#personally i think his scene w jonathan was a great way to open the door for that conversation down the road

[pyreshe]

livvy and will gay lesbian solidarity is actually the most important thing

[dtrhwithalex]

TV | Loki (106)

106: FOR ALL TIME. ALWAYS.

D: KATE HERRON. W: MICHAEL WALDRON & ERIC MARTIN. Original Air Date: 14 June 2021.

Non-spoiler-free recap and review of the sixth and final episode of the first season of LOKI, which airs every Wednesday on Disney+. It was announced at the end of this episode that LOKI will return for a second season.

RECAP

Loki and Sylvie approach the place beyond the void. It is a citadel around which the timeline circles. Before Sylvie can make up her mind about how to enter, the doors fall open before them and they, swords drawn, enter cautiously. Out of nowhere suddenly Miss Minutes appears and informs them that the person behind the TVA — He Who Remains — has decided that, if they wanted to, they could both continue existing together, unbothered, could have a throne, something to rule, if that was what they wished. However, Loki and Sylvie have other plans.

After Miss Minutes vanishes, they continue exploring the citadel. As Loki wonders out loud if anyone was even still alive there, a door to an elevator opens and HE WHO REMAINS (JONATHAN MAJORS) beckons them to enter. Sylvie immediately attacks, but he time jumps to safety with the help of a special TemPad on the back of his hand.

After several other failed assassination attempts, they arrive at his office, where he prepares them a drink and asks them to sit. Reluctantly they do. He Who Remains explains to them that he knows all there is to know, knows all there was and will be. He explains how the TVA, the Time Keepers and the Sacred Timeline came to be and the role he plays in all of it. It was he who discovered Alioth when the different timelines became fragmented, and he used Alioth to end the war between his own variants of different timelines.

After he finishes, he realises that they have just crossed the threshold of known time. From here on out, not even he knows what will happen. His plan, however, doesn't need him to. He wants to retire and have Loki and Sylvie take on the role of Time Keepers. This is the way they can both continue to exist, but more importantly, can continue to exist together.

Sylvie doesn't believe a single word he says, and goes to attack again, but Loki stops her. Loki believes him. They argue, they fight it out with their swords, and eventually, Loki manages to stop Sylvie. She accuses him of wanting to accept the job for the throne, but Loki says that all he wants is for her to be okay. Hearing this, Sylvie kisses him — long enough to distract him from the fact that she gets a hold of the TemPad, with which she opens a time window and shoves him through, back to the TVA. Alone now, Sylvie kills He Who Remains, unleashing the different timelines from the Sacred Timeline.

While Loki and Sylvie were looking for the face behind the TVA, Mobius has returned to the TVA and goes to confront Renslayer. She is surprised to see him, but says that if anyone would make it back alive from the void, it would be him. Mobius reveals to her that he has found a way to convince other Hunters and Minutemen that the TVA lied to them — he found a variant of Renslayer on Earth. A teacher, she is the source of the blue ballpoint pen Renslayer had been using and Mobius had been asking questions about in an earlier episode.

Arguing with Mobius about who betrayed whom, Renslayer reveals that she is leaving. Mobius attempts to prune her, but she disarms him quickly. Leaving him behind, Renslayer opens a time window and steps through, on a quest for free will.

Arriving back at the TVA, Loki finds the place in action, Hunters are rushing off on missions, and everyone largely ignores him. He finds Mobius and Hunter B-15 in the archives, talking about the branching of the timeline. Loki tries to tell them what happened beyond the void, what He Who Remains told them and what Sylvie did. However, neither Mobius nor B-15 recognise him. Mobius thinks he is an analyst and asks his name and his sector. Because the timeline had already begun to branch when Sylvie sent Loki through the time window, she sent him to a timeline that was not his own. In this timeline, the statues of the Time Keepers are replaced by a single one -- that of He Who Remains.

FAVOURITE MOMENTS

I quite enjoyed the scene of Mobius confronting Renslayer. Their dynamic plays out so well there, and I thought it was great that Renslayer doesn't prune Mobius again. She easily could have, but she doesn't, and I think there's something really great about that.

I adored how He Who Remains tells his story to Loki and Sylvie. The visuals of it were just fantastic. Generally, the visuals at the end of time are gorgeous.

FAVOURITE CHARACTER(S)

It's always Loki and it will always be him. I just adore him. I enjoy Sophia's Slyvie but I just like Loki so much better. Oh and, of course, my dude Mobius. Love that guy.

QUESTIONS, CURIOSITIES

Where exactly did Renslayer go? She said she's looking for free will, so I kind of assumed we'd somehow see her again at the end of time. I have an inkling that she may be going to see the variant of herself on Earth, the teacher.

Where was my boy Casey? I miss him.

OVERALL IMPRESSION

I quite enjoyed this one. I thought Jonathan Majors was fantastic as He Who Remains and he really carried those scenes. I hope to see much more of him in the second season. I think this episode, while not necessarily providing something that feels like a true ending to this season, definitely solidifies a pretty decent anchor point to the show and its place in the MCU. Obviously this show serves to establish what we will no doubt be dealing with in DOCTOR STRANGE: MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS and I think it does a pretty good job with it.

[still image taken from the episode's imdb page]

[letterboxd]

Milking It.

Peerless American filmmaker Kelly Reichardt talks to Ella Kemp about her new film, First Cow, her favorite animal performers, and getting down to the nitty gritty of things.

We’re resharing this post to mark the arrival of ‘First Cow’ on VOD. The interview took place timed to the original release of the film in March, prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

With little fuss, Kelly Reichardt has been making some of the most tender and thoughtful films about American loneliness for decades. The quietly acclaimed director, writer and film lecturer began her feature career in 1994 with River of Grass, a runaway story of a couple caught in a tragedy, and now celebrates her ten-title milestone as a filmmaker by gifting the world the peaceful and moving portrait of another pair of nomads in First Cow.

Reichardt has earned her reputation as one of the most impressive and reliable American filmmakers with knockouts including the stripped-back heartbreaker, Wendy and Lucy and the stunning portrait of feminine isolation and frustration, Certain Women. There is always a common thread—and there is often Michelle Williams—but then, also, each film is a rich, vivid new tale that feels like it belongs to you and no one else.

Based on the 2004 novel The Half-Life, written by Reichardt’s frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond, First Cow has been coming together for over a decade, and feels like the culmination of Reichardt’s finest skills and sensibilities. The story follows Cookie (John Magaro) a taciturn cook travelling alongside fur trappers in 19th-century Oregon, whose ambition comes into focus when he meets King Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant. Together, they develop not only an essential friendship, but also a delicious business model, which involves slyly stealing milk from a cow owned by a wealthy landowner. It’s a film of subtle gestures, of deeply tender attentions, with a sharp eye across endless landscapes, and already has devoted fans on Letterboxd.

“I have never felt so well cared for by a movie,” writes Liz Shannon Miller in her Letterboxd review. Zachary Panozzo appreciates the way the film tackles American capitalism as a system, writing that “First Cow, in the most pleasant and honest way, calls bullshit on that.” And Phil Wiedenheft observes: “It feels—like all her work—so simple and elegant that it’s a wonder how [many] histrionics so many other filmmakers have to perform to end up saying less.” And, everyone wants those butter-honey biscuits.

First Cow premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last year and went on to the New York Film Festival shortly after, before impressing European audiences last month in competition at the 2020 Berlinale.

Sharing memories of the writers who shaped her movies, the first film that proved that cinema could show a different view of the world, and the greatest animal performers of all time, Reichardt chats with our London correspondent, Ella Kemp.

Orion Lee as King-Lu and John Magaro as Cookie in ‘First Cow’.

How did you choose where to strip The Half-Life back, to get to a film-sized story? Kelly Reichardt: The novel goes through four decades and they sail to China, so it was way outside the realm of what we could do. It also has a contemporary thread, and that just became a prologue and we settled into the 1820s. We found the main mechanism, the cow, which doesn’t exist in the novel—in the novel they’re selling the oil from beaver glands to China. So once we had the narrative element of the cow, we could work our own way into the script while still using a lot of the themes and stories from John’s novel. And the other thing John did, which was great, was to combine two characters from the novel. King Lu is actually a fusion of two people in the novel.

On paper, First Cow might seem like a straightforward Western but in practice it feels much softer. How do you see it in terms of genre? I didn’t feel any limits by a genre, and I wasn’t really thinking of it as a ‘big W’ Western. I actually see it as a heist film if anything. When I made Meek’s Cutoff, we were dealing with bonnets and wagons and the desert and people crossing West. That felt like having to deal with the whole history of the Western while we set up the camera, but I didn’t feel like that at all here. I just felt like we were telling an intimate story about two people. We were in the minutiae of trying to find out as much as we could about the Multnomah tribes that lived on the Columbia river, and we had fashioned Toby Jones’ character—the Chief Factor—after John McLoughlin in the [retail business group] Hudson’s Bay Company. It was more about researching the beaver trade and definitely taking artistic liberties, while also really trying to stay pretty true in the details to the period. It was such a little world we were building, I didn’t really have the feeling that I was confined in a genre at all.

Kelly Reichardt. / Photo by Jens Koch courtesy Berlinale

You work with outdoor landscapes a lot, particularly in Oregon. There are similarities with Meek’s Cutoff but also with Wendy and Lucy—the nomadic loners, the animal companion… What keeps you coming back to these places? I’ve actually worked outdoors much more than I’ve worked indoors. It’s really the indoors which was really fun to shoot here, because with Tony Gasparro, who was the production designer on First Cow, he and I were able to design these cottages and interiors and build around what [we] wanted to shoot, which is really great and a first for me. But outdoors is where I’m usually mostly shooting. It was recognizable to me at different points in the film that we were recalling Old Joy and Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy. It was like the ‘Best Of’ of my movies.

There were some echoes of the other films for sure. It’s interesting to think how that’s happened. Because really, John’s novel The Half-Life is the first thing I ever read of his, and I wrote to him asking if he had any short stories—because I knew the novel was too big back in 2004—and he sent me Old Joy, the short story, which became the first thing we did together. But in between all that we’d been musing together for a decade, whenever there’s a lull in whatever we’re working on, we’d ask ourselves how we could do The Half-Life. It’s been cooking on the back burner for a long time, so maybe it’s bled into other films along the way.

Would you ever consider working in the city? I’m definitely ready to do something contemporary. It could be anything. I will just say on the practical side I do enjoy going away with a crew and feeling somewhat off the grid while making a film, separate from everyday life. When you say a city, I immediately think of New York. Never say never, but it’s just the practicalities of it… even if you can hire the crew you want, it doesn’t jump out at me as the most inviting thing.

In First Cow, your central characters are two men. Did you encounter different things in delving into male psychology after shaping so many rich female characters across your filmography? I don’t think of it in terms of gender, more in terms of personality. Maile Meloy’s short stories that I was working off for Certain Women focus on isolated women, a theme in some of her writing. But it’s really more about getting down to details on all levels of filmmaking for me. You have at some point the bigger picture, but I like to get down to the nitty gritty of things, in the story I’m telling and the people I’m making the story about and not worry about what gender anybody is. It’s more about who are these characters. A big draw to The Half-Life was that the Cookie character was so great. King Lu was totally fascinating as well. So it was more about keeping track of what they wanted, what they were to each other in the minute-by-minute, more even than in the big sense.

Lucy, the very good girl in Reichardt’s ‘Old Joy’.

Evie, the titular cow, is a terrific performer. What is your favorite animal performance on film? Oh god… Lucy! My own beautiful dog in Old Joy (2006), actually. No, of course there’s others. The animal that probably made the biggest impression on me as a kid was in Mike Nichols’ The Day of the Dolphin (1973). That dolphin was everything. You’re always afraid the animals are going to come to some demise. There’s [Vincente] Minnelli’s Home from the Hill (1960), which has the tragic hunting dog there. But it’s such a beautiful film. Whenever a film is named after the animal, you know it’s bad news for the animal.

Do you have a favorite film to teach your students? I’ve been teaching since 1998 so I wouldn’t call anything a favorite, but one film I’ve used in a sound class a lot is the opening scene of McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), where we’re just listening to the sound, and we turn off the image and the students describe the space. And so by doing that over the years I have René Auberjonois’ voice so firmly planted in my head, as he’s the bartender in the opening scene. I had the great pleasure of working with him on Certain Women and we wrote a little part for him [in] First Cow where he’s the cranky guy in town with the raven.

What is the film that made you want to be a filmmaker? When I was a kid and I saw Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) on TV, and there was a scene on a beach at night that happened in black and white. It was the first time I’d seen the ocean in black and white—I grew up in Miami. It was the first time I became aware that people could do something as far as film went. I think when I was in art school, Stranger Than Paradise (1984) came out, and it probably opened the door to a lot of people’s minds—like a lot of people who saw the first band who played their own music and not cover tunes, like, ‘maybe I could tell my own story on film’. It made something seem possible, for myself anyway.

‘First Cow’ is in US cinemas now. An international release is yet to be confirmed. Kelly Reichardt’s films ‘First Cow’ and ‘Wendy and Lucy’ feature in Letterboxd’s Official Top 100 Narrative Feature Films Directed by Women.

[pho---to---graph]

Henry Fox Talbot – The Haystack

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Steve Middlehurst In April 1844 William Henry Fox Talbot set up a camera loaded with light sensitive paper and photographed (i) a haystack on his country estate at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. The haystack had presumably been constructed in the summer of 1843 but as we have no clue to its original size we cannot tell if it has been used to feed livestock all winter or only recently opened. A ladder leans against the stack, blocks are obviously being cut starting from the top down and we can see that the hay knife has been left high in the stack to the left of the ladder (ii). We can see how the stack has been designed with an undercut to minimise rising damp and painstakingly thatched to protect the valuable crop from the rain. Another thatched roof can be seen behind the stack but this looks more likely to be a barn. I partly chose this image because I lived in rural Italy for a number of years and stacks not dissimilar to this still exist in the mountains of Abruzzo, I found an ancient hay knife in the outbuildings of the house we lived in. This, of course provides a punctum (1) in this photograph that is quite personal to me.

Overall the composition has a strong geometry with the bright ladder and its dark shadow  providing contrast to the mid-tones of the hay. The Haystack is a study of light, tone and texture with the shadows of the ladder, the eaves of the thatch and the undercut all playing important roles in defining the significant and detailed forms in the scene. The dark leaves overhead provide a contrasting backdrop to the stack.

Such a stack would have been common place in rural England in the 1840s, unremarkable, probably identical to many other stacks in the Lacock area if not on the estate itself. This leads me to wonder why Fox Talbot photographed this particular stack, what did he want to communicate to his audience and who did he perceive that audience to be? Because this is a well know photograph, one of a series that Fox Talbot published in The Pencil of Nature in 1844 (2) (iii), it has been analysed, considered, critiqued and interpreted for over 175 years.

In fact it was whilst quite casually turning the pages of Ian Jeffrey’s How to Read a Photograph (3) that I paused to read his interpretation of The Haystack and began to think about the variety of ways in which we can read this calotype and how those readings have probably changed over time. It is interesting to consider such an old image in this way because, whilst we feel compelled to label it, there were no strongly established photographic genres in 1844 and no history of this type of image to speak of so Fox-Talbot only saw his work in the context of his drawing, his scientific research (iv) and as a commercial opportunity. He did refer to his calotypes as Art saying in his introduction to The Pencil of Nature that the book is a “first attempt to exhibit an Art of so great a singularity”  and refers to the process as “Photogenic Drawing” (v) but I cannot shake off the feeling that the practical process or the commercial potential was more interesting to him than the end result.

Fox Talbot, like many educated men of his time, maintained regular correspondence with contacts all over Europe and from the letters held in the De Montford University archive (5) it is possible to find many references to his photographic work but the ones I found (vii) were predominantly practical, or scientific in nature; and perhaps not surprisingly he was very interested in arguing the advantages of his Calotype process over the Daguerreotype. The discussions he was engaged in rarely touched upon the aesthetics of his or other photographer’s work and one letter from Fox Talbot to William Jerdan, the Editor of the Literary Gazette (vi), is particularly revealing; he wrote “The Complexity of the Art requires a division of labour; one person should invent new processes while another puts in execution those already ascertained, but hitherto I have been the chief operator myself in the different branches of the invention.”

We do know that Pencil of Nature is as much a catalogue as a photo book. Fox talbot selected subjects that showed the potential uses of photography; a photograph of his china collection is accompanied by a text explaining how this would help recover them if they were stolen, the leaf of a plant is contact printed as a botanical specimen, and the haystack is included to show how well photography could record “a multitude of minute details which add to the truth and reality of the representation, but which no artist would take the trouble to copy faithfully from nature.” He also places some photographs into the context of schools of painting, his famous Open Door is referenced to the “Dutch school of art”. All of which supports Gerry Badger’s description of the book as “an advertisement, a calling card, an experiment, a history, an aesthetic achievement and a manifesto” (6).

REPORT THIS ADPRIVACY SETTINGS

Ian Jeffrey looking at The Haystack with a post modern eye suggests that the ladder has been placed here to provide human scale, “it serves as an attribute, making practical sense of the haystack”. He goes on to say that the sparse composition leaves the audience focusing on the items that are there so the ladder becomes suggestive of Jacob’s ladder which reached from earth to heaven. All valid points from a highly respected critic; I don’t see the ladder as being “placed” by the photographer, it is logical to me that it has been left here from the last time they cut into the hay which also explains why the hay knife has been left so high on the stack. I didn’t find the ladder suggestive of anything other than a practical way of accessing the hay.

When Fox Talbot photographed The Haystack, his intent appears to have been to show how his new process could capture the infinite detail in a large and recognisable object. He created a pleasing composition and may or may not have had one of his farm labourers bring a ladder and hay knife into the scene to add human scale or human interest. His message was primarily concerned with the functionality of the Calotype; his audience was probably a mixture of the scientific establishment, the British artists he hoped would “assist the enterprise” and the middle-class buyers who, not being able to afford a Constable, might buy a Fox Talbot instead.

Jeffrey sees the photograph as an example of the conceptual game “in which one step forward delivers things and words and one step back discloses the scene itself in all its natural complexity” (3). One the one hand I see it as a romantic view of rural life that has personal links to my life and on the other hand as a photograph taken by someone more interested in process and technology than the picture, rather like those internet conversations about pixels that appear to reduce photography to a technological arms-race. But, my interpretation is no more right than Jeffrey’s nor has this eminent art historian and critic has in any way missed the point, far from it.

The haystack is a prefect example of the practical application of Roland Barthes concept of “The Death of the Author” (7) and the idea of “Creative Attention” as proposed by Ainslie Ellis and Jonathan Bayer (8). (These ideas have been discussed in previous essays – see note viii below)

The post modernist view which is strongly based on Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author argues that whilst “the sway of the author remains powerful” the viewer is the primary controller of Art’s meaning. Barthes argues that reducing the influence of the author “utterly transforms” a piece of art and The Haystack is a perfect example of this process. Its power as a photograph is built upon a complex combination of its original context including the history of Fox Talbot and his competition with Daguerre, the mysteries and ambiguities that exist inside the frame and its aesthetic appeal but this is only relevant as a springboard for the ideas the viewer creates by engaging in a dialogue with the image. Harking back to Bayer’s idea, The Haystack releases its meanings slowly and has been doing so for over 175 years.

(I have also looked at this photograph in the context of semiotics here.)

Notes on Text

(i) Fox talbot patented the calotype in 1843. Light sensitive paper was exposed in a camera, developed and fixed to create a negative. A print was made by exposing another sheet of light sensitive paper placed in contact with the negative. (1) I was intrigued to find a letter in the de Montford archive where he uses the term “photograph” as a generic term “Several photographic processes being now known, which are materially different from each other, I consider it to be absolutely necessary to distinguish them by different names, in the same way that we distinguish different styles of painting or engraving. Photographs executed on a silver plate have received, and will no doubt retain, the name of Daguerréotype. The new kind of photographs, which are the subject of this letter, I propose to distinguish by the name of Calotype; a term which, I hope, when the become known, will not be found to have been misapplied.” (

(ii) Since the advent of silage hay is is used far less for animal feeding and when it is used it is bailed and stacked as opposed to just stacked. The art of making a haystack has nearly disappeared in England but in many parts of Southern and Eastern Europe both the stack and the the unique triangular knives that are used to carve out the hay are still common.

(iii) Fox Talbot’s great contribution to the process of photography was the concept of printing multiple copies of the same picture from a single negative. The Pencil of Nature was the first ever photo book and ran to to six separate volumes that in total contained twenty four calotypes.

(iv) By all accounts Fox-Talbot was a brilliant man, as a gentleman scientist he explored many fields and was awarded a honorary Doctors of Laws degree by Edinburgh University not for his contribution to the arts or even his political career (he served in Palmerston’s government when the MP for Chippenham) but for his many contributions to science. In mathematics there is the “Talbot’s Curve”, in physics “Talbot’s Law” and the “Talbot” is a unit of luminous energy; there are two species names after him in the filed of botany and for good measure there is a Talbot crater on the moon. (4)

(v) He also points out that “you just can’t get the staff” saying that the chief difficulty he faces is the “paucity” of “skilful manual assistance”.

(vi) The full text reads: “I intend sending you a Copy of my new work the Pencil of Nature which I expect will be published tomorrow. I have met with difficulties innumerable in this first attempt at Photographic publication, & therefore I hope all imperfections will be candidly allowed for, and excused – I have every reason to hope the work will improve greatly as it proceeds, & that British Talent will come forward and assist the enterprise The Complexity of the Art requires a division of labour; one person should invent new processes while another puts in execution those already ascertained, but hitherto I have been the chief operator myself in the different branches of the invention.” (Document number 5013 in The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot held by the De Montford University (5))

(vii) It is important to recognise that Larry J Schaaf has recorded approximately 10,000 letters to and from Fox Talbot so it would be quite wrong to give the impression that I have done anymore than skimmed the surface of this resource. I concentrated on reading the letters written between early 1843 and late 1844 which covered the period of The Haystack photograph and the publication of The Pencil of Nature.

(viii) The Death of the Author is discussed in two essays about post modernism here and here and the ideas of Ainslie Ellis and Jonathan Bayer are looked at here and here)

Sources

Books

(1) Barthes, Roland. (1980) Camera Lucida. London: Vintage Books

(3) Jeffrey, Ian ( 2008) How to Read a Photograph: Understanding, Interpreting and Enjoying the Great Photographers. London: Thames and Hudson.

(6) Badger, Gerry (2007) The Genius of Photography: How Photography has Changed our Lives. London: Quadrille.

(7) Barthes, Roland (1968) The Death of the Author. (Included within Image, music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath (1977)) London: Fontana Press

(8) Bayer, Jonathan (1977) Reading Photographs: Understanding the Aesthetics of Photography. The Photographers’ Gallery. New York: Pantheon

Internet

(2) Fox Talbot, William Henry (1844) The Pencil of Nature (accessed at PCCA 6.7.15) – http://www.photocriticism.com/members/archivetexts/photohistory/talbot/talbotpencila.html

(4) Schaaf, Larry J. The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot (accessed at the de Montford University Fox Talbot archive 6.7.15) – http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/talbot/biography.html

(5) Schaaf, Larry J. The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot (accessed at the de Montford University Fox Talbot archive 6.7.15) – http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk

[hazeofhearts]

For Her Honor

Hello readers! Before we begin, I would like to say that I do not own any of these characters or you. Hope you enjoy!

(Note: this is a part of a series but you don’t have to read them in order! It would be recommended though. If there are any mistakes, please message me so I can fix them. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you!)

You hissed as your bleeding knuckles rubbed uncomfortably on your bandages. This was the third time this week you had lost your temper but who could blame you. You had been moved to Nowhere, Indiana in the middle of your junior year of high school. All the girls were stupid and petty and didn’t think you were even worth a side glance because you didn’t dress exactly like them and do your hair exactly like them.

If there was one plus, it was that there were some really cute boys around. The boys in New York were cute too and they didn’t dress like total dorks but Indiana boys appeared to have much more class. At least that you knew about.

One boy that had definitely caught your attention was a boy whose name you didn’t know. He had big hair and his face had the occasional bruise. You always saw him in the hall walking alone. Occasionally he was brought aside by another boy with a mullet. The words they exchanged never appeared to be nice.

You found out his name was Steve Harrington when you eavesdropped on this girl Carol’s conversation in Study Hall. She had said something about him and Billy who you could guess was Mullet Boy.

You were gathering your books for class when your locker was shut with a loud bang. A hand with a ring on the middle finger made your eyes trail up the arm and to the face of the one and only Mullet Boy. He had a greasy smirk on his face that you didn’t like the look of one bit.

“Hey there, princess. Name’s Billy, what’s yours?”

You gave him a blank stare, moved his hand off your locker door and opened it again to retrieve your correct book. You had grabbed the wrong one while you were thinking about Steve.

“Excuse me, I asked you a question.”

Mullet Boy knocked on your locker door and you scoffed before slamming the door shut on your own.

“I’m not interested, sorry.”

You turned on your heel and walked away, missing how his cheeks turned red before he stormed off in the other direction.

It was the next day and you had a particularly ominous feeling in the pit of your stomach when you walked through the doors. As soon as you stepped through the threshold of the high school, the hallways got silent and whispers started to float through the air. You made your way slowly through the halls, feeling the need to throw up grow with each step.

As soon as you got to your locker, you knew why everyone was whispering. On your locker door, in what looked like red lipstick, was written several words that made your stomach flip over about a hundred times.

‘SLUT’, ‘WHORE’, ‘BITCH’ were some of the less colorful ones. You slapped a hand over your mouth in silent horror and took a few steps back before you bumped into a boy dressed in mostly black who grabbed you by the shoulders and swung you around, steering you to an empty closet.

The boy had brown eyes and brown shaggy hair that was starting to curl up just past the edge of his collar. He sat you down on a broken desk before walking over to a girl who was filling a bucket with water. You could see the steam coming from the water and saw the girl squirt soap into the bucket.

“Um, who are you guys?”

The duo turned to you, the boy suddenly looking embarrassed and the girl smacked the boy before coming over to stand in front of you.

“I’m Nancy and that’s my boyfriend Jonathan. When we saw what happened to you, we knew we had to step in.”

Before you really understood what was happening and before you could stop it, your eyes filled with tears and they overflowed onto your cheeks. You turned your head away quickly and scrubbed your cheeks with your sleeve. Nancy handed you a tissue and you blew your nose.

“Sorry. I mean, this is really nice what you guys are doing for a stranger.”

Nancy reached out and rubbed your arm and you took great comfort in the feeling. How long had it been since somebody who wasn’t your mother tried to touch you affectionately? Probably too long.

“We’ve both been made fun of in our lives. Hawkins is a shithole, I know. But we’re here now if you want to hang out with us.”

You shyly nodded your head and were about to slide off the desk onto the floor when the door to the closet burst open and two bodies fell in. One was Mullet Boy and the other was Steve Harrington.

Steve was currently on top of Mullet Boy and was punching him in the face. You whipped your legs up on the desk and held them against your chest. Nancy called for Jonathan and he pulled Steve off of Billy.

Mullet Boy staggered to his feet and swayed before looking around the room and laughing.

“Well, King Steve, here’s your girl now! Why don’t you just go on and confess to her.”

Steve’s cheeks turned red and you wondered if he had a crush on Nancy. Or…

Steve turned to Mullet Boy and spat out some blood.

“Fuck you, Hargrove.”

Billy laughed again and tried launching himself at Steve but you stuck out your leg and tripped him. He face planted back out into the hallway. A chorus of ‘ooohhhs’ circled around the hallway as a teacher and the principal arrived on the scene.

“All of you, in my office, NOW!”

You slid yourself off the desk and held your protest that was on your tongue. You filed down the hallways, all the kids staring at your tension filled group. The principal opened the door to the office and then his personal office before slamming the door and pacing the floor behind his desk.

“Mr. Hargrove, you know the deal by now. I will extend your detention time to two months and a whole week of out of school suspension. Mr. Harrington, you will have one month of detention and a week of in school suspension. I do wonder how Mr. Byers, Miss Wheeler and Miss l/n are involved.”

You let Nancy and Jonathan speak for themselves. You fidgeted with your hands and then your sleeves. You were trying to hide your busted knuckles. You had put a lot of ointment on your hands the night before and placed them in rubber gloves before you went to sleep. They had healed considerably well but you didn’t want the principal thinking you were punching people instead of things.

“Miss l/n? What is your part in this? I was notified that your locker was vandalized.”

“Well, Billy approached me yesterday and it seemed like he wanted to come onto me but I made it clear that I wasn’t interested. When I came to school this morning, I saw my locker vandalized and Nancy and Jonathan took me away. We went into the storage closet and when we were leaving, Billy and Steve came in and they were fighting.”

You were waiting for Billy to chime in that you tripped him but you figured that his pride wouldn’t let him. The principal let you off the hook, along with Jonathan and Nancy and you went on your way. When you got back, your locker was clean and only a faint red tint was left. Jonathan and Nancy chatted with you while you gathered your stuff.

The weekend was right ahead of you. You had managed to survive your hell week without another incident. The hallways gradually grew louder again as you walked down them. You opened your locker and blew a raspberry, hesitating. You had too little homework to be going home this weekend.

A hand on your shoulder made you jump out of your skin. You smacked a hand to your chest and whirled around to find Steve Harrington, bruises and all, standing in front of you. He looked nervous.

“Jesus, Harrington! You scared me!”

“Sorry, sorry. I’ve just been calling and you didn’t seem to hear me.”

“W-Well, what do you need,” you said with warm cheeks.

Steve ran his fingers through his hair and you saw his hand. Without even thinking, your own hands flashed up to grab it. Steve stuttered as you brushed his knuckles delicately with your fingers. You brought him closer to your locker and didn’t let go of his hand as you opened your container of ointment and slathered some on his knuckles.

You didn’t even look at Steve’s face so you didn’t see how red it was. When you grabbed his other hand, Steve cleared his throat and you finally looked up at him. He looked embarrassed, his eyes roaming the hallway, avoiding yours. You continued to care for his hands, wrapping bandages around both of them.

“Uh, thanks. M-Maybe I could play the flavor?”

“What?”

“I-I mean! Uh. Repay you for wrapping my hand. Would you like to go out sometime?”

Your mind went blank. Steve Harrington wanted to go on a date with YOU? The girl who didn’t wear her hair up and wear skirts three times a week?  

“I think that I would love that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” you smiled.

“That’s, uh, that’s great! So I’ll pick you up tonight? Six thirty?”

“You don’t know where I live but sure,” you teased.

“R-right.”

You gave Steve your address and watched him walk down the hall. You turned to your locker but kept an eye on him as he walked away. When he stepped outside, he immediately pumped his fist into the air while jumping. You snorted.

What on earth were you getting yourself into?

[durenjtmusings]

Poly Representation Matters

[Theft of intellectual material below the cut]

My husband sent me a link to a New York Times Review of an new off Broadway play “Yours Unfaithfully”- the premier of a play about polyamory written by Miles Malleson back in 1933. Based on the review, the situation sounds a bit simplistic as far as modern poly goes, but the emotions, confusion and explorations do not. The review was favorable about both the writing and the production, although the reviewer felt that the writer’s messages about poly were a bit muddied. I was pleased about this on so many levels - both that the play existed so long ago, and that it was being well produced today.

What struck me, however, was how much I wanted to go see this play. Really wanted to see it - like idly considered if it was possible to get to New York before Feb 18th and how much the tickets might cost. Surprised with myself, I poked at this feeling and realized that I wanted the validation that seeing the play in person would bring. I wanted to see my issues, feelings, and experiences represented up on that stage in a room full of folks who may never have understood. I want to be able to say “See?! That - yeah, THAT.” 

In general, I live my life as a cis het white middle-class female surrounded by empowering friends and working in a fulfilling female-dominated field. Despite being comfortable with many similar folks representing a wide range of sexual diversity, I worry a lot about my level of privilege and lack of understanding for others. I got a twinkling of insight today. Representation matters.

Here is a link to the NYT review: “Yours Unfaithfully,” NYT Critics Pick Text of the NYT Review below the cut - in case you can’t access via the link.

Review: ‘Yours Unfaithfully,’ on an Open Marriage and Its Pitfalls

YOURS UNFAITHFULLY  NYT Critics’ Pick  Off Broadway, Comedy, Play  2 hrs. and 30 min. Closing Date: February 18, 2017 Theatre Row - Samuel Beckett Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St.  212-239-6200

By ALEXIS SOLOSKIJAN. 26, 2017

Anne has the perfect cure for her husband’s writer’s block. Not a change of scene, not a change of topic, but a sexual adventure. “Go and get into mischief,” she tells him. “Any sort of mischief! I shouldn’t mind what you do, as long as you get happy again, and start working.”

“Yours Unfaithfully,” Miles Malleson’s 1933 play, now receiving its world premiere at the Mint Theater, is a refined, rueful and often shrewd comedy about polyamory, written decades before open relationships were quite so openly discussed. In some ways, it’s surprising that it went unproduced for so long. Its subject is no more scandalous than those of several plays by George Bernard Shaw or Harley Granville Barker, another Mint favorite. But the shock of its content, the gentility of its form and its strong links to Mr. Malleson’s own life must have made it a chancy undertaking.

Stephen (Max von Essen, a recent Tony nominee for “An American in Paris”) is a writer perhaps too interested in questions of virtue and vice, and Anne (Elisabeth Gray), is his elegant, broad-minded wife, with whom he runs a progressive school. They have been married eight years and have two children. (The almost total absence of these children, even in conversation, is one of the play’s peculiarities.)

When Anne sees Stephen mired in marital and intellectual doldrums, she encourages him to have an affair with their beautiful friend Diana (Mikaela Izquierdo). Stephen is persuaded, Diana is willing, and everything’s just dandy until it isn’t.

“Yours Unfaithfully” is both a daring play and a highly conventional one. Under the polished direction of Jonathan Bank, and in the hands of a fine team of designers, its arguments remain provocative, while its structure feels familiar, its tone decorous. Maybe that only makes it more unusual. It’s a bit like a sex farce with real sorrow instead of slammed doors, and something like a drawing room comedy with moral conundrums peeking out beneath the cushions. It is often very funny; it is also very nearly a tragedy.

Ultimately, the play’s insistence on the sanctity of open marriage, a stance that apparently reflected Mr. Malleson’s own beliefs and practices, isn’t all that persuasive. If the central claim, that to “live effectively” you must walk the line between “a great slope of complacence on one side” and “rather a mess-up of promiscuity” on the other, sounds reasonably plausible in the moment, that is a credit to the dapper Mr. von Essen. Does the road to moral enlightenment and matrimonial contentment absolutely lead into the beds of selected others? Is there really no other way? Separate vacations, maybe?

But what is extraordinary about Mr. Malleson is his ability to create characters who are capable of feeling several things at once, or who don’t really know what they’re feeling at all. Both Stephen and Anne seem genuinely surprised that their hearts and minds aren’t as orderly as they had believed. (Ms. Gray is especially adroit at rendering these intricate emotional shadings.)

In one scene, Alan (a first-rate Todd Cerveris), a friend of the couple’s, tells Stephen to bring Anne to dinner, so that they can all say exactly what they think. “What we feel,” Stephen corrects him.

“What we think we feel!” Alan replies. “That’s as near as most of us get.” Certainly, “Yours Unfaithfully” gets closer than most stage comedies. When a playwright can manage that, you might as well say “I do” to seeing it.