trumpgrets:

(thank you, alabama)

Joy and applause and hope from Down Under!!

sybilius:

mcicioni-blog:

I guess each slash fan can situate themselves at one (or more!!!) point(s) along the continuum between identification and desire (BEING Rowdy and FANCYING Rowdy). It would be great if people could reveal a little of where they stand.

Myself, I’d like to BE (in this order) Ryan, Corbett, and Rowdy. I used to want to be Gil Favor but soon grew out of it. I would like a night or two with Corbett and a longer fling with Rowdy, but wouldn’t throw myself into any river if they said no.

My objects of desire tend to be female (writer spares the audience a detailed description of desired interactions with Lauren Bacall and Marlene Dietrich)

This is a very interesting post! I tend to think of myself as in conversation with my faves? There are definitely traits I identify with in them, but for the most part my relationships with my characters tend to extend to just “what I would do if I got in a room with them”. So I guess in no particular order….(with westerns and death note AND true detective???)

Keep reading

So interesting. Pity I am, as usual, catastrophically short of time.

Intriguing, and inspiring, notion, that of wanting to be in a room with the characters (the canon ones, the ones we have rewritten, or both?). 

Favor: I’d run hell-for-leather. He’d be likely to be politically conservative as well as intolerant, sexist and authoritarian. And he’d be stronger than me, so I couldn’t use his favourite negotiating skill (a right to the jaw).

Rowdy: I’d encourage him to read self-improvement books and to learn Spanish, and I’d ask him for shooting and riding lessons.

Ryan: he wouldn’t talk a lot to me and we wouldn’t have a great deal in common. Maybe one night we’d have three or four drinks together and he’d open up, and we could gradually become friends on the basis of different, but equally valid, kinds of knowledge.

Corbett: see Ryan above. I’d ask him about his previous (unsuccessful) experiences as a saloon keeper and as an army officer.

Cuchillo: I’d need to be Proper and Detached because he might try to seduce me or rob me of my life’s savings.

Cudlip: oh yes, potential for friendship there. I would (secretly) teach him how to read and write, and he’d teach me how to shoot and ride. We would talk about our respective failures and dreams. We would find ways of fighting baddies together. I’d be at C’s side when he marries Ben.

Enough already. Wish I knew tow to make cuts in posts not originating from me.

I guess each slash fan can situate themselves at one (or more!!!) point(s) along the continuum between identification and desire (BEING Rowdy and FANCYING Rowdy). It would be great if people could reveal a little of where they stand.

Myself, I’d like to BE (in this order) Ryan, Corbett, and Rowdy. I used to want to be Gil Favor but soon grew out of it. I would like a night or two with Corbett and a longer fling with Rowdy, but wouldn’t throw myself into any river if they said no.

My objects of desire tend to be female (writer spares the audience a detailed description of desired interactions with Lauren Bacall and Marlene Dietrich)

In German they say “ein Bisschen bi / schadet nie”, in Italian they say “un pochino bisessuale / non potra’ mai fare male”, and is there an English equivalent? A little bi/ won’t make you die?

bleak-nomads:

Posting meta about my ship/fic but I think a lot of solitudinum is actually so fraught for Blondie and I feel for him a lot.

Like he essentially gives himself up to Angel Eyes with half a death wish and not knowing what will happen. And then they have this sort of awful brutal sex after they don’t kill each other that really leaves Blondie wondering what the hell he’s done with himself.

I think a lot about the space between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 (which I think must have been a few months) and how hard it must have been on Blondie. Like he got what he wanted (the gold) but really, he didn’t want any of it. And he was left with no sense of purpose after that really, and just sort of turned back to what he knew out of…lack of direction.

Have re-read the 5 chapters.What I focused on this time was the two men’s total awareness of how bleak their lives are, and their lack of desire for change. Except for “keeping the other person around”, because each of them sees the other as emptier and dryer than himself.

You said in another post that you have invested quite a bit emotionally in this story. Trying to understand where exactly the investment is – in seeing how two nasty pieces of work can, very gradually, come to unveil a tiny bit of human need for closeness? In exploring how it is possible to give a little bit of oneself through violent sex? (Not abusive, because consensual. Still violent and painful in all ways). The story is dark (hic sunt leones) but fascinating. Your emotions in writing it even more so.

deafchildcrossing:

theopinionatedartist:

skeletree:

hungrylikethewolfie:

inkdot:

This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So – what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses – everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while.  But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not.  Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.

This post is one of those things that I will reblog every time it appears on my dash.  This is so important, and no one ever tells you about it.

I almost didn’t read this but then I did and I’m really glad that I did.

Super important

Tldr: The reason clothes never “looked right on you” is because models and celebrities always had their clothes tailored to fit them perfectly.

Great idea (and I agree that someone who can alter clothes is your #3 resource after a trusty plumber and a trusty electrician), but what a ghastly waste of time to have everything you own altered to perfection. One wouldn’t have time to read the newspaper, let alone pursue hobbies and other involving activities.