stolen velour

improbable, unnatural, above all, beautiful 22 💐 any pronouns

[dandiacal]

hello DEAR VISITORS !

Consistent interests i enjoy here are decadent literature, gothic literature, fashion history, whatever else. i like my female characters vicious and flaunting and my male characters pretty and incapacitated . in general if somethings a) absurd or b) simultaneously beautiful and disgusting i love it and please recommend it to me!!!

[huariqueje]

All kinds of spring Herbs and Grasses - Paula von Goeschen-Rösler , 1917.

German , 1875-1941

Gouache in lime green, dark green, and brown, black pencil, silhouetted and mounted on Japanese paper, 34.9 x 38.9 cm.

[dandiacal]

the history of a self-tormentor is DERANGED

[dandiacal]

i went to the lesbian club for the first time 🎉

[pompomposting]

he is touching grass with his friends

[sivavakkiyar]

US accepts only white refugees for sixth consecutive month

The Trump administration is spending more than $100 million to fight the "emergency" of "white genocide" in South Africa.

[dandiacal]

literary criticism keeps shading me for liking these women

[dandiacal]

what does it mean that olive chancellor is a huge germanophile

[fapper]

What me and jay saw on my hinge yesterday

[dandiacal]

i failed to drive them to their worst by the end of may but believe me i'm trying very hard to get them there fast and well. wip thwednesday

[hyodyton]

Miss Wade was the only thing I cared about in this book (I like Harriet too)

[pompomposting]

he is showing off his charm point with his friends

[dandiacal]

i'm reading little dorrit and i started reading it because a) i heard there was a domineering and deranged gay seeming woman in it (though she doesn't appear often) and b) the story sounded interesting.

i shouldn't have been embarrassed of giving so much time and attention to this secondary character whose only appearance a quarter into the book has been to storm in on like page 7, issue ominous predictions to a family she's been avoiding while stuck with them in marseille in a mandatory travel quarantine, then immediately go upstairs into the bedroom of this girl the family adopted to be their servant to watch her having a screaming and crying resentment fit which it's implied she, miss wade, MYSTERIOUSLY caused by being receptive to the untoward ungrateful rage of someone adopted into a family to replace a dead twin by acting as the living twins sister/slave, and then leave. because to my surprise everyone in the book is equally obsessed with her .

months and many pages after being in quarantine with her for like one week this one family is still making loaded and fraught allusions to her. what are you thinking about.... is it MISS WADE perchance 😹 ..... i'm blushing. stopppp i'm getting really scared stop it's like she's touching me [sic]..... . who is she to you people

[dandiacal]

speaking of that i need to learn more about earlier lesbian stereotypes because there are specific characteristics (neurotic, melancholic, willful, well-educated, possessive, cold, vengeful, cruel) common to TWO characters im looking at (olive chancellor in the bostonians and miss wade in little dorrit) who've long been interpreted as lesbian and i find it fascinating. they're definitely pathologized, but the reaction to them is fear and pity rather than disgust. these traits have class implications (women who are well-educated and don't marry can't be too poor) and it's funny to think what a male victorian author might take away from an interaction with a woman who doesn't want men in any way like yeah i bet she did seem cold and repressed to you.

also interesting to me that they're not really presented as wanting to be/be like men; these women certainly have masculine traits but it's less of a physical binary thing (liking women = physically you are like a man) than it is the forcefulness and desire to act as the head of a household and ARGUABLY masculinity isn't presented as comical clumsy or embarrassing like they are in some current stereotypes. it IS cause for pity and censure though since a passionate strong will in women is monstrously outsized of course and leads them to overextend themselves/get Presumptuous to ruinous effect.

yeah two instances do not a phenomenon make BUT iirc there was a review of the bostonians that was like oh a devious controlling neurotic freak, we see her, don't think you can hide it: The Lesbian, as if we all know what the Type is, but i can't remember where it was. and whatever existing stereotypes were in place caused THESE characters to be read that way in contemporary and 20th century criticism while other characters were NOT. for instance the woman in white's marian halcombe is so so queer to my modern eyes (off the charts homoeroticism with her half sister im talking kissing her on the mouth and hating her suitors, deliberately masculine self-presentation) but she seems to have gotten away scot free from any Unwholesome Suspicions men were even writing wilkie collins asking whereeeee can we find someone like her. all fascinating i need to dig

[dandiacal]

finding out theres exactly one (1) character commonly read as lesbian in dickens is sending me. there's barely enough of her to go around but everyone just looked at her for those five minutes and said yeah. who is even that

[dandiacal]

can we see a man ass up for once

[jeejyboard]

ianthe spending every saturday morning throughout NtN having to corral gideon onto the mithraeum front lawn to pressure-wash her horrible goddamn body cavity AGAIN bc gideon keeps eating all-day bowls of depression cereal on the couch in a horizontal position and spilling milk into the crevices so here comes ianthe AGAIN putting things in order AGAIN while john waves from the front porch in a robe with coffee watching the kids do their saturday chores (he is also depressed)