With our powers combined....
It's no secret to my friends, family members and even random strangers that I have slash goggles on like 24/7. Everything I see can be slashed, up to and including randomly real people.
On a (semi) related note, I have deep, fangirly love for Abraham Lincoln.
I'll admit, that Lincoln gets a lot of press as one of the best presidents like ever totally whoa, or at least that's what we've been taught since tiny elementary school children somehow combine President's Day with Black History Month and come out with Lincoln = awesomeness. I do not disagree with this.
What other people do not have, I'm sure, is the complete fangirlieness of my love for Lincoln. If we ignore the incredible hottness of his intelligence and speechifying, he is a man who is teeming with angst in the richest of forms. A lawyer from a poor background works honestly and diligently even while his life is filled with failure. His wife is crazy. His job is hard. His babies die. He has power, but it's embroiled in war where half of the country wants to kill you, and the other half really isn't so fond of you getting their boys killed. He's too tall, too skinny, with big ears and nose, and gets these depressing moods all the time. Rife with fandomly attributes!
If I were so inclined I could write a Mary-Sue historical RP fanfic where a sympathetic young housemaid in the White House comes across Mr. Lincoln and soothes his deeply wrinkled brow, allowing him to continue on with the horrors of civil war for just one more day.
...if I thought any teenager who was interested in Mary-Sue fanfic would also be interested in Lincoln, I might write such an atrocity. Much more interesting than soothing Johnny Depp's sea-salt roughened face and hair filled with lice, fleas, and probably, syphilis.
Part of this fanfic, as I explained to a friend yesterday, would involve convincing Mr. Lincoln to grow a beard. We know that a chick did convince him to grow a beard right before he took office:
"It's cannon!" I proclaimed. "And by cannon, I mean history!"
(She was 11 but so what.)
Too weird? Oh honey. Just you wait.
So I am clearly not the only one who loves Mr. 5-Dollar-Bill maybe a little bit too much. I just finished reading "Assassination Vacation" by Sarah Vowell, and nearly half the book is dedicated to our first assassinated pres, Mr. Lincoln. But Ms. Vowell also introduced me to another ahngst-ridden character of the same period, Edwin Booth.
Brother to famous Lincoln killer John Wilkes Booth.
If you get a chance, you should probably read this book. It's got all sorts of interesting bits of info and it's written in a way that's not too dry (except for a large part of the bit about McKinley, whom Vowell clearly does not fancy in the way she fancies his successor, Teddy Roosevelt) but we see clearly the fangirly love for Edwin, and I get it. Despite the name.
Edwin spent much of his formative years caring for his drunken actor father, and eventually became one of the more famous actors of his time, even tho he wasn't as hawt as his li'l brother was. But his history reads very much like Lincoln's: started a theater, went bankrupt. Married = she died. Married again = she died again. One daughter, a girl named Edwina (that one's his own fault, I'm sure). Saved Lincoln's son when he fell in front of a train. Embarrassed and horrified by the family black sheep.
I want to watch some of the movies about him, but I'm afraid it will only be utilized for the RP historical slash that now lives in my head:
Abraham Lincoln/Edwin Booth.
The dark, intense, brooding President finds solace in the arms of the confident, charismatic young actor. The hothead younger brother discovers his much-admired sibling with a man whose political stance he despises, and the country is tossed into despair and chaos. Years later, the now-older actor reaches down to pluck a man out of the jaws of death, only to discover it was the only child of his long-lost love...
On a (semi) related note, I have deep, fangirly love for Abraham Lincoln.
I'll admit, that Lincoln gets a lot of press as one of the best presidents like ever totally whoa, or at least that's what we've been taught since tiny elementary school children somehow combine President's Day with Black History Month and come out with Lincoln = awesomeness. I do not disagree with this.
What other people do not have, I'm sure, is the complete fangirlieness of my love for Lincoln. If we ignore the incredible hottness of his intelligence and speechifying, he is a man who is teeming with angst in the richest of forms. A lawyer from a poor background works honestly and diligently even while his life is filled with failure. His wife is crazy. His job is hard. His babies die. He has power, but it's embroiled in war where half of the country wants to kill you, and the other half really isn't so fond of you getting their boys killed. He's too tall, too skinny, with big ears and nose, and gets these depressing moods all the time. Rife with fandomly attributes!
If I were so inclined I could write a Mary-Sue historical RP fanfic where a sympathetic young housemaid in the White House comes across Mr. Lincoln and soothes his deeply wrinkled brow, allowing him to continue on with the horrors of civil war for just one more day.
...if I thought any teenager who was interested in Mary-Sue fanfic would also be interested in Lincoln, I might write such an atrocity. Much more interesting than soothing Johnny Depp's sea-salt roughened face and hair filled with lice, fleas, and probably, syphilis.
Part of this fanfic, as I explained to a friend yesterday, would involve convincing Mr. Lincoln to grow a beard. We know that a chick did convince him to grow a beard right before he took office:
"It's cannon!" I proclaimed. "And by cannon, I mean history!"
(She was 11 but so what.)
Too weird? Oh honey. Just you wait.
So I am clearly not the only one who loves Mr. 5-Dollar-Bill maybe a little bit too much. I just finished reading "Assassination Vacation" by Sarah Vowell, and nearly half the book is dedicated to our first assassinated pres, Mr. Lincoln. But Ms. Vowell also introduced me to another ahngst-ridden character of the same period, Edwin Booth.
Brother to famous Lincoln killer John Wilkes Booth.
If you get a chance, you should probably read this book. It's got all sorts of interesting bits of info and it's written in a way that's not too dry (except for a large part of the bit about McKinley, whom Vowell clearly does not fancy in the way she fancies his successor, Teddy Roosevelt) but we see clearly the fangirly love for Edwin, and I get it. Despite the name.
Edwin spent much of his formative years caring for his drunken actor father, and eventually became one of the more famous actors of his time, even tho he wasn't as hawt as his li'l brother was. But his history reads very much like Lincoln's: started a theater, went bankrupt. Married = she died. Married again = she died again. One daughter, a girl named Edwina (that one's his own fault, I'm sure). Saved Lincoln's son when he fell in front of a train. Embarrassed and horrified by the family black sheep.
I want to watch some of the movies about him, but I'm afraid it will only be utilized for the RP historical slash that now lives in my head:
Abraham Lincoln/Edwin Booth.
The dark, intense, brooding President finds solace in the arms of the confident, charismatic young actor. The hothead younger brother discovers his much-admired sibling with a man whose political stance he despises, and the country is tossed into despair and chaos. Years later, the now-older actor reaches down to pluck a man out of the jaws of death, only to discover it was the only child of his long-lost love...