There is a particular take on the destruction of Tumblr that I keep waiting for someone to write, but no one has yet. Which means I apparently need to do it myself.
The take is, essentially, that not only should adults have access to adult content – in itself, valid and true – but also it is important to cultivate SOME social spaces where the overtly/explicitly sexual overlap with the non-sexual. (Not all spaces; I still think it should be illegal to have sex on the sidewalk. But SOME spaces that enable the sexual and the non-sexual to exist side-by-side)
Part of what I think leads to the dehumanization of sex (and subsequently allows the stigma and shame to cling so heavily to it) is the complete bifurcation of life into SEX and EVERYTHING ELSE and never the twain shall meet. When we – at every turn – put all aspects of human life into one sphere, and sex into another, we dehumanize it. We remove the full subjectivity of people from it, which is a problem.
I think we need to actively cultivate spaces LIKE before-time!Tumblr where we can be people, and talk about what happened at work today, and the funny thing our dog did, and how our parents make us crazy during the holidays, and how dare they do X thing on Supernatural, and here’s a great version of that distracted boyfriend meme, and ALSO be able to talk about being horny on main, as the saying goes, and find the right porn clip to fap to. Or post nude selfies. Or hunt down that sweet, sweet NSFW Symbrock fanart.
Having spaces where the explicitly sexual and the non-sexual overlap is important to humanizing sex and, subsequently, de-stigmatizing it (which, it should go without saying, is particularly salient for marginalized people who often suffer way more heavily from sexual stigma)
This. As someone who is half French half British I’ve forever struggled with the frankly pretty Puritan British attitude towards sex and our bodies and the open French attitude. I know which is healthy and which isn’t from personal experience. People not discussing sex, nudity etc in a safe environment leads to so many issues around lack of education, understanding and future deep emotional and physical issues for young adults trying to figure life out. It can last our entire lives if not addressed.
My friends and I got naked in front of each other as teens to change like it’s no big deal and yeah on occasion we looked and compared bodies, it’s thanks to this that I know that my nipples which I hated for being so huge are actually not that weird. My friends all have completely different body shapes and it made me comfortable in mine knowing it was ok to not look like a model/porn star and be different because we all were.
I’ve learned so much from tumblr just from discussion and I share this with others, it’s embarrassing how little people know about their own bodies due to a lack of a forum to discuss it. This is such a good place for it and I’m so sad it is so niche already let alone if that now collapses.
Due to lack of discussion of sex and just human bodies someone close to me didn’t address the pain he had every time he had an erection until he confided in me as an open friend and it turned out he needed a medical circumcision. He went 10 YEARS with this pain (and not having sex) because he had no one to talk to about it and nowhere to look it up. Fucking ridiculous.
So yes, even for non trans / queer folk it’s so important to have an open forum somewhere regarding these things let alone how hugely important it is for these communities.
While at the same time I’m also angered that sex and nudity is villainised while nazism and it’s ilk is fiiiiiiine.
This . Is . Wrong .
“also it is important to cultivate SOME social spaces where the overtly/explicitly sexual overlap with the non-sexual.”
This.
One of my favorite things about rl kink communities? That we also went to munches (get togethers at restaurants) and just hung out, and sure we’d probably casually mention/joke about being huge perverts at some point because it was safe to do so among people we knew wouldn’t be offended, but the nice thing was just being able to be around people and talk about anything.
God, yeah. I remember being wigged out at first when I got on tumblr and it was just this free-wheeling place where someone would complain about their bad day and their next post would be a reblog of pornographic fan art with graphic comments in the tags.
You can follow people who make nsfw content (photos, fic, art) and get to know them as people. You can follow people that aren’t content creators and get to know their tastes in kinky shit. You can have friends you met because you liked the same kind of porn and find out all the other stuff you have in common and become real friends.
I don’t talk about my sex life on fucking facebook (other than in very locked groups, lol). Hell, I’m not sure I’ll do it on twitter unless I start a separate one for that (which….tbh I might; I liked having a sideblog here for me to post nudes and sexual tmi).
I’m really gonna miss the way that stuff was all mixed together here.
It does seem that Hamilton and Laurens were quite codependent. Whenever they were separated, they would write to each other about how much they missed the other, and they sometimes barely seemed able to function without the other in their presence. After Laurens left Hamilton for the first time and headed to South Carolina, Hamilton practically begged Washington for permission to head south as well. When Washington refused, Hamilton was greatly upset. Hamilton also wrote to Laurens on a couple occasions about how he hated everything in the world except for Laurens. They also often enabled each other’s reckless behavior, leading to some not-well-thought-out decisions. However, I think any sort of insecurities they had about their relationship was a result of the heteronormativity of their society and Laurens’s strict Christian upbringing telling him that his sexuality was sinful. Hamilton and Laurens could also bring out the best in each other. They offered such deep love and support to the other, which neither had really known before. Hamilton loved Laurens, supported his black regiment, and showed Laurens that he was doing a lot of good for the country. Laurens didn’t treat Hamilton differently because of his status as a West Indian/illegitimate son, and Laurens likewise showed Hamilton love and support in all his plans and endeavors.
Missing your SO and being really upset when they are away from you without reliable communication in a situation where either of you could be killed at any point and may never see each other again is not codependence. That is a normal human response. The guys both seem to have suffered from bouts of either self or world loathing (I’d call it depression but I don’t want to get condescended to about the impossibility of historical diagnoses) independent of their relationship with each other. They likely found their connection alleviated these feelings, and therefore it makes sense that they’d have an uptick in these negative feelings in separation. Hamilton was constantly trying to get off of GW’s staff and get a field command, so joining Laurens would have actually accomplished that career goal for him in addition to keeping them together. Same gender relationships tend to get labled codependent much more frequently than is accurate and much more frequently than het relationships and I really hate that a lot.
I would even go so far as to assert that their relationship helped Alexander develop his capacity for forming lasting relationships. In letters he shared with the friends he had before John, there’s a common theme that he doesn’t write to them enough. Of the notes that I’ve been able to find, most he received/sent were shared with his benefactors, Ann Lytton Venton, Cruegar, and Knox. And, even those he fell out of touch with for long spans of time
In one letter from Ned Stevens, Ned complains that Alex hasn’t written to him since he’d left for university (which could easily be because Alex was too busy, but it’d been years). Ned’s tone is almost desperate to assure Alex that he retains a “most sincere and disinterested Friendship for you”. And, from the context of the letter and the quote, Ned (and Alex’s other friends) know nothing of what’s been happening with him. “enclosed your Letters to some of our common Friends in that City, and requested them to transmit them to you. But I have not been able to collect the least Intelligence concerning you from any Quarter, untill very lately your Friend Dr: Knox informed me, that he had heard from you, that you was perfectly well, and that you had been exalted to the Rank of Col: and Aid de Camp to general Washington.” That news is almost a year old, and on the date of the letter, Alex was not perfectly well, he was on his death bed with a month-long fever.
Alex would’ve met Lafayette a week or two before Laurens arrived at headquarters, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those friendships were the most profoundly personal ones that Alex developed. In direct contrast to his early friendships, he kept constant communication with them both throughout the war on both professional and personal matters, and after the war, he wrote to Lafayette throughout the rest of his life.
I could also directly contrast Alex’s romantic relationships pre-Laurens to his courtship of Eliza, but that one’s pretty obvious.
For John, I’m honestly not sure you could say his relationship with Alexander was positive or negative. It seems to me that John had a lot of sorrows in his life and a lot of pressure to posture himself. Alexander definitely gave him someone he could truly relate to and confide in, and that’s always a good thing. But, like @madtomedgar‘s said, the negative feelings would be more prevalent while they were separated, and even together, having strong feelings for someone that had to constantly be hidden/avoided would’ve definitely had a negative impact (especially if that was the first or only time John had ever felt that way for someone, or if he had only ever felt that way about men).
But, if that’s the case, none of that is Alexander’s fault and it doesn’t mean that Alex was the toxic influence. He was probably one of the least toxic things in John’s life.
What annoys the FUCK out of me about the ‘all historians are out there to erase queerness from history’ thing on Tumblr is that it’s just one of those many attitudes that flagrantly mischaracterises an entire academic field and has a complete amateur thinking they know more than people who’ve spent fucking years studying said field.
Like someone will offer a very obvious example of – say – two men writing each other passionate love letters, and then quip about how Historians will just try to say that affection was just different ‘back then’. Um…no. If one man writes to another about how he wants to give him 10 000 kisses and suck his cock, most historians – surprise surprise! – say it’s definitely romantic, sexual love. We aren’t Victorians anymore.
It also completely dismisses the fact of how many cases of possible queerness are much more ambiguous that two men writing to each other about banging merrily in a field. The boundaries of platonic affection are hugely variable depending on the time and place you’re looking at. What people mock us for saying is true. Nuance fucking exists in the world, unlike on this hellscape of a site.
It is a great discredit to the difficult work that historians do in interpreting the past to just assume we’re out there trying to straightwash the past. Queer historians exist. Open-minded allies exist.
I’m off to down a bottle of whisky and set something on fire.
It’s also vaguely problematic to ascribe our modern language
and ideas of sexuality to people living hundreds or even thousands of years
ago. Of course queer people existed then—don’t be fucking daft, literally any
researcher/historian/whatever worth their salt with acknowledge this. But as
noted above, there’s a lot of ambiguity as well—ESPECIALLY when dealing with a
translation of a translation of a copy of a damaged copy in some language that
isn’t spoken anymore. That being said, yes, queer erasure happens, and it
fucking sucks and hurts. I say that as a queer woman and a baby!researcher. But
this us (savvy internet historian) vs. them (dusty old actual historian)
mentality has got to stop.
You’re absolutely right.
I see the effect of applying modern labels to time periods when they didn’t have them come out in a bad way when people argue about whether some historical figure was transmasculine or a butch lesbian. There were some, of course, who were very obviously men and insisted on being treated as such, but with a lot of people…we just don’t know and we never will. The divide wasn’t so strong back in the late 19th century, for example. Heck, the word ‘transmasculine’ didn’t exist yet. There was a big ambiguous grey area about what AFAB people being masculine meant, identity-wise.
Some people today still have a foot in each camp. Identity is complicated, and that’s probably been the case since humans began to conceptualise sexuality and gender.
That’s why the word ‘queer’ is such a usefully broad and inclusive umbrella term for historians.
Also, one more thing and I will stop (sorry it’s just been so long since I’ve gotten to rant). Towards the beginning of last semester, I was translating “Wulf and Eadwacer” from Old English. This is a notoriously ambiguous poem, a p p a r e n t l y, and most of the other students and I were having a lot of trouble translating it because the nouns and their genders were all over the place (though this could be because my memory is slipping here) which made it hella difficult to figure out word order and syntax and (key) the fucking gender of everything. In class, though, my professor told us that the gender and identity of the speaker were actually the object of some debate in the Anglo-Saxonist community. For the most part, it was assumed that the principal speaker of the poem is a woman (there is one very clear female translation amongst all that ambiguity) mourning the exile of her lover/something along those lines. But there’s also some who say that she’s speaking of her child. And some people think the speaker of the poem is male and talking abut his lover. And finally, there’s some people who think that the speaker of the poem is a fucking BADGER, which is fucking wild and possibly my favorite interpretation in the history of interpretations.
TL;DR—If we can’t figure out beyond the shadow of a doubt whether the speaker is a human or a fucking badger, then we certainly can’t solidly say whether a speaker is queer or not. This isn’t narrowmindedness, this is fucking what-the-hell-is-this-language-and-culture (and also maybe most of the manuscripts are pretty fucked which further lessens knowledge and ergo certainty).
Also, if there’s nothing to debate, what’s even the fun in being an historian?
All of this.
I had a student once try to tell me that I was erasing queer history by claiming that a poem was ambiguous. I was trying to make the point that a poem was ambiguous and that for the time period we were working with, the identities of “queer” and “straight” weren’t so distinctive. Thus, it was possible that the poem was either about lovers or about friends because the language itself was in that grey area where the sentiment could be romantic or just an expression of affection that is different from how we display affection towards friends today.
And hoo boy. The student didn’t want to hear that.
It’s ok to admit ambiguity and nuance. Past sexualities aren’t the same as our modern ones, and our understanding of culture today can’t be transferred onto past cultures. It just doesn’t work. The past is essentially a foreign culture that doesn’t match up perfectly with current ones – even if we’re looking at familiar ones, like ancient or medieval Europe. That means our understanding of queerness also has to account for the passage of time. I think we need to ask “What did queerness look like in the past?” as opposed to “How did queerness as we understand it today exist in the past?” As long as we examine the past with an understanding that not all cultures thought same-sex romance/affection/sexual practice was sinful, we’re not being homophobic by admitting there can be nuance in a particular historical product.
I know a lot of very smart people who are working on queerness in medieval literature and history. And yes, there are traditions of scholars erasing queer history because they themselves are guided by their own ideologies. We all are. It’s impossible to be 100% objective about history and its interpretation. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t good work being done by current scholars, including work that corrects the bad methodologies of the past.
also yeah, the key thing that’s helped me as a student of history is learning that using language outside of modern labels shouldnt erase queerness, but should complicate it.
Jesus Christ all of this
It’s very easy for us modern folk to see extreme affection, especially in masculine writing of the past, and see representation. But while it’s impossible to say never, it’s also impossible to say anything definitively (again, unless there’s dick-sucking talk or something similar).
What we have to remember is that gender performance, affection, and sexuality existed in very different ways a couple of hundred years ago in a most infuriating way to our modern sensibilities. A man in, say, 18th century England could wear a powdered wig, lace, and at times even makeup and still be seen as masculine. He could write to a friend in terms that would make most modern hetero men squirm. No one would think oddly of him. And yet, at the end of the day, if he was caught actively engaging in sex with another man he could literally be put to death for it. In many ways, the culture back then allowed men to speak about affection more freely than now, yet acting on their feelings was a capital offense, and we need to take into consideration how exposed those men would have been willing to make themselves. It was a dangerous tightrope to walk.
Likewise there would have been a staggering number of men and women back then who were 100% closeted their whole lives. People who knew the consequences of making their feelings known, and who silently went through the motions of what society expected of them, either getting married to someone they didn’t love in order to fit in, or staying single their entire lives. Those poor, nameless souls are hiding in plain sight in the historical, and we should never forget them.
At the end of the day, as a historian I’m less concerned about Proving 100% that a popular historical figure was LGBT. I’m more concerned with making it known that regardless of the words we use to describe sexuality, and the ways in which we express it, LGBT people have been around for as long as people have been around. They don’t need a celebrity spokesperson from each century to speak for them – common sense, as well as the historical record, tells us that they existed and that they deserve to be remembered.
I’ll admit right up front that I’m particularly sensitive to the argument that, if you’re able to function, your pain mustn’t really be that bad. I have had fibromyalgia since I was 8, and I was diagnosed with lupus just two weeks ago (fucking yay!). I’m in pain 24/7. My immune system attacks healthy tissue in my body. It’s fucking painful. And yet, I still function. Many people have doubted how much pain I’m in because of the myth that you can’t function when you’re in pain.
Today there was a lot of meta focused on asgardians and pain. The meta addressed people who call Thor’s use of the obedience disk on Loki torture. As goes the response to any argument that’s too pro-Loki, things quickly escalated to “he’s just mildly irritated by the obedience disk” and “Loki hasn’t experienced actual physical pain in the MCU except for maybe when he nearly died in TDW.”
*sigh*
I often state that asgardians can handle pain. That’s something I believe in. I think they respond differently to painful circumstances that would kill or severely disable a human. That’s based on evidence from the movies. Fandral’s impaled in Thor, and survives. Thor’s obviously been stabbed by Loki multiple times, and he’s fine. Both Thor and Loki have been smashed by Hulk, and both have had the obedience disk used on them, and they’re both still alive. Loki’s been in Thanos’ clutches, and he’s seemingly made a full physical recovery from that (despite looking incredibly fucked up and tripping all over himself in Avengers). For that reason, I tend to be more accepting of how physical characters get with asgardians. I forgive Loki stabbing Thor. I forgive Thor grabbing Loki by the neck and throwing him to the ground when they’re reunited in Avengers. My assumption is that asgardian culture is more permissive of acts we’d recognize as excessively violent (let’s not get into whether those acts are justified–that’s not the point) by virtue of asgardians being able to survive more.
What I mean when I say asgardians can handle pain is that they are durable. They are like Deadpool or Wolverine. Both can survive very painful, violent acts. That isn’t the same as not feeling pain.
Volstagg, when touched by a frost giant, shouts in pain. He quickly recovers from a severe case of frostbite, and is able to continue functioning, but he clearly feels the pain.
Loki is terrified of Hulk. If he doesn’t feel the pain of being smashed by Hulk, then why is he so scared of him?
Thor passes out each time the obedience disk is used on him. Loki can’t even fucking move when it’s used on him. My assumption was that Thor passes out from pain, and Loki’s in so much pain that he’s unable to function while that pain is sustained. That’s something the script states, really. It says he’s writhing in pain.
So yes, the obedience disk is a torture device. It superheats veins. I forgive Thor using it on Loki to disable him–he needs to stop Loki from betraying him. I still think Loki feels intense, sustained pain. I don’t agree that it’s just a mildly irritating device. I think Loki’s felt pain in numerous instances. Sometimes the characters inflicting that pain are justified, and sometimes they’re not. Hulk was justified. Thor was justified (for at least as long as he needed to disable Loki, and I happen to think the fact that he just leaves him disabled is ooc). Thanos wasn’t justified. Kurse wasn’t justified.
I’m kind of sick of fans not being allowed to feel uncomfortable with that scene. If people are uncomfortable watching Thor gloat over his brother’s twitching body, that seems reasonable. It bothers me that Thor uses it on Loki for the amount of time that he does (so much that I call it ooc because I don’t think Thor would torture Loki, or leave him to potentially die). It bothers me that it gets used on Thor, too.
I can’t even watch the scenes where the obedience disk gets used on Thor or Loki. I close my eyes. Watching them in pain reminds me of my own. I feel my own more keenly when I watch those scenes. I also feel very, very squeamish seeing the veins under their skin.
TL;DR: Asgardians are durable, but they still experience pain. People are entirely justified in being uncomfortable with the obedience disk. It’s very easy to interpret that device as a torture device. Please stop rolling your eyes when someone finds it uncomfortable to watch their favorite character(s) twitch in pain. Consider that your interpretation of a piece of media may not be the only “right” or even reasonable one.
To add something semi-relevant: I’ve been seeing a lot of people try to justify Thor by pointing out that Loki has done worse things to him; most commonly they will cite the incident in The Avengers where Loki drops Thor out of the Helicarrier in the Hulk cage. (This is such a common move that I feel like it’s got to be in some Thor stan/ Ragnarok defense playbook.) Here is why that comparison doesn’t accomplish what they want it to accomplish:
It was entirely reasonable for Loki to think he was not endangering Thor’s life. He knew Thor could get out of the cage because he had Mjolnir with him. As far as we can tell, in Ragnarok, Thor had no way of knowing that the first people who would happen along were Korg & co. as opposed to, e.g., Topaz, who probably would have just killed Loki while he was incapacitated. Maybe he did have some way of knowing, but this was not made at all clear in the film. So even if he didn’t think he was endangering Loki’s life, he was being culpably negligent.
In The Avengers, Loki was acting as an adversary, and everyone was completely aware of that. He was trying to hamper his opponents by scattering them, and possibly to demoralize Thor by showing that he wasn’t going to get his brother back. In Ragnarok, Thor presented what he did as some kind of “tough love” – punishing Loki “for his own good,” with the aim of getting Loki back on his side rather than (as Loki was doing in The Avengers) turning him decisively against him. If you can’t see why that’s kind of fucked up, well…
Loki is clearly aware that what he’s doing in The Avengers is wrong. He hesitates before he hits the button to drop the cage, and hesitates again (with tears in his eyes, FFS!) before he stabs Thor later. He’s conflicted, and it’s not unreasonable to think he regrets hurting Thor when he’s no longer under direct threat from Thanos (his attempts at self-justification in TDW have a defensive air that make me think the lady doth protest too much). In Ragnarok, Thor just looks smug and self-righteous about the electrocution thing, even though he’s very aware that Loki is in severe pain.
It troubles me that neither Thor himself nor the narrative – which consistently seems to take Thor’s POV as unproblematic and incontestable – considers that what Thor did might have been excessive. Yes, I get that it’s the “trickster tricked” narrative device. I get that Loki was going to betray Thor. And here’s why that doesn’t prove what people seem to think it proves:
Very simply, Thor could have done something less severe. He could have used the buzzer to incapacitate Loki temporarily, and turned it off before he left. Hell, considering how Thor tended to remain incapacitated for a while even after it was no longer active, he probably should have given his (obnoxiously self-righteous, manipulative) “pep talk” after he turned the thing off. But the least he could have done was not leave it on for an indefinite amount of time, leaving Loki vulnerable to whoever happened along first. (I’ve also seen people claim that Thor put it on a “lower setting,” which is why it’s OK that Loki endured it for several minutes continuously rather than a few seconds and why he recovered faster. Maybe; but again, this is not made clear.)
The way I read the film (as charitably as I could), Loki had good reason to be pissed at Thor. He had been trying to reach out and offer help, and Thor blew him off (that conversation is another post entirely, and other people have analyzed it at length, which I don’t need to do now). No, it wasn’t a good thing that he planned to turn Thor back in to the Grandmaster (though again, I doubt he thought he was putting Thor in serious danger; he was too entertaining as a gladiator to be melted). But you can also see why it wasn’t just an act of capricious malice, and therefore why it isn’t cleanly a matter of Bad Loki being bad and Good Thor needing to righteously punish him however severely he pleases.
Or maybe we are supposed to think it was an act of capricious malice, because as I’ve complained before, this film makes Loki’s motivations completely incomprehensible beyond “I did it for the lulz.” Which may be intended to recast him into the Trickster archetype (on a fairly simplistic understanding thereof), but is massively discontinuous with the way the Loki of previous MCU films is motivated. So part of the problem here is that the narrative has already set Thor up to be justified in punishing Loki by giving Loki no clear motivation for doing anything he does. This is just lazy writing. And if you know me, you know that I will usually bend over backwards to avoid blaming an apparent inconsistency on bad writing. (This is partly a reflex of my professional life. Most historians of philosophy assume that if you say that your subject’s argument is invalid, you have missed something. You have not tried hard enough to make it consistent. Kant always knows better than you. Kant scholarship is like Talmud scholarship: you never want to say that the source text is inconsistent, because it’s basically divinely inspired.)
This! All the bits you mentioned, with the panicked freezing up, I got the distinct impression that Martius thinks he’s about to get his throat slit.
Yeah, exactly, and with good reason given that Aufidius totally just made every indication he was going to do so. His alertness is very fight-flight-or-freeze rather than an indication of any enthusiasm for what’s happening — independent of how he feels about Aufidius under less threatening circumstances. (Inasmuch as he’s prepared/expecting to deal with him in non-murderous-blood-rage circumstances.)
The impression I got from this production is that the shipperliness only goes one way. Aufidius is all “BOYFRIEND!” and Martius is all “NEMESIS!” and neither one realises that the other doesn’t see it the same way. I don’t think Martius is at all prepared to even consider that possibility that dealing with Aufidius could happen in a non-murderous-blood-rage context.
So Aufidius is pouring out some violent form of love/lust, and Martius can’t understand the forehead kiss as anything but a prelude to stabbing. And as for Aufidius, he just assumes Martius feels the same way he does, and it never crossed his mind that he might not.
They’re a perfectly doomy pair, and I love it. And both of them do that thing where they latch on to teeny tiny word usage details and get REALLY FURIOUS about them. Martius especially, what with his diatribe over the word shall, and the other diatribe upon being called “boy”, but Aufidius does it, too, with the name “Coriolanus” (this is something I used to do when I was much younger, so it strikes a particular chord with me; I’ve always been very aware of nuance and I used to not realise that other people were a tad sloppier and didn’t intend any insult. Isn’t it great when you share a fatal flaw with a doomed Shakespearian title character?).
P.S. If no one has done a staging where Virgilia and/or Volumnia kills Aufidius at the end, someone needs to.
*CRASHES THROUGH SEVERAL WALLS A LA CAPTAIN AMERICA ON MY WAY TO JOIN THIS CONVERSATION*
Okay originally I just wanted to reblog because YES I READ THE BLOCKING THAT WAY TOO, IT HURTS. But also I didn’t do the staging where Virgilia kills Aufidius…but I wrote the fic…(with all those warnings because, well, I follow the reading above and IT HURTS)
could not resist getting in on this too oh my good god
so in the Donmar production it felt to me like Aufidius’ relation to Martius had just kind of spilt over from “NEMESIS” to “..hOLY SHIT I WANNA FUCK YOU SO BAD” some point during everything, but bc Hadley Fraser gave us a (brilliantly believable) supremely unreflective Aufidius, he literally does not even bat an eyelid and just gets on with the important business of, y’know, telling his erstwhile-enemy about all those sex dreams he’s been having whilst feeling him up a bit. as one does. but as much as the transition is on one level kind of pretty hilarious, on another, of course, it’s so absolutely plausible; as Fraser’s said i think, the way they relate to one another as enemies, as soldiers, all the times they’ve met as adversaries on the battlefield, their encounters are physical – and more; intense, intimate. Elaine Scarry writes in her book The Body in Pain that war is the human activity that is the most profoundly embodying; she might have done well to add the caveat “aside from sex”. My point being that as i see it it seems very, very natural that Aufidius’ obsession with Martius should tip over into the sexual, given the sheer (perhaps twisted, dangerous, but nevertheless indisputable) intimacy of an encounter between two people who are trying to kill one another…
At the same time, I loved how Tom played Martius as just so utterly confused here, so wrongfooted and uncomprehending. In the past..what, 24 hours (can we say that?), the very laws of Martius’ reality have been turned inside out. He’s been taught his whole life to hate the plebeians and everything they stand for…but suddenly hating them is wrong?? and no one understands why he can’t acknowledge his dependence on the people (on others), why hecan’t show his scars he can’tand the mother he’d forged his whole nature for has seemingly turned away from him, is suddenly asking him to be false to that very nature when he can’t doesn’t she see HOW CAN SHE NOT SEE SHE WAS THE ONE WHO MADE HIM INTO THIS and the city he understood himself as serving with every last sinew of his body is declaring him a traitor…! and so Aufidius, his rival, his nemesis, Aufidius is for Martius at this moment the last known quantity; either the other’s hatred of Rome will compel him to take Martius into his service (but only because his hatred of Rome trumps even his hatred of Martius), or Aufidius will take this golden opportunity to gain final, absolute dominance over him and end their rivalry, end [for Martius] everything, in a single knife-stroke. But Aufidius does neither of these things; instead he’s embracing Martiuslike a lover…And with that, the last concrete certainty in Martius’ world has vanished into air. As Aufidius embraces him, Martius looks suddenly, heartwrenchingly, like exactly what he is: a frightened, lost little boy.
So beyond the issue of Hamilton grew up very poor, and therefore wouldn’t have a particularly carefree attitude towards hunger- the whole “Hamilton forgets to eat because he’s so goshdarn hardworking!” thing bugs me for other reasons. It just feels like it’s glorifying skipping meals and treating it like a symptom of genius, rather than, you know, a deeply unhealthy habit that impedes cognition.
It also bothers me because the trope rarely acknowledges the consequences that Hamilton’ overexertion irl had on him. Riding for days on end without a break to get the troops from Generals Gates and Putnam? Almost kills him.
I also feel like the whole “writing himself ragged” tends to get flanderized. Hamilton was a fast writer and could crank them out like no one because he had great stamina, and he wasn’t above pulling an all-nighter to get the job done (though there’s nothing to suggest he didn’t take breaks).
I can only think of one instance off the top of my head where he actually risked his health to get papers written, and that was when he had to meet Congress’s demands for extensive reports on the Treasury’s activities and use of foreign loans. But that one was Congress’s fault for purposefully setting an unrealistic deadline – and one Hamilton called them out on when he finished the report early, leaving this passive-aggressive remark:
The House will perceive, that the variety of matter comprised in this letter has not been collected and digested into its present form, without much labor, and an unavoidable expense of time. I trust, they will be sensible, that no delay has been unnecessarily incurred. It is certain, that I have made every exertion in my power, at the hazard of my health to comply with the requisitions of the House, as early as possible. And it has even been done with more expedition, than was desirable to secure the perfect accuracy of the communication.
Yes, this, thank you. I remember reading biographies of historical figures and being so upset because they would be doing these amazing, life changing things on 2 hours of sleep with no repercussions. And I was still exhausted on 9-10 hours. It made me feel like I wasn’t physically capable of accomplishing the things I wanted to accomplish. This post was actually just such a revelation and a relief. Someone whose work ethic I admired had faced consequences from pushing their body too hard. They got sick a lot. They had to and did take breaks. And they were still able to do so much. It was just such a relief and so validating for me.
Anyway, every historian who ignores or glosses over chronic illnesses owes me $20.
In addition, and drawing back to the hazards of glorifying not eating as a staple of hard work-
One of the worst things a person can do when they’re under stress is fail to take care of their health, and Hamilton was someone who had to know that.
Taking the provided example: his trip to Albany where he degraded his immune system under stress and nearly died of fever, here’s the account of his expenses. There are gaps in the receipt, November 1st-8th, 8th-10th, 14th-16th wherein Hamilton and Gibbs aren’t stopping at taverns (granted, they likely packed for the trip and bought surplus when they stopped, so there’s no reason to assume they ever went hungry on the ride), but that kind of relentless traveling takes a toll on horseback. And, sure enough, on the 22nd, “On the road to PeeksKill when Colo. Hamilton was taken sick from Morris Town”. There’s no denying that Hamilton took on unreasonable projects and placed himself under unhealthy amounts of stress- but there’s no reason to suggest he purposefully, knowingly risked his health by neglecting to eat.
People display stress in different ways- some people fall into depressive emotional states, others openly break down, others- like Hamilton- might genuinely fail to notice their stress until it physically incapacitates them. And, judging by the excerpt from his report to Congress- he had realized that his stamina had limits and understood how unhealthy it would be to push them.
Forgetting to eat is not a symptom of genius- it’s an act of dumb recklessness, and Hamilton knew that.
Sharing because I did in fact say all this – not because I feel 👑-ly
I agree with all these points, but I feel specifically compelled to respond to the worldbuilding thing. I apologise in advance. I have a friend who insists that fanfiction is inferior to original fiction because you “skip past worldbuilding”, so this hit a sore spot.
One might say that people who write contemporary fiction “skip past worldbuilding”. They describe the scenery, the places where their characters live and work and eat and go, but they are not going to explain how these places came to be. They’re probably not going to outline the entire history of wherever the story is set. Even if you’re not familiar with the setting yourself, you’re going to pick up bits and pieces as you go along. Meanwhile, the author is just describing what they’re already familiar with.
One might say that people who write historical fiction “skip past worldbuilding”. They do research instead. Can’t have Catiline wear breeches, or Thomas Cromwell use toilet paper, or Bonaparte board a train to Moskow. In fact, they’ll pay attention to a lot of little details, and if they do their job properly, they’ll eventually know more about everyday life in Late Republican Rome or England under Henry VIII or France at the turn of the 19th century than historians, because they want to get the setting right. But again, they’re describing things that they have become familiar with, not things that they have invented.
And yet, nobody is saying that they’re “skipping past” anything. After all, they do their research. They observe their everyday surroundings so their description of the New York rush hour will be spot on, or sit down with the letters of Cicero, or look at every toiletry article from Tudor England that they can find, or study the diary of a merchant’s daughter in 1790s France.That’s hard work, and we appreciate it (or complain if it hasn’t been done properly). Their lack of original worldbuilding is not considered an inherent weakness of the genre of contemporary crime story, historical novel or whatnot.
Fanfic authors often do the same. Either, they are already so familiar with the canon that they essentially describe places they know, or they will do a lot of research to get these places right. For instance, I don’t know if this is still a thing, but when I was new to fanfic, it was customary to have your Harry Potter fanfic “britpicked” (i.e., beta-read by a British person or someone intimately familiar with Britain) before posting. And when you’re writing Tolkien fanfic, especially if it’s set during the earlier ages of Arda where there is very little description of everyday life and culture, you’ll end up doing worldbuilding on top of someone else’s worldbuilding and pray that it won’t clash with everyone else’s vision of that time and place. (I have absolutely been asked where the mulberry trees for the silk my Elves were wearing would grow in the climate of Northern Beleriand (read: Finland).) And when you’re writing stories set in the Marvel universe, you’ll probably have to be familiar with the settings and character arches from previous stories, and either work from that or make a decision to deviate from the choices of previous authors.
So yes, fanfic writers don’t necessarily have to create their own worlds and characters. But what advantage they gain by writing about already established characters and conflicts, they lose by having to contend with other people’s interpretations of these characters and conflicts. Somebody is always going to think that a particular original character that interacts with a canon character is a Mary Sue, that the protagonist of your fanfic is acting totally OOC, or that the Nandorin Elves would not know or eat cheese.
You win some, you loose some.
TL;DR Fanfic writers skip past worldbuilding and character establishment in the same sense that authors of historical fiction do
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