Whenever they gave us one of those "read through ALL the instructions before you begin!" trick assignments in school where the steps lead you on an increasingly ridiculous goose chase until the final one tells you to just put your name on the paper and turn it in without doing anything else, I was always like, "Okay, but what's the point? Surely the REAL world won't be anything like this." And then I grew up and discovered that not only is the real world often exactly like that, some people won't even read the first line of the instructions even if they make perfect sense. And these people are called "co-workers"
i know you can just say "none of your business" but phrasing it as a question with a jarringly formal tone is the ideal way to shoot an overfamiliar unwelcome overture dead in its tracks and force the person making it to confront the boundaries they're taking for granted + it would really piss people off which is funny
This isn't limited to fiction by the way, I've seen way too many people argue that a wife has "soft power" in a patriarchal society because she could nag her husband and sometimes he'd even give in to her. There's a reason they call it soft power and it's because it gives the moment hard power comes in.
All power is social. All of it. That's what makes it so slippery. Social power is the reason the order 'i want you to bomb this country' gets followed if it's said by a president and ignored if it's said by an unhoused man on the street corner. But hard social power (legal, economic, religious, political) will always trump soft social power (being persuasive). The reason women's soft social power is magnified is not because it's equal to hard social power, but because it's a patriarchal excuse. That the legal, economic, religious, and political oppression of women must happen to counter their "overwhelming" soft social power of being seductive or clever or naggy or whichever excuse they're using this time.
Over twenty years ago my big brother got me a job at a Taco Bell in the St. Louis suburbs-West County. He warned me that it was the "gay Taco Bell", but since I was coming from the "gay Howard Johnson's" I wasn't shocked. It turns out it was the black trans women Taco Bell complete with black trans women in management. And they'd worked out an arrangement with the local teen Narcotics Anonymous group so that twice a week we would shut down the drive thru and the dining room and exclusively serve 60+ teens in various stages of recovery. And many of the women I worked with were in various stages of being out or transitioning and they were from all generations from teens to over 50. One woman I worked with had a regular corporate job presenting as a man 9-5 Mon-Fri and then came to Taco Bell and worked 6pm -2am Friday and Saturday night so she could be herself surrounded by other black transwomen in those stolen weekends. And we had customers come from all over the metro area because they knew they could be themselves in the dining room. I only worked there from 1999-2001 but for young me, this was a vital, formative experience. Some of the girls came from north city all the way out to the "gay Taco Bell" on Manchester in west county because they heard it was safe to work there. Like- I know times have changed but they haven't changed much in 20 years. I'm still convinced that for lgbt youth, finding a job at your city's version of the "gay Taco Bell" is key to survival.
I think it would be interesting if this line from Long Face were an allusion to Tony Jackson's "Pretty Baby."
Tony Jackson was the most popular entertainer in Storyville. Like his mentee Jelly Roll Morton, he sang and played in saloons and brothels. He was also openly gay.
(Not visible here -- his iconic arm garters!)
"Pretty Baby" remains Jackson's most enduring work. The original lyrics were supposedly written about his male partner, but the lyrics were reworked by another party before the song was sold. (Jackson's work was frequently sold for pittance or outright stolen.)
Continued with lyrics below the cut:
Verse 1
You ask me why I'm always teasing you.
You hate to have me call you "Pretty Baby."
I really thought that I was pleasing you,
For you're just a baby to me.
Your cunning little dimples and your baby stare,
Your baby talk and baby walk and curly hair,
Your baby smile
Makes life worthwhile.
You're just as sweet as you can be.
Verse 2
Your mother said you were the cutest kid.
No wonder, Dearie, that I'm wild about you
And all the cunning things you said and did.
Why, I love to fondly recall.
And just like Peter Pan it seems you'll always be
The same sweet cunning little baby dear to me,
And that is why
I'm sure that I
Will always love you best of all.
Chorus
Everybody loves a baby that's why I'm in love with you,
Pretty baby, pretty baby,
And I'd like to be your sister, brother, dad and mother too,
Pretty baby, pretty baby.
Won't you come and let me rock you in my cradle of love
And we'll cuddle all the time.
Oh, I want a lovin' baby, and it might as well be you,
Pretty baby of mine,
Pretty baby of mine.
You can also view the sheet music here.
(Note: Jackson unfortunately never made a recording, but Morton did in an imitation of Jackson's style, and it's a neat bit of history!)
If he existed in the world of IWTV, Jackson likely would have been one of the piano "professors" like Morton playing the Azalea. He would have been one of the voices of Storyville underscoring the earliest days of Louis and Lestat's relationship -- a peak time for their romance, but also a time when the asymmetry of their interracial maker-fledgling dynamic was especially palpable.
On one hand, when imagining this song being used as a serenade from Lestat to Louis, these lyrics could read as a romantic overture (that smile! the curly hair! "all the cunning things you said"!) On the other hand, when Jackson's lyrics are reappropriated to the context of a vampiric maker/fledgling relationship, they could read as smotheringly patronizing. Note too the flattening of the family in that context, all collapsing into the singer ("I'd like to be your sister, brother, dad and mother too.")
If Lestat were intentionally making this allusion here, I think it would be laden with the usual concoction of romantic and concerning elements. (And of course, this is really a question for real human composer Daniel Hart!)
You know, there's this cliché that teenage boys always eat massive amounts, but teenage girls really aren't that different if they're not suppressed by diet culture and body shaming. Like, I was a teenage girl who frankly just stopped bothering to fit into mainstream beauty ideals at some point, and I would regularly make myself just one big massive pot of pasta and devour it completely. This wasn't even stress eating or anything, I just genuinely needed the energy because you know, I was a teenager and my body was developing. I feel like so many teenage girls think they need to eat as little as possible to be petite and pretty, but the truth is that your body is developing just as intensely as teenage boys' bodies. Eat more, please, your body needs it.
