#mfa musings

[bluedalahorse]

August and Rousseau are functionally the same character: the serious version

On Thursday evening, at my fanfic co-author’s encouragement, I posted about August and Rousseau being functionally the same character. This post was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but there’s always been a serious, liberal arts college analysis version of it lurking in my head. I decided to go ahead and share it because what is the point of rejoining tumblr if I can’t torture the world with my Young Royals meta? (Do we even call it meta anymore? I am Fandom Old.)

So anyway, I have now written too many words about how Rousseau the horse is a narrative shadow for August, and how horse tropes are used to communicate August’s character arc. My ~credentials~ are as follows: I’m currently doing a terminal degree in writing literature for children and teenagers, and I have re-read the Felicity Merriman American Girl Books more times than I can count. I was not a horse girl in childhood, despite my mother trying to get me to be one by buying me Breyers and an alarmingly technicolor Lisa Frank notebook with a horse on its cover. (For Not Being A Horse Girl reasons there may be some errors in equestrian terminology here, but I’m gonna do my best. I invite genuine Horse Girls to weigh in with their knowledge and insight.) I have more thoughts about August as a character than I know what to do with, to the point where those thoughts have in part inspired the critical thesis on justice and privilege in YA lit that I am going to write for my MFA. These thoughts here on tumblr are merely for a fannish intellectual experiment, however, so I will not be as aggressive with the MLA and the footnotes as I would be in thesis work.

While I am an American of Swedish descent who has celebrated her Scandinavian heritage since childhood, I am still very much an American and my native language is English. Most of my lit theory here is therefore informed by the Anglo-American Horse Girl tradition, which I know got imported to a lot of other countries in translation. At the same time, I am aware that there are Swedish Horse Girl books out there, and I do not know as much about where they overlap with the Anglo-American tropes and where they differ. If anyone has knowledge in this particular area, please feel free to chime in.

Before we begin, I feel it necessary to issue a few notes about content. The first and most obvious content note is that this meta deals with August’s character arc, so I will naturally mention his releasing of the video and his other toxic masculine behaviors that harm the people around him. I will also make reference to his drug addiction, mental health issues, and possible disordered eating. In addition, there will be discussion of abusive relationship dynamics and adults invading the privacy of teenagers with the goal of controlling their romantic, sexual, and reproductive futures (particularly in the context of a monarchy securing its lines of dynastic succession.) You have been warned.

TOPICS COVERED

Horses in Literature and their General Vibe

Cinematography and Film Language in Young Royals

August, Felice, and Sara

Bloodlines and the Line of Succession

What’s next for August and Rousseau?

Horse/Power

Horses have long been symbols of wealth, status, and nobility. While literature and folklore offer their fair share of ordinary workhorses, the prince on a fancy white horse is an iconic fairy tale image. Historically, the ability to maintain a stable full of horses, specifically bred for battle or fine riding, was (and still is) a privilege only the rich can afford. Among the Romans, the second highest ranked social group after the senatorial class were the equites, named for the fact that they were rich enough to own horses they could bring to war. Fast forwarding to the modern day Young Royals, we see the wealth of Hillerska on full display in the stables. Even Felice’s parents, who have plenty of money to burn, remind her how much they spent on Rousseau.

August, of course, defines himself by his status. When we first meet him, he’s always going on about his father’s estate, bragging about flying off to restaurants in France, separating out who is nouveau riche and who is ancien regime—and so on and so forth. So what? you may be saying. Plenty of Young Royals characters are wealthy and own land. Why single out August and make him the character shadowed by the horse, just because of his money? Probably because of the other ideas horses get associated with in popular media. Horses in fiction are often temperamental, but their humans often work to control and tame horses in spite of that. There’s a certain tension and troubledness to fictional horses that makes them dangerous. Rousseau is no exception to this—Felice and others have difficulty managing him. We know August has a temper that gets the better of him. We also know he’s obsessed with control, and the first person he tries to be strict and controlling with is himself.

To put it more briefly, horses in stories can be used to open up a lot of questions about wealth and power and how that power is, well, reined in. Thematically, having Rousseau as a shadow to August’s character arc is an obvious choice.

Framed by the Stable Doors

The cinematography of Young Royals visually links August and Rousseau from the very beginning of the series. As early on as episode 1.2, a shot of Sara taking Rousseau out for a trot is followed immediately by a shot of August out on a run. (Or maybe it happens in the opposite order? Help.) These moments mirror one another—both of them are scenes of a moment of discipline and exercise, underscored by tense background music. Throughout season 1, even when August and Rousseau aren’t paralleled by the editing, they are at least paralleled by the writing.

As we move into season 2, the shots of Rousseau become more constrained as the threat of prison looms over August’s head. Rousseau is almost always behind a fence or restricted by some other architectural features. The bars(?) of Rousseau’s stall door echo the bars of a jail cell, while the trailer belonging to the Worst Kind of Horse People (TM) suggests a police van taking August away after a future arrest. These scenes almost always include Sara somewhere, and she’s often having reaction faces. As others have noted, Sara doesn’t speak much, but these visual cues offer hints about her internal mental landscape while also foreshadowing her eventual role as the one who turns August over to law enforcement.

I’m inclined to read these “imprisoned horse” scenes as Sara having internal conflict about her relationship with August. On some level, she is attempting to grapple with the fact that they’re already doomed because of August’s prior actions with the video. I don’t necessarily think this means that Sara is always thinking these things consciously and in words. Maybe it’s just a sense of foreboding in the pit of her stomach. Instead of having Sara try to articulate this in any sort of literal way, my guess is that the YR production team wanted to convey this part of her arc through visual language and symbolism. I think it works, once you’ve decided to buy into the horse parallels.

Does this mean we’ve segued into talking about the girls now? Probably. Might as well gallop ahead…

Enter the Equestriennes

Even outside of Horse Girl books, women on horseback are a repeating motif in Western literature. As various academics will tell you, equestrian women occupy a complex and problematic (in the academic sense) space on the page. On one hand, riding horses confers status upon these women and gives them some freedom of movement. On the other hand, equestrian women are often being trained for the patriarchy in subtextual ways. One thesis I looked at explains how in Victorian literature, riding was often used to facilitate female characters’ interaction with men in ways that eventually lead to marriage. You also examine the common Horse Girl cliché of that one special teenage girl who knows how to calm down the impossible horse, and understand it as a little sister to the “I can fix him” romance genre. As bastion of literary analysis TVTropes points out, ponies and the Troubled But Cute Boyfriend sure do have a lot in common.

Young Royals knows the tropes, and it wants you to know that it knows them.

Felice Ehrencrona doesn’t want to be a horse girl. Felice’s mother wants her to ride, because riding is what archetypal rich girls from Hillerska do. Throughout season one, we see Felice struggling with her riding classes and being afraid of Rousseau. While she gains more confidence with the help of Sara, she never truly grows to love being around Rousseau (as we can see by the way she quickly abandons her hobby later.) Still, for a while, Felice maintains the public image of the happy equestrian by posting pictures of herself and Rousseau to her Instagram and making additional posts that say she’s in the stables when she isn’t. Felice’s mother, believing this to be true, is delighted—until in 1.3 it comes out that Sara has been riding Felice’s horse instead, and Felice’s positive relationship with Rousseau is just a facade.

What holds true for horses holds true for boys, too. Felice’s mother is constantly putting pressure on her about boys, specifically in the way she encourages Felice to pursue Wilhelm. The fact that Felice knows stuff about the line of succession and whose babies get what rank (something she explains to the beleaguered American Maddie) suggests that Mamma Ehrencrona isn’t just interested in Felice having a nice boyfriend, she’s actually bringing marriage and babies into it. Which… is a lot. It’s so “a lot” that Felice rebels against her mother at the end of 1.3 by hooking up with August.

Although Felice’s initial act is one of rebellion, she ends up trapped back in the same place she started from, where socioeconomic status and performative gendered nonsense is prized above all else. August, after all, is still from the nobility and still comes with all that baggage Felice is getting from her parents. Felice’s relationship with August is very bad, especially behind closed doors where he’s constantly questioning her about who she’s with and where she’s going. To Hillerska at large, however, they give off the impression of being the school power couple. During moments of characters scrolling there phones we can see that in addition to being seen together, they also included photos of themselves together on one another’s instagrams. This contrast between the image and the reality of Felice’s relationship with August echoes Felice’s selfies with Rousseau.

As for Sara… well, if you nodded along to what I said before about the special teenage girl who is the only one who can tame the troubled horse, you probably already know where I’m going with this. Sara and August’s relationship doesn’t really come out of nowhere. Rather, they’ve spent an entire season taking a step closer to one another, literally and figuratively, every few scenes. You know the cliché where the horse girl visits the troubled horse every day and gets a little bit closer each time until the horse finally trusts the girl enough to eat sugar cubes out of her hand? Yeah. Same rhythm/pacing as the Sara/August scenes, and it only gets more obvious in season 2. That scene where he’s having a panic attack and she calms him down? He is a scared horse. We’re all on the same page, right? I hope we’re all on the same page.

In some ways, it’s not a perfect analogy and doesn’t always match up in a one to one way. Most horse girl books stay wish fulfillment and there isn’t always a moment of “the horse is Bad Actually, and we will remind you that the horse released a sex video of the horse girl’s brother.” But I think the horse girl novel coding speaks to what makes a relationship with August appealing to Sara in the first place. Deep down Sara wants to be special and exceptional to someone else, and she feels she understands things about August (and how to keep his emotions regulated) that other people don’t. As Sara sees it, she’s taken time to build trust with August. It’s the two of them together against really difficult odds, and she’ll take the difficulty that comes with that.

Also, while we’re here, the first place August kisses Sara is the stables. And there’s that entire conversation Felice and Sara have when Sara comes back after having sex in 2.3. I’m just saying. It’s right there. We’re all doing the math, right? We all see it?

People Of Good Breeding

Here’s where it gets even more icky.

In season 2, Felice decides to quit riding. This makes keeping Rousseau a bad investment, so Felice plans to sell him, and Sara decides to tag along. When a particular family expresses interest in Rousseau and comes to Hillerska to assess him, Sara swiftly dubs them the Worst Kind of Horse People.

What makes the Worst Kind of Horse People so upsetting to Sara? They don’t know how to respond to Rousseau, and they don’t treat him with the compassion Sara does. They’re willing to endure Rousseau’s volatile moods, however, because of he’s a thoroughbred and has a prestigious pedigree.

Things I did not know before watching a documentary about it: apparently all the thoroughbreds that exist in the world now are descended from three historical stallions. They are inbred af. IRL people who own thoroughbred stallions now will charge ~$50,000 per insemination in like a horse breeding hookup situation. Which… what? What the literal fuck. I get that this is a hobby people feel very passionate about and find fulfillment in, so I am trying not to be judgmental… and also that is a lot of money (more than half my yearly salary) for just one instance of breeding horses. So I’m still wrapping my head around it.

It stands to reason that the Worst Kind of Horse People could want Rousseau for his, um, genetic material. Anyway, let’s talk about the monarchy and the line of succession.

At the same time that the Worst Kind of Horse People are expressing interest in Rousseau, the royal court has started to pay attention to August. According to the YR fictional family tree, August is next in line for the throne after Wilhelm. Kristina’s advisors have plans to groom (see what I did there) August as a backup heir if Wilhelm keeps insisting on having free will. (Really! The audacity! Good for Wilhelm, though, we’re all rooting for him.)

For August, the idea of being elevated to spare prince, or potentially even king one day, feels liberating. Based on how he’s acting at the shooting range after his visit to the palace, he sees a chance for himself to leave his crimes behind and not be caught in his guilt. But I want to pause for a moment and consider the scene in 2.4 where he gets the phone call from the palace. Jan-Olof asks August a series of privacy-invading questions, including ones that touch on his sexual history. The final question (and therefore the one the writers want you to notice) is simply “are you heterosexual?” to which August replies that he is.

There’s a tempting rabbit hole I could go down about what it means for August to go beyond just engaging in toxic heterosexual behavior, and actually embrace heterosexuality as a label, and because it’s a tempting rabbit hole I will save it for another meta. What I want to focus on here is how sinister this scene feels. Part of that is because we (and Sara) know how blatantly and easily August is lying, and that he’s slipping back into his old, status-loving, drug-abusing self. In light of the established Rousseau parallels, however, I can’t ignore the subtext that the royal court is interested in whether or not they can “domesticate” August just enough that they can get him to eventually marry the right girl and produce a legitimate heir to the throne. That’s it. Nothing more. They aren’t interested in helping him with his addiction or getting him into therapy for his disordered eating or helping him process his dad’s death—all of which would put him in a better emotional place, and maybe even prevent him from returning to the emotionally dangerous mindset he was in when he outed Wilhelm and Simon to the entire world. On a metaphorical level, the royal court is basically treating August as livestock. Which. Is gross, actually.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We all know that August himself perpetuates a lot of gross sexual behavior toward others. Aside from releasing the video, he’s selfish and borderline emotionally abusive toward Felice, especially about sex. He constantly eggs on his classmates to stand up on the breakfast table and brag about their “conquests.” He eventually becomes extremely sweet and tender with Sara, but that’s only after he’s tried to get her to sell him drugs, bullied her family about not being able to eat lunch on Parents’ Weekend, and kissing her without her consent in the stables. August is very much Not Someone Who Respects The Sexual And Reproductive Autonomy Of Others and yet! There is this whole entire system of hereditary monarchy behind him, aiming to control every aspect of his life and violate his privacy, and he is a teenager. It’s not okay that they do it to Wilhelm either. We know they’re trying to do it to Wilhelm even now, and we get the sense they did it to Erik too, given the lines about the OnlyFans girlfriend needing to be hushed up.

I think it’s easy to say, well, August is power hungry and amoral enough that he consents to having his privacy invaded, and he does, but I legitimately wonder if he knows what he’s getting into. (Case in point: I think August really believes that the palace crowd would let him publicly date Sara. And, no. Even if Sara weren’t Simon’s sister, I can’t imagine they’d be excited about him dating the neurodivergent daughter of an immigrant mother and a father with a shady drug past. At the very least they’d force Sara to sign some pretty hefty NDAs.) My point is, you can consent to something and still end up in a weird power dynamic that’s bad for you and doesn’t honor where your feelings are. You can be a person of privilege who harms others, while still being harmed by systems of privilege yourself. And that’s precisely part of what makes August a compelling and complicated character.

Look, I just wish more people nowadays had seen the legendary 1990s anime Revolutionary Girl Utena because they would then get what I mean when I say that August isn’t Akio, he’s Saionji.

…I’m off track. My point is that the reproductive subtext in that scene is deeply unsettling and August’s nakedness in front of the window only makes it moreso. Right. Moving on.

What’s Next? The Horse and His Boy

(Apologies for naming this last section after a problematic Narnia book.)

Man. I wish I could just write August off and clamor for his untimely and violent death without a care in the world. The reality is that I’m under a curse, and that curse makes me want to see him eventually sort his life out, one way or another.

Let me be clear about what that does and doesn’t mean: I don’t mean that I don’t want to see him face consequences for the very real crime he did. I don’t mean I think he should suddenly be perfect and woke. I don’t mean that he and Sara should get back together. I don’t mean I want to see everyone forgive him. I just mean I want August to honestly confront the truth of his life so far and go “you know what? I suck. I can do better. I’m not even sure how, and I’m gonna make mistakes along the way, but maybe I can suck less.” And maybe he takes one tiny step where you’re like, if he keeps taking steps like this, this kid could turn out okay by age 40. Maybe. I feel incredibly exposed even saying this, since I know August is so widely despised by so many people in fandom, and I know other people who are okay with letting him stay in the villain zone, but I also feel like if anyone can pull off this story, it’s Lisa Ambjörn. She gets nuance, and she gets young people their flaws and their family conflicts. If YR were a different show, with a different writer and a different morality underlying the stories it tells, I would feel differently. But I don’t, and I think Lisa can pull off a complex story like that. So here we are.

(For examples of YA novels that pull off this kind of narrative catharsis, check out the character arc of the protagonist Deposing Nathan by Zack Smedley. Or pay attention to the uncle’s character arc in Randy Ribay’s Patron Saints of Nothing.)

There’s a very soft acting choice of Malte’s in 2.3, where August goes to meet Sara in the stables, to ask if she wants to come by and talk later. Sara’s getting Rousseau settled for the evening, and August reaches out and pats Rousseau on the nose. If I’m remembering the scene correctly, the usually temperamental Rousseau is calm in response.

We’ve seen August act self-aggrandizing before so he can build himself up and threaten other people. We’ve also seen him engage in escalating acts of self-harm (via excessive exercising and calorie counting) when he isn’t living up to his own strict standards. What we don’t see a lot is him having compassion for himself. If we accept that Rousseau is August’s shadow-self, then this nose pat is a rare moment of self-compassion. It’s at this point in the season that August realizes he needs to exist in community with other people, and that he needs to actually process his overwhelming emotions instead of lashing out at others. He makes an effort to try and quit using drugs, genuinely connects with Sara, and even briefly defends Simon when Vincent gets on Simon’s case after the indoor rowing match. It’s a positive trajectory and a glimmer of what could have been. That lasts until his visit to the palace, when August is offered the position as Wilhlem’s backup and starts to go back to his old ways. Moreover, the pressure of becoming the spare creates new complications for August’s mental health, and he slides back into lashing out at others again.

At the end of the season, August views Rousseau as a commodity and buys him for Sara in a Grand Gesture (TM) that’s actually pretty alarming and could be categorized as love-bombing. Sara is not impressed (I suspect she’s witnessed Micke love-bombing Linda, and all her alarm bells are going off) and continues her trip to the bus stop so she can report him to the police.

I could talk about the police call and the part where Sara is playing with a small horse keychain at the bus stop, but that might be the topic for another meta. Instead I want to take a moment to think about the practical fact that August owns a horse now. This opens up a few questions: if Rousseau continues to be August’s shadow-self, what does it mean for August to buy and own Rousseau? Is August going to have to learn to take care of Rousseau now? How much farther can we extend this metaphor?

Patience, comrades. We’re almost to the finish line.

By buying Rousseau, August has allowed himself to be bought by the aristocratic power structure that’s been trying to maneuver him into royal life. He’s started to actually use the inheritance left for him by his father—not because he’s finally started to process his grief, but because he’s doubling down on the idea that he deserves his inherited wealth and that he can use it as lavishly as he wishes. What’s interesting is the way he thinks this makes him into someone Sara will stay in love with. There’s the quid pro quo of it all, which is the obvious surface reading, but there’s also another level wherein August has been raised to believe that this is the ideal of aristocratic masculinity, and therefore what Sara would be attracted to. He assumes Sara wants the prince (even if he has to be a little bit Machiavelli’s the Prince behind the scenes to play that role.) But Sara wants the trust and care and connection, and a bond that’s a little bit weird and unique and ultimately private. She also values honesty and accountability. Sara doesn’t want the prince—she wants the horse. But not the literal one. And not necessarily in a material ownership kind of way, either.

As we move into season 3, I find myself wondering what’s next for August and Rousseau. Like. August owns a horse now. Is he going to have to take care of it? Like is he going to have to learn how to groom Rousseau and muck stalls and such? I get that he’s rich and can probably pay someone to do that for him, but given the way that Rousseau is meant to be a commentary on August’s character arc, there’s a lot of narrative potential (and dare I say… humor?) in August just having to learn to take care of the horse his own damn self in season 3. I feel like it could allow for some great moments of introspection on August’s part, if done well, and could lead him to a place of radical acceptance. We don’t even have to rule out August going to jail for his crimes, but knowing that jail is not the kind of thing that will happen in the first five minutes of the first five episodes, why not facilitate some internal character growth via horse chores first?

Alternately, August will just keep doubling down on making someone else do the horse chores. This would be consistent, if nothing else. He may just continue to be horrible, in which case I am worried for Rousseau.

(Please, Lisa Ambjörn and/or god and/or Epona. I am so desperate for this as-of-present unrepentant fuckboy to have to do symbolic horse chores that end up being about him finally coming to terms with the impact his counterrevolutionary behavior has on others. Is that so wrong?)

Anyway, I guess we won’t know until season 3. Thank you for sticking around if you’ve read this far—it ended up being way longer than intended! I’m back on tumblr after being away since 2015 or so, so this post feels like a wild way to reappear. But I’m glad I shared my thoughts all the same. Have a blessed Saturday, fandom.

#young royals #young royals meta #august young royals #sara eriksson #felice ehrencrona #unabashed horse girl propaganda #mfa musings

[thedepartmentofdiscoveries]

Apollo and the Muses, by John Singer Sargent, 1921, via the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

#apollo #the muses #greek mythology #john singer sargent #20th century art #mfa boston #calliope #clio #erato #euterpe #melpomene #polyhymnia #terpsichore #thalia #urania #the nine muses #the 9 muses #greek gods #zeus #daughters of zeus #mnemosyne #mount helicon

[slinklove]

Working on so many things….

Really connecting more and more with the idea of a mostly auditory paper…gonna play with editing and formatting today….

I think I will go back to a vinyl for my second install. Something bigger than body that occupies a big window space….. “IM NOT BLACK IM BLACK” .

I have a writing for it….will transcribe here later….but rn I’d rather stretch and make a smoothie 🤸🏽‍♀️

#studio update #mfa #cincinnati #handmade #street fashion #lasercut #fashion illustration #musings

[beatingdrumspouringwine]

hello all! i’m taking a trip to the MFA in Boston tomorrow, which has an incredible collection of statuary of the Greek Gods! as such, i want to put out an offer to take prayer requests :) they have statues of Juno/Hera, one of the Muses, Dionysos, Hermes, Hygeia, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Ares, as far as I can remember! so, if you want me to offer up any prayers, just let me know - i won’t post them, i’ll just pray + delete 💕

#helpol #hellenic polytheist #hellenic paganism #hellenic polytheism

[centuriespast]

Ki-Mao-Sao and worshipers Made at: Bow Manufactory (England) Attributed to: Muses Modeler (English) EnglishAbout 1750–52

mfa boston

[terminalisms]

caved so quick to the 2nd muse impulse o mein gott......throwing sejoon into the mix with another minimal stats page + round two of rambly character intros 😵‍💫 if u are interested in plotting just like this post or add me on discord!! (tip.toph) 🥰

tw! mentions of terminal illness, death of a parent

only son to 2 anomalies. plain jane working class background

in a past life, dad is still a top tier hardboiled detective who doesn't gotta think about the fact he has a wife and kid at home

in this one, mom is inconveniently out of the picture for......... [vague gestures] reasons and he has to hunker down into single father life fast. ends up opening a restaurant in order to be able to provide

but in spite of all of this his childhood isn't so bad! he and his dad are close despite obvious stark differences in personality, which can be summed up as naive softie vs cynical hardass. even if sejoon's too trusting ways has dad up at night wondering how the hell is this kid gonna survive on his own

also dad: [does the absolute most to keep him shielded and sheltered cause he's Seen Things and as a parent's bare minimum that means letting a kid being a kid. which means shoving things deep under a rug and the default response to any inkling of curiosity being "Don't worry about it"]

until sejoon's anomaly kicks in at 12-13 by making a patron's chair float on accident and his dad's like k. better late than never......

its a little (ok a lot) hard to coach sejoon through controlling his abilities considering dad's own anomaly is not anything remotely close to moving things w his mind (its memory manipulation btw for some hwang fam #trivia) and sejoon is like ): but this is so cool why shouldnt i wanna show it off......

their deeply anti-anomaly district with equally staunchly anti-anomaly neighbors, friends, politicians being a VERY good reason not to: (:

dad: wear this patch thingie. dont ask why just do what i say

(thank god for nullivi huh like seriously)

doesnt stop the bubble bursting with when people realize ur not "human" they treat u different but ykw.........the sun is still shining and the world is much much bigger than their humble slice of daegu for EVERYONE to be that way

sua's open for admissions just around the time sejoon's thinking about higher ed AND broadening his horizons. gets in on arts scholarship and off he goes

baby bird leaving the nest turns fish out of the water. college and seoul are a bit of an adjustment but exciting all the same. and he does thrive! gets involved in the sporting rallies, really developing his artistic vision, has a social life, and gets to be his #true self among fellow anomalies the whole enchilada

things only really go downhill in the last 6 months of his undergrad with 2 wrecking balls: a devastating breakup and (TW: ILLNESS, DEATH) his dad being diagnosed by stage iv lung cancer

its right after graduation that sejoon immediately falls off the face of the earth for 3 years to be his father's sole caretaker until his death (END OF TW) no one i mean no one knows what he was doing or where he is

but hes back now to do his mfa!! let the bella loca where the hell have u been-isms begin

vibe wise hes bright, social, easy to talk to but can also be kind of spacey eccentric and the ultimate pacifist. the type that makes u feel like u guys are sooo close but then when u reflect ur like actually idk if i really know much about him at all (which!! is not totally intentional he just makes for a better listener and is great at making conversation about what YOU have to say). these days that same can do energy is there but it doesnt feel the same if u look too close but its fine!!! everything is fine

plots that are marginally better than the first time around but not by much:

friends who were blindsided by him going mia without warning

friends who are gracious enough (or equally ??????? avoidant? weird even) to pick up where they left off like nothing happened in the first place

people who dont even know who he is so like none of the above for his sob story doesnt even really matter

this is really really limited to one (1) person but somebody who managed to run into him in the three years that he was laying low

will require extensive plotting but the ex......not necessarily endgame but i am in the mood for some bittersweet woulda shoulda coulda's, angst and answering the penultimate question of: why did we break up?

former teammates? i imagine he was part of house samjoko during undergrad

ur a stranger feeling nosy and ur ultimate mission is figuring out where hes been. he lets u speculate

u need someone to do ur graphics. can be contractual pro bono whatevah.......

im running out of steam here but i am open to it all please hmu

#nm:intro #ooc.toph #this was supposed to be up saturday morning but irl got in the way #dms 🔜 once i get some sleep!!!!

[copperbadge]

As Tumblr’s resident well-travelled “Art Dad”, would you please consider recommending a few “must-see” exhibits at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts? I received the delightfully shattering present of a membership, and I have my old favourites (Monet is mandatory💕🖼) but it’s been ages since I’ve been. First museum trip post lockdown. Fingers crossed.

Ah, I hope you have (or had, sorry for the delay) a great time! I haven't been to the museum in a couple of years and I know that they were doing a lot of construction in it -- I'm given to understand my beloved Netsuke room was closed off and may still be, and honestly I couldn't tell you how to get there anyway. I usually just stumbled into it. :D

I will say the John Singer Sargent works are my favorite -- both the paintings on the walls and the murals on the ceilings. Definitely hit the murals if they're available, in the big rotunda by the "old" entrance (which may not be called that anymore). And find the Portrait of Thomas McKeller, it's a gorgeous painting of one of his most prominent muses (and possible-to-likely lover). You can see McKeller's face and body, whitewashed, in many of the murals as well.

The MFA is a glorious labyrinth that it's easy to get lost in, so I say wear good shoes and go wandering! You will find things to love I have no doubt :)

#boston #museum of fine arts #sargent #thomas mckeller

[behindthcmall]

☆ –– (priscilla quintana, she/her, cisgender female) who is AUGUSTA RIVERA anyways? ew. you don’t know about HER, we’ll bet you want to. they’re feeling 31 and WRITING IN A JOURNAL feels like a perfect night to them. rumor has it they’re OVER EMOTIONAL and GUARDED because they care, but they’re also LOYAL and FUN-LOVING in the best way. SHE works to make a little money as a(n) POETRY COLUMNIST FOR THE NEW YORKER. they’ve rented a place on cornelia street in the form of WOODVALE APARTMENTS. AUGUST (MUSE B) and THE LAKES (MUSE A) are the songs they could dance to the beat of forevermore. (ooc info: tee, 29, pst, she/her.)

Hi loves, I’m Tee and I’m thrilled to be here! I’ve been creeping this group for a while and waiting for the timing to be right. I felt, as a huge Taylor fan, it’s my obligation to join (and fun fact, it’s my nine year anniversary today of being Taylurked!)

Anyways, this is Augusta. She’s still a slight work in progress, but here’s some basic info about her (more to be added as it's developed):

Name: Augusta Rivera. Age: 31. Date of Birth: TBD, I'm an astrology hoe that needs to let her cook before determining. Hometown: Cathedral City, California. Gender, Pronouns: Cisfemale, She/her. Sexuality/Orientation: Pansexual. MBTI: TBD, but most likely XNFP. Job: Poetry columnist at The New Yorker and MFA grad student at NYU. Residence: Woodvale Apartments.

Facts:

Augusta is from Southern California and the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents.

She loves writing, especially poetry. She was definitely one of those teens who had a “deep” poetic Instagram/twitter/MySpace (she's a millennial, LBR here) account that was literally terrible and overdramatic. However, she’s been honing her craft and gotten to a point where she can’t see herself doing anything else.

As the story goes, she met James during a summer trip to New York to visit relatives that live in the state. It was a whirlwind romance in her eyes, and a special summer of firsts: first trip to her dream university (NYU), first time dipping her foot in the Atlantic Ocean, first head over heels love for another woman. It was very eventful for baby teenage Augusta, and when it ended, it lowkey ruined her life.

She's been trying to put that summer in the past, but it always seems to creep its way into her life, whether it's through her poetry or her trust issues.

Augusta comes off as very naturally fun loving and charismatic, but she's more what you'd call an introverted extrovert. She really shines when she's surrounded by people she trusts and loves.

She started her university career in SoCal, but her dream was always to end up at NYU. She was accepted there and got her butt on a plane so she could start working on her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She's making money through publishing work through the New Yorker (and realistically, she's probably another job too. TBD as I think of it.)

Wanted Connections:

The Folklore Love Triangle - If you're the Betty, James and/or Inez and we haven't chatted yet, you know what's up. Let us brainstorm the whole thing.

Literally anything/everything. She likely hasn't been in New York for that long (I imagine a few months, if that) but she's probably travelled there quite a few times over the years, so I'm open to plotting anything. Feel free to IM me and we'll chat.

#cornelia.intro

[dannyfoley]

Sanya Kantarovsky is known for his work across a variety of mediums, as well as his texts and curatorial projects. His multifaceted approach often results in artworks that seem forced to reckon with their own embarrassment. The dark humor consistent in Kantarovsky’s work pits the sumptuous against the abject and thrusts private space – be it physical or psychological – into public view. Kantarovsky’s most well known body of work, his figurative paintings, contains drastic shifts in scale, paint application and stylization. Evoking the feeling of an uneasy inner monologue, figures are gawked at, exposed, poked, or spooned medicine. They interact with one another, as well as the edges of the canvas itself, testing the confines of their given bodies and their given frame. Similarly, the artist probes his art historical predecessors: both canonical and relatively unknown painters, writers and illustrators. The presence of these muses, which dot Kantarovsky’s compositions, simultaneously questions and indulges in a lineage of painterly impulses.

Sanya Kantarovsky

Baba, 2019

Oil and watercolor on canvas

85 x 65 inches

(215.9 x 165.1 cm)

Kantarovsky was born in Moscow, Russia in 1982 and currently lives and works in New York. He studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI and received his MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kantarovsky recently presented solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland (2018) and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy (2017-2018). Recent group exhibitions include Radical Figures at Whitechapel Gallery, London; Baltic Triennial 13 GIVE UP THE GHOST; The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin at the Jewish Museum, New York; The Eccentrics at Sculpture Center, New York; and his curatorial project Sputterances at Metro Pictures, New York. Other important presentations include Happy Soul at LAXART in Los Angeles; You are Not an Evening at Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst in Bremen; What Were You Expecting, Mr. Milquetoast, a Plot? at Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe; and Apricot Juice, with Ieva Misčeviūtė, at Studio Voltaire in London. A comprehensive monograph entitled No Joke was co-published by Studio Voltaire and Koenig Books in 2016. Kantarovsky’s works belong to several prestigious museum collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Tate Modern, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

#contemporary art #sanya kantarovsky #fine art #painting #contemporarypainting #figurative #figurative painting

[angiewrvting]

For: Any Female muses (Must be 21+)

When: 25th of January 2023.

Where: Cornell University. MFA in Creative Writing.

Summary: Elias Carmichael (39 Years Old) is recently divorced ex-wife, Katya Carmichael, whom had been having an affair behind his back. After being offered the chance to change from a community college to a  guest lecturer at Cornell for a year after his release of his latest novel, he was ecstatic at the chance of upgrading his life and quickly moved across the country. Upon arrival he was assigned an assistant, of which which he has a strained relationship with - he doesn’t mix work and pleasure, but she’s got him trapped in his head as he wishes after her, but is too scared to venture into something like that again after the pain of his wife's affair. 

‘‘It’s late -- ‘‘ Elias sighs, reaching up to rub at his eyes. ‘‘ --- You should get going.’‘

Long days, late hours and the four walls of this class room had felt like his home. Mid terms were right around the corner, and the prep mixed together with the endless mock exams and marking had him wanting to hit his head off the desk. However, none of it was made easier when her proximity had his eyes fluttering closed every time she walked past, the smell of her perfume intoxicating so much so, that he kept sitting as far from her as possible.

She must have thought he hated her, for which he cringed. 

‘‘It’s almost midnight, we’ve got an early class.’‘

#indie rp #indie oc rp #male muse #elias carmichael. #slice of life rp

[uwmspeccoll]

Fashion Friday:   Sixty Drawings of Haute Couture

The is the final post by Intermedia Arts MFA student Christine Westrich who spent the the entire Spring 2022 semester mining the primary resources of Special Collections and the American Geographical Society Library as inspirations for creating new fashion designs. It has been a rich and engaging experience. Here are Christine’s culminating observations:

Haute couture never fails to impress on Anna Wintour's red carpet of the Met Gala. Just a few days ago, the Spring 2022 theme of Gilded Glamour posed a great atelier challenge:  to dress in themed opulence or to curb the nines in restraint of today's pandemic/war/climate calamities? 

A breeze through the runway photos show that Instagram won the day with celebrities donning nothing short of costume ecstasy with Billie Eilish's feathered décolleté by Gucci and Megan Thee Stallion's winged caplets by Moschino. Lizzo's wondrous caftan by Thom Browne brings thoughts to the late André Leon Talley, the lovely protege of Diana Vreeland and the man behind Vogue elegance.

These styles are orchestrated for their line, shape, and color. While ostentatious, they are cleverly choreographed for the camera. The monochromatic pinks of Valentino and unfussed Tom Ford silhouettes give homage to the sculpturist images of Robert Mapplethorpe who often chided his muse Patti Smith to deconstruct her flair so he could capture a timeless polaroid.

Whether the dress statement of Mayor Eric Adams to end gun violence in the wake of the NYC subway shootings, or Hillary Clinton's ode to Clara Barton and Harriet Tubman, clothing is a means to influence, to power, a means of manipulation as described by John Berger in 1972.

Over this Spring term, I completed sixty fashion drawings under my design moniker "chch", which arouse just such drama; the dominance and brawn of past civilizations inspired in illustrative gowns for our modern era. From Egyptian gods to Middle Age saints to pre-common-era princes, these designs challenged my thoughts on the exploitation of dress.

Daily, we face the decision of what to wear, considering how we may look walking to Colectivo, sitting on a work stool or looking back to an admirer. These choices reveal our inner playwright and expose us on life's stage of these non-quarantine days... coquettish, audacious, or perhaps hiding in plain sight.

And should such an extraordinary Met Gala invitation arrive on my doorstep, I would gladly construct one of my sixty costumes to wear and proudly compete in its outsider aesthetic against the pomp of a Milan fashion Maison. Of course, some days it feels best to give up on this visual communication problem of couture, of being under the lights—and in this case—I find my authentic self by joining society via the old-fashioned telephone.

A very special thanks to Senior Lecturer Kathleen Donnelly who provided me with expert costume construction know-how while emphasizing stage awareness and no-nonsense grit, both earned through years of theatre productions.  

Thank you to the UWM Head of Special Collections Max Yela for his impeccable fashion taste and to Special Collections Department Manger Alice Ladrick for her kindred conversation on all things Milwaukee.

View my previous ten posts on historical fashion research in Special Collections.

View more Special Collections' Fashion posts.

—Christine Westrich, MFA Graduate Student in Intermedia Arts

#graduate research #Christine Westrich #fashion #costume #fashion design #costume design #the last hurrah

[marrowbaby]

your therapist’s office is a shitty place to conduct a craft workshop on life writing so you should go to hell instead, pt 1.

Thinking a lot about that bog of an intersection between the craft of autoficition and the introspective capacity that seems required to narrate the blindspots of trauma. wrestling with the chasm that exists between a life and a narrative. the cultural insistence that one be imposed upon the other (and vice versa) does not, as it turns out, make them the same thing. thinking then about how forms of life writing, memoir, autofiction, etc.. are always an imposition of form onto the dizzying formlessness of one’s life. by which I mean to say mine.

I’ve been pushing my rock up Mt. Autofiction for a few months now, and in this case I suppose the rock is the notion of plot as a formal constraint on lived experience. I admit a stubborn aversion to writing autofiction from the place of an I, though that may be because I truly do believe that all life writing is an exercise in POV not dissimilar from the kind of introspective self-objectification that happens in therapy.

That’s to say, you’ve got to find a way to look at yourself (but you only have one set of eyes and you don’t even like 3D movies because the goggles they give you at the theater don’t work with your glasses and everything gets fuzzy in the periphery, which gives you a headache). To write about yourself, your life, requires a kind of double vision.

Over the last few months, I’ve been feverishly reading and re-reading The Divine Comedy, returning often to my favorite cantos from the Inferno. I have vivid memories of being 7 or 8 years old and lying on the couch that served as my bed at my dad’s newly-established bachelor pad while he read the fourth canto aloud to me. The one where Virgil introduces Dante to all the classical poets and great philosopher kings living in a dope penthouse on some prime real estate in the first circle of Hell. I don’t think my dad had gotten around to setting up the TV yet. Recalling that fact of my early bedside eduction in the classics makes me feel like slightly less of a narcissist when I wonder whether it’s inevitable for MFA students to at some point find themselves asking “wait, so am I like... basically Dante rn?”  

As I’ve been toiling away on this manuscript, I’ve found the greatest difficulty to be something like a confusion of actors.

Asking myself questions like: who, exactly, occupies the role of our Orpheus? And.. wait- was it even Orpheus, or was it Dante? (An actor of fated retrieval, the one who descends with a purpose.) And: what does plot know of the partial protagonist, the one who is two apart? (Here’s where I admit that I always preferred Stevenson’s Treasure Island to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.)

I’ve been keeping notes as I go back through the Comedy. Ruminating on the the world of the Inferno. Thinking about the ways that Hell, too, is a world of double vision—there’s Dante the writer and Dante the Pilgrim, I and I — down below in the realm of shades. How poetry is itself is a thing in-two, a muse of Mercury.

And the shades that live in the underworld — those figures that drift about, sometimes speaking, sometimes wailing, telling the Pilgrim and his guide of their sins and explaining why they’re here, what they did—also get doubled. These figures made of anguish and shadow are that which block the very light the travelers seek. But they’re also the ones with the stories, the flickering television screens through which the full vision of Hell is relayed to Dante, fizzling up through the poem to be transmitted to the world above. They exist in-double: both static and transmission in one; shade and light; fact, and its forgetting.

But this is my blog and I get to be Dante now, looking at my life, looking at myself as I look at myself. A girl folded over a body, eyes crossing into twin vision.

***

I’ve more to say on this and a lot more ruminations on Dante, but I’ll stop here for now because Infinity Pool comes out on Friday and I can’t think about anything else.

#m #on autofiction #and dante #but really on mia goth

[geracaoalpha]

Artist Spotlight: Ryan Frame

Alphaa.io is pleased to welcome visual artist Ryan Frame to our network of creatives!

Frame was born in South Africa and is based in Los Angeles. He incorporates body paint, human subjects, water, and photography to create surreal yet intimate portraits.  Learn more about Frame in our interview below and check out his works on Alphaa.io.

Where are you from? 

Ryan Frame: I was born and Raised in Johannesburg South Africa, then lived in Cape Town from 18-24 and then moved to LA where I have lived since 24. I am 30 now.

What is your background?

RF: I have been working in the motion picture industry throughout my entire professional career, which led me to move to Los Angeles. There, I studied for my MFA at UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television.

How did you get started in your artist career? 

RF: As I became more involved in the motion picture business I begun feeling frustrated at how long things take for a creative vision to materialize. It was through this creative frustration that I searched for more immediate ways to express myself. I gravitated towards body painting because I have always been fascinated by the originality of how this medium combines naked skin, paint and photography. The immediacy of this art form gave me an emancipation from the long drawn our process of making films.

Any exciting upcoming projects in 2023? 

RF: I’ve been experimenting with underwater photography and testing paints and powders that will enable me to achieve it.

What excites you the most about technology (NFTs, Web3 blockchain etc) right now? 

RF: I think the promise of NFT technology is well suited for fine art for three reasons. First is that it provides provenance for these works as a certificate of authenticity that cannot be manipulated. Second is the ability for the creator to participate in secondary sales in perpetuity which I find most exciting. Third, I believe NFTs should ideally be accompanied by the original works. Although some can exist on their own, the value of art is the ability to appreciate it in person.

What inspires you? 

I get inspired when I observe life's contrast through witnessing my hopes and dreams against another person's pain and suffering, or my own pain and suffering against another's hopes and dreams. Seeing creation and destruction both in a natural context is another source of inspiration. I like to choose locations for my photoshoots in places that highlight the beauty of natural landscapes or places that carry a heaviness to them through political or religious affiliation. 

How did you get in touch with Alphaa.io and how would you see the relationship growing this year? 

RF: I met Manu at an event several months ago where she saw my work and invited me to apply. I would like to see our relationship become one where Alphaa.io represents my work to its clientele for sale.

What are you currently working on?

RF: I’m currently in Cape Town until the end of February. It’s summer here so I’m using the opportunity to create a series featuring local muses and landscapes. We’ll see how it comes together.

Anything else you want to add?

RF: Just that I recently started becoming more public with my work in the past year. It took some courage to come out because I wanted to build up enough works before I shared with whoever might find them pleasing.

#alphaaio #nft #nfts #visual art #photography #bodypaint #blockchain #digitalart #surreal photography #ryan frame #ryan frame artist

[rockislandadultreads]

Book Recommendations: More Dark Academia 

Bunny by Mona Awad

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort - a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door - ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision. The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith

Many years ago, Claire was named Head Librarian of the Unwritten Wing - a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the library. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto. But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifyingly angelic Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil's Bible. The text of the Devil's Bible is a powerful weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the power to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell... and Earth.

This is the first volume in the “Hell’s Library” series. Its sequels include The Archive of the Forgotten and The God of Lost Words. 

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, The Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever - but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way. Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled - or perhaps just grimly exploited - and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins. A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

Ivy Gamble has never wanted to be magical. She is perfectly happy with her life. She has an almost-sustainable career as a private investigator, and an empty apartment, and a slight drinking problem. It's a great life and she doesn't wish she was like her estranged sister, the magically gifted professor Tabitha. But when Ivy is hired to investigate the gruesome murder of a faculty member at Tabitha’s private academy, the stalwart detective starts to lose herself in the case, the life she could have had, and the answer to the mystery that seems just out of her reach.

#dark acamedia #fiction #thriller #fantasy #dark fantasy #library books #reading recommendations #reading recs #book recommendations #book recs #booklr #book tumblr #to read #TBR pile #tbr #library blog #book blog

[katierosefun]

Midnight rain, bigger than the whole sky, and glitch? For the ask game?? (Also what is your fave song on the album? Mine is probably sweet nothing but omg vigilante shit is FUN)

hellooo thank you for the ask!! (and my faves are definitely labyrinth, snow on the beach, and you're on your own, kid . . . although i also really love question...? and, in a sadder way, would've, could've, should've). // from these asks

Midnight Rain: What's a decision you contemplate in the middle of the night?

mm . . . i'm in law school right now, so that means i def. have a lot of midnight musings on whether this was a good idea. i think that ultimately, it was and it is a good idea, but i think i definitely wonder what would happen if i just. didn't decide on law school and if i just bit the bullet and decided to go into creative writing on a professional level, get my mfa or something. (which i don't think would have been right for me, and i know that would have been a much more financially difficult decision, but i still wonder.)

Bigger Than The Whole Sky: What's something you did for a short time that you really loved?

i answered this one, but i think i want to try giving different answers, just bc there are so many things . . . but oh, i took a beginner's korean course for the first time in my senior fall semester back in undergrad . . . and i really, really loved doing that. i def. had a super hectic time in fall 2021, just because i was doing 2387423423 things, always, but learning korean and really connecting with the language again consistently brought me to a happy space :")

Glitch: What's something in your life that worked out very differently than you thought it would?

oh, lol . . . i think relationships in general. i think this fall especially, i've learned that i'm creating new friendships with people who i never would have assumed i'd be friends with, and at the same time, i'm also seeing developments in older relationships that i never thought it would actually go in, which is all incredibly fascinating and very wonderful to me. it feels a bit like a glitch in the system--a very pinch-myself-on-the-arm sort of situation, like, oh, is this my life now? is it? and i'm very happy about it.

#answered

[sleuthomatic]

Knowing your partner well makes writing together a lot easier. Tag this with the people you enjoy roleplaying with but want to get to know better. Or don’t, I’m not your mom!

Basics

Name: Jess

Age: Old as balls 33

Preferred pronouns: She/Her

Sexuality: Asexual

Zodiac sign: Capricorn. Hello, I like money

Taken or single: Single atm

Three facts

I love to cook.

I started an MFA in poetry way back when and someday I’d like to finish it.

I listen to a lot of city pop, dad rock, and easy listening.

Experience

How long (months/years?): About 14 years

How’d you start: Text-based MUD RPGs, occasionally MSN

MUSE PREFERENCES

Female or male: No preference. Most of my muses have happened to be male.

Favorite face: It depends entirely on the day.

Least favorite face: N/A

Writing preferences

Fluff, angst or smut: All the fluff and all the angst. Smut if it’s with feelings, and not overly explicit.

Plots or memes: ¿Y por qué no los dos?

Are you like your muse(s): Not really; we both like mysteries and classic lit, I think that’s about it. Putting aside all the obvious differences, I’m not particularly perceptive or good at noticing patterns and things out of place, both qualities that would be essential for a detective, I would think.

Tagged by: Girl I stole it

Tagging: I don’t have time for that, steal it

#out of office [ooc]