“Were there any straight people in this period of history?”
“Well…obviously
speaking, there must have been some people that nowadays we would
describe as ‘straight’, but we have to be very careful about applying
modern standards of sexuality to the past. I’m sure if you asked anybody
at the time if they were straight, they would have been very confused.
And there’s something quite dangerous about forcing identities onto
people who might not consider themselves that way. You also need to keep
in mind that some things that today would seem ‘straight’ to us – like
getting married, having children, etc. – were just the way things were
back then. Nobody would have thought twice about doing that, including
non-straight people. And there were plenty of people who undoubtedly got
married, had very intensely emotional connections with their spouse,
but then went off to go see their lover. Again, sexuality is a very
complex thing, so I wouldn’t presume to state definitively that anybody
was ‘straight’, and especially not without good, solid evidence that
they were exclusively heterosexual. To presume otherwise would not only
be making a lot of assumptions, it might even just promote harmful,
overdone stereotypes about what makes someone ‘have’ to be straight, you
know? So, yes, technically speaking there were, but I don’t see any
reason to specifically consider straight people historically.”
When you guys have visited potential apartments, what kind of questions did you ask besides the basics like what rent and utilities include?
Here are questions I didn’t ask but should have: what does the basement look like?
What measures are taken to secure the building ?
Are the walls thin? Brief info of who lives in the building. Are they college kids? People that work through the day? Elderly? Is it a mix? Where does the garbage go?
Can I pay rent bi-weekly? What kind of fuses does the apartment use? (My fuse box is in the basement. If I blow a fuse I have to replace it myself. They screw until the box. All of which I didn’t know until it happend and I was sitting in the dark suddenly)
Who do I call for repairs? (If it’s a private rental) Am I allowed to paint the walls? Is there any additional storage? Do you do regular pest control?
count the outlets, ask about recycling policies, ask if there’s a noise restriction (nothing loud after midnight, everything goes on the weekend, etc)
LAUNDRY FACILITIES Definitely ask about security Whether subletting is allowed (esp if you’re in college and might want to sublet for the summer) If you have a car, whether there’s parking/how much it costs What kind of heating/AC there is Procedure/response time for any maintenance How mail/packages are received/protected from theft (seriously people stealing your packages can be a huge problem) What kind of verification of your salary will they want, and in what circumstances will they accept a guarantor instead? Whether the apartment is furnished
Assuming you are in the middle of looking at/choosing between places: When does the lease start? Are you going to give preference to people based on when they can move in? Whether groups of a certain number of people get preference Really anything about who they prioritize for applications, it can save you a lot of trouble in trying to apply to places you’ll never get into
not something for asking the realtors, necessarily, but important rights you should be aware of as a tenant:
when and for what reasons are your landlords allowed to enter your home? how much of a notice should they give you before entering?
can the landlord make modifications to your home or apartment without your approval? to what extent?
what are the options and conditions for breaking your lease early if there’s an emergency? (this is ESPECIALLY important for anyone moving to a new state/considerable distance where you are not able to visit the apartment/home before you rent – students get taken advantage of ALL THE TIME with this shit)
if your first or last month at the property is a partial stay (i.e. you move in on july 15th, and rent is typically due on the first) make sure you don’t pay the full first month’s rent before you know the area laws! in many states, you are only legally required to pay for the time you are occupying the property
is renter’s insurance necessary? many apartments want at least 30k coverage, which can run a couple hundred dollars extra per year
are the landlords/property management liable for crimes on the property? for example, if your car was broken into. if not GET RENTER’S INSURANCE
-ask if there’s any property upkeep you can do to get a bit off the rent (aka, can they take 100$ off the monthly rent if you maintain the lawns/garden, etc.)
-ask if there’s been any consistent/frequent trouble with electricity/internet connectivity/cable if you have it
-what KIND of electricity?
-what kind of heating (hot water/electric)
-how secure is the neighborhood (if you don’t know)
-ANY PLUMBING ISSUES? check ALL the fucking taps, the showers, EVERYTHING WITH WATER to make sure it all works right.
Probably already covered in the heating aspect but – check the windows/window frames. I’ve now lived in two separate places that have had wooden frames – one with single pane windows and the other the frames had warped so much that in two rooms there was a considerable gap between the window and the frame when the window was “shut”
Landlord access (if it’s not a live in landlord) is a biggie – I’ve been hit by this before and have heard of worse cases too. Make sure you hold them accountable to what they put in the contract.
And talking of contracts – do not sign anything without reading it thoroughly, twice. I repeat – DO. NOT. SIGN. ANYTHING. WITHOUT. READING. IT. TWICE. And if you don’t understand something or agree with it, bring it up BEFORE you sign. My mother instilled that in me when I was a kid and it stuck. Luckily, as my second landlord tried to rush me through some dodgy paperwork once…
Before you move in, try to really inspect the place for things that need fixing or repairing or repainting (because even though they may have fixed up the place, they may not have done it well). If you see anything wrong tell the landlord right away but also make sure to take photos of it and document it just in case the landlord never has it fixed or they never fix it properly. So when it’s time for you to move out, you can show that the damage was already there when you moved in and shouldn’t be taken out of your deposit. Because they will look for any little thing that will allow them to dock from your deposit.
Last weekend, I went to see the off-Broadway production of “Hadestown”, a 1920s-esque folk opera retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice. That’s a lot of elements for one show, but yes, really. And it works. It’s based on a 2010 album by Anaïs Mitchell, which you can listen to here, but which is fairly different from the show as it exists now.
It is the best thing I have seen/heard/read in ages, and I want everyone I know to see it immediately so that I can talk about it with more people. Which I realize is a problem, because a) most of you don’t live in NYC, and b) it’s only running until the end of the month. So! Let me tell you about it.
The Orpheus/Eurydice plot plays out fairly close to how it does in the myth: we see them meet, fall in love through Orpheus’s music, Eurydice descends to the Underworld, Orpheus chases after her, they convince Hades and Persephone to let them leave – with, of course, the caveat that they only escape if Orpheus doesn’t look back – and then the tragic ending. The biggest change is in how important the Hades/Persephone relationship and myth is to this play; they become at least co-leads, if not the central figures.
The setting does a lot of work, though it’s more in feel and symbolism than plot points. Orpheus is the great musician, still – but he’s also a penniless romantic that is not particularly concerned with figuring out how to support himself and his new wife, which is a problem in the Depression-esque “Hard Times” of this story. His eventual look back that loses Eurydice – I don’t want to spoil too much, but whew, the show has no sympathy for him. It’s absolutely savage. In the first act, he’s strongly paralleled to Persephone. She seems to be the same sort of feckless dreamer as Orpheus, and Amber Gray, her actress, plays Persephone as a drunken flapper girl who treats summer like an unending party with her as the star. Here’s a photo.
Hades, on the other hand, is the god of work and railroads and industry and factories; “Who makes work for idle hands?” he sings at one point, and yes, he is also much more of a Devil figure here than in the original Greek myth. His underworld is a place where dead souls endlessly build a wall – there’s no particular need for a wall, you see, it’s work simply for the sake of work.
We build the wall to keep out of the enemy, Hades tells his followers, in a catechism-like song, and then asks, “What do we have that they should want?”
The response is: “We have a wall to work upon! We have work and they have none And our work is never done My children, my children And the war is never won The enemy is poverty And the wall keeps out the enemy And we build the wall to keep us free.”
(YES I KNOW. But this song was written in 2010 and is not actually about the Trump campaign, despite any and all horrifying similarities.) Here’s a link to the show’s version of this song, which everyone should absolutely listen to.
In this version of the story, Eurydice does not so much die as sell her soul to escape hunger and cold – that’s her belting out the final verse of Why We Build the Wall, zealous in her temporary seduction by the underworld’s affluence. She and Persephone are both quite explicitly creatures kept in gilded cages, trading freedom for luxury. And they are both, in different ways, furious about the world that took away their choices. They both feel lied to by the men they’re in a relationship with (this show really has no sympathy for men in general, it’s amazing). The difference between them is that Eurydice still has hope for Orpheus, while Persephone hates Hades in the way that only comes from love that’s died.
However, Persephone is after all a goddess and vastly more powerful, and when Eurydice and Orpheus’s story has ended, hers still goes on, repeating its summer/winter cycle forever. It’s ambiguous as to how complicit she is in the humans’ fates; there’s more than a tinge of A Midsummer Night’s Dream here, the supernatural creatures playing out their own cold war through the proxy of hapless mortals. Persephone loudly announces her hatred for the underworld and Hades throughout the show, but her constant use and pushing of alcohol called to my mind the tempting forgetfulness of Styx. In one song she sings to a nameless soul, half-promising and half-mocking:
“Come here, brother, let me guess It’s the little things you miss Spring flowers, autumn leaves Ask me, brother, and you shall receive. Or maybe these just ain’t enough Maybe you’re looking for some stronger stuff I got a sight for the sorest eye When’s the last time you saw the sky?”
After all, what stops you from escaping more than a little false relief?
The casting is diverse – both Eurydice and Persephone are mixed race black women, in another parallel – and all of the acting was amazing. Nabiyah Be (Eurydice) does so much with tiny facial expressions that felt like they shouldn’t carry out to the whole theater, but she was absolutely magnetizing. And I haven’t even had a chance to mention Hermes (Chris Sullivan)! He, along with the three Fates, works as narrator and storyteller and Greek (ha) chorus, and is also fantastic. Everyone was! I desperately want more people to see this, mainly for selfish reasons including but not limited to: they will write interesting meta for me to read, they will produce a cast album, they will make this the next big theater fandom.
I know it’s a bit pointless for me to recommend this, since again most of you probably won’t be able to see it, but I can’t help it but do so. It’s just so good! If you have an chance, absolutely check it out.
It’s basically a massive database full of high-quality images of different hairstyles. I mean, look at all the options in that sidebar (and part of it’s cut off):
In total they have 976 pages of hairstyles with about 17 styles each, that’s about 16592 hairstyles to look at.
Given that I think “My Immortal” is a troll (with the reason generally being that author Tara references both Marty McFly and TOM BOMBADIL), I just reread it and I’m astounded by the effort put into it.
The spelling and grammar gets steadily worse over the course of the story, messing up simple words and even the main character’s name (variations on Ebony include Enoby, Enony, Eboby, and my favorite Enopby). The author gives frequent shoutouts in the A/N at the beginning of each chapter to someone called Raven, who she considers a friend and apparently functions as a beta. In chapter 16, Tara severs ties with Raven, expels/murders Raven’s character Willow, and changes Ebony’s full name to Ebony Dark’ness Dementia TARA Way. It’s suggested that they fought because Tara stole Raven’s poster of Gerard Way. By chapter 17, they appear to have made up and Willow is brought back with no further explanation.
The plot, of course, is just insane, but the story was obviously being read; Tara begins each chapter furiously ranting about “flamerz” leaving bad reviews, terribly misspelled. At one point, Ebony was referred to as a Mary Sue and she immediately tried to shut that down, citing “Satanism” and “depression” as flaws. She held each new chapter hostage, demanding a certain number (usually 5) good reviews before she would update. Assuming the spelling and grammar mistakes were intentional, the natural progression of them getting worse and worse is incredible. The difference between Tara’s A/Ns and Raven’s edited text is also astounding, although chapter 16, during their supposed rift, is not noticeably more poorly written than the chapters immediately preceding and following it.
The misspellings of character names and general slipups get worse and worse to the point that once, “Enopby” is referred to as “Tara”, and at another point, “TaEnby”, further to emphasize that Ebony is, in fact, the most obvious self insert in the history of literature. The reference to Marty McFly (he appears at the end of chapter 35 to spirit Ebony into the future) confounds me; Tara does not seem like she’d been aware of pop culture enough to have seen “Back to the Future”, given that she describes “The Nightmare Before Christmas” as this serious, depressing, Adult movie. She’s young enough to consider “he put his thingy into my tool” an accurate description of sex. Further, she references Tom Bombadil, a character in “Lord of the Rings” who I believe just shows up and sings for a while and is strongly implied to be God and then disappears, not really relevant to anything. He’s not even in the movies. Would Tara Gilesbie have read “Lord of the Rings” when she admits she’s never read the Harry Potter books?
Read through that lens (that this was an elaborate hoax), can you believe the rest of it was so organically terrible? Even now, 10+ years after the fact, no one can agree on whether this story is a troll, and until anyone finds out who Tara Gilesbie really is, it’s going to be impossible to know for sure. This is just crazy to me.
I have done extensive digging on this subject, and there is a lot more to My Immortal than meets the eye. Read as a troll, this story is a brilliant piece of satire on fan fiction. It incorporates so many cliches of the genre, especially those from the early to mid 2000′s. The obviously self-inserted Mary-Sue (mentioned above) along with unnecessary and unexplained crossovers, nonsensical sex scenes, and allusion to scene culture and pop punk music. Not to mention the story outside the story, Tara and Raven’s falling out, critiquing the culture of A/N’s and reviews. The tropes and cliches are far too obvious and overplayed to be sincere. I am a true believer that Tara was not only a troll, but a genius of satire. After all, if it was truly so bad, it would not have survived mixed in with ten years of equally terrible fan fiction. The legend of this story is so *ehem* immortal it has sparked heated debate in the online community for years, and was even made into a web series. (https://vimeo.com/70381882) Whether you believe it was satire or not, there is something about My Immortal that is inherently fascinating. Even if it was not her intention, Tara has created the bad fan fiction. It is a perfect storm of chaotic, nonsensical drama spiraling around the least original character ever written. Story lines are dropped and picked up again seemingly at random, characters and names are inconsistent to the point of being unintelligible, and there is no consistent overarching plot. In a sense, it is the anti-story, because it so decidedly defies every literary rule in the book. Either we are drawn to My Immortal as one watches a car wreck in awe, or because it satirizes the worst aspects of every story we have ever read. Regardless, the legacy of My Immortal will live on, either as a warning, or a work of pure genius.
Oh my god I just thought of a great idea for a short story!
And when I say a “great idea” I mean “I am literally dropping every other story that I’m working on in order to write/complete/publish this within a manner of days because everyone needs this story in their lives”.
A deaf pirate and her siren girlfriend.
That’s it. That’s all you need. Oh sure, there’s more, but that’s all I’m giving you because that’s literally all you need.
It will be a short story. But it will be wonderful. I am serious when I say that I can have this published within a week.
I finally reached 5000 followers *quietly cheers* and @strongity asked me a day before that happened to maybe do a tutorial thing on eyes and anatomy… So I did my best. I have kind of moved past using methods to draw (like using boxes to create shapes), just because I’m so used to drawing people. It kind of became a tips thing rather than a step by step guide, but hopefully it will help some of you!
sparksoffandommagic 