The thing is, how do you claim that the sexual puritanism of a certain kind of youth comes only from having been intensively surveilled and offered very little freedom except for being online as a kid, when that same certain kind of youth also espouses ideas about what constitutes "good" / "unproblematic" values in media, that are basically aligned to the philippians 4:8 style of media criticism (whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is truthful, whatever is virtuous etc etc think on these things). Moreover, their entire style of media criticism is basically like when my youth pastor sat me down and tried to explain that brave new world is a sinful novel because it is depressing and lacking in hope which reflects the writer's deep hopelessness from his immersion in sin. Have we not heard similar arguments advanced against tragic/hopeless novels albeit with the language of sin stripped from it and instead replaced with the language of "necessity" and "ethics"?
In my mind, you cannot separate the sexual puritanism of a certain kind of youth from this desire for only hopeful, uplifting, "wholesome" fiction, because they come from the same instinct and root cause i.e. the ideological requirements of fundamentalist christianity which visualises a frictionless, conflictless, pure and good and virtuous utopia that is also distinctly sexless and chaste (as god intended!). A better question to ask is how did such a distinctly Christian form of media criticism and reading become the dominant strain even in ostensibly progressive spaces? And that, I think, requires a much deeper investigation of what went on in the classroom, where kids learned how to read books; a deeper investigation of how families impart knowledge and the influences that went on in there; the deliberate Christian campaigns to get back into and influence schools through being on boards etc; the ways in which certain forms of thinking spread cross-culturally across the internet (and also, imo, the ways in which conservative Christians have learned to mask their rhetoric in ostensibly progressive garb and in which liberal Christians have served as a kind of vanguard in sanitising this rhetoric). There is no grand unified theory of the puriteen, but if we have to make one, surely since they're replicating Moral Majority talkpoints, we should start by studying the people who birthed the Moral Majority?
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Just wanted to tell you that your recent art of Machete looking after Vasco while he's sick reminded me of Nights at the Villa by Gogol. Only a small fragment of it survived, probably because it's straight up author's diary about falling in love for the first time with a man who is already dying. It's such a beautiful little piece and your art really reminded me of it's vibes. Anyway, I'm mentally ill about russian literature and I love your dogs <3
The longing and lamenting quite something, poor guy.
It's not very long so I'm just going to put the whole thing under the cut ->
They were sweet and tormenting, those sleepless nights. He sat, ill, in the armchair. I was with him. Sleep dared not touch my eyes. Silently and involuntarily, it seems, it respected the sanctity of my vigil. Its was so sweet to sit near him, to look at him. For two nights already we have been saying "thou" to each other. How much closer he has become to me since then! He sat there just as before, meek, quiet, and resigned. Good God! With what joy, with what happiness I would have taken his illness upon myself! And if my death could restore him to health, with what readiness I would have rushed toward it!
-
I did not stay with him last night. I had finally decided to stay home and sleep. Oh, how base, how vile that night and my despicable sleep were! I slept poorly, even though I had been without sleep for almost a week. I was tormented by the thought of him. I kept imagining him, imploring and reproachful. I saw him with the eyes of my soul. I hastened to come early to him and felt like a criminal as I went. From his bed he saw me. He smiled with his usual angel's smile. He offered
his hand. He pressed mine lovingly.
"Traitor." he said, "You betrayed me."
"My angel," I said, "Forgive me. I myself suffered with your suffering. I was in torment all night. My rest brought me no repose. Forgive me!"
My meek one! He pressed my hand. How fully rewarded I was for the suffering that the stupidly spent night had brought me!
"My head is weary," he said. I began to fan him with a laurel branch. "Ah, how fresh and good," he said. His words were then… what were they? What would I have not given, what earthly goods, those despicable, those vile, those disgusting goods… no, they are not worth mentioning. You into whose hands will fall -if they will fall- those incoherent, fleebe lines, pallid expressions of my emotions, you will understand me. Otherwise they will not fall into your hands. You will understand how repulsive the entire heap of treasures and honors is that attracts those wooden dolls which are called people. Oh, with what joy, with what anger I could have trampled underfoot
and squashed everything that is bestowed by the mighty scepter of the Tsar of the North, if I only knew that this would buy a smile that indicated the slightest relief in his face.
"Why did you prepare such a bad month of May for me?" He said to me, awakening in his armchair and hearing the wind beyond the window-panes that wafted the aroma of the blossoming wild jasmine and white acacia, which mingled with the whirling rose petals.
-
At ten o'clock I went down to see him. I had left him there hours before to get some rest, to prepare [something] to him, to afford him some variety, so my arrival would give him more pleasure. I went down to him at ten o'clock. He had been alone for more than one hour. His visitors had long since left. The dejection of boredom showed on his face. He saw me. Waved his hand slightly.
"My savior." He said to me. They still sound in my ears, those words.
"My angel! Did you miss me?"
"Oh, how I missed you." He replied.
I kissed him on the shoulder. He offered his cheek. We kissed; he was still pressing my hand.
He did not like going to bed and hardly ever did. He preferred his armchair and the sitting position. That night the doctor ordered him to rest. He stood up reluctantly and, leaning on my shoulder, moved to his bed.
My darling! He weary glance, his brightly colored jacket, his slow steps- I can see it all, it is all before my eyes.
He whispered in my ear, leaning on my shoulder and glancing at the bed: "Now I'm a ruined man."
"We will remain in bed for only half an hour," I said to him, "and then we'll go back to your
armchair".
I watched you, my precious, tender flower! All the time when you were sleeping or merely dozing in you bed or armchair, I followed your movements and your moments, bound to you by some incomprehensible force.
How strangely new my life was then and, at the same time, I discerned in it a repetition of something distant, something that once actually was. But it seems hard to give an idea of it:
there returned to me a fresh, fleeting fragment of my youth, that time when a youthful soul seeks fraternal friendship with those of one's age, a decidedly juvenile friendship, full of sweet, almost
infantile trifles and mutual show of tokens of tender attachment; the time when it is sweet to gaze into each other's eyes, when your entire being is ready to offer sacrifices, which are usually
not even necessary. And all those feelings, sweet, youthful, fresh - alas! Inhabitants of a vanishing world - all these feelings returned to me. Good Lord! What for? I watched you, my precious, tender flower. Did this fresh breath of youth waft upon me only so that I might suddenly and irrevocably sink into even greater and more deadening coldness of feelings, so that I might become all at once older by a decade, so that I might see my vanishing life with even greater
despair and hopelessness? Thus does a dying fire send its flames up into the air, so that it might illuminate with its flickering the somber walls and then disappear forever.
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thinking about how as Aemond’s wife you are the model of perfection.
Your back is straight as you curtsy when you first meet him and hair neatly braided with fine jewels. Your voice is even and never waivers as you speak to him of your family and how grateful they are for this union.
You are intelligent and beautiful, the perfect wife.
It’s why Aemond hardly ever spends time with you.
He bears no ill will toward you, of course. There is no resentment or hatred to his lady wife, but there are no fond feelings either.
He knows of courting and romance, his mother taught him everything from a young age. The poor woman would hold her son’s hands tight and explain that a man must not only respect his wife, but truly cherish her. Love her in the eyes of gods and men. As he grew older he noticed the way his father would wave off her constant advice and concerns until the dreaded night where she was the only one defending him after he lost his eye.
But practice was one thing. When you were nothing but a concept. A figment of Aemond’s imagination when he was ten and marriage was only spoken of during his lessons. Before he lost his eye. Before he heard the ladies of the court whispering about his mutilation and before he watched a whore flinch at the sight of his scarring when Aegon dragged him to a brothel on his thirteenth name day.
He learned then that no matter how much he would love and worship his wife, it would not be returned.
Rather than attempt to force it (he was no brute and had no intentions of doing something so cruel) he simply let you be by yourself.
Yes you were married. You sat by one another at every meal and formal event and on the rare occasion he would even ask for your hand in a dance. But Aemond’s affections toward you were few and far to find.
But there were moments.
Where his icy facade would weaken and you found yourself able to slip through the cracks.
Alicent had told you of his “moments” when the engagement had been announced. The queen herself taking you by the hand as you walked through the garden and explaining gently of Aemond’s condition.
“There are times where he feels a great deal of pain because of the-” She paused, chewing on her cheek while trying to find the most inoffensive way to describe the tragedy that befell her son. “-incident he had as a child.”
You knew enough of it. Many rumors flew through court the day Aemond targaryen walked in with a patch on his eye after Laenor Velaryan’s funeral at driftmark. Some day it was from a sparring incident, others say it was a mark he bore from the first time he mounted the mighty vhaegar. Others say that the Rouge Prince Daemon Targaryen himself gave it to his younger cousin after crude words were exchanged behind closed doors.
You didn’t know what was the truth. Aside from the day the princeling got his scar, was the same he got his dragon.
A fair trade, some would say.
But they didn’t live with the attacks he did.
Nerve damage, is what the maester’s called it when you asked them for more information. His wound may have healed years prior but the prince would continue to live his life with constant bouts of mind-numbing pain brought on by the slightest touch or too sharp of a wind to his cheek.
“Senseless fits.” Aegon called it. When he heard about your curiosity about his brother’s condition he had all but cornered you late at night in the hall. “Anything will set him off and send him throwing a tantrum like a belligerent child. It’s quite entertaining.”
But there’s a moment where the elder brother frowns and you see a shred of concern in his eyes.
“He doesn’t like to be touched during those moments. It makes the pain worse. So if you’re trying to find some way to comfort him I’d recommend you do something else.”
What was ‘something else’ you learned, was simply being there.
Sitting by his side when he curled into himself, trembling fingers reaching out to grab yours and not complaining when his nails dig into the palm of your hand as he cries out in pain. When his breath evens out and the pain subsides, he crawls to you and presses his face to the crook of your neck. He’s far too tired to cover the gnarled scar covering the side of his face but you show no fear or disgust at the sight of it. Your fingers run through his hair, gently combing back the silver tresses and ignoring the tears that stain the shoulder of your gown.
The next morning your husband would wake in your arms and takes a moment to watch your peaceful expression and the way the morning sun kisses your skin.
That day Alicent notices her son sits closer to you at breakfast, speaking softly to you of something she cannot understand. But when she sees his hand reach out and grasp yours, she smiles.
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