I love thinking of Hannibal and Will in their home intimacy. Hannibal wakes up and puts on his elegant robe ( nightie )
(because he is elegant even when he sleeps and wakes up) and Will is wearing his classic white t-shirt. Hannibal kisses him to start the day and then goes to the kitchen to finish making breakfast. ( Prints available on my shop. Link in my IG and X Bio )
“One day there was an anonymous present sitting on my doorstep—Volume One of Capital by Karl Marx, in a brown paper bag. A joke? Serious? And who had sent it? I never found out. Late that night, naked in bed, I leafed through it. The beginning was impenetrable, I couldn’t understand it, but when I came to the part about the lives of the workers—the coal miners, the child laborers—I could feel myself suddenly breathing more slowly. How angry he was. Page after page. Then I turned back to an earlier section, and I came to a phrase that I’d heard before, a strange, upsetting, sort of ugly phrase: this was the section on “commodity fetishism,” “the fetishism of commodities.” I wanted to understand that weird-sounding phrase, but I could tell that, to understand it, your whole life would probably have to change. His explanation was very elusive. He used the example that people say, “Twenty yards of linen are worth two pounds.” People say that about every thing that it has a certain value. This is worth that. This coat, this sweater, this cup of coffee: each thing worth some quantity of money, or some number of other things—one coat, worth three sweaters, or so much money—as if that coat, suddenly appearing on the earth, contained somewhere inside itself an amount of value, like an inner soul, as if the coat were a fetish, a physical object that contains a living spirit. But what really determines the value of a coat? The coat’s price comes from its history, the history of all the people involved in making it and selling it and all the particular relationships they had. And if we buy the coat, we, too, form relationships with all those people, and yet we hide those relationships from our own awareness by pretending we live in a world where coats have no history but just fall down from heaven with prices marked inside. “I like this coat,” we say, “It’s not expensive,” as if that were a fact about the coat and not the end of a story about all the people who made it and sold it, “I like the pictures in this magazine.” A naked woman leans over a fence. A man buys a magazine and stares at her picture. The destinies of these two are linked. The man has paid the woman to take off her clothes, to lean over the fence. The photograph contains its history—the moment the woman unbuttoned her shirt, how she felt, what the photographer said. The price of the magazine is a code that describes the relationships between all these people—the woman, the man, the publisher, the photographer—who commanded, who obeyed. The cup of coffee contains the history of the peasants who picked the beans, how some of them fainted in the heat of the sun, some were beaten, some were kicked. For two days I could see the fetishism of commodities everywhere around me. It was a strange feeling. Then on the third day I lost it, it was gone, I couldn’t see it anymore.”
Australian Federal Election 2001: Pranksters follow around Prime Ministerial contender Kim Beazley in an attempt to sneak fake microphones into news footage
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Asked at trial to account for her dress before the court, Jones responded: “I have been in the practice of waiting upon Girls of ill fame… and they induced me to dress in Women’s Clothes, saying I looked so much better in them and I have always attended parties among the people of my own Colour dressed in this way—and in New Orleans I always dressed in this way.” Though the context of her confession undoubtedly shaped this response, Jones’s description of three distinct geographies-the Greene Street brothel, the parties among people of her own race, and New Orleans, where she “always dressed in this way” —named variously scaled sites in which Jones’s gender expression, as an intracultural maneuver, was met with a reception at odds with the ridicule she faced that day in the Court of General Sessions.
This part of Black On Both Sides about a black trans woman in the 1830s explaining that she’s able to present as her correct gender in black spaces and the negative reaction in a white courtroom was outside of her norm…illuminating
A fae forms a genuine bond of friendship with a human. As a prank another fae decides to kill their friend. Their ruler decides the murder did not violate any fae laws and issues no punishment, so the first fae dedicates their life to getting revenge by teaching humans all the rules of the fae.
The Court of The-King-Who-Would-Be-Crowned has never seen such uproar. His daughter has never been so loud, so furious, has never filled a space with screams and feathers and the blast of a winter storm. And all over a mortal? She is bid to be silent, and she refuses.
“There has been no crime,” the King insists, the pressure of his authority coming down like a hammer. “Behave yourself in my presence.”
“No crime?!” Her voice has never been so loud. The air crystalises around her. “They were mine and my own, and stolen from me!”
“Were they?” The King asks. “I saw no brand upon them. They had not eaten or drunk of your table. They were mortal. Therefore, I am not bound to answer your call for vengeance.” His voice softens, as though in appeal to the one he calls his daughter. ‘It was just one mortal, dearest. You can find another.“
Agony at his description of a friend unbound to law turns again to fury at the idea that such a person could be replaced. “Never. Never will I. And there must be justice for this!”
“You defy your father’s judgement?” The Honoured Dealer smirks.
Other members of court are not as bold as he, and hide their smiles behind fluttering fans or raised hands or carefully-maintained glamour. There has not been such entertainment had in centuries, to see the polished and poised Winter Swan raving and weeping and defying an open order from her sovereign.
The Swan rounds on the Dealer, hissing, teeth bared, an inch from his face. He flinches, but holds his ground. His confidence is not shaken when she whispers her promise: you shall bear the blame for what is to come. Then she twists herself into feathers, and in swan form she leaves. The whole countryside - fae territory and mortal scope alike - ring with her agonised and mournful howls all night.
Things move too quickly, then, for the Courts to understand. For them, who have centuries of seasons, a week should be less than a blink. Yet in a week, the territory of the Dealer and his kin is laid bare. Mortals come in their greedy droves, with picks of iron shattering the border stones and axes of iron to cut down the ancient oaks. When the Sisters of the Petal went down with song and seduction to call mortals to their doom, these greedy men threw handfuls of salt, and bound each woman to a name, and burned them at stakes of yew wood. A week, and the ancient untouched forest became a logging camp, and all ancient mystery was stripped from this part of the world.
The-King-Who-Would-Be-Crowned sought out his daughter, where she stood upon her frozen pond. He scolded her for her vengeance, for stripping the Courts of one of their own. The Winter Swan looked on her father like she would look on a hated stranger, and told him to go drown himself.
Mortals continued to learn about the sacred mysteries that kept the Courts safe. Rivers were dammed, lakes were dredged, standing stones were defaced and toppled; salt was scattered, names were used like lassos. The Summer season was stripped and shrivelled. Autumn and Spring soon felt their territories likewise invaded, and could do nothing. They were named, and they were burned, and they were lost.
The-King-Who-Would-Be-Crowned sought out his daughter again, and told her she had gone too far. If this continues, there will be no court left. The Winter Swan arched her neck proudly, nodded, and told her father to go drown himself.
Songs full of salt and iron and binding names were sung by children, taught by the wailing bird that circled overhead. Axe and shovel and poker and spear press and push and dig into the territory of the fae. The Courts are broken. All will become fable, or forgotten.
The-King-Who-Would-Be-Crowned sought out his daughter, one last time. “All this for one mortal? Our world ends, our lives end, because of one mortal? You cannot follow him if you die! You will be unmade, and for what?”
“For one mortal,” she said, with a cold smile. “For one dear friend.”
