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mishapen-dear · 3 months

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Cant sleep so im thinking about ayhalo

I think its like. one sided. qaypierre WOULD smooch that demon and take him on dates. qbad would not recognize anything as a romantic gesture. aypierre could throw a bouquet of chocolate roses at him and bad would just be like ! thank you :}

like they love each other, absolutely. they TRUST each other, to the point where i’d even say it gets in the way of bad seeing aypierre as anything more than a good friend. that’s his guy. The dude always in his corner. Friend resource label: team mate (coparent) (down to help kidnap people). bad doesnt do classic romantic relationships- all of his relationships are INCREDIBLY queer, but the closest he usually gets to what others read as romance is a classic chewtoy4chewtoy dynamic. He LOVES to fuck with people and he loves to get fucked with and if there’s a nice jawline or pretty muscles included?? huge bonus !!

he’s got something- not kinder, with aypierre? not calmer, either, but stable, maybe. pierre has proven, over and over again, that he’s on bad’s side. Spying on tubbo, encouraging bad’s pranks, the kidnapping- i can’t call it a reliable dynamic, not with how paranoid bad is, even when he trusts, but there is still a feeling of understanding that, wherever pierre’s limits are for when he cant support bad (or genuinely turn against him), it hasnt been reached yet

aypierre, on the other hand, i dont know enough about to be absolutely sure but there are some Vibes. ironically, i think hes feeling like his relationships are unreliable. max was going to have their baby, and then he wasnt, and then he left him, then max fucking died. plus whatever is happening with him and ayrobot, which probably leaves him feeling like he cant rely on Himself. like he had, if not a little crush on bad, at least some Interest in him, before. as well as several islanders. i remember the days of the Bed Threat.

but thats part of it, too? because those flings didnt have that emotional connection, and i always got the sense that he started looking for that with maximus, to Love and Be Loved rather than pure lust. To care about someone, genuinely, and be cared about in return. but he didnt get that with the flings, and We know that max was using him, but i dont know if he did, but maybe he had a feeling about it and maybe he also had a feelinf about maximus’ feelings towards bad and maybe- there’s something about that? A little push of not-spite-not-projection onto bad.

because bad IS that reliability, right now. he’s a fucking gremlin. a bastard. a prankster silly guy. he trusts aypierre and aypierre trusts him and they dont share everything but so often, when it comes down to it, it is them against the world. them in the corner, caught, aypierre shouting about kissing as a cover for their crimes while bad runs giggling away from him.

#qsmp character analysis #qsmp shipping #<- because i DO think bad would be down to ~fornicate~#but i dont think pierre drifts into that chewtoy zone enoufh for bad to get that Obsession #theyre kidnapping and escaping buddies !! who share food and secrets and strategies !!#but bad would do the same with the other french yknow #god i could go on for YEARS about how queer qbad’s relationships can get that demon is full of LOVE and that love is QUEER #i could make an argument that even his parenting style is affected by his queerness #in the way that he takes on all required roles for the eggs and cares for them SO MUCH #and SO OBVIOUSLY #as a dad/uncle that you dont often get to see in fiction #to the point where he is still in some way seen as a mother figure #but thats a whole different post #anyway this is part-analysis and part-silly written at ass-o’#clock in the morning #if i remember ill come back to tag the ship for filtering purposes but i dont wanna throw ‘i think its one sided and exacerbated by grief #and general yearning for love/stability in an ever changing world’ when prople are just tryin to make em kiss #i respect the kisser causers have fun yall im enjoying seeing it #god i need to sleep #ayhalo

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prettylittlelyres · 5 years

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This Still Happens: Gordon Benn and Religion

Ffion shrugs Scott's hand off her shoulder and snaps at him. "Don't fucking touch me! And don't tell me how to feel about Gordon disrespecting my God!"

Oh, for fuck's sake. I scoff. "Ffion," I say, as if she's three and I'm thirty-three, "It's only disrespectful if the thing I'm talking about is worthy of respect. Else, it's just called talking."

I've passed 11,000 words on this draft of This Still Happens, and I'm getting near to the end of Chapter Two, which is where things really take an awful turn.

We're seeing a really nasty side to Gordon in this chapter. He's hurting inside, and he's lashing out at other people--mainly Sophie and Ffion so far--because of it. That's in no way OK, and I'm in no way condoning it, but I do think it needs talking about.

As a Queer Catholic, I have a really complicated relationship with God--as do most people--but I've often felt like I can't do the religion thing and be Sapphic. Luckily I've always been aware that being Queer isn't smething I can change--it's just the way I am--so I've never been in such a place where I've tried to "fix" myself in order to feel like a proper Catholic... but its gone the other way. For a long time I felt like I couldn't believe in God, because I was always told to pray for the the homophobic bullying I've experienced to stop... and then it didn't. Instead of blaming the adults I should have been able to trust, I blamed God, and decided I didn't want to know Him.

If He would allow such horrible things to happen, why would I? In later years I've come to realise that it wasn't God who allowed it to happen, but authority figures--teachers, parents--and that God never would allow it to happen.

This is a major reason why I don't believe God to be omnipotent. Omnibenevolent, yes, and omniscient, yes. He knows who I am and He loves me--He made me that way--and He knows what happened... but He couldn't have stopped it. Humans do bad things to each other, and it's gone beyond a level God can control. I hate that, I really do. But it's not God's fault, and through Him I've been able to find better acceptance of myself as a biromantic lesbian, far more than I would ever have found growing up in the house, the town, the environment I grew up in.

My approach to Catholicism is by no means traditional. I don't go to Church, I'm not baptised or confirmed, and I don't believe in the omnipotent God most Catholics--for example, my Grandma--do (did, in Grandma's case, may she rest in peace). But I do feel it gives me a sense of protection, stops me from feeling isolated, and stops me from feeling powerless in times of trouble. I pray at home, I pray at university, and I pray when I'm out and about, for safety and happiness for my friends and me. I feel God in nature, God by the sea, God in the forests where I walk, and I feel better about the world and the people in it. God wants what's best for us, His children, and He would give it to us if we could. But most effort must come from us--people--because there's only so much God can do.

We must be the ones to seek happiness and to create it for other people. We must be kind. We must not lash out, even when we are in pain; that just creates so much more, pushing the world even further from the one God wants us to inhabit.

Gordon takes a different view. and we see that in the way he interacts with Ffion McDade, a Baptist girl in his class, and Sophie Wainwright, his friend of many years, herself a devout Roman Catholic.

"Soph, come on. Be reasonable about this," I say, leaning on my upturned hockey stick as Chris hands out bibs and Sophie pretends to be intrigued by the patchy grass.. "Chris loves you so, so much. Please don't throw that away on my account. I'm OK, I promise. He made a bit of a silly mistake, but, honestly, I think he was just a bit… knocked for six by my coming out. Given time, he'll be every bit as accepting as everyone else. You'll see."

Sophie huffs, and thumps the ground with the curved end of her stick. "That's only part of it," she mutters, "There's a lot more to it than you know, more to it than you can understand. By treating you like crap for being gay—the way God made you, by the way—Chris is saying God made a mistake. And I can't be OK with that, Gordon. You know I can't."

I shrug. "I don't care. I don't believe in God."

"Yeah? Well, I do," Sophie says, hooking her thumb around the chain of her necklace and showing me her crucifix, as if I needed reminding that she's Catholic, like most people in Chase Valley. I'm constantly being reminded of how fucking Catholic everyone is. Pisses me off no end.

Sophie sets her jaw, and speaks through gritted teeth. "So I'm sure you'll forgive me for being uncomfortable with Chris turning his back on you for the way God made you."

I snort with laughter. "I don't think he'll be turning his back on me any time soon, Soph. That's kind of the point."

"For fuck's sake, Gordon, that's my boyfriend you're talking about!" she snaps, putting her hands on her hips and scowling at me with hard black eyes. "Can you try and take this seriously? This isn't easy for me!"

"Fine," I say, "I'm very sorry your boyfriend's a little bit homophobic. But I'm fine. And he's apologised. And he's trying to be better. So I don't know why you're getting so pissed off about all this. It's not like it affects you."

Sophie rolls her eyes and mutters heavenwards. "You have no fucking clue what you're talking about, do you?" she says, turning her eyes back on me.

I shake my head. "Apparently not."

We're seeing everything from Gordon's point of view in Chapter Two. That's the benefit--and the drawback--of the first-person style. Although we get a very clear picture of what Gordon's thinking and feeling, and therefore a better understanding of why he acts the way and does the things he does... we don't get that for other characters, because nor does Gordon. Something we'll learn about Gordon in coming chapters is that he's very set in his ways, very determined to hold onto his views, and little ready to listen to those that differ. He rejects the idea of religion because he thinks it makes people closed-minded, but never stops to think that he himself is closed-minded. And that's his main problem.

Gordon won't see Soph's point of view because it involves a belief in God. What Gordon doesn't know--because nobody has told him, and he's only seeing the world through his own eyes--is that Sophie is bisexual, and has been struggling to reconcile this with her faith. A few days ago, she went to Confession, and confided all this in Father Matthew... expecting ostracism... but finding acceptance. Father Matthew tells her it's OK to be Sapphic, because God made her that way... but Gordon doesn't know. He expects the same rejection of his gayness that Sophie expected for her bisexuality, and because he deliberately steers clear of the Church... which means he never gets to know what is actually being said there.

Much as Gordon might want to think he's super-open-minded due to his militant atheism, he's actually closing his mind off to the idea that there's a higher power who loves him the way he is. While he has no problem accepting himself as gay or anything else--any other aspect of his identity or personality--he creates for himself an extra sense of persecution on top of that which he already experiences as societal homophobia. It's a shame, really. It turns him into this angry person who won't see other people's viewpoints, and picks arguments where there really aren't any.

As a result, he misses out on friendships, pushing people away because he expects them to hate him. And while sometimes he's right about that, he's often wrong. By avoiding talking to Ffion--who is proud to be Christian, proud to be Baptist, and feels at home in her Church--he never gets to know her properly. Unfortunately, Ffion's particular Church community is very scornful of the LGBT Community, and she ends up seeing him in a similar way, as someone to be avoided, and so she too never says a friendly word to him. There's this massive divide between them, created by their expectations of each other, which neither of them can surpass until they start to question those.

Because they're both so closed-minded, they can't do that on their own; it takes the work of their mutual friends and the creation of some desperately horrible circumstances for them each to realise the other isn't so bad. There's a friendship coming out of this, but not for a while.

Gordon has to change dramatically first, just as much as Ffion does. Can he overcome imagined prejudices in order to save and create friendships in the face of real ones?

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postpostpostpostpostpost · 3 years

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Maeve Brennan’s “An Attack of Hunger”

Maeve Brennan’s short story, “An Attack of Hunger” draws, largely, from her personal life and, more specifically, the relationship between her parents. In the story, Brennan writes about how Hubert and the patriarchal society of Ireland at the time had turned Rose into a hollow, idle shell of what she once was and could have become. The theme of society stifling the eccentricities and passions of people and, more specifically, women was common in Brennan’s work and she combatted this in her personal life quite vigorously as well.

Brennan, like John, similarly left her family in order to pursue a higher purpose which she has mentioned had caused her great guilt. This is most likely due to her resentment of her father, Bob, as well as her fear of leaving her mother, Una alone with him. She has described her father as “queer”, mad, and envious and has blamed him for being selfish, putting unnecessarily heavy burdens on Una by either being in jail or on the run for much of Maeve’s young childhood in Ireland (Enright).

In “An Attack of Hunger”, Brennan’s style is sharp and direct, cutting out any unnecessary plot points or characters. She writes Rose’s character as flat and featureless as possible so as to accentuate how hollow she has become, describing her as able to make “the decisions she made about the food she put on the table and about various matters about the house” which were “dictated by habit and the the amount of housekeeping money Hubert allowed her” (Brennan, 148-149). Every aspect of Rose’s personality is written by Brennan to be in relation to either her husband or her son with everything she does being directly for Hubert and/or John. Rose was lonely, stuck in a life without anyone loving her and without anyone to love, causing her to have guilty thoughts such as “Oh, if only Hubert had died, John would never have left me, never, never, never. He would never have left me alone…” (Brennan, 148). However, the only time when Rose acts against her husband’s wishes is when, after an argument with Hubert in which he blames her for John leaving due to her tediousness and coddling, she leaves the house in order to search for her her son. Even then, though, she changes her mind, coming back, hoping that one day Hubert might die and John might have his own parish and, then, she might be able to cook and clean for him there again. She could then be known as a “holy woman”, admired as a devoted mother by the community, always wearing black clothing (Brennan, 170). Brennan describes Rose’s hopeful but delusional thoughts writing, “There was no doubt what she foresaw would happen, and when the day came she would pack up, sell out, and go straight to John, and after that it would be roses for the two of them all the way, roses, roses all the way.” (Brennan, 170).

Brennan described her mother as being strong and having “the voice you can say anything in … infinite, always changing, endlessly responsive, and capable of containing anything, and everything” (Enright). Therefore, it likely angered Brennan to see society as well as her commandeering father soften the edges and muffle the personality of her mother. This caused her to have an almost misanthropic mistrust of society and to live her life in a constant protest of gender norms and cultural norms.

This protest began healthily, as she challenged norms in her writing as well as personal life. Fellow writer William McPherson described her as “a woman of legendary but fading Irish beauty, spectacular red hair and marvelously eccentric intelligence” (Enright) . She smoked cigarettes in public and swore and once, when no one came to take her order at a bar in New York, she dropped a sugar bowl onto the floor (Harty). During the late 50s and throughout the 60s, Brennan gained a reputation for her writing and was, largely, able to escape the term ‘Irish writer’ critics tended to try to pin on her. She tried to avoid the classic charming nature of Irish writers’ stories, claiming to dislike the “bog and thunder variety of stuff that has been foisted abroad in the name of Ireland” (O’Toole).

Her pursuit of a life spent in protest later became an unhealthy obsession, however, as through the 70s and 80s she descended into alcoholism, homelessness and mental illness. She began to write less and typically slept in the women’s lavatory of the New Yorker building. Eventually, she was found wandering the streets of New York City and sent to a nursing home where she died of a heart attack in 1993, at age 76. Before she died, Brennan seemed unaware of her reality, saying, “I write every day in the Irish Press and get paid,” (Enright). Finn O’Toole, a writer for the Irish Times later wrote that her life was “a vague but powerful anxiety about how women’s lives could get lost” (O’Toole).

Brennan’s hope was to be the anti-Rose, someone who would venture into the world and succeed, despite her eccentricities being in plain view even with society constantly disapproving. Although she achieved this goal and produced a great body of impactful writing, it ultimately proved to be her undoing, causing her to disappear and, unfortunately, largely become forgotten, like Rose. “An Attack of Hunger”, written in Brennan’s unwaveringly direct style is still as important in today as it was in 1962, exploring the ways in which society is able to deter one from achieving their full potential as well as how one might avoid such a fate like Brennan did herself.

Works Cited

“An Attack of Hunger.” The Springs of Affection: Stories, by Maeve Brennan and Anne

Enright, The Stinging Fly Press, 2016.

Enright, Anne. “Anne Enright: In Search of the Real Maeve Brennan.” The Guardian, Guardian

News and Media, 21 May 2016, www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/21/anne-

enright-real-maeve-brennan-new-yorker

Harty, Patricia. “Anne Enright's ‘Springs of Affection’ for Maeve Brennan.” Irish America, 10

June 2016, irishamerica.com/2016/06/anne-enrights-springs-of-affection/.

O'Toole, Fintan. “Fintan O'Toole on Maeve Brennan: No Fairy Tale Ending.” The Irish Times,

The Irish Times, 13 Jan. 2017, www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/fintan-o-toole-on-

maeve-brennan-no-fairy-tale-ending-1.2934677.

#Maeve Brennan #An Attack of Hunger #Ireland #Irish Literature #Book Review

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