cooler one...but there's no way Mistoffelees could have known that...right...?

Suffice to say, although neither of them knew...that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship lmao. I could wax poetical for paragraphs and paragraphs about why the two of them work so well together, but that first meeting was a solid representation of the essence of their dynamic. Mistoffelees is a consunmate showman, as is Tugger, but there was never an air of competition or of insecurity or jealousy or any such unpleasantries. Mistoffelees, as far as Tugger was concerned, was the only cat he had ever met up to then that had no expectations of him; no ogling admirations, no prejudicial judgments. that didn't see him as a conquest, or a celebrity, or a henchman, or a project. and Mistoffelees, meanwhile, notices the evident sincerity of Tugger's attachments towards him. he's intuitive enough to glean quickly that most of Tugger's affections are, apparently, superficial and angled...and yet, despite Mistoffelees not partaking in the fandom, Tugger seeks him of all cats out, encourages his talents, praises him even when nobody else is around...so none of it, for once, is a performance. the two can just be so organic and raw with each other Im asfafoihgope

their idiosyncrasies are also fun to compare and contrast, like...both are showmen who enjoy being the center of attention when it's controlled. both know and understand what it feels like to be used. both grapple with prejudice, with the presuppositions about their propensity for evilness (because Tugger was raised by Macavity and Mistoffelees is magical, which, in my CATS universe, has negative connotations in certain religious groupings amid pious denominations of the cat world). however, Tugger is loquacious, extroverted, gregarious...while Mistoffelees is quiet, observant, cryptic. they balance each other out aaaa it's cute idk.

A Comprehensive Guide To Dealing With the Unique Situation Of Having A Superpowered Boyfriend? Best Friend

I just like to think that Tugger is more privy than perhaps anybody else about the multitude of nuances that come along with Mistoffelees's magical powers. it's not as simple as catapulting force lightning at every wayward piece of furniture on a whim! I think Tugger was the first to know of the extent of Mistoffelees's abilities (as described before, others in the yard knew that he could perform magic, but at first he kept it to seemingly explicable illusions --- sleight of hand things that are cool, but not actually preternatural) and has learned so extensively about them from a combination of tenure and fascination. he keyed in early on to the possibility of Magic Exhaustion (tm), and to the way Mistoffelees's power levels correlate with the moon phases, and how soporific a New Moon is to the Conjuring Cat. he knows to an extent better than most others, what exactly Mistoffelees 'can and can't' do, what sorts of magic he struggles with versus what he excels at, etc. like he might know these little details like, conjuring requires more energy than vanishment. he knows that if Mistoffelees tries to transmute anything without a Full Moon, he'll probably exert himself beyond his means and pass out. he knows when Mistoffelees is 'sensing' something, like an unseen entity or if he's having a moment of prescience. he knows that Mistoffelees struggles the most with sionic/psychic magic and that he dislikes even trying it (and that every time he does he gets a splitting headache).

for the most part, Tugger is infinitely impressed by the Conjuring Cat. this is known. as an unappeasable, unsatisfiable itinerant in almost all regards, it's nigh impossible to impress and excite him --- but Mistoffelees manages to do it all the time! that being said, there are truthfully a handful of downsides. Tugger's great at putting on an easygoing veneer, so all might not be privy to the moments when he's feeling pretty anxious about his friend...like when Mistoffelees overexerts and then goes comatose. when he's unrousable for longer than Tugger expects. when Macavity and all and sundry catch wind of him and he becomes a target. when he jumps into the line of fire, aggrandized into a save-the-day sort of role by virtue of being a literal sorcerer.

Tugger, on one paw, wants to show Mistoffelees off to everyone. he wants the world to know how uncredible this cat is, wants to bask in the glory of having the rare privilege of knowing him. but sometimes, on the other paw (indecisive as ever)...he wishes he could just have Mistoffelees to himself, where he's safe and where neither of them have to worry about the supposed ramifications of being able to shoot lightning out of your hands and suchlike.

despite those feelings, I don't personally see either Tugger or Mistoffelees as codependent of possessive of the other. their relationship is so organic and natural, bereft of miscommunication or distrust or overcompensation or jealousy or any such shortcomings. Tugger is protective without being patronizing. Mistoffelees is watchful without being hypervigilant. and so on and so forth.

fellas is it queer if your relationship with your bro is so profound that it actually transcends spacetime and subversely defies the cultural paremeters of any label available in any language, thus making this question unanswerable?

idk if this is an hc at this point. now I'm just babbling. but for what it's worth I'm a SAP...a SUCKER...a slut, even....for the type of relationship between two dudes that is nebulous and layered beyond the realm of conventional categorization. the kind of thing where it's like, they'd do anything for each other. they are soothed and balanced by each other's presence. one cannot imagine a world without the other. they are both 100% of themselves and their connection does not detract from either, nor does either need the other to complete their picture. they do, of course, love each other, yes. is it friendship? romance? sexual or sensual? familial? a partnership? a domestic union? none of the above! it's somehow something else entirely! it is more than all of that, and yet the most lightweight and simplest alternative.

is it ridiculous for me to wax and wane hither and thither so philosophically over two campy fictional dancing and singing anthropomorphic cats who technically only directly interact for a net total of like ten minutes??? yes, it is! but there are worse things

I just like to think that that's the kind of relationship they have. you can't stick a neat and tidy label on it. I think in their materially planar bubbles in which they are beholden to cultural mores, there's potential for spindles made out of the What Are We? sort of threads. but like I often indulge in the imagery of it being like a sam/frodo thing where we just don't even know what to call it lmao.

all that is to say. knowing how prevalent the idea of reincarnation is in the world of CATS, I do like to think of Tuggoffelees as something of a cosmic fixture in the grand scheme of the universe. in my personal CATS canon [[I need to think of a damn title for this thing]] there comes a time when Mistoffelees has to come to terms with the fact that he's going to outlive all of his loved ones. when Tugger becomes privy to this, and to Mistoffelees's apprehensions about it, he promises (with some levity because this IS Tugger we're talking about) that he'll always find Mistoffelees in every subsequent Jellicle Life. he'll always come back to get on his nerves. Mistoffelees is incredulous; it's not like Tugger's future incarnations will remember his past lives and have the wherewithal to do any such thing. But Tugger insists that he'll always be Looking, even if his future incarnations don't necessarily know what specifically FOR, because he'll always be a restless soul (that can only be truly settled by one vital connection, as we have already seen). he assure Mistoffelees that the latter will know when future Tuggers have found him; and Mistoffelees chuckles and says he's sure that he will.

both of them know that neither of them REALLY believe that. but it's a comforting thought.

recently I've been juggling with the idea that after escorting Old Tugger to the Heaviside Layer, Mistoffelees casts a spell for which he sacrifices his voice to make it so that he can always identify Tugger's soul, and only that soul will be able to hear him speak. subsequent generations of cats will come to know the legendary Mistoffelees as entirely mute, although none will know the reason why. that's a whole other thing tho asdflkapsofi

#cats the musical #cats musical #mistoffelees #the rum tum tugger #rum tum tugger #mr mistoffelees #tuggoffelees #jellicle asks #CJL

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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Out of guilt or amnesia, we tend to treat wars, in retrospect, as natural disasters: terrible but somehow inevitable, beyond anyone’s control. Shaking your fist at the fools who started the First World War and condemned millions to a meaningless death seems jejune; historians teach us to say that the generals did their best under impossible conditions. Mournful fatalism is the requisite emotion, even when mad fury would be more apt. Efforts at de-escalation are cast as weakness or cowardice, while those who lead nations into catastrophe are praised for their “strength of character,” or for stoically accepting what was supposedly unavoidable. We rarely honor those who turn back at the brink. John F. Kennedy’s compromise during the Cuban missile crisis is an exception, though only because prudence and caution—our removal of nuclear missiles from Turkey—were neatly covered up and presented as pugnacity and courage: we had made the Russians “blink.”

The habit of describing war with metaphors drawn from natural disasters is as old as war writing. Homer himself uses natural metaphors to ennoble violent human actors: Achilles is a wildfire sweeping across the Trojan plain. Given what Greek warfare actually entailed—pitched battles of close combat, where victory meant cutting others to death with edged weapons—the figure feels less like a metaphor than a mask.

So it is with us. The Civil War lingers in memory as brutal and heartbreaking, but also as heroic and tragic, accompanied by an Appalachian campfire fiddle. It is the altar of American existence—a sublime sacrifice and a perpetually contested example—so thoroughly sanctified that to ask if it might have been avoided by pragmatic compromise feels almost obscene. No war, no Lincoln, no Emancipation Proclamation, no Gettysburg—neither the battle nor the address—to inspire and instruct us? And yet three-quarters of a million people died, and the enslaved people in whose name the war was fought emerged still trapped in an apartheid terrorist state. Was it worth it?

In “1861: The Lost Peace” (Grand Central), Jay Winik—the author of several fine works about American history—takes up that question of whether the Civil War might have been avoided. The title overpromises a little. Nowhere in the book do we encounter a truly plausible compromise that might have averted the conflict. What Winik offers instead is a portrait of two sides talking past each other, rather than with each other. Still, he traces the efforts of those who genuinely wanted to prevent war and the trauma of secession—and shows how Abraham Lincoln tried at first to listen and then at last refused.

The early chapters are given over to what will be, for many, a familiar story. We hear again how an underrated, grotesque-looking backwoods lawyer with scant experience (one term in Congress and two failed Senate runs) managed—by virtue of being a moderate and, usefully, an outsider; a man of the frontier rather than of Boston or New York—to wrest the Republican nomination from the seemingly inevitable William Henry Seward, of New York, and go on to win the national election against the pro-slavery Democrat John Breckinridge.

We’re told about the assassination plots brewing before Lincoln had even taken office, forcing him—in ways widely seen as comical, not to say cowardly—to sneak into Washington under the protection of the newly founded Pinkerton private-detective force. (By rumor, though not in fact, he was dressed in women’s clothes.) Southern states were already passing resolutions of secession one after another, with South Carolina taking the lead. Meanwhile, the Confederate noose was tightening around Fort Sumter, in the waters off Charleston, where the Northern garrison was effectively under blockade.

The reasons for the radical action were plain. Lincoln, despite his efforts to present himself as a moderate, was what we would now call a single-issue candidate. The issue was slavery, and his categorical rejection of it. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong” was his most emphatic aphorism on the subject, along with his famous injunction: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”

Though absolute on the moral question, Lincoln was neither the hard-core political abolitionist we may wish him to have been nor the apologist for slavery some later commentators have made him seem. He was, instead, a democratic politician trying to build a coalition—and he knew that, to keep the border states within it, a firm New England abolitionist line would fail, while a focus on containing slavery, not eradicating it, might succeed.

And so, during that strange American interregnum between election and Inauguration—it was even longer in the nineteenth century, with the ceremony held in March—Lincoln struggled to find common ground with the Southern secessionists. He began a pre-inaugural exchange of letters with Alexander Stephens, of Georgia, a friend from his congressional days who made it clear that, in the Southern mind, everything was secondary to the preservation of slavery. “We at the South do think African slavery, as it exists with us, both morally and politically right,” Stephens wrote. “This opinion is founded upon the inferiority of the black race. You, however, and perhaps a majority of the North, think it wrong. Admit the difference of opinion.”

The enterprise of avoiding war was likely doomed from the start. Nonetheless—and here lies the new emphasis of Winik’s book—there was an attempt at a “Peace Conference” (Winik oddly capitalizes it throughout) during this pre-inaugural period, and it was more substantial than most subsequent histories have acknowledged. If it didn’t resolve the crisis, it at least exposed the depth of the deadlock.

The conference took place in Washington, at the Willard Hotel, where Lincoln had stayed since his arrival, using his suite as his office. The Willard, like the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York, has gone through many incarnations, but in the nineteenth century it seemed more central to Washington life than either the White House or the long-unfinished Capitol. (Its cast-iron dome was still incomplete.) From February 4th to the 27th, the conference drew delegates from twenty-one of the thirty-four states then in the Union. It brought together representatives from the South—most notably from Virginia, the cradle of Presidents, which had not yet committed to secession—with Republicans from the North, many of them, as Winik reveals, operating under the direct or indirect guidance of Seward. Though the delegates were mostly former members of Congress, the gathering wasn’t limited to them; the former President John Tyler, of Virginia, who held no official position but remained influential, was present.

It was, by all indications, a comfortable negotiation. Both sides dined—if a Willard menu from that year is to be trusted—on lamb chops, stewed kidneys, and, precociously, frozen custard, which, like baseball, would not become a national mania until after the war. It is perhaps less surprising, then, given their shared table, class, and manners, that both sides, including almost all the Republicans, were ready to concede the permanence of slavery in the South in exchange for ending the threat of secession. A Thirteenth Amendment was proposed, and could probably have passed, guaranteeing the continued existence of slavery in the states where it already prevailed. Even Lincoln was prepared to accept this.

The unresolvable issue was the extension of slavery into the territories. Here, the arguments were fierce, layered with subtexts and overtones more audible then than now. For all the civility of tone and talk of compromise—Lincoln went so far as to agree that a fugitive slave could be recaptured and returned to bondage—the real conflict was profound and, in the end, unbridgeable. Like the conflict in the Middle East today, it was rooted less in clashing interests than in vast and irreconcilable mutual fears. The underlying meanings were evident to all: any limit placed on slavery, the Southerners believed, was intended to hasten its extinction; any constitutional blessing of slavery, the North understood, was intended to support its extension.

To use an awkward but apt modern analogy, it was as if the right-to-life movement, having won the Presidency, were to concede that reproductive freedom would remain protected in blue states like New York and Massachusetts, but be entirely eliminated in red states, with harsh penalties. Blue-state voters would see that the true goal was to end abortion everywhere, and that agreeing even to a temporary truce meant accepting the long-term influence of hostile neighbors on a vital and defining issue.

Behind the Southern delegates’ suspicion was a kind of post-October 7th trauma: John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, in 1859, had convinced the South that the Black population was poised to rise up in bloody rebellion if given the chance. This, in retrospect, was plainly chimerical—the enslaved had not, in fact, joined Brown’s insurrection, and, when Black enfranchisement did eventually come, however briefly, during Reconstruction, Black Americans, far from turning violently on their former masters, embraced electoral politics with enthusiasm. But the Southern establishment was unshakable in its belief that any concession to abolitionists would end in the massacre of white families. Stephens wrote indignantly to Lincoln of “such exhibitions of madness as the John Brown raid into Virginia, which has received so much sympathy from many, and no open condemnation from any of the leading men of the present dominant party.”

Lincoln nonetheless participated warmly in the Peace Conference debate, insisting that his task was simply to follow the Constitution, which he understood to prohibit secession from the Union as an act of treason. Yet, for all his provisional concessions, he effectively ended the conference by declaring, “In a choice of evils, war may not always be the worst. Still I would do all in my power to avert it, except to neglect a constitutional duty. As to slavery, it must be content with what it has. The voice of the civilized world is against it.”

Those words may now strike us as unduly mild, but behind them lay the doctrine of the “Scorpion’s Sting”—the idea, adopted by antislavery advocates around the world, that if slavery could be encircled and confined, it would destroy itself, as the scorpion is said to sting itself to death when trapped in a ring of fire. The scorpion metaphor, though pungent, was poorly chosen. Just as frogs do not, in fact, remain in water as it boils but leap out when they are scalded, scorpions are actually immune to their own venom, and, when encircled by fire, they die not by stinging themselves but from heat-induced convulsions that only appear to be self-inflicted. That image offers a better metaphor for the war to come. Stoic suicide doesn’t occur in nature. Frenzied, senseless self-destruction does.

Yet Lincoln’s words signalled—clearly, to anyone attuned to their overtones, and everyone at that conference was—that slavery was to be put, or left, in a position where it would have to end itself. Slavery had a cursed past, and a present to be tolerated, but no future. No one quite said this; everyone grasped it. And so the Willard Peace Conference quietly foundered. Its resolutions were rejected in the Senate and never even reached a vote in the House.

Southern paranoia and Northern complacency together may explain what, at first glance, seems to us the oddest feature of the Willard meetings: that no one on the Northern side proposed a rational plan for gradual emancipation and enfranchisement, presumably subsidized by the already wealthy industrialists of the North and carried out over some specified interval. Such plans had been tried before—in Pennsylvania, as early as the seventeen-eighties, and proposed for Virginia, though unsuccessfully, by Thomas Jefferson. Surely a similar scheme, however brutal its delay for the enslaved, might have spared the country the full scale of the war to come. Lincoln himself returned to the idea in 1862, when he proposed a program of compensated, gradual abolition for the border states. Yet even then, at the height of the war, sympathetic border-state representatives refused to act. Slavery had embedded itself too deeply, not only as an economic engine but as a terror-bound cultural institution.

The tragedy was that, while the South could not overcome its paranoia about the violence it would suffer if the slaves were freed, the North could not imagine the scale of the violence it was choosing. The assumption, of course, was that the conflict would last twelve weeks—just long enough to put the erring states back in their place. But only a few months later Julia Ward Howe would be staying at the same Willard Hotel when, in the course of a day, she saw a column of freshly inducted Union soldiers, in blue uniforms, marching and singing lines from a newly adapted spiritual: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground.” The words struck her as too direct, and she composed a loftier version in her hotel room, substituting God’s vengeance for that of the abolitionist: “He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword / His truth is marching on.” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was born. It was only November, and already more than forty thousand soldiers had fallen. The eternal language of euphemism—swords and lightning—had begun its work, displacing the reality of bullets breaking bodies.

In the wake of the failed conference, Lincoln skillfully replaced “abolition” with “the Union” as the war’s compelling purpose. The case he made to connect the end of slavery with the preservation of a political arrangement was subtle. Secession, he maintained, was a denial of democratic rule. Slavery had, from the beginning, been a national issue. It could not be fenced off and become a parochial one now. This was the logic, easily lost to us because it’s so familiar, behind the memorable line in the Gettysburg Address, delivered two years later, that the great question of the war was whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated”—that is, to liberty—“can long endure.” Without a strong central authority—not a dictator or a king but a unifying rule of law—a free state would be torn apart by demagogues and dissension.

Yet the argument, though it has come to seem foundational, is in some ways specious. As Southern critics noted at the time, for the wrong reasons but not with the wrong logic, the American Revolution was itself an act of secession—from a functioning and successful union. Many regions have broken apart at the will of their inhabitants. It is easy to imagine horrors today that could make, say, California and Oregon and Washington want to declare themselves a separate polity, and it is hard to invoke a moral principle to tell them that they can’t. From this perspective, the idea of “union” was one of the most disingenuous diversions in American history: the transformation of an abstract constitutional principle into a cause worth dying for.

Why this new argument proved so powerful remains something of a mystery. Edmund Wilson, in his study of Civil War literature, “Patriotic Gore,” saw in it the blunt, power-fixated logic of human history: big states swallow small ones. The North was stronger and bigger, and it swallowed the South. The bleak truth, Wilson suggested, is that people like joining armies of conquest. Presumably, when the Great Canadian campaign begins, there will be no shortage of soldiers to fight it, or of apologists ready to enumerate the horrors of Canadian life that must be erased, poutine aside.

And yet Canada, oddly, offers a clue to the peculiar appeal of Lincoln’s abstract ideal of “union.” Donald Trump’s threats have, almost overnight, caused a famously divided and centrifugal nation to cohere into a single national front. Something like that happened across the North at the outset of the Civil War, when “the Union” became not just a constitutional principle but a moral rallying cry. The South, for its part, responded in kind: secession swiftly forged a fractured region into a reactive unity, bound by fear of emancipation and faith in a mythic agrarian freedom.

In an illuminating study of American Jews during the conflict, “Fear No Pharaoh” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Richard Kreitner notes that even pro-slavery rabbis in New York were converted by Lincoln’s unionist rhetoric. Morris J. Raphall, who led the Greene Street Synagogue and had defended slavery on Biblical grounds, abruptly reversed himself when Lincoln invoked the vision of a united America. American Jews, Raphall insisted, knew the “difference between elsewhere and here.” His son enlisted in the Union Army and lost an arm at Gettysburg. As in the post-mass-immigration moment of the First World War, a crisis proved necessary to forge a common identity. “Elsewhere” and “here” always make for more compelling rallying cries than “right” and “wrong.”

This bleaker view is reinforced by the historian Michael Vorenberg’s new book, “Lincoln’s Peace” (Knopf), which picks up the story at the other end of the conflict, as the war was drawing to a close after unfathomable death and suffering. Vorenberg’s account, despite the intervening carnage, returns us to a situation eerily similar to the one that preceded the war: the white South, though militarily defeated, had no intention of accepting anything resembling racial equality. And, while Robert E. Lee might have declined to resort to guerrilla warfare, many of his lieutenants carried on a program of suppression by terror. In that sense, Vorenberg argues, the Civil War never truly ended.

Lincoln’s assassination was, in this light, a last-ditch terrorist assault on the national government—one that very nearly succeeded. Seward and Vice-President Andrew Johnson survived the conspiracy only by chance. The pattern of compromise persisted, with the politics of the border states still exerting undue influence. Indeed, one of the most fateful disasters in American history—Johnson’s embattled Presidency—was a by-product of those very compromises: Johnson, a Tennessean, was chosen to replace Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, on the 1864 ticket in a bid to appease the border states, with predictable results.

In “American Civil Wars” (Norton), Alan Taylor broadens the frame to include parallel struggles over national identity and democratic renewal in the eighteen-sixties—not only in the United States but in Canada and Mexico as well. One could broaden it further and argue that the period from 1848 to 1871—bracketed by the liberal revolutions and the end of the Franco-Prussian War—was marked by a series of violent shocks across the Western world, culminating in the establishment of a liberal political compact that, in some form, endured into our own time. Lincoln’s “passion” became so sanctified, in this reading, because it was the most extreme instance of a common struggle. In this view, the American experience was not exceptional but emblematic—a subset of the painful emergence of something resembling genuinely popular democracy.

What’s striking about the new literature on Lincoln and the war is that, though one may expect him to be in some sense debunked or “deconstructed,” he remains a largely idealized figure. Winik is admiring of his firmness of purpose at the war’s outset; Vorenberg mourns its absence at the war’s end. Matthew Stewart, in his recent study of the influence of idealist philosophy on abolitionism, “An Emancipation of the Mind,” goes further. Drawing on quotations from Karl Marx, a Lincoln enthusiast, Stewart argues that Lincoln was essentially the first Marxist President: embracing a view of labor not far from Marx’s own, and opposing the peonage of working people in all its forms.

This is obviously tendentious—nor does Stewart mean it entirely seriously—but, then, Lincoln, like Jesus, is easily made to conform to whatever ideological need the historian brings to him. If a left-wing, quasi-Marxist Lincoln is a plausible invention, so is a far-right, conservative one of the sort evoked by Harry V. Jaffa, the godfather of the Claremont Institute. Jaffa saw Lincoln’s choice of war in 1861 as wholly heroic—an almost Christlike epiphany that united revelation and reason in a moral crusade. He cast Lincoln as the embodiment of a set of absolute values: Biblical revelation and Greek reason joined in opposition to the relativism of modern liberal humanism, with its taste for irony and its acceptance of a plurality of forms of existence. Jaffa was, in effect, allying Jerusalem and Athens against New York. He wanted the American home built on rock, not shifting sand, and believed Lincoln was its carpenter.

In truth, we have no difficulty building our abodes on sand—that’s why the most expensive homes in Los Angeles and Long Island are called “beach houses.” There is no bedrock to build on, in the world or in morality. The political ground beneath our feet shifts, grows squishy, and is meant to. What we feel when we study Lincoln’s life through the war is not so much the force of fixed convictions imposed on others as the gradual emancipation of his own mind—a sense of his discovery, in real time, of what he believed. A powerful intuition that slavery was absolutely wrong evolved into a tragic fatalism, haunted by a sense of Providence, and finally opened into a horizon of hope, shaped by the scale of suffering Lincoln had helped to unleash. This much death had to make for a better land.

Yet believing that the war was inescapable is not quite the same as believing that it was right. Was the Civil War “worth the sacrifice”? Suppose that someone had had the force and the imagination to craft a plan for gradual emancipation. Full enfranchisement might have been delayed for several years, but the enslaved would have been free at last. And what of the human cost? If eight hundred thousand people had been deliberately murdered over the next four years—in some expanded version of the Trail of Tears or the Bataan Death March—would we see that as an unfortunate necessity of history or as an unforgivable crime?

Of course, some eight hundred thousand did die—many in horrific ways—while the formerly enslaved were left to fend for themselves in a postwar state where apartheid was enforced by terror. Why, exactly, is that outcome morally preferable—or more readily excused? These were not slaves but soldiers, who, in some collective sense, chose to fight. But was that choice entirely their own? Or was it made for them, by circumstance, by duty, by the illusions of glory, not to mention the blunt force of conscription? We are far too ready to depict the suffering of others as the price of the history that seemingly rewards us now.

The truth is that we accept mass dying with enormous aplomb. More than a million perished in the COVID-19 pandemic, but those who complacently predicted that it would be no more than a season’s pain appear to represent the new common sense: lockdowns were excessive, the health establishment overreacted. Mass dying barely fazes us—until, that is, it becomes personal and particular. Leo Tolstoy revered Lincoln, calling him “a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live for thousands of years.” Yet in “War and Peace” he captures the raw vulnerability of a young soldier—brave, devoted, almost absurdly loyal to the cause and its flawed leaders—wounded in battle. As blood seeps away and he imagines death nearing, the soldier slips into a state of wonder at existence. These passages, among literature’s most poignant and strangely affirming, bridge the gap between the vastness of war and the intimacy of a single death. A youth, swept into combat by patriotic fervor, faces bullets and, fallen, gazes at the sky, not with moral clarity or anger but with innocent bewilderment: Existence is so good—why am I dying for this? Major Sullivan Ballou, writing to his wife, Sarah, before the First Battle of Bull Run, mused, “I know I have but few claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of little Edgar—that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, nor that, when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.” Early in the fight, a cannonball tore off his leg. He lingered in agony for a week, very likely in no condition to whisper anything, least of all her name.

Lincoln’s elegiac words about the dead soldiers at Gettysburg remain true: from their sacrifice, we still can take renewed commitment to their cause, that of liberty against tyranny. But we should also remember that the purpose of the struggle of liberty against tyranny is not to carry on the fight but not to have to. We can’t forget these soldiers’ lives, but neither should we forget the manner of their dying. Even if we return to the original proposition—that the Civil War was unavoidable, or that of all the bad choices war was not the worst—it doesn’t alter what happened at Bull Run or Antietam. Remaining alive to other people’s pain, in the face of heroic rhetoric, retrospective rationalization, and two-sided tribal terror, is perhaps the hardest moral task we face—and one at which we almost always fail. Sometimes the only people who can see the sky are the soldiers who die beneath it.

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rockerb0y · 5 months ago

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@neuroslayyer: "Can't believe you got us kicked out." she mutters as if she weren't also complicit in the rabble-rousing. There's plenty of other bars and joints in Night City so it's not an issue. Yet five shots in hell breaks loose. It was that last shot she had nearly choked on. In a blur there had been yelling, smashed glass and within the blink of an eye she was pounding a fist into some gonk's stupid face (almost in sync to the rhythm of the music); hopped up on booze and adrenaline — a dangerous combo. With bloodied, busted knuckles, she had been pulled off the poor bastard. The chaos that had nearly turned into a wildfire quickly extinguished. When all was said and done, the craving for vivacious night life had dissipated like the feral excitement burning in her veins. She leans against him, flushed cheek resting against his bicep. Watching the roving neon signs and lit up buildings pass through the window of the metro brings about a dizziness. Gaze focuses instead on her hands. Damn, she's broken a couple of nails — a manicure that had been fresh, barely worn beyond a day. "What the fuck got you so worked over? Know you have attitude problems but holy shit."

DESPITE the overarching newness of the cloned body, congenital truculence had been inherited from digitalized state without dilution. complexion was now blemished and marred, adorning fresh contusions and abrasions from a triumphant altercation at ' six shots '. to bleed his own blood was an unexpected privilege, as was the satisfaction of the first punch's connection with the ganger's jaw.

no longer was the hand culpable for his pugnacity, its voice silenced in perpetuity during the body's creation and clinical commitment to compatibility. wrath was now entirely his own to concretize and employ, further augmented by the alcohol and over fifty years' worth of dormancy. not much reason was needed to instigate a brawl but what was gleaned from the nearby company was considered adequate, even with the inevitability of eviction afterwards.

❝ gonk had it coming. said you had a pretty mouth and not-so-subtly implied how he was gonna make the most of it. not too far off from what i was thinkin' myself, actually. also thought dick-chin wasn't using his mouth to its full potential and i was right. ❞ inorganic digits unfurled and flexed in tandem with their reference, ❝ got to test out my state-of-the art chrome right then 'n there. ❞

although the exact remarks weren't retold verbatim, there was ample faith in her ability to supplement the vulgar verbiage. explicit harassment in night city was as expected as it was scorned, particularly when it was largely dictated by certain superficial attributes. the dichotomy between her gender and his own had made itself unavoidably apparent during his tenancy in the relic; the conflict at the bar was just the most recent example — only this time, his reestablished agency facilitated a more impactful form of retaliation.

gaze gravitated lower to follow hers and likewise gauge the condition of the mercenary's fingers, right hand horizontally supporting hers from beneath to lift them higher for examination. the pad of his thumb delicately swiped near each broken nail, noting their jagged edges jointly with abused knuckles. participation in the melee was untethered to any doubt of her skillset or faculty for self-defense; rather, it was rooted in the phantom remnants of their connection after they were sundered. an affront against her was one against him, and vice versa.

❝ guess your nails aren't as durable, though, huh ? fuck, what a rip-off. can't even handle a little horseplay. ❞ soreness didn't hamper his head from shaking in disbelief. ❝ should bill the other guy for property damage — after he shells out for trauma team's platinum rate, i mean. got a good look when i pulled you off of him and he's sure as shit gonna need it if he wants open airways anytime soon. ❞

#neuroslayyer #ANSWERED.#ACT III. THE REVIVAL #old habits die hard lmao

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mandsleanan · 7 months ago

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I think whatever female Bettas lack in pugnacity and fin size they make up for in personality.

Years ago I had a crown tail breeder named Toadflax, who would get so excited when she saw The Bloodworm Cup approaching, she would spray eggs all over her container.

She was an extremely personable fish, but this was very, 'Ma'am? Ma'am, please control yourself.'

#Bettablr #Female bettas #Crown tail betta

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megumi-fm · 2 years ago

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a list of english words and their meanings because the gre verbal section is kicking my ass

abject: to the maximum degree; (alternatively) completely without pride or dignity

absolve: wash away guilt, obligation, or punishment.

adroit: clever or skillful

apocryphal: of doubtful authenticity, although widely circulated as being true

apposition: the positioning of things side by side or close together

beholden: owing; being indebted or obligated (to someone)

belie: disguise; contradict; failing to give a true notion of something

bloviate: to talk pompously and at length

bucolic: relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life

circumscribe: to restrict within limits

clemency: mercy

cursory: hasty and therefore not thorough or detailed

derision: scornful ridicule or mockery

desiccate: to remove the moisture from (something)

didactic: intended primarily to teach rather than to entertain

dispensation: exemption from a rule or usual requirement

docile: compliant; obedient; submissive

egregious: outstandingly bad or shocking

emulate: match or surpass (a person or achievement), typically by imitation

entail: require; call for

entreaty: an earnest or humble request

ethos: the characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community

foil: a person/thing that contrasts with (and as a result emphasizes) the qualities of another

garrulous: excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters

glib: fluent but insincere and shallow

gregarious: sociable; fond of company

hackneyed: overused and unoriginal

idyllic: extremely happy, peaceful or picturesque

imperil: endanger; put at risk of being harmed, injured, or destroyed.

implicate: show (someone) to be guilty or involved in a crime

incorrigible: (a person or habit) cannot be changed or reformed

inept: unskilled, incompetent

intrepid: fearless; adventurous (usually used in a humourous connotation)

irreconcilable: (of two ideas or statements) conflicting; contradictory to each other

jargon: special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand

libertine: someone (usually a man) who freely indulges in sensual pleasures without regard to moral principles

librettist: a person who writes the text of an opera or other long vocal works

logorrhea: excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness

loquacious: talkative

onerous: (of a task or responsibility) involving a great deal of effort, trouble, or difficulty; burdensome

ostentatious: characterized by pretentious or showy display; designed to impress

palpable: tangible; (an emotion or atmosphere) intense enough to be felt

pat: simplistic; superficial and unconvincing

patina: gloss or sheen (on the surface of a metal) due to age or polishing; impression or appearance of something

perfunctory: usually an action, carried out without real interest, feeling or effort

perusal: the action of reading or examining something; scrutiny

pervasive: something unwelcome spreading widely throughout an area or a group of people

philistine: hostile or indifferent to culture and the arts.

polemic: expressing or constituting a strongly critical attack on or controversial opinion about someone or something

poring: to be absorbed in reading or studying (something)

pragmatic: practical; realistic

profligate: extravagant or wasteful in the use of resources

pugnacity: readiness to quarrel or fight

ramification: complex or unwelcome consequence

reactionary: conservative; opposing political or social progress or reform

repudiation: refuse to accept; reject

reticent: reserved; introverted; withdrawn

reverence: deep respect for someone or something (used in religious connotation)

roiling: (for a liquid) to make turbid or to move in a turbulent manner

scant: barely sufficient or adequate

scrupulous: careful, thorough, and extremely attentive to details

skein: length of thread or yard, loosely coiled or knotted; strand; an element that forms part of a complex or complicated whole

skewer: fasten together or pierce with a pin or skewer; subject to sharp criticism or critical analysis

sporadic: scattered or isolated

spurious: bogus; something that is not what it claims to be

staid: solemn; grave; serious minded; quiet

subsume: absorb something into something else

sullen: bad-tempered and sulky

temerity: excessive confidence or boldness

tentative: not certain or fixed; unconfirmed; provisional

tout: attempt to sell or show the merit of something

trite: lacking originality or freshness

truculence: eager or quick to argue or fight

understate: describe or represent (something) as being smaller or less good or important than it really is

vignette: a short description or account of something that expresses its typical characteristics very clearly

#vocabulary #english #language tag #langblr #english vocabulary #vocab list #english vocab #engblr #gre.txt

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emo-eyemakeup-evildude · 6 months ago

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Question tiiiiime~

Firstly, I'm curious about who your favourite ocs you've made are? Maybe like a top 5 list? ^-^

And which one of them has the most tragic backstory? I love a tragic backstory hehe

I hope these will do

And here's a rat I saw at Pets At Home last night as a gift

RAT!!!!! I miss having rats

Top five ocs, excluding Vala because I already said they're my favorite:

Acuity, violist for the Hyrule royal orchestra

Althea, as mentioned in my last oc post because she's fun

Hem, from As Long As There Are Stars Above You because he's complicated (also Evia and Valiance ofc but I'm trying to do a true and proper top 5)

Cecilio, the director and principal conductor for the Hyrule royal orchestra

Milas, the bass section leader, narrowly beating out the other section leaders or else there would be a five (six, even) way tie here

And honorable mention to Kiaram because everyone fucking hates that guy. I cannot stress enough how much I love that every comment I get about him is that he sucks

Most tragic backstory is a three way tie between Acuity, Vala, and Valiance, who were all abandoned by their families in way. Acuity was cut off by her family for joining the royal orchestra instead of high society and Valiance ran away from home to avoid an arranged marriage. Vala's backstory is a spoiler for a fic I haven't started posting yet so I'm not gonna post that unless someone asks

Also as long as I'm talking about both Acuity and Valiance, I have a headcanon that there's a denomination of Hyrule's religion in the wilds era that still believe in the Triforce/old Goddesses, and so they have a habit of naming their kids after the Triforce a la English Puritan names. So you end up with names ranging from Duke or Sage to Pugnacity or Soundness. You also get people arguing over which part of the Triforce is superior (power and courage are for stupid people! courage and wisdom are for weaklings! power and wisdom are for cowards! etc) even though that's like not the point of having three parts that connect to make a whole

#my ocs #long road to ruin cinematic universe #turns out there was a question I was waiting for someone to ask #because it got asked on ao3 but I don't think I've talked about my hyrule puritan thing here #anyway it took half an hour to not just put 1. I love all my ocs equally #and yes vala is my favorite oc and acuity is number 1 on my top 5 ocs

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wordsmusicandstories · 4 months ago

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Acrostico 🔤

🄼 🄰 🅁 🅉 🄾 Il gioco linguistico di questa settimana, su suggerimento Eletta Senso (qui) è un acrostico sulla parola MARZO. Ecco la mia proposta: M agari sapesse il mondoA ssaporare di nuovo la serenitàR inunciando ad armi e odio pugnace,Z avorra greve che spinge in profonditàO gni esile tentativo di pace Se volete, aggiungete le vostre creazioni nei commenti. Saranno pubblicate qui…

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#acrostic #game #language #March

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parlerenfleurs · 6 months ago

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Gakane always makes me think of a cute puppy. He's very determined to be good and to getting stronger, yet has no ego to get in the way, and attaches himself to highly skilled individuals with pugnacity. First it was Yuder, and now it's Nathan. It's adorable. I hope he'll go far and never dies

#turning by kuyu #gakane

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malumxsubest · 3 months ago

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as you may have read about amelia, she came into being when a total red eclipse ( or blood moon ) occurred while her soon-to-be tribe was feasting on one of their kin, spilling blood into the earth. ( amadeus also came into being, but that's for a later time. ). so, as it stands, the eclipse is of great importance while simultaneously being the most aggravating event ever.

throughout the week of the eclipse, amelia will increasingly become aggressive & territorial, have derange pugnacity, and, much to her dismay, be concupiscent or aroused. additionally, her hunger will be bearing down on her neck, digging between her ribs and clawing into her throat. and she'll be able to siphon more energy from the void above without risking or compromising her vessel.

on the day of, she'd be cooped up in her estate. alone, because she wouldn't want to deal with her staff lingering about and trigger a prædator response, getting themselves killed. so, it's safe to admit that people should steer clear away from her lest they want their souls to be ravaged out of them. or worse, dead.

aka, don't engage her. :) unless, you know, want a challenge. be her guest.

#and ι'll ғear no evιl вecaυѕe ι'м вlιnd тo ιт all [headcanon]#ᵗᶤᵐᵉ ᵗᵒ ʰᵉᵃᵈ ᵇᵃᶜᵏ ᵗᵒ ᵐʸ ᵠᵘᵉᵘᵉ [q.]

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shannendoherty-fans · 7 months ago

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People June 14th 1993

Shannen Doherty's Wild Ways May Be Hazardous to Her—and Her Career

I was weary of the verbal assaults and locked myself in our bathroom. At this point she threatened to shoot me and said, "I'm going to drop you!" I knew she had a loaded 9-mm automatic…. I heard the chamber pulled back; at that point, I hastily exited the house through a back door connected to the bathroom and escaped. —From a May 25 petition by Dean Jay Factor in the Superior Court of California for a domestic-violence restraining order against Shannen Doherty

The scenario sounds like something from Top Cops, not Beverly Hills, 90210, but then actress Shannen Doherty, 22—who in America's favorite zip code plays prototypical teen Brenda Walsh—has always marched to a dangerous drummer. Partying late into the night at trendy L.A. clubs such as Roxbury and the Gate and piloting her $30,000 black BMW at high speeds through nearby streets, she has defiantly winked at her bad-girl reputation. "Don't believe everything you read," she coyly told fans during a May 26 TV interview. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, half the things you read about me are untrue, and the others are lies.

Now, however, attitude alone may prove a flimsy defense. Last week Doherty was facing not a hyperbolic tabloid headline but the sworn testimony of former fiancé Factor, 28, heir to the Max Factor cosmetics fortune. And his charges made the tantrum-prone 5'2", 100-lb. Doherty sound violent if not downright homicidal. By midweek, according to Factor's attorney, Edwin Lasman, an understanding had been reached with Doherty in which his client's differences with her were resolved, eliminating the need for further court proceedings. An announcement of the agreement was expected by the week's end.

Still, the allegations in Factor's 15-page declaration remain deeply disturbing. Once, Doherty tried to run him down with a car, Factor claimed. Another time, he said, she threw a log through a window to get into his house. During one argument, he maintained, she "threatened to hire a few guys to beat me up and to sodomize me 'on the front lawn.' " He ended his petition by saying that even though he was taking steps to prevent harassment, "I will live in fear."

Others say they are afraid for Doherty. They believe she is a young woman on the verge of spinning out of control—and that she may be a harmful influence on Tori Spelling, 20, who plays 90210's Donna Martin (and whose father, Hollywood megamogul Aaron Spelling, is the show's executive producer). Tori lately has been engaging in the kind of hard partying and public pugnacity that has given Doherty her bad-girl reputation.

For a time, her rep looked like a stellar career play for Doherty. It meant publicity (even in the form of a nationally circulated I Hate Brenda newsletter, a thinly disguised jab at the actress herself). And Doherty willingly parried the insinuations about her behavior. She denied in interviews that she had an alcohol problem and told one reporter, "I don't hit people. I wasn't hit as a child, and I don't believe in it." Not denying her aggressiveness, she offered in her own defense a favorite line from her preteen days as Jenny Wilder on Little House: A New Beginning. "Michael Landon," she said, "told me you have to stick up for yourself in this business."

What would Landon think now? Since debuting on 90210 in 1990, Doherty has left a trail of bad debts, trashed homes, exhausted friendships and wasted relationships. When challenged, say several people who know her, she is likely to respond with a menacing, "You don't know who you're f—ing with!"

Apparently, Dean Factor learned who and wishes he hadn't. Neither Doherty nor her attorney, Joseph D'Onofrio, responded to PEOPLE's repeated requests for an interview. Speaking in his daughter's defense, Shannen's father, Tom Doherty, 49, an L.A. mortgage adviser, offers a different spin. "He's been doing [the abusing]," says Doherty. "He initialed the charge, but she's the victim."

Indeed, in a confrontation between the 5'10", 175-lb. Factor and Doherty, it is hard to imagine Shannen as anything but a victim. And yet Factor swears that lie was usually on the receiving end. At times, he admits in his petition, he slapped her. Once he threw her into his swimming pool. He says he was acting in self-defense—a claim many who know Doherty are inclined to believe.

"I could have predicted this before it happened," says Doherty's previous ex-fiancé, Chris Foufas, 25, a Chicago-based health-club owner who was engaged to the star in 1991. "Things move along smoothly for a while, and then something snaps and she goes into another drive: rage."

Until March 19, when Doherty moved into Factor's $5,200-a-month rented Tudor-style house in the Hollywood Hills, all seemed relatively smooth. "We did not have more than the occasional loud argument," Factor says. On April 19, with 90210 on hiatus, Doherty began work on the set of a movie, the suspense thriller Blindfold. A senior crew member on the movie calls her behavior "cantankerous, snotty and threatening" and says Doherty told everyone on the set how she and Factor "were constantly fighting, saying how she punched him and he hit her." And then, he adds, "the thing with Nelson began."

In Blindfold, Doherty, who does her first onscreen nude scenes, plays a patient who becomes sexually involved with her psychiatrist—portrayed by Brat Pack graduate Judd Nelson, 33. Shortly after shooting began, Doherty began an offscreen romance with Nelson, even though she was still living with Factor. Right after a read-through of the Blindfold script in early April, Factor and Doherty began a vacation together in Hawaii on April 12. They were accompanied by Spelling and Nick Savalas, 20, son of actor Telly Savalas, Tori's boyfriend of several months. During the trip, said Factor in his petition, "we took full advantage of the romantic setting." He proposed marriage—and Doherty accepted. But within hours, they were fighting. "Shannen came back with a black eye and said she'd been hit by a surfboard," says her dad. "In reality he'd hit her." Factor's version in his declaration: "After having been kicked and beaten, I pushed her off me. Unfortunately she tripped, fell and cut her eye on the doorstep." What were they arguing about? "Judd Nelson," speculated the senior Doherty. "Dean felt she was fooling around with him."

Over the next few weeks, Factor said he pleaded with Doherty to continue their engagement. But on May 13, some days after Doherty moved out, said Factor, she returned and yet another fight ensued. The next day he filed a complaint with the LAPD. He said in his deposition, "I decided the nonsense had to end."

For Doherty, though, it was just beginning. That same night she checked into Dallas's exclusive Mansion on Turtle Creek—with Judd Nelson. The couple went out for some midnight club-hopping. Gus Hudson, manager of the Greenville Bar & Grill in Dallas, noticed on that evening that Doherty "was drinking heavily" and that "she puked at her table." The next night, back at the Greenville, Nelson was taunted by several young people about his recent lack of good movie parts. When he tried to climb over a railing to argue, he kicked 21-year-old Kim Evans in the nose—unintentionally, he says. Evans left the bar with minor injuries, and Nelson was eventually charged with assault. The case is pending.

As Chris Foufas sees it, his ex-fiancée's bar-and mate-hopping follows a familiar pattern. "Shannen can be a great, wonderful, loving person," he says. "But she wants to be a dictator. Shannen gets people to commit to her and then says, 'See ya!' She is like a kid who wants a toy, gets it and then gets tired of it."

Over the past year she has amassed a lot of toys—at heavy cost. After she broke up with Foufas, for example, she went on a $45,000 shopping spree. Previously the California United Bank, which often tolerates celebrity overdrafts up to $100,000, had filed suit in May last year because Doherty had not repaid $31,628.16 in bad checks written in 1991. The Superior Court of California awarded the bank a 25 percent levy against her $17,500-a-week 90210 paycheck—which will be raised to $22,500 when shooting resumes July 7. Says bank attorney Andy Alper: "We were lucky we were first in line."

Apparently. Still waiting for payment are Doherty's former publicist, Susan Culley, ex-manager Mike Gursey and former landlord Mark Nishimura, who claims Doherty owes $14,000 in unpaid lease fees. Reportedly two of Shannen's leased Mercedeses have been repossessed.

Why the seeming inability to control her spending? "It's a power thing, to prove her worth," says a former friend. But Shannen, who started acting in Pepsi commercials at age 10, has helped the Doherty clan (including her mother, Rosa, who works at an L.A. beauty salon, and her older brother, Sean, 26, a political volunteer). "She's too generous," thinks her dad. "Your cash flow just dries up."

Ultimately, of course, Aaron Spelling governs that spigot, and an insider says he is looking to dump Doherty from 90210. Though she has 28 episodes left in her contract, Doherty's onscreen time next season may be minimized if Brenda leaves for college in Minnesota. But Spelling is concerned more for his daughter than his series. Tori has moved out of her family's 100-plus-room Holmby Hills mansion. Over the last month she and Savalas have been spotted engaged in loud arguments in several L.A. hot spots. Says Roxbury doorman Todd Spenla of their relationship: "Tori is always unhappy for some reason." Notes the insider: "With Tori getting caught up in [Shannen's lifestyle] now, Aaron is beside himself as a father."

Given Doherty's long-standing reputation—not likely to be enhanced by Factor's allegations—losing 90210 could cripple her career. Shannen, her father hopes, may be getting the message. "It's disheartening for her," says Tom of the adverse publicity. "A little of the life, a little of the spirit is out of her. She's just gelling over the shell shock." Then he adds meaningfully, "She's beginning to understand things too."

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