#his courtship of Louis lasted almost an entire year

[showmey0urfangs]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE - Timeline (1910 - 1945)

I made this timeline using some of the dates given on the show, and cross-referencing that with clues from the dialogue, props, as well as the historical events that were happening during that time.

[ppeonppeonhan]

2023 BL Breakout Actors

I really hope to see more of these actors next year.

Louis Chiang | Kiseki: Dear to Me

He played a tiny lovesick tyrant who pined for his childhood bff and fellow gang member. I could've watched an entire drama just about him and his journey from impulsive orphan thug to feisty romantic. He was simply electric.

Suggested Role: There's a sports trend in BL right now, and he's so good at the physicality of acting that I'd love to see him play a competitive professional tennis player who's conflicted when he's forced to partner with his nemesis.

Lim Ji Sub | The Eighth Sense

He had to play such a heavy character -- a college student and surfer suffering from depression and survivor's guilt -- and his heartbreaking performance made you want to reach through the screen and give him a hug.

Suggested Role: South Korea does slice of life SO well that I'd really love to see him switch it up and pine for someone in a quasi comedic role. He could play a young real estate agent who starts to fall for one of his picky clients, and they learn together that the perfect home is one you make and not one you find.

Film Thanapat Kawila | Laws of Attraction

I honestly did not enjoy this drama, but I did enjoy his performance. He is so captivating as Charn -- this scenery-chewing, maniacal, traumatized, good-boy-turned-bad lawyer -- that his romantic love interest could not manage to keep up.

Suggested Role: I dunno. I feel like I'd happily watch him play this role again, and take down another corrupt politician.

An Jeong Gyun | Love Class 2

It's so easy to get lost in an anthology when there's three couples and when you're not traditionally attractive, but his character stole the whole damn series. He was so bold and upfront about his emotions in a mature and refreshing way that it made you ignore the beige flags of playful manipulation that comes with courtship, and root for him to win his crush's heart.

Suggested Role: He's actually older (30), and I appreciate that South Korea is exploring more love stories between older men as Thailand conquers the under 25 demo. So for him, I'd say a divorced storyline. Maybe explore the story of how two ex-husbands rebuild their lives apart and rediscover their friendship while they fall for other people.

"Silvy" Pavida | The Warp Effect

Speaking of bloated casts, this series had like a million people in it playing characters of a variety of genders and sexualities, because it was intended to be -- in part -- a modern sex guide that pushed against traditional constructs. But in the midst of all that was a brief performance by Silvy, who was only tasked with playing an aspiring "plus size" actress, but managed to leave a lasting impression, making you want more.

Suggested Role: She's a singer and she's half-Italian. There's gotta be something we can do with that. Maybe the story of a shy singer, who is often hired to record tracks for rising tone-deaf artists, and is encouraged by one to make her debut as her opening act and help her write a romantic duet in Italian for her international audience.

***

Now...most of us agree that Step by Step was...not great. But it did have a lot of Thai actors that I hope to see again soon -- in an entirely different storyline far away from whatever the hell that was.

"Saint" Paramee Matthanadul | Step by Step

Was his character a whiny little shit? Yes. Is he so gorgeous you almost forgot how hot his big brother was? Also, yes. The fandom was pissed his romantic subplot did not get a resolution, because there was so much he could've done with this character if given the opportunity.

Suggested Role: I think he has baby girl potential, so I really want to see him either play a spoiled mafia kid who falls for his mentor OR a rich kid pretending to be a working class waiter at the restaurant he owns, marinated in gay panic every time the head chef scolds him.

Zorzo Nathanan Akkharakitwattanakul | Step by Step

I have yet to watch a proper GL series, but if she was starring in it, I'd clear my TV schedule. There's something so femme fatale about her and her features. She had no business stealing scenes from the nearly full cast of dudes, but she did. Every time.

Suggested Role: I really want to see her in a mystery produced by whoever is doing The Sign right now. Maybe she could play an undercover cop trying to solve a missing person's case in a small town, and her love interest is married to her prime suspect.

"Ben" Bunyapol Likhitamnuayporn | Step by Step

Last, but not least, is the adorable Ben. Who, in spite of wasting our time with the most anticlimactic drama ending, played a character that was an inspiration to every office employee who has been dying to tell their ungrateful and abusive boss to step back and let a bitch cook. He played him with such naiveté and earnestness that it made you want more for his character than a lustful boss who struggled not to abuse his power.

Suggested Role: It's so easy for him to get sucked into passive roles opposite the zaddys of BL, so I'd like to see how he fairs against an equal. Maybe another workplace ensemble comedy where he plays a reporter posing as an intern at a new social media company run by an unhinged mogul spreading fake news, and falls for another intern who helps him take the company down.

[hekateinhell]

We NEED to be selling more people on the idea of Louis/Armand and honestly there’s no one better for the job 🤌🏼 L/A and D/A are popular enough (you’ve done a wonderful job with the L/A propaganda specially and I’ve seen sooo many people start warming up to them and their fucked up courtship) but I’ve seen a lot of people discard Louis/Armand as nothing but a sad relationship between two people who only saw each other as their plan B and only keep going back to each other out of loneliness. Or some others who seem to think they’re only friends/platonic companions because they’re never shown kissing in canon. So please don’t stop, give us all the headcanons all the feels 🥹 the bitchy teenager and the sad wet man have EARNED their place as one of the finest, most long lasting and enduring couples in the VC universe 😭

MY PROPAGANDA LMAO HOW DARE YOU 😭

Part of my profession requires PR involvement. Listen, I do nothing but quote the canon and write the porn, RIP.

I think with Armand/Louis it's easier for a lot of people to happily dismiss them because putting them together "cancels out" the two most popular ships in the fandom -- Loustat and Devil's Minion. Which I don't think is true, but I know that's how some tend to see it. With Armand/Lestat, I won over *enough* of the Lestat girlies just by virtue of ✨Lestat✨ being there (by enough I mean like three and I cherish them with my whole entire soul).

But I love Armand/Louis!

I wasn't able to appreciate them properly when I was a baby bat, but once I got older, I realized that there was always something there post-IWTV:

Louis being "troubled" when he can't answer Lestat's questions about Armand at the end of TVL

Armand holding a collapsing Louis with Daniel during QotD (Armand's Prince Charming moment)

Louis being said to have recently visited Armand in Paris in MtD

The way Louis is so relieved to see Armand survived in TVA that he almost cries (and Armand clearly feeling all kinds of ways about him)

David equating Lestat and Armand in Merrick, knowing they'll both fuck him up if anything happens to Louis

And then Trinity Gate, where Louis later says to Lestat that he found his happiness again, and Armand began to heal. How close Armand and Louis seem to be throughout the last trilogy. I've never heard two platonic friends being described as being the pillars of a household, like c'mon... they're Mom and Dad.

Just like them, it's subtle, but Anne kept all those threads for us the whole time.

Bonus: depending on the timeline you follow, they were only separated for thirty years before coming back together to create Trinity Gate.

I love them!

[joachimnapoleon]

Hello, Can you tell me about the relationship between Joachim Murat and Caroline Bonaparte. Thank you.

I've been wanting to write about their relationship more in-depth for a long time, but I've been putting it off for various reasons, so thanks for giving me an excuse to finally get down to it. :) And... this is probably going to be pretty long. Their relationship was very complicated and often tempestuous (I could use that exact phrasing to describe Murat's relationship with Napoleon, but that's another, possibly even longer post, for another day).

I'm still not entirely certain how I feel about Caroline. She has been greatly maligned over the years, and is, in my opinion, the most misunderstood and demonized of all the Bonaparte siblings aside from Napoleon himself. So much of what we know (or think we know) about her, derives from memoirs that were largely hostile to her; she left none of her own (though her daughter Louise and granddaughter Caroline did). Her remaining published correspondence is sparse, and very one-sided; she apparently was in the habit of destroying most of her received correspondence, including nearly every letter she ever received from her husband, and Murat almost never kept copies of the ones he sent her. So there is this gaping hole in their correspondence where you almost never have Murat's voice. This lost correspondence has been the biggest bane of my existence since I started studying Murat a few years ago.

Their first meeting may have been at Mombello in 1797, but if so, it would've been brief, as Murat only stayed there for a short time before returning to Brescia (and his then-mistress, Madame Ruga). But it seems to have been long enough for Caroline to have become completely infatuated with him, and to confess her feelings for him to Hortense while they were together at Madame Campan's school. She didn't see him again until after the Egyptian campaign, but their courtship seems to have taken off once he was back in Paris. Caroline became bent on marrying him, and Napoleon was opposed to it, only reluctantly signing the marriage contract in January of 1800 and then spitefully not attending the wedding. Apparently it was Josephine who persuaded Napoleon to let the two marry, hoping to finally secure an ally among the Bonaparte siblings. She developed a sort of motherly affection for Caroline early on, but Caroline eventually ended up--whether due to the influence of Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte, or her jealousy of Hortense--firmly in the anti-Beauharnais camp, and Murat and Josephine, who had initially had a good relationship, also became enemies over the next few years.

The early years of their marriage were, from all indications, happy. They had four children in fairly quick succession. They were a very affectionate couple--often publicly so, to the point where a disturbed Madame Campan finally asked Hortense to urge Caroline to show some restraint.

They endured a long period of separation very early in their marriage--the first of many, adding up to several total years spent apart between 1800 and their final parting in May of 1815. Murat was sent to take command of a force in Italy in November 1800 while Caroline was pregnant with their first child; they did not see each other again until May of the following year. There are a couple of letters within Murat's published correspondence that hint that, though he at first attempted to remain faithful to his wife during this interim, he may have given up on the endeavor prior to their reunion. The diplomat Charles Alquier, who befriended Murat in Italy, wrote to him in April 1801, lamenting not being able to spend a few days with him in Florence, teasing that he "would like to witness your gallant successes there and hear you talk about your marital fidelity, without believing it in the slightest." The following month, after the arrival of Caroline, Alquier teases Murat again along these lines, in a postscript that reads "It was about time that Madame Murat arrived in Florence, or your hard-pressed fidelity was about to escape you." He had almost certainly resumed his affair with Madame Ruga during this period.

After the birth of their fourth child, Louise, in March of 1805, Caroline was not pregnant again until 1810 (she would end up miscarrying while Joachim was waging his Sicilian campaign). This has led some historians to conclude that there was a "physical separation" between them, a rift of some sort in their relationship. This may have been the case, but I haven't found much evidence on it either way. There is very little remaining correspondence between the two during this period. Murat was away for long periods due to multiple wars, plus the time he spent in Spain in 1808 prior to taking the throne of Naples that year. Neither of them were faithful to the other. Murat, who was in his early thirties and quite set in his womanizing ways when he married Caroline, doesn't seem to have been either capable of, or interested in, monogamous relations, and at some point this seems to have taken enough of a toll on Caroline that she apparently decided to follow suit. Hortense records an encounter with Caroline from the mid-1800s where Caroline's "sole topic of conversation was the joy of loving and being loved. Her affection for her husband, which once had been so violent, seemed to have diminished. She was now attracted by the charms of a pure liaison."

Over the years Caroline allegedly had affairs with Charles de Flahaut (who was also Hortense's lover), Junot, and Metternich. One of her biographers has theorized that Caroline carried out each of these affairs for the primary purpose of future political leverage (Junot, for instance, was the Governor of Paris at the time). Another theory I've encountered is that she picked these men as a sort of game of one-upsmanship over her female rivals--to show Hortense that she could take Flahaut from her; to show Laure Junot that she could have her husband or her later lover Metternich if she wanted, etc. I... don't really have an opinion on this one way or the other. Caroline was definitely ambitious, and also capable of petty jealousies. What affairs she had (or allegedly had), were of short duration and so far I've come across nothing to convince me that she ever actually fell in love with anyone other than Murat.

Out of the two of them, you may as well flip a coin as to which one was more ambitious. I think, in the end, Joachim managed to overtake Caroline in that department, when he got it into his head to try to become the king of a united Italy while Caroline just wanted to preserve their throne in Naples after Napoleon left Elba. But early in their relationship, Caroline seems to have been the one most obsessed with titles--throwing a fit until Napoleon conceded in granting her and Elisa the title of "Princess". Once Caroline was a princess, she wanted to be a queen, especially after her friend/rival Hortense became the queen of Holland via being married to her brother Louis. Joachim and Caroline were essential to each others' elevation, and they both recognized this; and this recognition, along with their devotion to their children, were the two things that kept them united even when they were temporarily at odds with each other. Once he had obtained the title of "prince" by virtue of being Caroline's husband, Murat became as obsessed as Caroline with the idea of having a throne. Napoleon himself later blamed Caroline for putting grandiose ideas into Murat's head, which then, in his words, "hatched chimeras." He also took it for granted that it had been Caroline who had pushed Murat into defecting from Napoleon and signing the treaty with Austria in 1814, and remarked that Caroline had tremendous influence over her husband.

The irony of Joachim and Caroline Murat achieving the height of their ambition by being given the throne of Naples, is that their reign was probably the worst thing to ever happen to either of them. It wreaked havoc on their marriage for years. It was easily the most miserable period of Murat's life.

For starters, Napoleon essentially poisoned the well, so to speak, by making it clear in the Treaty of Bayonne that Murat was only king by virtue of being married to Caroline, language which Murat found deeply humiliating. The humiliation was further compounded by Caroline being named his direct heir, rather than their son Achille, in order that the throne stay within the Bonaparte family.

So Murat started his reign with a certain amount of resentment and jealousy--and a fear that Caroline would attempt to edge him out of power and dominate him the way that her sisters dominated their husbands, a prospect which was intolerably degrading to a man of Murat's pride. There's no real indication that this was ever Caroline's intention--but Murat was prone to paranoia, worried for years about being superseded by his wife, especially as he increasingly fell out of favor with Napoleon, and Caroline (and her faction at court) steadily gained influence. The first couple years of the reign saw Joachim doing everything he could to keep Caroline on the margins of power. She spent much of her time reading, writing letters, and visiting the ruins of Pompeii.

There was a reconciliation (for a time) between the two in 1810, while they were in Paris together for Napoleon's second wedding. After the wedding, when Murat returned to Naples and began preparing for his Sicilian expedition, Caroline remained in Paris for several more months, during which she served as a sort of intermediary between her husband and Napoleon during a time when the two were at odds and Joachim and Caroline were worried about losing their throne. Her letters to Murat during this time are full of tenderness, consolation, and advice. Examples:

"My dearest, this last separation seems to me even more insupportable than the others. You were so good, so perfect to me in those last moments, that your kindness brought me to tears and still fills me with affection. I confess that when you do justice to my true feelings for you, I am the happiest of women." (11 May 1810)

"You will see one day: we shall be the happiest creatures in the world, and we shall owe it to our children. They will give us back all the love we have for them, and our old age will be adorned with their virtues. See as I do--far into the future." (13 May 1810)

"I'm always anxious about your expedition... Do not expose yourself more than the duty of a general requires, I ask you in grace, imagine that your existence belongs to me and is a possession you cannot dispose of." (16 June 1810)

"We can be happy, but in order for that, we need to be content with what we have, you must calm a little your head, which gets hot so easily, and await, with more patience than you've had until now, the moment where we will be more tranquil and more independent. The happiness of our interior will compensate us for our many pains, and you will find with me, with our children, and from all those who sincerely love us, enjoyments worth all the others." (5 August 1810)

Their relationship was fractured all over again before the year's end. Murat's aggravation with his Sicilian campaign boiled over in a scathing letter to Caroline in which he accused her of being disloyal to him; she received it two days after her miscarriage in September, further adding to her heartbreak. It wasn't a permanent rupture by any means, but it was a deep wound in their relationship that took time to heal. The following year, Murat received reports (almost certainly false) about Caroline having an affair with Daure, Joachim's Minister of the Police, who Joachim soon removed from office, writing to Napoleon that Daure had "aimed at forming a party against me. He did not hesitate to attack me in my tenderest affections," but that "his efforts in that respect were far from obtaining the success that he dared hope for." Murat's relationship with Napoleon likewise grew even worse in 1811, and Caroline went once more to Paris to serve as a go-between/peacemaker.

Leaving for the Russian campaign of 1812, Murat had no choice but to leave Caroline as regent, and he spent most of the campaign worrying about what was happening in Naples in his absence. But she proved a capable ruler, and ruled as regent again during the 1813 campaign, and then again in 1815 during his failed campaign against the Austrians. Joachim seems to have gradually gotten over his fear from early in their reign about Caroline trying to edge him out or dominate him, after she had ample opportunities to do so when he was out of favor with Napoleon throughout 1811 but never did; the latter years of their reign indicate something of a happy equilibrium, and Murat was not above consulting Caroline for her views on complicated issues.

Joachim accompanied her to the ruins of Pompeii on a number of occasions. They both shared a love of art, and patronized a number of artists, including Canova, Ingres, and Antoine-Jean Gros. They danced together regularly at court balls, and went to the theatre often. But above all they preferred spending time together with their children, and their favorite place for this was the terrace of the Palazzo Reale, their personal sanctuary, off-limits to all but the royal family and invited guests, where they would often dine and walk in the gardens (and under the shade of the lemon trees Joachim had had planted for Caroline). 

To sum it up, their relationship was extraordinarily complex and they weathered some serious storms which would've broken most relationships beyond repair. The more I read about them, the more I'm impressed by the resilience of their relationship and their determination to keep mending it and making it work, rather than just giving up on it and going the way of Caroline's sister Pauline and her husband Camillo Borghese, who lived mostly separate lives and had minimal interaction. But the Murats had been a love match, and neither of them ever seemed to reach the point of wanting to give up on their relationship entirely. Their relationship--like Caroline herself--has been maligned and badly misinterpreted by earlier historians leaning too heavily on hostile memoirs, and also by those who have been intent on salvaging Murat's reputation by putting all of the blame for his mistakes on Caroline's shoulders.

Thanks for the ask! And sorry if I rambled on too much.

[antonfm]

can     u     believe     that     a     whole     entire     day          after     the     rp     opens          ,          i     finally     have     my     shit     together     enough     to     post     an     intro          !          can     u     fuckin     believe     it          !          anyways          ,          i’m     elliot          (          she/they          )          ,          i’m     20     n     i’m     a     supreme     dumbass     who     needs     2     get     their     life     together     on     so     many     levels          .  .  .          it’s     fine     though          !          completely     fine          !          totally     n     utterly     fine          !!!

(          timothee     chalamet          &          cis     male          )          who          ??          these     days          ,          it’s     all     about     anton     olivier          ,          who     comes     from     manhattan          ,          ny          ,          and     is     making     headlines     as     an     actor          .          he     currently     has     a     fan     count     of     45.9k          ,          no     thanks     to     the     rumours     of     them     being     vainglorious          !          but          ,          on     the     other     hand          ,          his     most     devout     fans     say     he’s     actually     retiary          .          last     i     heard          ,          he     caused     quite     a     buzz     when     he     was     caught     leaving     multiple     lovers’     houses     despite     being     in     an     allegedly     ‘     committed     ’     relationship          !          it’s     no     wonder     they     remind     me     of     inky     black     as     a     beautiful     contrast     to     stark     white          ,          tastes     of     fake     blood          &          bourbon     dancing     a     mistimed     tango     on     your     tongue          ,          stacks     of     literary     classics     like     small     mountains     on     your     living     room     floor          ,          abandoned     chastity     ring          (          ruby     red     gemstone          ,          isn’t     it     ironic          ?          )          ,          heat     -     slick     kisses     smeared     to     the     corner     of     your     mouth          ;          dark     academia          /          technicolour     ghost     disappearing     in     the     middle     of     a     crowd          ,          slipping     into     the     back     of     a     lecture     theatre     abound     with     rapt     attention          ,          pressing     bruises     into     not     -     yet     -     ripe     fruit     for     the     thrill     of     watching     it     wilt     beneath     satin     touch          .

𝔩𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯     𝔬𝔫𝔢     .          rudimentals          .

full     name:     anton     françois     olivier     . nicknames,     aliases:

ant     .

mon     cher     .          (          by     his     mother     .          )

age:     twenty     -     three     . date     of     birth:     october     fifteenth     . place     of     birth:     manhattan         ,         new     york     city     . nationality:     american     . ethnicity:     caucasian     (     french     )     . spoken     languages:     english          ,          fluent     french          (          spoken     in     household     more     commonly     than     english          )          .

zodiac     sign:     scorpio     . hogwarts     house:     slytherin     . myers     -     briggs:     infp     -     t     .

career     claims:     charlie     heaton     ,     some     of     bill     skargsard’s     stuff     .          (          i’ll     write     his     imdb     page     later     .          )

𝔩𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯     𝔱𝔴𝔬     .          physicals          .

height:     six     foot     three     . weight:     157     lbs     .

complexion:     pale     ,     scarily     so     .     nothing     medical     about     it     ,     just     a     natural     pallid     sheen     to     sharp     features     .     a     small     ,     light     dusting     of     freckles     over     the     nose     and     cheeks     and     forehead     .      face     shape:     heart     -     shaped     ,     incredibly     angular     .     sharp     cheekbones     and     jawline     ,     square     and     dashing     in     a     sinister     kind     of     way     .     very     thin     ,     very     gaunt     .      facial     quirks:     in     some     lights     his     left     eye     is     ever     so     slightly     lighter     than     the     other     ,     but     it’s     a     trick     of     the     light     .

hair:     black     ,     naturally     so     (     your     mother’s     hair     )     .     has     a     slight     natural     wave     that     sometimes     springs     to     a     loose     curl     .     recently     ,     you’ve     grown     it     out     so     that     it     curls     around     the     nape     of     your     neck     and     falls     into     your     eyes     .     typically     ,     strands     are     tucked     behind     your     ears     unless     they     fall     out     of     place     .     soft     ,     incredibly     so     --- -     cherry     blossom     shampoo     and     conditioner     ensures     that     . eyes:     bright     blue     ,     cobalt     .     golden     rings     around     the     pupils     ,     with     green     and     hazel     flecks     throughout     .     lashes     are     unfairly     long     and     dark     ,     a     prettily     sooty     smudge     against     the     high     ridge     of     your     cheekbones     .     brows     are     dark     and     expressive     ,     unruly     ,     arched     ever     so     slightly     .     dark     indigo     bags     underneath     your     eyes     aren’t     an     unusual     sight     ,     results     of     too     -     long     nights     and     a     strange     work     schedule     . nose:     your     mother’s     button     nose     ,     small     and     straight     and     ‘     lovely     ’     according     to     your     rabid     fan     base     .     nothing     much     to     say     about     it     otherwise     .     you     considered     piercing     it     when     you     were     fifteen     and     going     through     it     for     unknown     reasons     .      mouth:     relatively     normal     lips     ,     slightly     plusher     lower     lip     but     that’s     not     saying     much     .     chewed     ,     bitten     ,     chapped     like     nothing     else     /     favourite     flavour     of     burt’s     bees     is     pomegranate     .     teeth     are     white     ,     straight     ,     pretty     good     teeth          ;          indents     of     which     often     find     themselves     deep     in     that     lower     lip     .

scars:     none     of     note     .     the     typical     petite     white     scars     of     childhood     across     knees     and     elbows     ,     but     nothing     too     serious     . tattoos,     piercings:     none     .     there     are     plans     in     the     works     ,     but     currently          ?          nothing     . more     body     modifications:     again     ,     nothing     .     bitch     is     boring     .

𝔩𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯     𝔱𝔥𝔯𝔢𝔢     .          biographicals          .

not     quite     your     typical     tale     of     boy     -     meets     girl          ;          art     gallery     curator     curator     watches     broadway     ‘     ingénue     ’          &          falls     head     over     heels     in     an     infatuation     that     borders     on     obsession     but     is     returned     tenfold     .     adele     st     .     croix     can’t     believe     her     luck          (          moved     to     manhattan     just     two     years     previously          ,          resumé     builds     beyond     belief          ,          engagement     to     a     big     name     is     imminent          !          )          and     pierre     -     louis     olivier     has     never     been     so     deeply     in     love     before          .          the     courtship     is     wonderful          ,          twilight     walks     in     the     park          ,          regular     dates     at     terribly     romantic     restaurants          ,          soft     kisses     on     random     stoops     and     rough          ,          impassioned     kisses     on     your     own          .          the     engagement     comes     in     1995          ,          &          a     year     later          ,          marriage     is     a     cover     story     and     a     four     -     page     spread     in     all     the     glossy     tabloids     your     mother     loves     to     collect          .          

your     conception     comes     as     a     shock          ,          of     course          .          neither     wanted     children     so     early          ,          just     a     year     into     their     marriage     but     the     very     first     time     that     your     mother’s     silky     -     smooth     hands     rest     on     the     then     -     flat     expanse     of     her     belly     it’s     over          .          unspoken     talks     of     termination     that     weighed     uncomfortably     heavily     on     unmoving     tongues     are     quashed          ,          replaced     by     fluttering     anticipation     of     a     child          .          your     impending     birth     is     announced     three     months     after     your     parents     find     out     they’re     expecting     you          ,          &          soon     enough     your     own     infantile     chunk     of     their     upper     east     side     penthouse          (          a     grandiose     wedding     present          )          is     carved     out          ;          decked     in     earthy     tones     and     warm     creams          ,          pastels     of     all     shades     and     joy     woven     into     each     choice          ,          you     are     a     source     of     joy     to     rival     the     sun          .

birth     is     almost     perfect          ,          only     one     day     past     your     due     date          .          naturally     your     first     breath     is     a     noisy     one          ,          wailing     and     crying     and     oh          ,          how     they     adore     you     already          !          adoration     seeps     into     your     bones     from     the     first     time     mother     holds     you          ,          presses     a     kiss     to     your     head     and     breathes     in     that     lavender         ,         fresh     -     linen     new     baby     smell          .          from     that     very     first     moment     love     is     ingrained     into     every     single     pore          ;          love     is     what     you     breathe          ,          what     you     feed     on          ,          what     you     see     the     world     through          .          your     mother     and     father     are     almost     sickeningly     in     love          ,          true     dotage     in     its     finest     form     and     later     in     life     you     suppose     you’re     lucky     to     have     grown     up     with     such     a     wonderful     idea     of     what     true     romance     is     meant     to     look     like          .          they     love     each     other          ,          and     they     love     you          .

childhood     is     wonderful          ,          if     you’re     perfectly     honest          .          it’s     a     blur     of     ice     cream     at     fancy     parlours     after     your     mother     picks     you     up     from     school          ,          renting     movies     and     getting     wonderful     takeaway     and     laughing     until     your     sides     ache          .          it’s     freshly     -     laundered     uniforms     that     just     look     so     damn     precious          ,          school     ties     in     immaculate     windsor     knots          .          (          schools     are     all     catholic          ,          of    ��course          ;          some     things     die     hard          ,          but     your     mother     and     father’s     commitment     to     their     faith     dies     harder          .          )          church     on     sunday     mornings          ,          followed     by     brunch     and     a     movie          /          picturesque          ,          absolutely     perfect          .          ignore     the     paparazzi     trailing     behind     you          ,          though          .          ignore     the     fact     that     despite     everything          ,          a     childhood     dripping     with     luxury     and     privilege     is     not     really     a     normal     childhood          .          normal     children     don’t     dress     in     such     expensive     clothes     in     their     free     time          ,          normal     children     don’t     understand     the     complete     and     utter         hedonism     that     you’re     enabled          .          

it’s     only     a     matter     of     time     before     you     find     your     calling          ,          though          .          you     are     fourteen          ,          already     a     gangly     mess     of     too     -     long     limbs     and     charming     smile     and     curls     that     melt     even     the     iciest     of     glares          .          you’ve     sat     in     the     backs     of     theatres     while     your     mother     rehearses     for     your     entire     life          ,          and     stepping     into     the     harsh     spotlight     itself     feels     like     home     in     a     way     you     can’t     possibly     describe     in     either     of     the     tongues     that     crowd     your     mouth          .          your     first     performance     is     macbeth          ,          and     you     dominate     like     nothing     else          ,          tragic     figure     with     a     mouth     of     steel          .          for     the     next     few     years     of     your     high     school     education     you     always     score     the     leading     role          ,          not     through     anything     but     the     sheer     force     of     your     talent          .          acting     is     second     nature     to     you          ,          a     comfortable     set     of     skins     you     fall     into     like     it’s     nothing          ,          like     they’re     nothing          .

sixteen     when     you     get     your     first     gig     ,     a     guest     appearance     in     some     established     police     procedural     ,     but     it’s     a     rush     like     nothing     else     .     one     gig     leads     to     another     ,     and     another     ,     and     another     !     it’s     not     until     you’re     hired     by     netflix     to     do     their     biggest     hit     ,     some     then     -     untitled     sci     -     fi     horror     80s     thing     ,     that     you     take     off     like     nothing     else     and     god     ,     it’s     like     nothing     you’ve     ever     known     .     blockbusters     are     offered     to     you     after     your     second     season     airs     ,     you     find     yourself     in     cameos     in     fucking     marvel     movies     ,     &     yet     nothing’s     quite     as     thrilling     as     horror     .     something     crawls     under     your     skin     the     first     day     you     shoot     stranger     things     ,     and     it’s     stuck     ever     since          ;          you     make     a     good     archetype     ,     the     dopey     yet     helpful     boyfriend     ,     the     white     knight     .     you’re     barely     nineteen     when     you     decide     what     your     avenue     is     and     make     a     conscientious     decision     to     stick     to     it     .

and     now          ?          your     imdb     page     glitters     ,     cacophany     of     roles     quite     unlike     each     other     ,     bad     guy     and     good     guy     and     killer     and     saviour     ,     all     crammed     in     together     .     didn’t     think     you     had     time     but     somewhere     you     met     someone     ,     fell     in     love     ,     started     dating     ,     all     that          ;          but     that     bleeding     ,     genuine     heart     of     yours     can’t     be     contained     ,     falls     in     love     five     times     a     day     ,     catches     itself     upon     the     hooks     of     others     and     impulse     control     is     a     long     -     forgotten     acquaintance     .     newspapers     call     you     a     heartbreaker     ,     but     you     never     break     hearts          ;          you     simply     leave     your     scent     on     bedsheets     and     heartbeats     alike     ,     prettiest     kind     of     ghost     .     sometimes     you     play     up     the     ‘     arrogant     heartbreaking     dipshit     ’     spiel     for     interviews     but     with     you     ,     what     you     see     is     what     you     get     :     passionate     ,     driven     ,     emotional     .     a     fervour     .     a     lover     ,     a     romantic     ,     altruistic     kinds     of     chaos     .     the     prettiest     kind     of     confusion     ,     all     wrapped     up     under     that     surname     .     oh     darling     ,     you’re     the     nicest     kind     of     sweet     nightmare     and     you     don’t     even     know     it     .

𝔩𝔞𝔶𝔢𝔯     𝔣𝔬𝔲𝔯     .          wanted     connections          .

the     committed     relationship     .

the     string     of     lovers     he’s     been     seeing     .

exes     ,     on     any     kinds     of     terms     .

school     friends     from     forever     ago     .

co     -     stars     .

rivals     !!!!

literally     anything     PLEASE

[transracialqueer]

WHAT WE LOST: UNDOING THE FAIRY TALE NARRATIVE OF ADOPTION

by Liz Latty

January 3 is my Special Day. It is the anniversary of the day I was adopted. The day my parents bundled me up and brought me home to live in our red brick ranch house on West Chicago St. in a sprawling suburb just outside Detroit. As I grew up, I would hear the tale of this auspicious day time and time again. Sometimes even now, in my thirties, my parents like to retell it. Their eyes still shine with something expectant, something new.

We drove through the snow that morning to pick you up at the adoption agency. We were so excited. We’d been waiting so long for you; had prayed so hard. We held you in our arms. Your new brother made silly faces at you and you smiled and laughed at him. We took you home with us and our family was finally complete.

Although the Michigan court proceedings that legalized my adoption wouldn’t happen for another year and a half, my parents decided the January day they brought me home would be the symbolic day we celebrated our family making itself again each year.

I was told versions of the tale of my homecoming so many times over the years, it became somewhat like a myth. Perhaps the same way one’s birth story might feel mythical. And since this was the closest to a birth story anyone had to give me, it became part of the fabric of our family culture, like the storybook romance of my parents’ courtship that began with a canceled blind date in south St. Louis in 1963 and unfolded into their long prayed-for children arriving safely in their arms.

My brother had his own Special Day, having been adopted three years before me from a different family of origin. Our Special Day celebrations always included the retelling of the sweet tale of our arrivals, a small gift, and a special meal or dessert in our honor. I remember lovingly wrapped presents of longed-for books and shiny lip glosses, new CDs and all-you-can-eat dinners at the local Olive Garden. I liked feeling as though I had something akin to a second birthday. It made me feel different in a good way—like I got more than other kids to make up for the feeling that I somehow had less, or was missing something everyone else just naturally had.

At the same time, I felt acutely aware of how happy my mom and dad were on my Special Day, and how sometimes my feelings didn’t quite match up. Sometimes I would feel disconnected from the party, as if some other ghost girl were being celebrated as I watched. A girl who had one family that loved her, one family she belonged to, one name, one home, one story that began on that cozy January day and stretched on into happiness forever after. I would watch this girl celebrate with her family, watch them celebrate together, and I would feel hollow, empty in comparison. Eventually, as I grew into my teen years and my identity began shaping itself in part around this absence, I would come to an understanding that for my parents, my Special Day holds within its memory unbridled joy and relief—finally. But that for me, it holds something far more complicated.

*

Most mornings I sift through news stories from around the globe in search of content for an adoption news website I curate. As a result, I can safely tell you the majority of adoption-related news that doesn’t have to do with a celebrity adoption rarely makes it past small, local, or adoption-specific media platforms, or into the average person’s newsfeed on a regular basis. Yet this summer, when a five-year-old girl named Danielle had her adoption finalized in a Michigan courtroom, nine Disney princesses showed up to celebrate her, and a video of the joyous occasion went viral. Media outlets the likes of BuzzFeed, NBC, Refinery29, and Today.com ran the piece with headlines such as, “This Little Girl’s Adoption Hearing is a Real-Life Fairy Tale,” “Girl, 5, Gets Happily Ever After When Disney Princesses Surprise Her at Adoption Court Hearing,” and “Fairy-tale Ending as Disney Princesses Show Up for Adoption Hearing.”

I hesitated to watch the video. The all-too-familiar storyline linking adoption and fairy tales registered in my body as a flash of anxiety and exhaustion: Here we go again, I thought. But I clicked on it anyway and watched as a representative from the foster agency told us of Danielle’s obsession with Cinderella and everything Disney princess. My heart melted a little as I learned about the foster care workers who had arranged the elaborate surprise in an effort to make Danielle’s adoption day special. At the front of the courtroom next to Danielle sat her elated foster family of two years, for whom everything had lead up to this day in which they officially adopted Danielle, and another foster child, one-year-old Neveah, into their family. The anticipation in the room was electric as the judge offered Danielle the job of banging the gavel, symbolically sealing her own adoption, and the entire courtroom called out in unison, “It is so ordered!”

As the gavel crashed into its sounding block and a smiling, sweet-faced Danielle wobbled almost imperceptibly with the weight and force of it, I realized I’d been crying. The overwhelming sense of joy in the video, the love, the celebration of a family making itself, was beautiful. And, at the same time, I felt a familiar dull ache that often arrives as I watch adoptees at the center of someone else’s narrative.

I think what Danielle’s foster care workers and family did to make her day extra special was an incredibly loving gesture. And even though I can’t help but wonder what Danielle’s story is, what else she might have been feeling that day, or how she will come to think of that day in the future, what’s really troubling to me is why this video went viral when most adoption news goes quietly or not at all. What’s troubling to me is the particular brand of magic that Danielle’s story conjures for the rest of us.

There is no denying this video tugs at the heartstrings, but I believe it went viral for a very specific reason. With its fairy tale imagery and language, this video, and other sentimental representations of adoption, offer us the opportunity to further cement a narrative that we, in American society, have constructed over the last century and seem to need to believe in our individual and collective conscience: Adoption is a happy ending. Adoption is a win-win. Adoption is happily ever after. Unfortunately, this heartwarming narrative is a dangerous tale to tell and has far-reaching consequences.

The singular, unavoidable truth about adoption is that it requires the undoing of one family so that another one can come into being. And because of this, it is a practice, an institution, and a mode of family-making that is born of and begets trauma, loss, and grief. The fairy tale narrative of adoption denies adoptees the acknowledgement and support necessary to process their experiences across a lifetime. It delegitimizes the trauma of adoption loss and directly and indirectly influences the overwhelming statistics that show us adoptees are far more likely than the general population to struggle with trauma-related mental illness, suicide, and addiction.

By ignoring the complex reality of adoption, we are also corroborating a sentimental narrative that drives a billion-dollar, for-profit adoption industry whose sole purpose has been successfully shifted in modern American history from finding homes for children who legitimately need them, to supplying hopeful prospective parents with kids to call their own. The fairy tale narrative of adoption uncomplicates these truths and it lets us off the hook. It makes us feel good about each other and ourselves without having to face difficult complexities and integrate them into our understanding of not only what it means to be adopted, but also what it means to be human.

Inside the fairy tale, we don’t have to think about the darkness, the underbelly, or the unspeakable grief lying just below the surface of a child who has been severed from their home and family of origin. We don’t have to think about the countless pregnant people in the United States and across the globe who have been tricked, bribed, forced, and coerced into relinquishing their children or whose children are kidnapped and sold to agencies or intermediaries who stand to profit from their adoptions. Inside the fairy tale, we don’t have to think about all the first mothers and first families who would choose to keep their children or whose children might not have been unnecessarily or unjustly taken from them if they had access to the right kinds of support. The kinds of support that could be provided countless times over, both in the US and abroad, with the money currently invested in keeping the for-profit adoption industry and the child welfare industry in business.

So why do we love the adoption fairy tale so much? Most of us agree that modern day fairy tales have set us up for failure when it comes to beauty standards and romantic relationship expectations, but what about family-making?

*

I have the date of my Special Day tattooed on my left forearm along with the initials of the three first names I have been given—my birth name from my mother, a variation on her own mother’s name; my foster name from the people who cared for me in the interim; and my adoptive name from my parents, after the first American saint. Because people change children’s names, for a better fit, for a different life.

In my experience, most people that don’t know me well assume I inked my Special Day on my arm as a tribute to my adoption. A tribute to my forever family. To my happily ever after. Oh, how wonderful!, they exclaim smiling wide, knowing smiles. Except this is not at all why I wear the date on my arm. I wear it as a tribute to and an insistence on complexity. The complexity of a day that marks a beginning and an end, all at once. The beginning of my life with my adoptive family and the end of any possibility of returning to my family of origin. A family whose absence I felt as though my small body housed a haunting.

As a child, I never let on that I didn’t feel as excited as my parents did to celebrate my Special Day. This is a complicated hallmark of an adopted childhood. Adoptees often take on the emotional labor of holding our difficult feelings in places where no one can see them because we want to protect those around us from feeling hurt. There also often exists a very real and primal fear of further rejection. We understand we are loved and we understand love is tenuous, so we hide our feelings away because what if we didn’t? How will you feel? Will you be mad at me? Will you be hurt? Will you love me less? Will you send me back? I don’t want you to feel sad or think that I don’t love you, so I hold this hard truth. I hold it for you. I celebrate this day, in this way, for you.

In pictures of the day my parents brought me home from the adoption agency, I look like a baby. Utterly remarkable and yet not at all. In some pictures I look solemn, expressionless. In some I look happy, rosy-cheeked and smiling. There is no and every inference to be drawn as I sift through them, turn them over to see my mom’s handwriting, hold them up to the light. I can insert my adult feelings about this day into these pictures or not. I can choose how to narrate this story. I can tell a true story about a loving family that came to be. How long my parents had waited, had prayed. How they held me, finally. How I laughed at my brother because he made silly faces at me. How we went home together, forever. A family.

Twenty years later, although my parents (and consequently I) were told differently through agency records, I would find out that my eighteen-year-old mother had not wanted to give me up for adoption, but, like most original mothers, did not have the means to support me on her own and lived in a country unwilling to invest in helping single people, poor and working class people, people of color, queer people, immigrants, and young people keep their families sustainably intact. Though they were in love, my mother was not married to my seventeen-year-old father, and her family was Catholic. The answer was clear.

I was told her father made the decision that I would go away. A decision the family held against him for years afterward. A decision I believe I could see behind his eyes when he would try to look at me across a room or expanse of yard two decades later, after I found them.

I kept your newborn picture in my wallet for ten years or more, my mother’s younger sister tells me in a hotel bar. We always thought of you as The One That Got Away.

There is no record of the first five days of my life. I do not know if I was taken from my mother immediately or if we spent those last days together in the hospital. She was never able to speak of it during the time I knew her as an adult, before our reunion unraveled. Her sisters indicated to me they believed she no longer had access to these memories. That they had been too painful and she’d found somewhere to put them. I imagine a shoebox buried in the backyard of her parents’ home, the banks of the Detroit River eventually eroding, giving way, washing the memory of our time together into the tributaries and lakes that were the landscape of my childhood carrying on mere miles away.

The adoption agency placed me in a foster home on the fifth day, but my mother, not wanting to let me go, would come visit me. She asked her parents to take her there and they obliged. Once, she came alone. For two months, I lived in a stranger’s home without the person I’d come to know as intimately as one can. Except that sometimes she would come back for me. And then she would leave. And then she would come back. And then she would leave. As my body began to learn: this is what love is. Right up until that snowy January morning when I was taken to the adoption agency to meet my new parents and my new brother who made silly faces at me and I smiled. I laughed.

*

The late adoption scholar and activist, Reverend Keith C. Griffith, once said, “Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful.” I come across this quote time and time again, more than any other, in the online adoptee and first mother communities. It is so often quoted I think, because it succinctly points to the glaring misconception, misrepresentation, and misalignment that exist between society’s narrative of adoption and our actual lived experiences as adopted people and first families. There is such a gulf, such a divide, and one that is valiantly defended by society’s deep need to believe a singular, uncomplicated truth about adoption, that those of us who have experienced the interior of an adopted life often feel completely erased and utterly silenced.

Society’s narrative of adoption tells adoptees, in no uncertain terms, if we were given to a loving home, we shouldn’t feel this pain, this chasm, this rip, this tear. We were saved, after all. We’re so much better off. We’re the lucky ones. Our parents must be such wonderful people. We must feel so grateful. How lucky. How special. We were meant to be together. Everything worked out just the way it was supposed to in the end.

It is here—in everyday encounters, in saccharine and reductive media representations, and even in our adoptive families—where adoptees are expected to embody the fairy tale narrative of adoption. A hopeful, well-intentioned narrative, but one that is historically steeped in white saviorhood and colonialism. One in which people with more financial resources, social capital, and most often racial privilege, feel entitled to the children of those with less privilege, opportunity, and support. And we have accepted this not only as an unquestionable good, but also as the best possible outcome.

But what exactly is being measured when weighing this out? Are we certain a child will be “better off” living with the irreparable wound of parental separation and more financial resources than with a low-income or working class parent in their family of origin? Certainly socioeconomic status is often a clear indicator of one’s opportunities in life, but what’s the trade off? I have often wondered what our lives would have looked like had my mother and father made the decision to strike out on their own and raise me. And I wonder too how much of our future might have been determined by the biases that are alive in these very same assumptions. Am I better off? Am I lucky? The truth is, we will never know. And this, too, is a loss.

*

I found my original family in my early twenties and for the last fifteen years, I have experienced wild anxiety, deep joy, profound grief, complex gratitude, rage, fear, alienation, belonging, contentment. I have made primal noises and shapes alone on the floor of a studio apartment when my mother stopped answering my letters after two and a half years of knowing her. I have gotten to watch new siblings grow into stunningly kind, caring, creative, bold, and generous young adults. And I recently reconnected again with my original father for the first time in nearly ten years. Perhaps it will be different this time. Perhaps it will stick. I hope so.

Three years ago I met my original grandmother and three aunts on my father’s side for the first time. I stood barefoot on a cold, tiled kitchen floor during a sweltering Southeastern Michigan heat wave, surrounded by four brazen women who looked and laughed and cursed just like me. I stood there in that kitchen as my grandmother tearfully handed me a jewelry box containing a pair of delicate earrings, tiny gold hoops with sparkling lavender gems—a family heirloom. I stood there as they apologized for not knowing about me. Apologized that I’d been a secret. Apologized for whom?

We didn’t know, they said to me. If we’d known, we would have kept you. We would have raised you ourselves.

In that moment, I felt wanted, I felt important, I felt loved beyond measure, and at the exact same time, another ghost girl was born. A girl who was raised by four strong, independent, take-no-shit, hilarious, hardworking women in a working-class town. She had one family and one name and one home and she knew where she belonged. I watched the ghost girl’s whole life unfold in that moment. I fell in love with her. And then I began the task of grieving her. I’m still grieving her. I’m not sure how to let her go.

*

Adoption loss is an ambiguous loss. While it changes shape over time, it is often life-long. It is without end. I have lost my entire family and yet, there are no bodies to bury, no socially acceptable ritual or process meant for me to understand this loss and how to live with it. My mother went on living, became someone else’s mother, while I lived my young life with only the presence of her absence and the fracturing unknown. Maybe she’s alive; maybe she’s dead. Maybe she loves me; maybe she has forgotten me. Maybe anything.

Even after reunion, if it is possible or desired, there are new losses, new lives, and new selves to grieve. Loss of this magnitude and with this kind of ambiguity most often does not simply resolve itself. Adoptees must learn how to live with it over time, yet we must do so in the face of society insisting we exude joy, gratitude, and luck. An insistence that often means the kind of support we need to manage our grief is either nonexistent or unavailable to us. Imagine for a moment, if we treated other losses this way. Imagine losing a loved one—tragically, unexpectedly—and then being expected to behave as though it was the best thing that ever happened to you.

We need a new adoption narrative. We need to ask ourselves why we have historically needed to perpetuate the sentimental fairy tale narrative of adoption that only serves to hurt those at the center of it and to support an industry in dire need of reconstruction. We need a narrative that can celebrate love and family-making, but which does not insist that adoption is always the best option. That in fact, it is often unnecessary and the most generous, altruistic thing we can possibly do is to help prevent another child and first family from having to live with a lifetime of loss and grief. We need a narrative that centers the voices of adopted people and can hold the complexity of our multiple and fractured truths. That can hold all of it. Because I think this is the reality of being adopted—holding these seemingly contradictory, disparate, complicated truths, in the same body, always. Holding deep grief and profound joy in the same breath. Holding love for one mother that does not negate the love for another mother. Belonging partly to one family or country or culture, partly to another, but maybe never feeling as though we belong to either. Feeling both wanted and unwanted, both chosen and abandoned. Wanting to belong here and wanting to go back there.

What if we, as a society, chose to hold all these truths at the same time, at the same pitch, without the need to push one out in favor of the other? How might our questions or actions or beliefs about adoption change? How might our ideas about loss change? About healing? About family?

*

Though we live on opposite sides of the country now, sometimes my parents and I are in the same place on January 3 and we celebrate my Special Day together. We still eat, we talk, we laugh, we remember. And at some point, later that day or the next, I mark it in my own way, privately, for me. I meditate, I cry, I go to nature—the ocean especially. The ocean rebalances me, stirs a kind of biological rhythm in my body, a point of origin. And the ocean is always bigger and stronger than whatever you bring to its shore. There is comfort in the humbling, in one’s own smallness.

This past January, after thirty-six Januaries, I finally told my parents that my Special Day means something very different for me than it does for them. Fear and shame and guilt licked at my heart as I opened my mouth to say the words. I still wanted to protect them. I wanted to protect them from me. But because the impulse to protect others from their own feelings about my adoption ignites resentment in me, a desire to be the one protected instead, I was cold and forceful in my telling. It’s the day I lost my family. Why would I want to celebrate that? This wasn’t the plan. I didn’t mean to, but this is what happened. I wasn’t prepared for the force with which a truth, held inside a body for thirty-six years, would emerge. I can still see the sadness in their eyes as they listened carefully and nodded, Yes, ok, we hear you.

I left their house later that day, the day before my Special Day, without saying much. I went to a friend’s place a few hours away, in a town I used to call home and didn’t return for a week. I felt guilty about how I handled it and I wasn’t ready yet to try again. The truth is, my parents and I haven’t always had an easy relationship. My unresolved childhood grief made for an angry, rebellious adolescence that left my parents at the end of their rope. When I came out of the closet at eighteen, it proved irreconcilable with their devout Catholicism and there were years of deep distance before we were able to find common ground again. When I found my original family, my parents acted threatened and scared and were unable to figure out a way to support me around it for many years. This is not a laundry list of anyone’s failings. This is complexity. This is a family.

*

Watching Danielle’s adoption hearing reminded me of how much I adore adoptees. How fierce, independent, resourceful, hard-loving, loyal, brilliant, and creative we are. Not in spite of, but alongside this grief we carry. How the first time I was ever in a room full of adoptees, I felt an atmospheric shift. I mean this in the planetary sense. I was never the same again. I had been given permission to be myself for the first time without having to navigate someone else’s need for my story to reflect a fairy tale ending.

This was when I began to dream in earnest about what it would be like for adoptees to exist in a world that understands the paradoxical experiences that we live. A world that does not insist on reducing us to cheerful assumptions and sentimental media representations. A world that accepts adoption not as an unquestionable, benevolent good, not as a fairy tale ending, but as an event that forever changes and complicates the lives of everyone involved. That when the gavel crashes into the sounding block, literally or symbolically, it is both a fracturing and a coming together, a severing and a multiplication, a derailment and a hope for the uncertain path ahead.

(source in the notes)

[hrrytomlinson]

here are a bunch of fics I’ve enjoyed and loved reading throughout the month of may. I recommend that you read these great fics in june, if you haven’t already.

(all fics with a star are my favorites and if there are two stars then it was a favorite favorite)

1. Dance to the Distortion (96k)*

Louis accidentally breaks Harry's camera lens and in order to get it fixed, they decide to participate in a romantic couples study. The only issue is that they are not actually couple. Well that and the fact they cannot stand each other. 

2. Above Your Head (57k)**

What happens when an unstoppable object meets an immovable force?

Space AU. Louis is an astronaut. Harry works for Mission Control. They don't get along.

3. Curveball (15k)

“So when are you two getting married?”

Harry froze. Shit, shit, shit, this completely went against his whole ‘keep it casual’ stance he’d been planning on keeping. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say.

Louis shrugged. “I don’t know, I mean, we haven’t really discussed that.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “I mean, if it happens, then it happens. You know… Whatever.”

Whatever? Harry thought to himself. Did I really just say ‘whatever’ to when I’m getting married? When it's all I've been thinking of for weeks?

Harry couldn't believe himself. He knew he told himself to keep it casual and not put too much pressure on Louis for the idea of getting engaged, but for fuck’s sake, that was probably too casual.

Does Louis think I don’t want to get married now? What if he thinks I’m not ready for it? What if I just put him off proposing even longer?

He couldn’t shake the fear that he’d really just messed up.

Or, the Runner on Third sequel where Harry really wants to get engaged, and Louis doesn't seem to be picking up on that. Harry may or may not drop a few hints that are anything but subtle.

4. My Sweetest Downfall (42k)**

Louis is a retired guardian angel. After the death of his last charge, he became jaded. Humans die—what use is prolonging the inevitable?

He's more than happy to forget about humanity altogether until one day, when Louis is pulled from his desk job for a new assignment: protect One Direction's Harry Styles. It doesn't help that there's something about Harry that Louis can't resist, and it's making him question everything he's ever known. Humans are strictly off limits, and breaking that rule means risking everything, but Harry just might be worth it.

This is a story about forgiveness and discovery, featuring an angel who wants to be a little more human and a human who is so much more than he seems.

5. Suited For You (4k)*

“Louis Tomlinson, you have had that suit for almost ten years. It is time to get a new one, and it is time to get a good one.” Unfortunately, he could tell his mother wouldn’t budge. The discussion was over. They said goodbye, and Louis immediately dialed his sister Lottie.

She picked up straight away, “You have to get the suit, Lou.”

“Argh!” Louis yelled, hanging up on her. He missed his old flip phone, hanging up on someone was so much more satisfying.

Louis' family convinces him that he needs a new suit for some upcoming special events in his life. 

6. The World Turned Upside Down (71k)**

In September 1984, Harry Styles starts at Manchester Polytechnic with two goals: to take pictures and to join the Lesbian and Gay Society. He’s never paid much attention to the news, but everyone he meets in Manchester supports the miners. He realises how right they are when he meets Louis Tomlinson, a striking miner who flirts with him. A month later they are both at the founding meeting of Manchester Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, trying to bring down the government. Through letters and visits they build a relationship, in a world very much not of their own choosing.

Manchester and Doncaster in the 1980s are grim, hopeful and alive. Niall is president of the Young Labour club, Nick Grimshaw is in love with the singer of an up and coming band, Fizzy wants to know more about the women of Greenham Common and Harry and Louis are brave.

A Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners/Pride AU.

7. Nocturnal Creatures Are Not So Prudent (24k)

Louis spins a finger in midair, like he’s indicating someone to turn around, staring pointedly at Liam as the faucet turns itself on and the can rinses itself in the sink behind him. Liam, moon burn him, doesn't rise to the bait, choosing instead to lean back on his stool and wrapping his hands around his own mug.

“Anyway, like I was saying and that you were ignoring, there's this new club near my school and I want you to go with me. Could do you some good, getting out once in awhile.”

Louis is a white witch with a little black cat named Hemlock and a best human friend Liam (they're a lot like Samantha Stephens and Louise Tate). When he's dragged out to a new club Liam's heard about from a friend and classmate, Louis comes face to face with that which witches do not touch: a charming vampire by the name of Harry.

8. When It’s Late At Night (25k)

Louis has zero interest in an ex-boybander turned solo artist when his appearance on the show gets announced, but that's exactly who he gets stuck with when Harry Styles shows up at the Late Late show to promote the release of his debut album. For an entire fucking week.

Or The Late Late prompt that we all need to get through this excruciatingly hard time. 

9. Why Can’t It Be Like That (63k)

Louis Tomlinson, head of his local hospital's charity fund, suddenly finds himself in the heart of the Royal family when his mother marries the third son of the reigning monarch. Such an upset in lifestyle brings a lot of changes for Louis, one of them being the need for a stylist.

Enter Harry Styles, a cutting edge fashion stylist who loves his job and prides himself on his passion. The first time he sees Louis Tomlinson on the cover of a tabloid he wants to dress him, style him, make him as beautiful as Harry knows he could be. When he's hired to do just that, he knows this will be a perfect partnership. That is, until he actually meets the man.

A fashion AU with a royal twist, where Louis doesn't need a stylist, Harry's thrilled to have a real life Barbie doll, and they're both very wrong about each other.

10. Looking Through You (41k)*

Just as Louis and Liam were starting out in the music industry, writing and producing for up and coming artists, a fateful meeting with new pop singer Harry Styles changes everything. Four years later, just as Harry is set to embark on his next world tour, a drunken confession causes a rift between once inseparable friends. As Harry tries to make sense of his feelings for Louis, he begins writing his next album to express them as it may be the only way to break through the walls that Louis has built between them.

11. Never Be Ready (7k)

“Remember the documentary film program in Los Angeles? The one that I got waitlisted for? They called me this morning and said that a spot opened up and they offered it to me.”

“That’s great!” Louis says, and he means it. “When do you come back?”

He and Harry have spent every summer of their lives together. Surely Harry won’t ruin that perfect record.

“The middle of August,” Harry says, clearly thrilled at the prospect of spending ten weeks in California, and Louis’ heart sinks to his stomach like a stone in the sea.

A high school AU where a summer without Harry makes Louis realize that he wants to be a little bit more than best friends.

12. Never Gonna Dance Again (55k)**

Harry is quiet for a moment and his fingers feel like they’re burning past the fabric of Louis’ jumper, branding his skin. “Can I kiss you?"

This is where Louis should walk away and leave Harry to pirouette and cambré by himself in the faint moonlight shining through the windows. He is a spy and Harry is a dancer. There are lines that should not be crossed.

Louis surges forward.

Louis is a spy and Harry is a dancer. The only real thing they know is each other.

13. Atlas At Last (83k)**

He doesn’t know what he had been expecting out of the road trip itself besides burping contests and too much shitty gas station food with Oli and Stan, but in the brief moment before Harry ambles up his driveway, Louis idly wonders if this is about to become some sort of Gay Coming of Age story.

Maine to California in ten days. In which Zayn’s an open-shirt hippie they meet somewhere in Ohio, Liam’s the pastor’s son running away from home, and Niall’s the number they call on the bathroom wall.

It’s 1978. Harry and Louis are just trying to get to San Fran in time for the Queen concert.

14. Adore You (66k)**

“We invited our new acquaintances from uptown. You’ve simply got to meet their oldest son!” said his mother with a flourish, and suddenly it became abundantly clear as to why his parents had so adamantly demanded he join them in Deansville for the entirety of the summer.

Against his wishes, Harry spends the holidays at his family’s summer estate, and is reluctantly pulled into a courtship he didn’t ask for. Harry doesn’t want to get married, but Louis does. They don’t fit, but then again they really, really do.

Vaguely set in the 1920’s. Headpieces, jazz, fashionable canes, and flapper dresses, and that.

15. We’ve Got to Get Away from Here (23k)**

“It is my understanding that you are the most comprehensive member of this agency in the field of extraterrestrial life, is that right?” the agent asks. He’s trying to sound calm, but Louis can tell he’s shaken as well.

“Um, I guess so,” Louis says, glancing over at the man in the blanket again.

Suddenly, Louis’s blood runs cold. There’s something off about the man, something in his gaze, something Louis can’t put his finger on. It’s terribly unsettling, but excitement bubbles in his gut.

Or, Louis is an FBI agent who likes to think himself a paranormal expert, and Harry is alien that somehow ended up in his office.

16. There’s No Antidote for This Curse (26k)**

New York City, 1924. Harry Styles is an Auror working for MACUSA. Louis Tomlinson is an investigative reporter for the Daily Prophet in London. They haven't seen each other for years, but when bodies start showing up in Central Park, Louis travels to New York to cover the story. The two work together to uncover the killer, and uncover a few other secrets along the way.

[coconutbalm]

holy grail fic rec

since all i do is read fic i figured i should share my faves 

also these are all larry fics sorry

devil town a southern us au

so keep my candle bright  louis returns to his hometown after four years to find that the reverend’s son has done some growing up of his own.

this wicked game  An AU in which The Bachelor is gay, Louis is a contestant, Harry is the bachelor, everyone drinks a lot of champagne, the entire world gets to watch them fall in love, and no one plays by the rules.

tug-of-war  Louis' husband dies suddenly and he is left with nothing. Well, not really nothing. He has Harry. And a St. Bernard puppy named Link, whom his late husband left behind for him. Louis takes care of Link and Harry takes care of Louis. Everything is okay until suddenly, it isn't.

i’ll make this feel like home  Harry can't sleep because the cat next door won't stop meowing. He goes over to confront its owner, things go surprisingly well, and the cat ends up being the cutest thing that he's ever seen. Well, besides its omega owner.A love story quickly blossoms.

we’ll be the stars  When cleaning out his grandmothers art supplies, Harry finds a magical paintbrush that brings to life anything he paints. So he decides to paint his dead fiancé, Louis.

happiness comes in on tiptoes  the AU where Louis is new to the neighborhood and Harry is the angel living next door.

keep on dreaming, this is hollywood  A Pretty Woman AU where Louis is the high-powered businessman and Harry is the hooker. No, there is no necklace scene, but there is definitely piano sex.

have you coming back again It’s five o’clock in the morning. Louis has a lecture at half eight. He could be using this time to study or to do his readings or to go to the gym, but - well. He doesn’t have any exams coming up, he’s not going to his seminar today anyway and he hates the gym.Instead he’s using this time to fuck with Harry Styles’ poor little brain.

          just a feeling  The first time that Harry thinks about marriage in relation to Louis, he’s eighteen years old, standing in the middle of a crowded frat house, six drinks down and another in his hand

glitter/gold series

here in the afterglow  1970’s AU. In a tiny town in Idaho, Louis’ life is changed forever by the arrival of a curious stranger. 

if i should stay  Louis is a television actor who suddenly needs a bodyguard. Harry is the bodyguard he ends up hiring.

210 days  Harry is in the army and Louis is back in New York. Together, they get through Harry's six month leave by sending a series of letters back and forth. They've done it before, and they can do it again.

another hazy may  louis is a terrible poet and harry lives in the now and they have six weeks to fall in love but, really, it only takes six seconds. bookshop meets military meets summer romance au ft. marlboros, the backstreet boys, and underrated literary devices.

a love like war  the one in which Louis Tomlinson is a cliched rock star, he's got everything except for love. But then he meets Harry Styles; the man that, against all odds, saves him in every way a person can be saved, even when Louis didn't know he needed saving in the first place.

all the right moves  This is the third game in a row that Harry has been distracted by the noisy boy in the stands, five rows back.

do not go gentle into that good night the one 1997 AU where Harry is a bank robber and Louis falls in love with him

fading  Louis knows about beauty; the combination of qualities that pleases the aesthetic senses. He creates that combination every day in the garments he designs while studying fashion at uni. The cut of the design, the color of the fabric, the intricacy of the stitching; it all comes together to create something beautiful. When the science student with the long legs and dimpled smile agrees to model for him, Louis decides he’s found beauty personified. Harry just thinks Louis needs someone to show him how beautiful he is. (read the tags)

it’s in the love  Harry is sorta punk and never stops staring at Louis.

and i know these scars will bleed  Harry has anger issues and he meets Louis in a rehab center

love endless (the road to recollection) The year is groovy 1973, and eighteen-year-old Louis Tomlinson is perhaps the gayest teen to ever grace the gloomy, hateful town of Fortwright. Would be fine if he wasn't so viciously bullied at both home and school for such a "harmful" sexual preference.Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this story, haven't we? Believe him, Louis didn't think he was anything special either.Until he found the mansion. The notoriously haunted mansion hidden deep within the forests of his tiny blip of a town in Bumfuck Nowhere, Idaho. No one with a brain ever goes near it, but Louis could use a little excitement in his life...and possibly a Band-Aid or two.

autumn leaves  Harry is an American soldier in France during World War II, and Louis is a French waiter that doesn't mean to fall in love with him.

a life that we share (i owe it all to you)  Harry's son get bullied until Louis' son shows up

adore you  Against his wishes, Harry spends the holidays at his family’s summer estate, and is reluctantly pulled into a courtship he didn’t ask for. Harry doesn’t want to get married, but Louis does. They don’t fit, but then again they really, really do.

never be  The one where Harry Styles moves to Connecticut from England for nine months as a part of a study abroad program, and he just so happens to move in with Louis Tomlinson and family.

falling slowly  Louis is a quiet and shy famous football player who has a secret obsession with fish and Harry is a photographer who talks enough for the both of them.

since i’ve found you  Louis woke up on the morning he was meant to volunteer at the Feed the Homeless program at St. Mary's church hoping for an opportunity to give back a little to a city that has given him everything he could ever want. Little did he know, there was one more great thing waiting there for him; a boy with radiant green eyes in a weathered jacket and a beat-up backpack slung over his shoulders.

swim in the smoke “What about this, Captain?” Liam asks, nudging the boy kneeling between their feet with the toe of his boot. The boy hisses and swipes at him, slurring out something unintelligible around the makeshift gag Niall had to stuff in his mouth. He misses by a mile and tries again, just as ineffectively.Harry looks down at him, at the way the sun streams over his face and shoulders, at the way the gag stretches his mouth, lips pink and chapped. He’s lithe and pretty, smudged all over with dirt. They had found him tied up below deck, mostly unconscious, next to a barrel full of gold. He’s clearly a prisoner, but there’s something familiar about him, something that niggles at Harry’s brain. Something he can’t quite put his finger on.“Put him in my cabin,” Harry decides, turning back to deal with the rest of the loot. The boys screams out jumbled curse words at Harry’s back, muffled by the gag, and Harry can’t understand any of it.

but the world looks better through your eyes  Harry loves to see him doing things he loves. Whether it's being on stage in front of a crowd of thousands, playing football, reading to his sisters, or rubbing Harry's feet (maybe not that last one) Harry lives for the moments he gets to see Louis so completely in his element. Because, while Louis doing something as simple as brushing his teeth is breathtaking to Harry, watching him practice his knee kicks in the backyard is almost otherworldly. Louis seems to glow from the inside out- still is, even in this bar- and Harry can never get enough. (also my best friend wrote this so you have to read it) 

we’ll cast some light (you’ll be alright)   There’s a standard procedure for this. Scan, track, kill. But with a solar eclipse and a Greater Demon with unfinished business looming, the path to keeping England safe from harm becomes complicated and shadowed by mystery and secrets. For Harry and his team, times have never been harder, especially when a few old friends turned foes show up. Harry is left with just over forty days to overcome the hurdle of tension between them and reconcile their past, and figure out just what Louis is hiding from him before it’s too late.

have fun & read responsibly 

[its-just-like-the-movies]

Enough Said (13, B-)

It is so rare, I think, to watch a movie and be able to pinpoint the single thing that could be removed to the benefit of the entire project. Usually there’s a handful of flaws that are symptomatic of a misconstrued blueprint, like the inherent emptiness in everything The Wolf of Wall Street is about and depicts, or the shearing of so much of the risky edges that made August: Osage County such a rich prospect for a film adaptation. There’s a lot in Enough Said that’s special in how it textures its romance, not just in how Nicole Holofcener directs and scripts everything but in how Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and James Gandolfini play their characters. There’s a lot that’s also special in how both characters relate to their daughters, their daughter’s friends, and their exes. But the real snag is that Dreyfuss’s Eva also has a pretty odd relationship with Gandolfini’s wife, who she learns is one of her massage clients after the two already spent plenty of time talking about their shit ex-husbands, which radically changes how Dreyfuss interacts with Gandolfini’s Albert in spite of the fantastic time they’d been having together until then. The heaviness of this contrivance, that Dreyfuss had been conspiratorial in degrading the worst possible version of her boyfriend instead of a guy who sounds remarkably like the man she’s dating, and continues to mine Marianne for stories so that she can get “a better idea” about him, is a real burden on the film that can’t quite quash everything else that’s rich about the project, though that may ultimately be a bigger testament to Gandolfini’s performance than any recuperations in the script, especially in its most awkward phases. But even that isn’t enough to quash what’s unique and exciting in Enough Said, in its central relationship and in how its performers realize those part. It’s still a lovely rom-com realized with a light touch and mature sensibilities, even if it’s increasingly bogged by an unnecessary story conceit.

For about the first half hour, at least, the film is a complete delight as we see the relationship between Eva and Albert start to develop, moving from its awkward early stages into real bonding over their divorces, their daughters about to be sent off to college, and their middle-agedness in relation to their own lives and their disconnect with the current youth culture. Even before that we get a glimpse of Eva’s daily life as a masseuse, of her friendship with couple Ben Falcone and Toni Colette, finally allowed to use her native Australian accent. We also see her relationship with her college-bound daughter Ellen and Ellen’s best friend Chloe, a year younger than her and seemingly closer with Eva than Ellen is, as practically every one of her scenes in meant to remind us. I don’t mean this as an inherent dig on those scenes, which build into an interesting relationship between the three as Ellen’s college-bound reclusiveness sees her mom seemingly start replacing her with her best friend. Albert and Eva’s newest client Marianne enter Eva’s life within minutes of each other at the same party, Marianne in a very pleasant conversation and Albert in a somewhat awkward one, as Ben Falcone’s Will tells Albert and another friend how Eva doesn’t believe there’s anyone attractive at the party, which Albert agrees with. He later asks Eva out on a date, which is as about as surprising to Eva as it is when Marianne actually makes an appointment for a massage. Eva bonds with Marianne while discussing their ex-husbands, their daughters, Eva’s other clients, and how nice Marianne’s house and lifestyle is. 

Meanwhile, Eva and Albert bond over their daughters and their divorces, but also about being middle-aged, how they do and don’t understand their children, the loudness of the restaurant they’re eating at, and their own personal affinities, anxieties, and peccadilloes. It’s occasionally awkward, but also incredibly charming and hilarious, and their conversations are genuinely revealing of character and form a real bond between them. As Eva relates to Marianne later, they never stopped talking the entire date, and they don’t stop talking, flirting, or joking in most of their subsequent dates. These aren’t the interactions of two fundamentally lonely people, just two adults who haven’t been romantically close in a long time who are trying to feel their way around semi-familiar territory, even as they get more comfortable with each other. Chloe stopping by and ending up having breakfast with the couple is just as strengthening a moment for the two as the terrible lunch they have with Albert’s daughter Tess. The absolute best moment in the film, a horrified line reading of “oh my god” from Gandolfini, comes after said terrible dinner. And in these scenes of courtship Dreyfuss and Gandolfini shine, filling out their characters with warmth and wit while wearing them as comfortably as the blanket Eva is trying to finish knitting. Line readings, physical gestures, and darting eyes all speak volumes as the two navigate their relation while it blossoms with every new step they take together. Their time together is sweet, and you root for them as they become even more entwined in each other’s lives.

And then we learn that Albert is, in fact, the fabled ex-husband Marianne had been talking about this whole time. Eva’s face turns into a quietly terrified grimace, as did mine, before she hides behind a tree from Tess, which I could not do. What she does not do, unfortunately, is come clean and terminate her working relationship with Marianne for the sake of her relationship, instead choosing to mine her for information she can get on Albert and find out what, exactly, is wrong with him. What’s worse, frankly, is that the film almost completely corroborates the specific grievances Marianne has against him, judging him for his peculiarities in a way it does not her. I don’t mind that Albert is put to task for the ways he may not be appealing to Eva, or even the way she finds this out, necessarily. But in scene after scene, as Eva seems to lose all perspective on Albert beyond what his ex-wife says, the film doesn’t at all do anything to contradict Marianne after all these years of divorce or show that Albert has grown in any way past the deficits she’s ascribed to him. Eva’s decision to spy on him this way is scrutinized, sure, but the film just can’t respond to the scale of her betrayal the way it can to individual instances of her acting sketchy, like trotting out Albert to a couple’s dinner with Falcone and Colette’s characters only to drunkenly try and get them to agree with all the dislikes she’s inherited from Marianne. The actual confrontation with Albert and Tess at Marianne’s house where everyone learns what Eva has been doing is not just awkward and embarrassing for the characters, but for Holofcener’s writing to boot. Aside from the clunky insults she gives Eva as she feels her way around Albert, she just cannot address Eva’s decision with the gaze that Eva scrutinizes Albert. Dreyfuss herself plays Eva perfectly fine in the last hour, rooting the character in small gestures and glances without overplaying it. She survives the least plausible of Eva’s actions better than the character does, giving her decisions emotional logic without even the film’s rom-com logic. It would have been a better film, I think, had it stayed about a woman becoming unsure about her relationship based on the horror stories of another woman who’d dealt with a somewhat similar man, rather than one about two women dealing with the same man, and one using the other for information in ways that cannot help but hurt him and herself.

Thank God for Gandolfini, though, who manages to play Albert so delicately that he survives the seeming onslaught against his character. It’s not that he plays against anything we’re told about Albert so much as he underplays those tendencies without shoving any one aspect of the character, positive or negative, under our nose or as a “central” trait of him. More than that, he is as unembarrassed of his character as Albert is of himself, and fuses all of his traits into the lived-in habits of a middle-aged man. Though I’ve criticized Holofcener’s writing of how Eva addresses Albert and how the film address *that*, she is adept at giving him ground to stand on when it comes time to defend himself, and is particularly generous to him in the film’s first half hour, gifting him the kind of traits male writers don’t usually give male characters. His first meeting with Eva at the party, where he responds to being told she thinks no man at this party is attractive by saying he doesn’t think any women are that attractive here either, is not written or played as a bruised insult, but as a deflation to the awkward tone that the original statement had set for the conversation. His own handling of his daughter dissing Ellen’s choice of college is not a reprimand to Tess but a rescue line to get this child to stop insulting his new girlfriend’s daughter. The remarkable openness of Albert’s conversations with Eva is matched by how equally nervous they both are about it, and his stunned, wounded goodbye to her once he learns what she’s done is all the more heartbreaking for how earnest, warm, and bravely on the line he’d put himself out of her. The horrific idea of casting John C. Reily in the part, someone who’s made a career on stooging out against simpleton characters, also shows that Holofcener makes Albert so simply decent that his actor would have to really work to sell him out. Neither the part nor the film would work if the actor also invited us to judge Albert, either positively or negatively, and there’s a real possibility we could’ve spent the last hour wondering what on Earth would make Eva even bother with him, or him put up with her. But Gandolfini takes everything on the page for that character and burnishes him with real feeling, gruff sincerity, and a delicate sweetness that fills every inch of his plus-sized frame. The test of any rom-com character, I think, is if you’d fall in love with them too, and on this ground Gandolfini hits a remarkable bullseye without working to hard to sell or defend his character. He lets the man be himself, and it’s lovely 

There are other pleasures on the sidelines of Enough Said in how older couples relate to past and present marriages: A woman celebrating a two year anniversary talks about how perfect her first husband was without the second getting jealous, remarking plainly why she isn’t still married; Eva asking her husband what he tells people when they ask why he got divorced; his perfect response; the way Toni Colette cannot stop wondering what her second husband would be like until the first suddenly says what he finds lacking in their relationship. There’s a little too much hanging around that doesn’t need to be there, mostly an arc about Colette failing to fire a maid who may not be as inept as she seems, though we probably don’t need as many scenes of Eva doing something with Chloe and Ellen walking in halfway and feeling betrayed about it. Her goodbye, as Eva and her husband leave her at the airport as she flies off to college, is surprisingly poignant, and here I give credit to all three of the young actresses Holofcener is working with here. The film’s final scene, as Eva shows up to Albert’s house on Thanksgiving and makes a last, small plea to give it another shot, ends on a delightful note as the two sit on his porch together, having made a step towards reconciliation. I admire both characters for being willing to go forward in spite, or perhaps because, of all the messiness that had led them to breaking up in the first place, and theirs is a reunion that I earnestly hope would last once the credits finish rolling 

I wonder how much more I would’ve liked Enough Said had it not gone with the conceit it sold itself on, and let Eva’s fears be premised on the anxieties of someone whose situation is similar to hers without being hers specifically, the way Gena Rowlands relates to the depression of Mia Farrow’s character in Another Woman despite only ever hearing her grievances through an air duct. Furthermore, I wonder if I could’ve even liked it with a better-executed version of its actual premise. The Lady Eve, which features a conwoman convincing the same man to fall in love with her twice, is certainly ripe for an excavation of its problematic elements, yet the trickery there never bothered me anywhere near as much as it did here. For sure, Preston Sturgess is a better director than Nicole Holofcener, shaping his scenes more carefully, and he handles the conceit of his film more carefully than she does. Even if the joke is always on Henry Fonda’s astoundingly silly mark, he is not treated with the same scrutiny that Albert is, and the ways Albert is scrutinized aren’t too fair to him. Barbara Stanwyck’s witty, lovestruck crook is given as much love and attention by her writer/director as Julia Louis-Dreyfuss’s witty, lovestruck masseuse, and The Lady Eve’s tone and style certainly build itself around the reprehensible things she does, but it’s a film that’s designed to handle her foibles much better than Enough Said does Eva’s.

Ultimately, what we’re left with is a pretty decent movie with some pretty obvious potential to make itself a much better film with not that much effort, and perhaps even less than it even exerts. So attuned it is to its central character that her joys are our joys, her anxieties are our anxieties, and when she’s making an ass of herself, I felt she was too. It’s very best scenes feel like unicorns in romantic comedies, so candid and finely-attuned to the wants and concerns of adults on the very real precipice of being alone, and hitting it off remarkably with someone they didn’t expect to get along with in the slightest. Dreyfuss and Gandolfini do remarkable work, though she is as hampered by Holofcener’s plot contrivances as he is bolstered by it, and his is a much harder task that he pulls off with such grace. I’d happily sit through more films in this age bracket, rather than 30-somethings that typically inhabit the genre, or the 60 and 70 somethings who are usually seen as a refresher from all the 30-somethings. They are, but still. 50-somethings are a rare subject for any film nowadays, though I imagine the maturity and sensibilities on display here are trademarks of Holofcener’s work. I’m excited to trawl through the rest of her filmography soon, and even if it’s a flawed object, Enough Said is a welcome introduction to Holofcener’s works and a fine, if improvable, piece of filmmaking all on its own.

[theconservativebrief]

The boy meets the girl, just like he always does. He falls in love with her, and after a brief and frenzied courtship, she falls in love with him too. There are setbacks and hardships, but the story is headed where you expect: toward bliss. Toward an easy, uncomplicated love. Toward marriage and family, even.

This is the framework for a million, million stories, throughout human history. It is also the framework for Lifetime’s new drama You, based on the novel by Caroline Kepnes and adapted for TV by Sera Gamble and Greg Berlanti. The brilliance of You (my favorite new series of the fall) comes from how relentlessly it grounds you, the viewer, in the age-old story you already know, in order to tell you a different but related one that has been happening all around you for ages, maybe without you even noticing it.

The boy who meets the girl in You is Joe, played by Penn Badgley; the girl is Beck, played by Elizabeth Lail. And even their casting is primed to help you understand what the show is attempting to subvert. Badgley is well-known to TV fans for his six seasons on Gossip Girl (his character Dan was eventually revealed, believe it or not, to be the titular character). Lail, meanwhile, isn’t exactly a newcomer — she had a stint on Once Upon a Time — but she’s not the face you recognize in the cast, not the person Lifetime built the ad campaign around.

The resulting disparity in who we instinctively trust, as viewers, is part of what makes You so devilish and terrific. Joe reveals himself (to the audience, at least) as a stalker at his earliest opportunity, first invading Beck’s life to find out what she wants in a guy and then turning himself into that very guy. And if he can slowly isolate her from the rest of her support network at the same time, well, that too could serve his purpose.

Again and again, You demonstrates the monstrousness of Joe’s reasonable nature. He cannot understand Beck as anything other than an adjunct to his story, because stories where men are the focus and women mostly exist to support them are the stories he’s been told his whole life. And because You situates us firmly in Joe’s point of view, via narration and other tricks, it leaves us no real exit from that perspective.

Joe wants so badly to make Beck’s life perfect and to make himself perfect for her that he fails to recognize that even her bad choices are her choices, her questionable taste is her taste, her two-faced friends are still her friends. He tries to rob her of the luxury of making her own mistakes, of the ability to have a story that is not his.

By the time we finally get to see this story through Beck’s point of view, we’re so desperate to escape Joe’s toxicity that it’s almost a relief — but we can still feel his poisonous attraction all the same. He’s right there, and he smiles so kindly. What could go wrong?

I’ve thought about Joe a lot these past few weeks.

The angry behavior of Les Moonves (left) and Brett Kavanaugh made headlines over the last several weeks. Getty Images

Outwardly, former CBS head Les Moonves and newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh don’t have all that much in common. Kavanaugh is a prep school alumnus and an Ivy Leaguer and a die-hard conservative jurist. Moonves attended the small Pennsylvania college Bucknell University and later became a massively powerful entertainment executive who occasionally gave money to Democratic political candidates. They operated in entirely different worlds, at least superficially.

But what links Kavanaugh and Moonves, for me, is their belligerence, their obvious inability to understand what it means that others have accused them of terrible things. The accusations of sexual misconduct leveled against Kavanaugh have been national news for the past several weeks, while those made against Moonves are already slipping into our collective memories. But the acts that men both have been accused of — and which both men have roundly denied — involve women and sexual misconduct and an abuse of privilege and power. This is America, 2018. You already know the rest of the story.

But I’m not here to adjudicate what these men might have done all those years ago. Instead, what I’m interested in is the similar fury that both men displayed upon having to deal with an adversity they hadn’t expected. Moonves angrily denounced the investigations into him, saying that the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him, reported in the pages of the New Yorker, simply didn’t happen. Kavanaugh effectively threw a temper tantrum in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as the whole country watched.

Both men were used to thinking of themselves as protagonists, not just of their own stories but of the stories involving everyone else they came in contact with. They had such tremendous power and privilege that they could ruin lives in a fit of pique — and they were part of entire systems that were set up not only to protect them by default, but to reward them for having done it.

This inability of rich, usually white, usually straight men to see that there are stories beyond their own has been at the center of the #MeToo movement more broadly. Rather than seeing the world as a series of interlocking tales that occasionally feature them in a major role but mostly feature them as extras (if at all), they are primed to see it as a series of stories about them, moving forward through their lives, attaining their goals, crushing those who would oppose them. #MeToo has complicated that narrative for at least some men, but one needs only to read news reports of Louis C.K.’s comeback standup sets to understand that many of these figures will come to see the revelation of their misconduct as a minor adversity to overcome, not something that shattered their entire lives.

Straight white men in America are taught that they are the protagonist of the story from birth. Their number includes me — I’ve always intuitively understood myself as the protagonist too. And this mindset has only become more ingrained in the past 20 years. Under Moonves, CBS became America’s most powerful network, but also went from broadcasting shows like Murphy Brown and Designing Women to mostly being a place where women were corpses, whose murders were solved largely by steely, determined men, with occasional help from quippy female sidekicks.

What is the fallout of this? What does it mean to have an entire class of people, already clothed in power and privilege, understand themselves primarily as the center of every story? How much of the turmoil of the past 10 years can be understood through this lens — from men who get furious at the thought of having women generals in their video games to a president who openly brags about committing sexual assault?

We have problems with power and privilege in America, 2018 — that’s to be sure. But we also have problems with our protagonists.

The cast of Criminal Minds awaits its summer TCA press tour session in 2005. Frederick Brown/Getty Images

In July 2005, journalists who attended the Television Critics Association summer press tour had one major, pressing question for the producers of that year’s new fall dramas: What was with all the violence against women?

It was an odd moment for TV drama, split between three major movements. The first, represented by ABC’s Lost and Desperate Housewives (which were then at the end of their first seasons), suggested that what viewers wanted were buzzy serialized shows about colorful characters in unusual situations. The second, represented by pretty much everything on CBS at the time, suggested that viewers wanted grim, “realistic” crime dramas. And the third, represented by HBO’s The Sopranos and FX’s The Shield, suggested that viewers wanted dark stories about antiheroes who indulged viewers’ vicarious appetites for horrible deeds performed with ruthless efficiency.

None of these trends was the “correct” one; TV audiences have always wanted shows that break new ground, but not too much of it. Yet of the three, the one that broadcast networks could most easily grasp was the one that suggested gritty crime procedurals, often with violence directed toward women, was what viewers were most drawn to. And looking at the hits of the era — which included the CSI franchise and Law & Order: SVU (still on the air today) — it’s pretty easy to see why they drew that conclusion.

Things came to a head at the press tour, however, as multiple reporters kept asking why so many of the networks’ new shows featured graphic scenes of women being tortured and abused, often right alongside the objectification of nubile bodies. The worst offender was Fox’s Killer Instinct, which featured a woman being paralyzed by spider poison and then raped by an intruder before the poison finally killed her. The show was ultimately canceled after just nine episodes.

But another new show that critics pointed to at that 2005 press tour as an example of this dark trend is still on the air today, and entering its 14th season: CBS’s Criminal Minds, whose pilot saw a woman get abducted and imprisoned in a cage, then raped and murdered. Journalists wanted to know: Why?

In response, the show’s producers and creator Jeff Davis mostly hemmed and hawed about how the story was based on a real case, and how the most horrifying thing viewers actually saw in the episode involved the woman’s fingernails being clipped. But instead of meaningfully answering the question, executive producer Mark Gordon offered a sarcastic quip that felt like an irritating brush-off in 2005 and feels slightly more telling today.

“There was actually a mandate from the network saying we want only shows that perpetrate violence against women. We’re just trying to get on the air. We’re doing the best we can,” Gordon snarked at the press conference. (Reporters pushed back on his comment, saying the topic wasn’t a joke to them, but Gordon’s response was the best anyone was going to get.)

I’m not dredging up this old quote this to attack Gordon. He’s just one of those producers who looks at what’s popular and develops programming accordingly. But I do think it’s notable that Criminal Minds aired on a network built by Les Moonves, who saw how popular CSI became and then filled his lineup with near carbon copies, consistently pushing the darkness and violence — especially against women — to further and further limits.

Viewers eventually got tired of the darkest of these shows, gravitating instead to slightly lighter fare like NCIS. But even then, popular CBS series like Blue Bloods were advancing a stalwart belief in the primacy and supremacy of white cops when it came to matters of police brutality, as Laura Hudson (now of Vox sister site The Verge) pointed out at Slate in 2014. And it wasn’t as if NCIS was free of stories that positioned women primarily as victims, and where at best, a woman could be the second or third lead, backing up a stoic, stalwart man who was brave and bold enough to stare into the face of darkness until it blinked.

How much of this programming was driven by what viewers wanted to watch in the wake of 9/11, when television took a darker turn in general? And how much of it was driven by what executives like Moonves cynically believed the audience wanted?

To be fair, there’s a cyclical element here — CSI was a surprise hit, after all, and surprise hits almost always get copied across the dial. But to become a surprise hit, you first have to make it to the air. And over the past 20 years, no network has had a worse record of telling stories centered on characters who aren’t straight white men than CBS, a trend the network has only finally broken this fall. What does it say about a culture when by far its most popular television network is dominated by shows where women serve primarily as support systems, quirky comic relief, and victims?

The specter of Tony Soprano looms large. HBO

All of the above is an indictment of how much of America’s recent pop culture has been rooted in the behavior of toxic men. Whether you want to point to the numerous Oscar-winning movies produced by Harvey Weinstein, or the TV series that Les Moonves greenlit, or the toxic attitudes toward women that Kevin Spacey made seem almost reasonable in American Beauty, you’ll find ample evidence that it’s a prevailing theme.

But it’s not like American culture’s fascination with toxic men is new. Indeed, it dates back to the inception of the nation, though it really took root in the 20th century and later. Many of our finest novels are about white male asshole protagonists, and most of the great films of the 1970s — often thought of as the single best decade for American moviemaking — are about troubled white men in tight spots, who fight their way out of those spots.

Some of those films are about the complicated relationship of assorted white ethnic groups to the larger American mainstream (The Godfather being the most obvious example), while others are notably troubled by their male characters’ dark and violent tendencies (Taxi Driver, for instance). But taken together, they presented an unmistakable trend toward grim violence being more “realistic.”

Even in cases where they offered nuanced takes on these tricky topics, it’s not as though they haven’t been stripped of context and filtered throughout the culture as something else entirely. Think, for instance, of how the one thing most people know about Taxi Driver is the “You talking to me?” scene, which is presented as a kind of lonely ritual in the film itself and has mostly become something vaguely “cool” since being removed of its context by the culture at large. (Critic Amy Nicholson and Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader reflected on the ways that film has warped and changed in this 2018 interview.)

But what I keep coming back to again and again as I think about what our most popular art says about our culture is TV’s antihero era, which began in earnest with 1999’s The Sopranos. It featured lots and lots of stories of white guys who took what they wanted, at any cost, with very little thought for how others might react to their all-consuming appetites.

These series are among the best in TV history. They include shows like The Sopranos and The Shield and Breaking Bad and Mad Men. They marked a shift in the cultural conversation, where TV came to occupy the prestigious position that film had once enjoyed, where television seemed to have surpassed movies in its ability to tell compelling stories aimed at adults. My life as a TV viewer would be vastly poorer if they didn’t exist.

And yet since the election of President Donald Trump, I can’t look at them without thinking of him.

This is an incredibly difficult topic to discuss, because of course The Sopranos didn’t create Donald Trump any more than Criminal Minds did. The HBO series, rich and evocative, was always at least partially about how much Tony Soprano’s appetites and behaviors were causing the ruination of his very soul.

The best antihero dramas of the early 2000s, like the best great films of the ’70s, were cautionary tales, deeply moral stories about how, in some ways, the men at the center of them stood in for an America — or at least a white male America — that couldn’t stop gobbling up everything it saw. The shows suggested, always, that even if their protagonists didn’t get their comeuppance onscreen, it was coming, unless they could change their ways. Only a handful of those protagonists, most notably Mad Men’s Don Draper, eventually came close to doing so.

But even now, these shows leave open the question of just how we’re supposed to grapple with the idea that many viewers will always see them as instruction manuals, or as validation of dangerous ideals. What are the takeaways for an audience that doesn’t want to dig into the moral and ethical nuance of The Sopranos and just wants to see Tony whack more enemies, or that believes Skyler White is the true villain of Breaking Bad?

This divide is not unique to our era — it’s as old as any art that depicts protagonists who don’t always do the right thing, which is to say it’s as old as fiction itself. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’ve capped an era full of white male antihero protagonists with a president who feels like he might as well be the main character of an antihero drama in some other universe, where viewers thrill at how he always dances one step ahead of the forces that would bring him down, cheered on by toadies and sycophants who eagerly abandon principle in the face of finally grasping power.

This is also a delicate dynamic to talk about because the surest path toward boring, bland art is to insist that it be morally, ethically, socially, and politically palatable. We need shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad to help us ponder the darkness within humanity, and within ourselves as individuals. To insist that art conform to some code of righteousness is a shortcut to making art that’s not worth thinking about.

Plus, I should note that as a critic, I’m part of a community that has been hugely responsible for the rise of white male antihero dramas — praising them to excess, hailing them as bold storytelling, building up an idea that a “good” TV show too often features a damaged guy who makes tough, dark choices and somehow escapes the consequences.

But at the same time, there’s been a bland sameness to so many of these shows for a decade now. Few of them still actively try to tell stories about what it means to give in to the darkness, to embrace the most selfish aspects of one’s inner being at the expense of others. And yet they keep getting made, and some of them even become minor hits (like Showtime’s Ray Donovan).

They continue to code what’s desirable in life as accumulating more things, more money, more enemies ruined, rather than trying to build something sustainable. They are stories of late capitalism — of a nation, an economic system, and a world unmoored. They reflect our culture’s shriveled soul, sure, but in consuming them, we also start to reflect them. They tell us who the protagonists are, and we’re only too happy to accept what they say, even when those protagonists keep wrecking everything.

When HBO picked up The Sopranos in 1997, it chose between that series and another, created by My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman, that centered on a woman business executive (as recounted in Alan Sepinwall’s history of the era, The Revolution Was Televised). And I note that here because the major executive in charge of making the final call on that decision was Chris Albrecht, now of Starz, who exited HBO in 2007.

He was asked to resign from the company after he was arrested for domestic violence.

Better Call Saul might show a better way forward. AMC

I’m not connecting these dots to suggest that any of our current culture is a conscious creation on the part of the TV industry, or pop culture, or the country. I’m also not suggesting that you should stop enjoying The Sopranos or Criminal Minds or any other dark dramas. (If I were saying that, I’d be a hypocrite; the complete series Blu-ray of The Sopranos is a centerpiece of my personal collection.)

What I am suggesting is that advocating for representation on TV and in films is not merely about painting an accurate, inclusive picture of the world we live in. Yes, we need more women antiheroes, more antiheroes of color, and so on — but we also need to think about how the stories we tell create long grooves in our culture, grooves that eventually crystallize into reflexive beliefs about who gets to be the protagonist and how they go about being that protagonist.

When the sorts of prestige TV shows and movies celebrated in our culture are, 99 times out of 100, stories of white male protagonists and accumulation, rather than stories of more varied protagonists and connection, it’s no great effort to see how they might set us on a path toward living those same stories ourselves.

The situation is not hopeless. Cheesy as it is, NBC’s This Is Us is a huge hit, and it’s all about building connections. The same goes for something like the 2016 Best Picture winner Moonlight, a film about what happens when you let the tough facade slip just a little to embrace the vulnerability underneath. Ditto for TV shows as disparate as AMC’s Better Call Saul, NBC’s The Good Place, and AMC’s The Terror.

And through its own protagonist, Lifetime’s You forces the audience to question why the stories we tell so often center on the viewpoints they position as the most important ones. Joe is both an avatar for our era and someone his TV show actively questions, over and over again, in its text and in its subtext. His mere existence forces viewers to rethink everything from the heroes of romantic comedies to the frequent depiction of women as helpless victims.

But we also have to ask why we aren’t telling more stories that don’t reflect this value system, that actively challenge capitalist greed, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, and other prejudices without becoming preachy and didactic. What would it look like to tackle these systems forthrightly, rather than with a sidelong wink? What would be the effect of presenting reality not as it is but as how it could be?

Utopias are always harder to tell stories about than dystopias, because dystopias can be fought against while utopias invite us to sink into their comforting excesses. But we’ve paid so much attention to stories where the greatest enemy is ourselves that it’s time to step beyond that framework, and to write new stories where the greatest enemy is a long history of systems designed to let those who have all the power maintain it at all costs.

As a critic and as a storyteller, I don’t pretend to know the answers, but these questions are worth struggling with, now and on into the future. If we’re going to make the world a better place, we have to imagine what that better place looks like. We have to imagine what it looks like when systems crumble, when connections and community come first, when we’re all aware that anybody, at any time, is the protagonist of their own story, not just riding alongside our own.

Original Source -> The Protagonists

via The Conservative Brief

[notesfromthepen]

INAPPROPRIATE

     Weinstein, Al Franken, Louis CK, Tom Cole, Blake Farenthold, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Donald Trump. The list goes on and on. I wonder where this road lead is leading. But first a disclaimer:

Predatory sexual behavior is not okay. Sexual assault is not okay. Sexual harassment is not okay. Abuse of power and aggression towards women is definitely not okay. In no way am I demeaning these very serious things. And in no way am I excusing these behaviors. Or mitigating the actions of the perpetrators.

     I humbly make this disclaimer as a plea for conversation. To say that we should never be above a worthy discussion or deem a subject below our effort. I only ask for a discussion free from the dogmatic judgment and reactionary anger that clouds the conversations in our society. 

Too often, at the first chance we get, we label any person or idea as either friend or foe, no matter how premature or inaccurate these labels may be. Some of you may even be doing this as you read these words, even before I've said much of anything. I simply wish, as much as is possible, to make observations about these 'hot button' issues without stirring the self righteous rage or reactionary indignation that drowns out voices and blinds our vision. 

This is just a plea, to put down our preconceived notions and emotional baggage, so that we can talk about the issues that we face as a society. Because we must come to some understanding.

This disclaimer might be misleading and it's unfortunate that it is even necessary. It might lead you to assume that I will have an offensive position or controversial stance. Something that will stir the preverbal pot, but this isn't the case, or at least it isn't intended to be. I sincerely pose these questions with humility and compassion, intended, only to spark conversation. I have no real agenda or preference for the out come or the answers put forth. 

I've come to see that our need to view issues as either 'completely black or white' is more of an illusion than a reality. So once again it is our responsibility to hash out the causes, the repercussions, and the solutions to the problems we face. 

We all know that this type of sexual behavior is a problem, or at least we should, but almost everyone I hear seems to be content with just claiming a superficial outrage. This is the safest and easiest stance but it does little in the way of a pragmatic analysis of the root causes and possible solutions to these harmful actions. Unfortunately this is all too common these days: Safe and easy, over, difficult but necessary.

Regardless of our preferences, there must be a line drawn when it comes to the issue of indecent sexual behavior. Especially in the work place. This piece is me, simply wondering out loud, where the line is to be drawn and what the consequences should be for crossing it. My attempt at a conversation that I can't have in here.

With that being said I want to make a prediction: That the nearly constant revelations of celebrities accused of sexual harassment will not stop anytime soon. At some point I think we will find that, in many instances, if we dig deep enough and reach back, far enough into someones past, that most people have had at least one moment worthy of shame, disgust, and embarrassment, depending on where our ever changing level of acceptable behavior currently settles. Especially when it comes to something as complex as human interaction.

Because most men, at some point in their lives, are flawed, confused, flailing idiots, stumbling through life trying to figure out how to deal with other complex people within social conventions. All while trying to figure out how to orchestrate the awkward, nuanced, and often ridiculous dance of courtship and sexuality. And like most bumbling idiots, many people get it wrong. 

It's obvious that, 'getting it wrong' or making mistakes is entirely different, than a habitual pattern of sexually aggressive or abusive behavior. I'm just wondering how low the bar will be set for an 'indecency' worthy of severe repercussions. If set low enough, we will find, few who are able to clear it.

OK, as I'm writing this, with my TV on in the background, more details involving the Matt Lauer accusations are being revealed and I can no longer continue this piece in the same direction without addressing these overt behaviors. I still have the same questions but his actions are ridiculous, seemingly ongoing, and overtly irresponsible. This asshole distracted me from my whole point. 

So with that being said I guess I'm going to have to be completely specific with my references as not to be confused with these types of acts. Dropping your pants and expecting someone in the workplace to give you a blow job or giving a sex toy as a secret Santa gift with a detailed and explicit note of suggested use is pretty indefensible.

But I guess that brings me to my first question: Are all acts of sexual harassment/inappropriateness equal? I'd assume not. First of all we must make clear that sexual assault is different than sexual harassment, which is different than sexual indecency, right? One is criminal in nature another other is 'wrong' and out of place in nature, and the last is 'creepy asshole' in nature. No doubt they are all wrong in varying degrees.

When it comes to, say Al Franken pretending to honk a pair of boobs over a flack jacket vest while smiling for a photo, compared with Matt Lauer having a secret button installed on the desk in his office, allowing him to lock the door without getting up, so he could drop trow without worry of a coworker escaping before getting a regrettable eyeful of 'unwanted Lauer', Are they equal? And if they're not equal, should the punishment or repercussions be the same across the board? 

The next question is: where do we draw the line? Sexual assault, is clearly not okay. Sexual harassment? Not okay. Sexual 'indecency'? This is where we need to figure out where to draw the line of what is unacceptable. And once we deem something unacceptable is it also unforgivable?

This is where things can get blurry. Indecency, is relative. Right? What one person views as acceptable behavior, another may deem as offensive or indecent. And if a vague 'indecency' is where the line in the sand is drawn, we will continue to see men of every position, in every industry, of every age and of every class outed as predators and ousted from their place of employment. Because, by definition, nearly every man, at some point in his life, has probably done something that could be considered sexually indecent. Depending on where you set the bar. 

A major part of the problem that we face is that people want to have sex. It's a fact of life. It is THE fact of life. And as long as people have this desire, the initiator of an unreciprocated advance will wind up as the asshole in the situation. Which is fine, I guess, but should the consequences, no matter how far in the past or regardless of the severity, be: public shaming and the taking of livelihood? 

I'm honestly asking because I'm not sure that we are all on the same page.

Should Lauer lose his job? If the allegations are true, which they seem to be. Absolutely. Should Franken lose his job, for an 'indecent' though obviously non malicious, prank photo? I'm not so sure. If he was asleep and a female comedian, like Amy Schumer, posed for a picture pretending to grab his ass, or crotch, should she lose her job? Is there a double standard? Should there be?

Another aspect that makes this subject less clearly defined is the 'wanted' versus 'unwanted' advances. 

Can a phrase or act be defined as appropriate or inappropriate depending on the reaction of the recipient? If that's the case, it can be a roll of the dice whether or not an advance is looked on as innocent flirting or an unwanted act of sexual indecency. And, in those questionable situations, where it is unknown whether or not an advance would be reciprocated, what should one do? Is the appropriate response to never risk it? This seems to be the intelligent and responsible way to behave in a professional setting, and that is fine. Why risk it?

If we do draw a clearly defined line between appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior, is the line retroactive? Can someone, who committed an act of insensitivity or made a tasteless advance twenty years before the line was drawn, be held responsible for a line that he or she didn't know existed at the time?

I ask these things with honest curiosity. Because these are the questions that we need to answer as a society if we are to move forward. I worry that without some honest and pragmatic discussion, free from overwhelming emotion, we will get caught up in a reactionary lynch mob mentality, in which we will blindly equate all acts of indecency, sexual harassment and sexual assault. In our understandable fervor and outrage, will we lump together any person who has made a crude joke, an insensitive comment, or idiotically misread a situation at some point in the past, with those guilty of sexual assault or rape?

I want to make a few things clear: When it comes to sexual harassment and indecency, the bar must be moved to reflect the equality that we like to consider ourselves worthy of. No one should have to deal with such avoidable bullshit in the workplace. Assault of any kind, and specifically sexual assault, is unacceptable and we, as men, must listen and be empathetic to the experiences of women, both in and out of the work place. We as human beings must listen to each other, no matter our differences of; race, age, sexual orientation, or gender. For, without the ability to view the perspectives of others, we will continue to be brothers and sisters divided. Don't ever think that this need for a glimpse into someone else's perspective doesn't apply to you. It does. Victim or perpetrator, hero or villain, male or female, black or white, none of us are above our responsibility for empathy. And I pray that none of us are above the desire for more understanding. 

What does it mean, that sexual indecency, sexual harassment, and sexual assault is unacceptable in the entertainment industry but is acceptable when it comes to our politicians? Where are we as a country when we ask more from our celebrities than from our elected officials? 

The fact that numerous accounts of alleged sexual assault isn't enough to disqualify someone from the highest office in our county, disheartens me to the chances of reaching an agreement of what is acceptable and unacceptable sexual behavior. When pedophilia can't be agreed upon as a disqualifier when running for senate, as the nominee of a major political party, then what are our chances for agreement? 

This is yet another symptom of refusing to look objectively at issues. We have become so tribal and so unwilling to do anything against those we view as our 'team mates' or 'tribal members', that we have placed tribe loyalty over our own morals, decency, virtue and justice. 

So without the leaders worthy of leading or, more importantly, without the citizens capable of viewing issues objectively enough to intelligently elect the officials, worthy of the positions they seek, it is left to us. 

The responsibility is on those of us capable of putting our egos, our emotions, and our tribalism to the side to discuss the issues we face. As difficult as it maybe, as uncomfortable as it may feel, we must do the work of engaging in honest discussions of any and all subjects. We mustn't use shame or spite as weapons. We must remove the vitriol and emotion in order to pragmatically discuss, and, or debate, in order to agree upon a direction to move in.

So where is this road headed? There is no doubt that a reckoning is taking place. A reckoning that stems from a righteous cause.. But I wonder, is there anyone at the helm? Is it being steered or guided by anything other than raw emotion and vengeance? And if not, haven't we learned anything from the past? 

When a movement is left to be driven by emotion, vitriol, self righteous indignation, and the fervor of a mob like mentality, no matter how genuinely positive its roots are, it always loses its purity and becomes ugly in it's results. Such a powerful and unguided motor inevitably pulls unintended and undeserving victims into its gears, crushing them under the justification of a righteous cause. 

The true righteous and lasting endeavors of history were compassionate to all involved. Oppressed and oppressor, victim and perpetrator. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Jesus, all let the righteousness speak for itself to enact the lasting change that was necessary. Their missions were never tainted by the smog of emotion, because they realized the tendencies of human nature, to become defensive and to relinquish control to such strong emotions. 

As transparency grows, seemingly exponentially, with the information and accessibility of the internet, I suspect that we may eventually be brought together by our common bond, of our flawed nature. As time passes, our weakest moments and our, once secret, indiscretions will become exposed. And as terrifying as this may sound, I believe it can be a good thing. Hopefully this vulnerability will shower us with some much needed humility. With such raw exposure maybe we'll have less places to hold our critiques and less right to pass judgements.

Here in this present moment, in the midst of this reckoning, we must be willing to learn and also willing to teach. We have to come together to understand the affect that our words and actions have on our sisters and brothers. We have to discuss the parameters, with reasonable expectations, for defining unacceptable behavior. 

Or better yet we should teach and practice empathy, so that there isn't a need for a universal, all encompassing rule to guide our every circumstance with every person. This way we can treat each other as fellow human beings and discover where each persons individual boundaries lie. Where we can get to know and understand each other. Maybe we can stop seeing each other as objects or villains and we can listen to each other. 

Hopefully we can also release our expectation to go through life without being offended. Bad things happen to everybody and though this fact shouldn't stop us from doing what we can to curb these experiences, and hold people accountable, but it should prevent us from being irrevocably damaged and defined by those negative experiences. There is a huge difference in perspective between a survivor mentality and a victim mentality. 

This life is a chaotic, messy, and often painful ride. We all are a part of this experience, where none are veterans and all are rookies. The best we can do is to lean on each other (please, no groping!) using compassion, empathy, brutal honesty, and love to learn from our mistakes, fix what we have broken, and to become better brothers and sisters to one another.

This is just my plea. A plea for conversation...