#The rich then exploiting women to raise their kids

[coochiequeens]

It is always OK to question the motives of people who choose surrogacy over adopting or fostering.

By Maryha Gill 8 Feb 2025

Whether it’s infertility, to save a career or pure altruism, is there ever a reason that can justify surrogacy?

An online row last week underlines something we all know but which many prefer to ignore. There is something not right about surrogacy. The furore started with an Instagram post by Lily Collins: a picture of her new daughter, Tove, in a little basket, under which the Emily in Paris actor expressed “endless gratitude for our incredible surrogate”. Reaction split along predictable lines – those in favour of surrogacy, and those against.

What was striking was that it also split along another fissure: Collins’s possible motives. It was OK, some felt, to use a surrogate if you have infertility problems. But not in order to keep your figure, help your career, or because pregnancy is taxing and you are rich enough to outsource it.

People were also divided on the motives of the surrogate. All well and good if she was driven by a desire to help Collins and her husband. But not if the true reason was the need for money.

Collins’s husband, Charlie McDowell, hit back at “unkind messages”, writing: “It’s OK to not know why someone might need a surrogate to have a child. It’s OK to not know the motivations of a surrogate regardless of what you assume.”

But he would be wrong to think motives are irrelevant here. This row touches on a central problem with surrogacy. As with assisted dying, motives do matter. If surrogates are being coerced by financial need or by other people, that is a problem. If the rich are delegating pregnancy to others merely because they can, that is another.

The trouble is – as with assisted dying – there are few ways to guarantee that someone is doing something for the right reasons. You cannot peer into people’s souls, divine their true reasons and legislate accordingly.

There is a defensible version of surrogacy, involving commissioning parents who are genuinely in need and a “gestational carrier” who was not pressured by her circumstances. But there are many, many indefensible versions, and no sure way to guard against all of them. If some reasons for surrogacy are morally unacceptable, then so is the practice itself.

Advocates tend to focus only on infertile couples yearning for a child. But there is no getting away from the fact that outsourcing childbirth is the preserve of the rich. It is increasingly common in Hollywood, for example: Sarah Jessica Parker, Nicole Kidman, Paris Hilton, Grimes, Khloé and Kim Kardashian, Priyanka Chopra, Rebel Wilson, Lucy Liu and Naomi Campbell have all reportedly used a surrogate to have children.skip past newsletter promotion

If infertility is a good enough reason to use a surrogate, then why not preserving your career?

Liu has said that her decision was not driven by infertility: “It just seemed like the right option for me because I was working and I didn’t know when I was going to be able to stop.”

This may sound reasonable. If infertility is a good enough reason to use a surrogate, then why not preserving your career? But it is in this way that a “need” for a surrogate transforms into a “right”. If career goals entitle you to a surrogate, then how about failing to find a good enough relationship? Increasing numbers of single men are employing surrogates on that basis. One Japanese businessman has accumulated 16 surrogate children “because he wanted a large family”. Rational step by rational step, you enter a dystopian world.

Motives also matter when it comes to the surrogate herself. For the vast majority, the driving force is unquestionably the need for money: most surrogates are hard-up young women in poverty-stricken countries paid to rent out their wombs. Some countries, the UK among them, have attempted to change the equation by only permitting “altruistic” surrogacy, where expenses may be paid and nothing more. But ethical pitfalls remain; potential wrong reasons abound.

What if a surrogate is driven by the belief she is building an important bond with a couple, only to be cut off once her service is complete? There is every reason for clinics and would-be parents to encourage a special feeling of connection but no obligation to continue it after the baby is handed over. The “best” reason for surrogacy is the halo of pure altruism, which does not depend on how the commissioners then treat you. But we should question that motive in a world where female self-sacrifice has traditionally been glorified. In almost every country, women are far more likely to be kidney donors, and men the recipients, even though kidney disease is more prevalent among women.

At the root of the problem with surrogacy is the fact that human emotions, attitudes, connections and relationships are vitally important, but they cannot be controlled or enforced. We cannot ensure that the relationship between surrogate and would-be parents stays sweet. Neither can we diminish the bond that forms between birth mother and child. Surrogates suffer as a result. And so do children: without that immediate emotional bond, parents seem to find it easier to abandon them. There are too many babies dumped with the surrogate or in orphanages when commissioners change their minds.

Surrogacy is a booming industry – globally it is estimated at £14bn. Between 5,000 and 20,000 babies are handed over every year. British would-be parents are increasingly turning to commercial surrogates in countries blighted by poverty, where it is cheaper. The numbers of Britons using both commercial and altruistic surrogates is rising. We should view all this as a problem. Surrogacy can work well, but there are far too many risks it doesn’t.

 Martha Gill is an Observer columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

[halfcourtyeet]

The Encounter with Elliot, and Mill Valley

On leaving the library today, I noticed an attractive girl in an outfit similar to mine, with shoulder-length brown hair. Let’s call her Elliot. Her deep voice I noticed first, so she may be non-binary. Elliot and I talked about many things — her trip to Japan, comic book artists, furries — and then parted abruptly. She said she moved here from Britain, she talked about her struggling to get her giant parents’ SUV in the local car wash, mentioned her trips home to England and her study abroad in Japan. Soon, though, I noticed her polite discomfort, her skills at social ballet. Finally, I noticed the ease at which she brushed me off to resume her business.

It is only now that I have taken time to manifest myself away that I can express my distaste for her.

As soon as I knew she was from Belvedere — the small, ultra-wealthy island in the Bay that hosts the San Francisco Yacht Club — I thought of a simple but memorable Prince lyric: “Right then and there, I knew I was through.” Her family possesses wealth immeasurable and incomprehensible to me. My family possesses poverty and economic trauma immeasurable and incomprehensible to her. How could we ever understand each other?

My middle school and high school peers were just like this (in fact, Christian G., who I went to Tam with, walked past me as I was talking with her. Even if we had locked eyes, I would have not said hello.) I am sure this is the same with any other upper-class (now borderline high-class) suburb. Their children are raised without struggle in sunny green locales, without community in giant family houses, and without emotional awareness in a culture that promotes capitalizing on others even over its own blasé hedonism. The children grow up to be adults working in (ideally) engineering, health, law, or management, and at worst, Wall Street. They pick up on their parents’ careful social movement from a young age and learn no other language, certainly not the language of the working-class, despite their urgency to imitate and emulate the cultural works of the poor (black and brown people, mainly.) They build a wall of pleasantries, excuses, and economic euphemisms around their hearts, and let nobody in, even those closest to them.

I hate this town!

It is class. It has always been class. As she cut me off from conversation, I left the library in a half-jealous stupor and noticed school had ended for the day. The children flooded the street in their white and white-passing brilliance. High-end SUVs orbited the roundabout, and slim white women in visors and sunglasses walked strollers briskly and escorted their children to safety once again.

Down at the pizza place, I noticed the arrogance of the kids leaving “North Bridge Academy,” the perfection of their haircuts, the willingness to be loud and make noise with no adult nearby to reprimand them. North Bridge itself is in the same building as Greenwood School, where I went to school on financial aid for a sorry five years of my childhood. That was before Mill Valley had the full audacity to host a children’s “academy.” Nothing from their behavior on the street showed me they were learning manners, at least.

I continued home, my mood worsening in the midst of all these thoughts. Mill Valley’s East Blithedale Ave., one of its two de facto main streets, is basically set up to give victory laps to the privileged trophy wives that wander the town — lines of salons, boutiques, art galleries, furniture stores and wineries pack the air-brushed rows. Any history that once existed here is sanitized or priced out of its rent. Its affluence possesses tyrannical villainy: it is rich to the point of being evil. Even the Mexican laborers I’ve noticed have a certain smugness to them for screwing their employers over pricewise, which seems to do nothing but repeat the cycle of vengeful exploitation the town’s residents cultivate. (Still, this is probably something I should figure out by interviewing.)

I know I sound like an old man here, but I cannot shake this feeling any longer without saying anything about it. Does this atmosphere not bother anyone here? Does it not frustrate them or make their stomach churn with gall like it does mine? Is everyone in this town so fucking tone-deaf to their own conscience that they think this fucking over-gentrified yuppie-tech wax museum is how people should live?

Elliot couldn’t understand why I didn’t like Mill Valley; she said she liked it just fine. Why wouldn’t she? Her blindness to the truth of things, I can’t even begin to imagine. She is so lost in the sauce that she opens her mouth and fails to taste the bitterness of her own words.

I stopped to get a slice at Stefano’s Pizza. This is one of the few locations in town from my childhood that has never changed or been gentrified, save for the price being increased in the wake of America’s inflation crises. I don’t even remember the name of the man at the counter, but he still works here day in and day out, just like he did when I wore cargo shorts and light-up sneakers. He did not smile at me or ask how I have been. He has seen what happens in this town. I tried to say a few kind words as I order, but to establish something with him now would require a confidence bordering on arrogance.

To him, I must also be the problem. Even though I was a transfer student, I went off to college and left the town behind. But consider how I spent two years largely surrounded by other transfers, and even those who went for four years often got financial aid (or predatory loans) to help mitigate their tenuous economic circumstances.. Their desperation to be, their ambition to escape, their imagination in telling their stories, all had a beautiful familiarity to me.

Even now, somewhere south, far and away from this evil little town, is a transgender girl in a messy room, half-dressed and overworked. She does not know how much longer she can stay in Santa Cruz with rent this high. She is poor and she is scared.

You will never know her, Elliot.

[darthlenaplant]

Yeah. Like. Treating the education of children like the massive responsibility it IS, should NOT mean we as a society need to move back 100 years in societal development. They don't say "it takes a village" for nothing, and if anything, men should be able to be stay-at-home fathers too, and I DO MEAN that ECONOMICALLY (because men's wages are STILL higher than women's even in the same field, with the same qualifications). Getting a child is prohibitively expensive by the year, and then the rich have the GALL to bitch about poor people complaining because they have no money to rear a child. And the racist policy makers complain all the time about the "wrong" people having too many children anyway.

Before the advent of the nuclear family in one household, it was NORMAL for a kid to be raised in a home that was like. 1-4 grandparents, parents, siblings, sometimes also siblings of parents and their children even. But those kinds of living situations are harder to exploit for monetary reasons.

Wether it is UBI (or some half-version of it) or just that ANY job (and be it bloody PART TIME) gives a worker enough money to be able to comfortably take care of a kid, the situation as it is will NOT become better if we go tradwife style.

can i be honest im 100% for the fact that like the tradwife stay at home mom thing is really fucked culturally but also like i think we as a society have to figure this shit out because a child needs the equivalent (if not more) of a full time job's worth of work from an adult who (for the health of the child and for the ethics of the situation honestly) needs to be able to function in a way that isn't making the adult miserable because being raised by miserable adults has really tangible negative impacts on children. whether its community childcare so that simply more adults can be involved in the situation or much more robust social aid towards young families. like this might he stupidly idealistic but i think really the root of a lot of issues in society come from the fact that people refuse to understand the gravity of like. parenthood. its an insane responsibility. i think it should be treated as such

[gettingridofhope]

I remember in high school I had an English teacher named Mrs. Grace. Mrs. Grace had a reputation for being a bitch but after having endured her class in senior year I found that Mrs. Grace couldn’t have been anything less. She was passionate about what she taught. She also was an advocate for animals, the environment, women’s rights and the poor. At one point towards the end of senior year she spoke in great detail about what the future holds for us as far as what we were set to inherit. She laid on us the coming climate crisis (doesn’t actually exist but we’ll get into that later), the economic hardship, the exploitation of everything by the rich and debt slavery. While she detailed all the topics she had listed I remember being annoyed as she continued to discuss every problem we were facing. At the the end of it I was the only one to speak up and say “what the fuck are we supposed to do about it?” I remember hearing whispers of agreement around me and her answer was just as disheartening as the speech she had just given us.

“I don’t know.”

They fucked it up and we’re supposed to fix it. Wonderful. Imagine the surreal feeling I got when I began to hear the same sentiment being felt by the younger generations, the children of my generation, asking the same question. My answer is a little more helpful the Mrs. Grace’s.

“You’re going to deal with it and whatever your are going to be. They’ll be the right ones.”

The future is coming rapidly. Technology develops exponentially so the future for you is coming twice as fast as it did for mine. But for you guys it’ll just be the way things happen. You won’t feel it any quicker it’ll just be. No matter what it is. You’ll just deal with it. Why? Because you have no other choice. Life happens whether you participate or not but you have an advantage over every previous generation that has come before you. Your generation has empathy on a massive scale. Your parents grew up having to fend for themselves. We had both parents if we had both working until late in the evening. Later if our’s was a single parent. We were called latchkey kids so named by door latch we had to unlock when we came home. Which might explain why our way of thinking is a bit more self centered than you might expect. That’s why people of my generation tend to need a lot more alone time than others.

Now I don’t have children but I do know that most parents want their children’s lives to be better than ours. So one parent, most of the time, stayed home to raise the kids. Constantly being reassured that you were bright, good and capable. That everything you felt and experienced is important. That lays a foundation of a general feeling of wanting everyone to be ok. That is very human. Human beings at their core do not want to see others in pain, in need or in despair. My generation would probably change the channel or turn off the tv. Yours may do the same thing but it haunts you. It doesn’t leave your conscious. That’s the difference. I think all of you see that you are a part of something bigger than yourselves. That need to make sure everyone is ok is just what is needed to start making things happen now. Embrace the challenges that lie ahead now because the sooner you do the sooner you don’t have to worry about it. Your grandparents and your great grandparents are responsible for fucking it up. Your parent were told to fix it and we’ve made efforts but they haven’t amounted to much. However, we’ve laid the foundation and that’s where you come in. It’s coming in fast but you are ready. You are capable and your solutions will be amazing. Redirect you angst not at the passed generations but at the problems themselves. Finding blame wastes time and energy. Rather to burn that energy on finding solutions. You are all in this together and some stranger in Russia, China, the Middle East and any where else I the world is not your enemy. Don’t let the the failings of the previous generations become your own.

[donnabroadway]

The church as a business

Today, as I was listening to one of the few churches whose livestream I tune into one Sundays, the pastor was going on and on about how the only way to be blessed with more is to give it away. I get it. Recently, I cut Ivy in my front yard and it seems like the ivy has grown like wild fire from the few pieces I cut. In the black community, they tell you in order to get long healthy hair, you must cut it. Giving your money away to make more money, may fall under those guidelines. I know really rich people, those with more money than they know what to do with, become philanthropist which is a fancy way to say they give away money in order to avoid giving it to the IRS. I guess the church is using the same approach, don't be afraid to pay your tithes and offerings, even in a recession because God will bless it. As I was listening to this sermon, my husband casually said, "oh prosperity preaching. I guess it makes you feel good." Record screech. Excuse me.

I wonder if it's a coincidence that every Sunday the men are driving the train and women are the ones falling out in their seats and hooping and hollering but that is an essay for another day. I write all that to say that no matter what we think, say, or believe that the church is and always has been a business and while that is not necessarily a bad thing because being a pastor is a full time job with full time responsibilities and I believe that anyone who works should get paid but in this capitalistic society, in order for a business to truly succeed, there has to be exploitation and in the church that exploitation is the congregation. The church thrives off of the tithes and offerings of their members, some of whom go without the basics to pay them because they are of the belief their monetary sacrifice will be multiplied ten fold. The church also thrives off the free labor of their volunteers, singers, teachers, evangelists, altar workers, the ministerial staff, and those who ultimately feel called the ministry and will give up their Saturday's to stack chairs all make sacrifices of their gifts, talents, and time sometimes only to receive a thank you or a gift basket and don't get it twisted, ministry is not only Sunday morning but can be multiple times a week, which is why many church kids say they were in church 3-4 times a week. Sunday service (1), youth fellowship (2), bible study or midweek prayer service (3), choir practice (4), fellowship (5). Honestly, another institution in the black community takes notes from the church with members paying yearly fees and dues, paying to attend or sponsor events, and giving freely of talents, gifts, and money in hopes of being elevated in said institution. There is a lot of overlap between these organizations.

Honestly, while the church can be exploitative, we have to look at what it's offered over the last 150 or so years. The church was the only place where blacks could freely congregate, hence them becoming the center of the black community. They educated our children, brought together families and unions, they offered fellowship, trained some of the best contemporary singers, and they were the backbone of social change. Without the black church, the civil rights movement wouldn't have been a success. The church brought together the black community and served as a meeting and training ground for many of the leaders. It is something to note that the movement began to falter once it was moved away from the church, I know that the FBI and COINTELPRO were in full swing but it's still interesting. It is also interesting that we can tell the singers that were not raised singing in the church because of their lack of powerhouse vocals and lack of stage presence because no one is harder to win over than a church mother or a congregation that has heard, what they feel like is the longest sermon ever and is hungry and ready to go home and the last thing they want to hear is another long, drawn out song. The church needs to bring back choirs, but that's another thought for another day.

I don't know if I fault the church for being a business because it obviously brings a healing power and fills a need but pastors, like most people can become power hungry and stray away from the lord and that becomes another essay.

[coochiequeens]

If 100 couples seek surrogacy services in Thailand, they will likely spend 100 million baht here.” - Dr. Sura Wisedsak

Well if commercial surrogacy can pump money into the nations economy who gives a fuck about women and the babies that would be born through this? Apparently not Doctor Wisedsak.

The idea of legalizing surrogacy services for foreign couples, including LGBTQ partners, promises rich benefits for Thailand’s medical industry – but has also triggered grave concerns about human trafficking risks.

“I am not against attracting the flow of foreign currency. But I would urge caution and also demand assurances that it [surrogacy for foreigners] will not leave Thailand labeled as a human-trafficking country,” said Prof. Dr. Kamthorn Pruksananonda, a lecturer in Obstetrics & Gynecology at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Medicine.

Prof. Dr. Kamthorn Pruksananonda

The medical lecturer pointed out that the concern about the sale and exploitation of children born from surrogacy arrangements were so prominent that they often feature in reports to the United Nations General Assembly.

“Such arrangements may be connected to child pornography,” he said, highlighting one aspect of the dangers associated with surrogacy.

Kamthorn said Thai authorities teamed up with United States’ Homeland Security Investigations to crack down on an illegal multinational surrogacy gang in Thailand several months ago. Foreign security agencies see Thailand as a base for human traffickers exploiting surrogacy services, he added.

“Lax legal enforcement means illegal surrogacy services are still able to operate here,” he said.

Efforts to protect kids

In 2015, Thailand passed a law to protect children born through assisted reproductive technologies, to prevent foreigners from hiring Thai women to serve as surrogate mothers. Prior to the law’s enactment, such surrogacy services were widely available in Thailand.

“We drafted the Children Born through Assisted Reproductive Technologies Protection Act to plug legal loopholes. With so many foreigners coming to Thailand for surrogacy services, there was a risk of human trafficking,” Kamthorn said.

The medical expert sits on the committee for the protection of children born through assisted reproductive services, and also the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ committee on Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility.

During the passage of the new law, a scandal erupted over a Thai surrogate mother who was left struggling with the burden of raising a Down Syndrome baby – named Gammy – after the infant was abandoned by his biological Australian parents. The foreign couple left Thailand with only Gammy’s twin sister after medical tests confirmed she was healthy and did not have Downs.

The scandal deepened after an investigation revealed that the Australian father had been convicted twice of molesting girls. This new finding also raised questions about the ethics of gestational surrogacy.

Under Thailand’s current law, only Thai heterosexual couples married for more than three years can hire a surrogate to have their child. Commercial surrogacy serving foreign clients and LGBTQs is currently banned.

Penalties for illegal surrogacy under the new law are severe.

A surrogate mother faces up to 10 years in jail and a maximum fine of 200,000 baht if she joins an illegal surrogacy service. Those caught selling sperm or eggs are punishable by up to three years in jail and/or a fine of 60,000 baht. And an agent for illegal surrogacy services faces five years in jail and/or a fine of 100,00 baht.

Proposed changes

According to Dr. Sura Wisedsak, director-general of the Department of Health Service Support (DHSS), the scope of the law is set to be expanded so that Thai surrogacy services also cover foreign and LGBTQ couples.

Dr. Sura Wisedsak

He pointed to the financial benefits of this move.

“If 100 couples seek surrogacy services in Thailand, they will likely spend 100 million baht here.”

Sura said Thai services and expertise in surrogacy are second to none, so would attract plenty of foreigners.

“Our service fees are also cheaper,” he added.

Thailand currently has 115 providers of services related to infertility. Of these, 17 are state hospitals, 31 are private hospitals and 67 are private clinics.

Each year, they provide around 12,000 artificial insemination procedures and around 20,000 in vitro fertilization services. These form part of a growing surrogacy sector serving couples who are unable to conceive naturally. Authorities have so far approved 754 surrogacy applications – accounting for 97.2% of total requests. The success rate of these services is currently 48.53% – up from 46%.

Dr. Olarik Musigavong, a reproductive medicine specialist, is an enthusiastic supporter of legalizing surrogacy services for foreigners, explaining that it will generate income for Thailand and enrich the skills of Thais working in the field.

“The government could also use tax revenue from the expanded surrogacy sector to subsidize assisted reproduction for Thais who need but cannot afford such services,” he said.

Asked about the potential dangers of commercial surrogacy, Olarik said that if proper control measures were in place, human trafficking would not be a risk.

“If we legalize the services, illegal practices will fade. And with a legal process and clear registration, those involved won’t be able to abandon kids either,” he said.

In some countries, the commercial system is so well-established that there are even sperm/egg banks that pay donors, Olarik said.

DHSS deputy director-general Arkom Praditsuwan said to prevent human trafficking, couples seeking surrogacy services may be asked to prove their good financial status.

Dr. Olarik Musigavong

‘Illegal practices put surrogate moms at risk’

Kamthorn said numerous Thai women who volunteered to serve as surrogate mothers for underground operations have ended up receiving substandard care. They have been crowded together in condo apartments and sometimes medicated to produce more eggs than they should.

“A few months ago, a teenager ended up in an intensive care unit due to the practice of overdosing with medication. She nearly died,” he said, “Agents don’t give a damn. They just try to lower costs to maximize their profits.”

Thai advertisements looking for surrogate moms are easily found on the internet.

They typically offer 500,000 baht plus monthly allowances during the surrogacy period. The monthly pay usually ranges between 10,000 and 20,000 baht.

Underground surrogacy rings usually divide their operations into several parts, each handled by different units, making it difficult for authorities to investigate and prosecute.

The Department of Special Investigation says a recent case involved Chinese customers hiring an underground ring operating in Thailand and neighboring countries.

In Thailand, they used three clinics for prenatal care and child-delivery services. Investigators found the gang had well over 100 million baht in cash flow at the time they were arrested.

By Thai PBS World’s General Desk

[andiamjustsoul]

Not a judgement just a thought I had quickly reading this very short quote from a book I’ve never read so I am very aware of how out of context this could be.

But whenever I see a sentiment like this, my brain immediately thinks - the person who wrote this is probably white and probably someone of privilege.

I was raised very Christian and knew after i finally escaped that I had so much work to undo all that I learned if I ever wanted to be completely free from ii. It was from there that started peeling the layers of Christianity but also of patriarchy, sexism, and capitalism. How Christianity paved the way for colonialism and white supremacy.

I’ve always been attracted to witchcraft, the occult and other religions so that’s where my spirituality has grown. I am grateful to have such a rich spiritual life again after escaping Christianity. (My craft is tied deeply to nature and daoism)

But whenever I see this idea that curses are like poison to the practitioner just makes me roll my eyes. Good magic versus bad magic. Magic is nature and nature is neutral. Witchcraft is the practice of those who are marginalized, especially in the West.

When those in power, those in privilege continue to exploit and manipulate the world to their favor at the expense of nature and people, should we not act? Use whatever tools we have available to us? Have you not cursed under your breath at those who continue to allow women to die because they could not get access to medical care they needed? To the trans kids who are denied healthcare and basic human rights? To the black kids who keep dying and being sent to prison? To any kid and teacher in any school? To every poor person, no matter how hard they try to get out of poverty?

So to all my dear witches, curses are not things to be feared. This idea to me feels strongly of a holdover of christian morality and a splash of racism. Curses are to be respected and understood and to be used wisely, like fire or a sharp knife.

Whenever someone makes a statement inferring something is an absolute evil sounds like someone who’s never had their existence challenged or their needs denied, have never felt the need to protect themselves. A life that is accepted in the status quo.

Someone who’s never felt the need to curse, to restore balance, to use all the tools given to them.

" Magic works through the practitioner, not around him. This means that anything I call forth tends to pass through me on its way out into the world. Sending a curse, in my experience, is a little like spitting poison from your own mouth. It can be rinsed out... but it changes your spirit ever so slightly."

- Roger J. Horne's Folk Witchcraft: A Guide to Lore, Land, & the Familiar Spirit for the Solitary Practitioner.

[bitchesgetriches]

On poverty:

Starting from nothing

How To Start at Rock Bottom: Welfare Programs and the Social Safety Net

How to Save for Retirement When You Make Less Than $30,000 a Year

Ask the Bitches: “Is It Too Late to Get My Financial Shit Together?“

Understanding why people are poor

It’s More Expensive to Be Poor Than to Be Rich

Why Are Poor People Poor and Rich People Rich?

On Financial Discipline, Generational Poverty, and Marshmallows

Bitchtastic Book Review: Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado

Is Gentrification Just Artisanal, Small-Batch Displacement of the Poor?

Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 1: Healthcare, Housing, and Labor Rights

Developing compassion for poor people

The Latte Factor, Poor Shaming, and Economic Compassion

Ask the Bitches: “How Do I Stop Myself from Judging Homeless People?“

The Subjectivity of Wealth, Or: Don’t Tell Me What’s Expensive

A Little Princess: Intersectional Feminist Masterpiece?

If You Can’t Afford to Tip 20%, You Can’t Afford to Dine Out

Correcting income inequality

1 Easy Way All Allies Can Help Close the Gender and Racial Pay Gap

One Reason Women Make Less Money? They’re Afraid of Being Raped and Killed.

Raising the Minimum Wage Would Make All Our Lives Better

Are Unions Good or Bad?

On intersectional social issues:

Reproductive rights

On Pulling Weeds and Fighting Back: How (and Why) to Protect Abortion Rights

How To Get an Abortion

Blood Money: Menstrual Products for Surviving Your Period While Poor

You Don’t Have to Have Kids

Gender equality

1 Easy Way All Allies Can Help Close the Gender and Racial Pay Gap

The Pink Tax, Or: How I Learned to Love Smelling Like “Bearglove”

Our Single Best Piece of Advice for Women (and Men) on International Women’s Day

Bitchtastic Book Review: The Feminist Financial Handbook by Brynne Conroy

Sexual Harassment: How to Identify and Fight It in the Workplace

Queer issues

Queer Finance 101: Ten Ways That Sexual and Gender Identity Affect Finances

Leaving Home before 18: A Practical Guide for Cast-Offs, Runaways, and Everybody in Between

Racial justice

The Financial Advantages of Being White

Woke at Work: How to Inject Your Values into Your Boring, Lame-Ass Job

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander: A Bitchtastic Book Review

Something Is Wrong in Personal Finance. Here’s How To Make It More Inclusive.

The Biggest Threat to Black Wealth Is White Terrorism

Coronavirus Reveals America’s Pre-existing Conditions, Part 2: Racial and Gender Inequality

10 Rad Black Money Experts to Follow Right the Hell Now

Youth issues

What We Talk About When We Talk About Student Loans

The Ugly Truth About Unpaid Internships

Ask the Bitches: “I Just Turned 18 and My Parents Are Kicking Me Out. How Do I Brace Myself?”

Identifying and combatting abuse

When Money is the Weapon: Understanding Intimate Partner Financial Abuse

Are You Working on the Next Fyre Festival?: Identifying a Toxic Workplace

Ask the Bitches: “How Do I Say ‘No’ When a Loved One Asks for Money… Again?”

Ask the Bitches: I Was Guilted Into Caring for a Sick, Abusive Parent. Now What?

On mental health:

Understanding mental health issues

How Mental Health Affects Your Finances

Stop Recommending Therapy Like It’s a Magic Bean That’ll Grow Me a Beanstalk to Neurotypicaltown

Bitchtastic Book Review: Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos and Your Big Brain

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[tressasinterlude]

𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐓 #𝟑: Female Public Figures Dating Men with Questionable Views That Contradict Their Image & Alleged Politics

𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗥: These rant blog posts are really just reflective of my thoughts at the time that I make them and are posted here because I need an outlet to release all of this shit I have going on my busy ass mind. That’s it and that’s all. Now let’s get into it..

This rant was greatly inspired by none other than Ms. Robyn Rihanna “Tell Your Faves To Pull Up [in regards to social injustices directly affecting black people]” Fenty and her openly colorist boyfriend, A$AP Rocky. Aside from the fact that Rihanna tends to slip under the radar and is never held accountable for her problematic ways due to her conventional beauty (i.e. Her heavy usage of anti-Asian slurs, particularly targeted towards Chris Brown’s ex gf, Karrueche), it’s very alarming that a woman who has an entire makeup brand with a campaign based around the inclusivity of ALL black women is publicly flaunting a beau who once said that DSBW do not look good with red lipstick.

And yes, I’m very much aware that Rakim said this tasteless comment over 8 years ago but from the looks of it, not much has really changed with him. Don’t @ me about it neither because I don’t care.

Also peep how he compares a hypothetical darkskinned woman to a man (Wesley Snipes) while trying to explain how his antiblackness isn’t wrong because he said something about white women as well. Gaslighting at its finest. Don’t you just love it! 😀

Furthermore, you would think that somebody of Rihanna’s level of stature would know not to associate themselves with someone as messy as A$AP Rocky but... Stupid is what stupid does, I guess! I can’t even begin to place the blame on him anymore because he’s revealed his true colors and we all have made the deliberate choice to either accept it or don’t and have discontinued all support for him. Unfortunately, misogynoir is never the dealbreaker for most people and the hatred for [dark-skinned] black women is so engrained in society that it’s frowned upon when we publicly speak out against it. Very ass backwards if you ask me but that’s society for you. Now, enough about that. Let’s focus back on Ms. Vita La Coco.

As a woman who claims to be a girl’s girl and is always presenting herself to be someone who is the epitome of a pro-black feminist bad ass, it just makes her alleged activism come off so disingenuous when she’s also laying down with the same man that actively attacks the demographic she’s supposed to be standing in solidarity with. It’s “Black Lives Matter” on the IG posts but your vagina is getting moist for a man who openly stated he doesn’t relate to what goes on in Ferguson because he lives in Soho & Beverly Hills. Ferguson being the exact place where a 17-year-old black boy’s lifeless corpse laid on the hot concrete for FOUR hours after he was murdered by a police officer. He couldn’t 'relate' to the fate of so many black men, women, and children who are murdered or seriously injured from state-sanctioned violence because they’re poor and he is not or so he thought.

But then again, what can I really expect from a woman who identified as being “biracial” until as recent as roughly 6 years ago? What can I really expect from a woman who called Rachel Dolezal a ‘hero’ for cosplaying as a black woman? I’d be lying if I said my expectations for her were high in this regard because sis has always shown us she was lacking in this department. And just for the record, this is not a personal attack on Rihanna at all for the die-hard Navy stans in the back. I admire her latest fashions and bop my head to her music just like the next person but she’s getting the side-eye from me on this one.

Trust and believe me though, she’s not the only woman who I can call out for being a hypocrite. Of course not! This stone can be cast at a few others. So without further ado, why don’t we bring Ms. Kehlani Parrish to the front of the congregation? Prior to Kehlani’s recent declaration of identifying as a lesbian, her last public relationship with a man was with YG. Yes, the same YG who felt it was necessary to say him & Nipsey had ‘pretty light-skinned’ daughters to raise in the middle of his deceased friend’s memorial. By the way, Nipsey’s daughter is not even light (or at least not in my book anyways.) She’s a very deep caramel tone just like her father which makes what he said even more moronic. Yes, the same YG who thought it was clever idea to use slavery as an aesthetic for a music video to a diss track about 6ix9ine. And yes, also the same YG who has derogatory lyrics targeted at bisexual women. Just to end up sweating the red carpets with one. I swear the jokes just continue to write themselves.

This raises the question once more; How high of a pedestal can I really put a multiracial woman who has a song titled ‘N*ggas’ and when received backlash for the song in question, she used the ultimate ‘I’m mixed’ copout while not having a visibly black parent in sight?

It’s also kind of suspicious to me that many were not privy to Kehlani’s secret romance with Victoria Monét (pictured bottom right) until Victoria did an interview with Gay Times revealing she fell in love with a girl but they subsequently broke up because Victoria had a boyfriend and that girl was pregnant in a polyamorous relationship. Fans began to speculate because both Victoria & Kehlani previously candidly spoke about their sexual orientations, Kehlani had just had Adeya and they both were seemingly close. Their short-lived fling would later be confirmed when Victoria released the song ‘Touch Me’ on her last project and Kehlani hopped on the remix. Meanwhile, Kehlani’s relationship with Shaina (pictured bottom left) was very overt and all over her Instagram feed from my recollection. And as you can see, Shaina looks absolutely nothing like Victoria. They look like the complete opposite of eachother in every aspect which is kind of alarming(?) to say the least because why is it that the women she proudly claims as her partners tend to have a very racially ambiguous look such as herself but her ‘sneaky links’ on the other hand are undoubtedly black women? Again, it could just be me jumping conclusions. You know, I’m kinda good for that however something tells me I’m not. Y’all be the judge of the material though.

Last but not least, I’d like to touch on Ms. Raven Tracy very briefly. I was very weary about even including in this segment and if I should just put her in a entirely separate blog post with other women who openly date abusers despite their checkered past (alongside Nicki Minaj & her r*pist murderer of a husband, India Love & Sheck Wes etc.) being this particular blog post was based around the theme of lightskinned/mixed women dating men with extremely problematic views about DSBW. Raven obviously isn’t lightskinned or mixed however I refused to ignore how contradictory her [former] relationship with an alleged (I used this word very loosely and mainly for legality purposes.) serial r*pist while promoting a brand that is all about feminism & body positivity. This also traces back to A$AP Rocky by default being that Ian Connor is his very close friend and he came to Connor’s defense when several women came forward detailing accounts of Connor allegedly s*xually assaulting them. (I wish I could place the actual video of what A$AP Rocky said verbatim but Tumblr only allows one video per blog post. 🙄)

Back in June of this year, Ian & Raven had a back & forth on Twitter after Ian tweeted about Raven “fucking everybody” behind his back. I can only assume that he was alluding to Tori Brixx posting a video of her ex, Rich the Kid & Raven kissing on her story. Disgusted is not even the word to describe my feeling when she admitted she stuck by Ian despite of his many allegations of s*xual abuse because she loved him and her being a empath causes her to want to help everybody. Imagine aiding and abetting a predator and even paying for his bail & legal fees just to turn around and expect sympathy because this same individual cheated on you and exploited you all over Twitter for the public to see. The same man that you would get back with not even a WEEK after the fact & turn off your IG comments because it isn’t our “business” after making it our business...

That being said, I just genuinely want to know: Why do these women completely go against what they stand for in regards to these men? Maybe it was never genuine from jump street and if that’s the case, why jump on the bandwagon of performative activism? Is it because it’s profitable right now? Is it because disrespecting black women is not an immediate death sentence to your careers and more often than not actually helps you advance even further? I guess that’s the billion dollar question that’ll never truly be answered. I just want the world to stop using black women as their stepping stool to get to where they need to go and then discarding of us when we’re no longer beneficial. Support us all the way or don’t support us at all. We deal with enough disrespect as is so we’d appreciate if y’all would stop straddling the fence and partake in your misogynoir out loud if that’s what you choose to do. We have no use for fake allyship and quite frankly, it’s doing more harm for us than good. Please and thank you!

Sincerely,

- 𝙼𝙸𝚂𝚂 𝙴𝙳𝙶𝙰𝚁 𝙰𝙻𝙻𝙴𝙽 𝙷𝙾𝙴. 💋

[strideofpride]

Gossip Girl and Old Money vs. New Money

tldr: I broke down the family background and class status of the Archibald/Van der Bilt, Bass, Rhodes/Van der Woodsen, and Waldorf families. Because even among the 1%, old money vs. new money is still a very real difference to them.

Archibald/Van der Bilt (aka Vanderbilt) family: In the world of the show, Nate's family is presented as the oldest money of them all. His mom is a Vanderbilt (spelled Van der Bilt on the show presumably for legal reasons) a real wealthy American family. Although, among the insanely wealthy, the Vanderbilts are technically not old money. In America, old money technically refers to families who made their money prior to the Revolutionary War. Anything else is technically new money (although one anthropologist has stated starting from the 1930s on you can refer to the Vanderbilts as old money - they would just be Lower-Upper compared to an Upper-Upper family that made their money in the 1600/1700s). The Vanderbilts didn't make their money until the Gilded Age and they did it by building a shipping and railroad empire. To my knowledge, the real Vanderbilts are not a political family; the show probably took from the Kennedys there.

The Archibald family, on the other hand, are clearly not old money. I don't remember specific scenes or episodes off the top of my head, but that's implied throughout all of Anne and Howard's interactions and you can just sense it in their dynamic. I do think Howard probably still grew up rich what with Dartmouth and all (also let's be real, Anne wouldn't have married him if he wasn't), but he was probably a first gen rich boy, and I think that tracks with him going into Wall Street and investment banking instead of something more "proper". Also I think it's canon that William Van der Bilt purchased the family home and boat for them? So yeah.

Bass family: The Bass family on the other hand is as new money as they come. Bart might be evil sure, but he's truly a self-made man (or as self-made as a billionaire can be - no one earns a billion dollars without exploitation of their workers - but Bart was canonically born poor). In 107, it's established that a lot of Bart's resentment of Chuck comes from the fact that Chuck was born and raised in privilege while Bart came from nothing.

The Bass family is primarily a real estate family, owning hotels and buildings. Obviously, I have to make the most obvious family comparison here: the Trumps. The Bass family is a rival of the Trumps in the show and I think there is an obvious parallel of Bart as Fred, the shady developer who built his family fortune from the ground up using dubious methods, and Chuck as Donald, the son who earned none of what he was handed, a sexual predator, and all around asshole who ended up taking his father's company and running it into the ground multiple times. (God I'm just realizing that if Chuck was real and ran for president he'd unfortunately probably win too).

In the books I think the Bass family even owns the Plaza, just like Trump did, although this was probably changed to the Palace in the show since they were more willing to let them film regularly there.

Rhodes/Van der Woodsen family: In reality, the oldest money of them all would probably be the Van der Woodsens. Van der Woodsen is a Dutch name, and that implies that they are a family that has been in New York since it was New Amsterdam, such as the Stuyvesant, Gansevoort, Schuyler (yes like the sisters from Hamilton), and Van Cortlandt families (I believe this is the case in the books). And yes, doctors make good money, sure, but you can't afford a penthouse apartment in Manhattan on a doctor's salary, let alone yachts or private jets or anything else Serena and Eric seemed to have grown up with. I think it's safe to assume that William comes from a very wealthy family.

Now the Rhodes family on the other hand is more complicated. Cece married a record executive and moved out to California with him. However, she clearly came from an elite Upper East Side family and I think this tracks with her choosing to raise her children in Montecito, a classier, more traditional and conservative neighborhood up in Santa Barbara compared to rich Los Angeles neighborhoods such as Beverly Hills and Brentwood. (Although did she live in Los Angeles with Rick pre-divorce and only moved herself and the girls up there after the split? Unclear.)

In 113 though, Blair makes reference to the Waldorf name and reputation while disparaging Serena, implying that her and her family have a trashier reputation. So my guess is that Cece marrying a record exec and raising her kids out in California probably knocked her down a peg in Upper East Side society. Lily probably gained some of that prestige back by marrying a Van der Woodsen, but then the three divorces by the time of the pilot probably sunk them back down again.

Waldorf family: The Waldorf family is the most confusing one to decipher. The name Waldorf obviously makes you think of the Waldorf Astoria (I'm sure that's where Cecily von Ziegesar got the name from) and the Astor family, one of the Upper Upper old money families of America. Waldorf actually comes from Walldorf, the name of the town in Germany the Astors were originally from. However, the show Waldorfs seem to bear no relation to the Astors or the hotel.

Harold almost certainly came from money. He went to Yale, and I believe he was a lawyer? Which again, sure, lawyers make good money, but not Manhattan penthouse, French chateau, and private jet money. There must have been family money involved.

Eleanor, on the other hand, I'm not so sure. She seems like a self-made woman and she makes a big deal in season 2 when Blair considers not going to college and going down the Maureen van der Bilt path about how "Waldorf women are not socialites". Also it does not seem to be a big deal for her at all to marry a Jewish man (Cyrus), something that might be different if she was a true born and bred blue blood WASP.

And certainly successful fashion designers can be extremely wealthy (Ralph Lauren's net worth is estimated at 7 billion), but Waldorf Designs is clearly a much smaller company than Ralph Lauren (it's not even public). She probably has a net worth in the tens of millions, but believe it or not that's still not regular access to private jet money. Which makes me think Harold almost certainly does have family money. And again, this tracks since in 113 it's made clear that the name Waldorf means something in Upper East Side society. So my guess would be that the Waldorf family is closer to old money than new money. But still nowhere near the level of the Van der Bilts.

[junkacctdjfjguecujfe]

So I sent the ask about this but then decided to reblog instead. But I don’t really want to criticize in front of people who follow me…so that’s why this is a junk side blog account.

Anyway. Idk about “based” with this article, did you read it? It’s all about normalizing surrogacy (aka buy a poorer woman’s body) too. And they want the female child to be empathetic and caring and take care of them in old age. Which is literally the rationale I heard from a woman from an EXTREMELY sexist culture for why she needs 1 boy (to make money) and 1 girl (to care about her/take care of her later). This is just that but for rich people who don’t need the boy to make money anymore.

As in they may talk a lot of shit about feminist reasons but when you scratch the paint even a little it’s still selfish exploitation of poorer women (for the surrogacy) of the wife in the situation (who is also put at health risk to do this and no wonder why is less into it than the male techie partner) AND in the end what they really want is a bespoke raise-a-maid service. They produce the “naturally caring” girl kid, they hope to get a top of the line full time carer for themselves out of her. In addition to raising her to “be a rockstar” first. Hmmm wonder how these designer baby techie freaks will react when big dollar price tag precious is rebellious, a slacker, uncaring or hates them anyway.

THIS IS THE FUTURE! First we remove the taboo against female embryo selection. Then we remove the taboo against aborting male fetuses.

[spectrumed]

9. conversation

(I wrote this after having a few drinks, so I apologise for the occasional digression.)

One time, some years ago, I was at medborgarplatsen in Stockholm. I was about to watch a movie at the cinema there, Filmstaden Söder. I can’t remember the movie, but this was at a time I wanted to prove my worth as a cinephile, so it wasn’t a blockbuster. For those of you who don’t know the way around Stockholm, medborgarplatsen is a square that is pretty close to the heart of the city, some may even argue that it is the heart of the city (though, I wouldn’t.) The name translates to “the citizen’s place,” an example of Swedes’ general commitment to all things egalitarian. Though, nowadays, most citizens can only dream of living in a place as central as medborgarplatsen. Södermalm, the borough in which medborgarplatsen is located, used to be known as quite the working class slum. Though, like with most global cities these days, things have changed. I don’t much like to complain about gentrification, I think it has more to do with governments’ reluctance to build new apartments, preferring instead to stick their heads in the sand and pretend as if population numbers aren’t increasing. Like, sure, I am not asking you to tear down all those old buildings to build new ones that’ll have enough room for more people, all I am asking is for you to expand, build more homes near the city and develop the right kind of infrastructure and public transport that allows for people to not need a car to get around. Cities are supposed to be lived in, they are not history museums! It drives me nuts, all these NIMBYs and their incessant whining and complaining about basic and inevitable societal progress. GAH! JUST BUILD MORE GODDAMMIT!

… I am sorry, I think I happened upon a tangent here divorced from the actual topic I wish to discuss. In any case, I was about to watch a movie at the cinema, and I had an hour or so to spend before it started. I was around people. Naturally, I was uncomfortable. People, you never know what they’re up to. They could be spying on you. They could be recording you. Or worse, they could be entirely indifferent to your presence. It is scary how others treat you, or how they refuse to treat you. It is easier not to be around people. Or well, be around people on the internet. That way you can get some social interaction, without having to be physically present. Being face-to-face with a person, that can go either one of two ways. Either you find a familiar soul, someone you can relate to. Someone you can love. Someone you could imagine spending your life with. Or you find someone that makes you feel icky, someone who makes you want to jump off a cliff. And it is difficult to find a cliff when you’re standing in the middle of a city, at a public square. Not many cliffs are to be found in the middle of cities. You’ve likely experienced the sensation of finding yourself in an uncomfortable situation, one you wish you could escape from, yet knowing that you are stuck. The icy feeling overtaking you. The dread. The profound desire to just do whatever you can to convince whoever is pressuring you to go away and leave you alone. Even if that means paying them money.

A person came up to me looking for charitable donations. Now, I am not a rich man. I certainly don’t spend all day long biddy biddy bum. I am not a wealthy man with a wife looking like a rich man’s wife with a proper double-chin, supervising meals to her heart’s delight. I wish I could give more to charity, but I can’t. I feel very uncertain about my future. I fear for my economic prospects. Don’t ask me for money, I don’t have any to give. There are plenty of filthy rich people in this world, ask them for their charitable donations. Many of them don’t even pay taxes. Surely, they have lots of cash. They stay in their penthouses, worshipping Mammon, and they certainly don't go down any citizens’ squares. What kind of money do you expect to receive from bothering a person like me? I don’t look rich. Or maybe I do. Someone might look at me and think I’m one of those rich kinds of nerds, an internet wiz kid, a programmer who made some website that’s now really famous. In any case, I am not. I am just a lost and confused sheep yearning for a shepherd to guide me.

The person showed me a series of photographs of women being victimised. Some tortured, some beaten up, some exploited. Pakistani women. The person was raising money to help Pakistani women. A noble mission, certainly. What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to say that “no, I don’t care about Pakistani women” and just walk away? I didn't want the person to think of me as some callous western chauvinist who isn’t willing to spend some of my money to make a real change. I do care. I care very deeply. But, well, I just don’t really have money. Not in that way. Not in a way that can make a difference. Still, if you’ve got a truly burning sense of justice, a desire to see things wrong get fixed, see the righteous win, then you will want any kind of cash donation you can get. I sympathise. I understand that the person showing me the photographs may not have cared to figure out whether I had money or not. I clearly did not look starving (I am fat.) Surely I could afford to make a donation. Even the littlest bit counts. I needed to give. They needed me to give. Just give a little bit. C’mon. Don’t you care about Pakistani women?

I ummed and ahhed for a bit. I felt cautious, nervous, wondering how I could possibly explain my concern for these women while also recognising my lack of being able to really contribute monetarily to help them. Of course, at the moment, my cognitive functions weren’t properly functioning. No, I was stammering, I was overwhelmed, I was suffering a sensory overload. All these people around me, all this noise. I could have given the person asking me for a donation just some coins, a paltry sum, then pretended as if that was enough. But I didn’t. I gave him half of the money that I had on me. Not too much, but a significant amount of Swedish crowns. More than the cinema ticket cost me. Money I wasn’t prepared to spend at that moment. Still, it served the purpose. It made the world around me calm down. It lessened the storm. I don’t want to live in a world of chaos. I want things to be ordered. An ordered world can be understood, it can be categorised. Chaotic agents threaten the peace. Chaos makes me worry I might be exposed. I don’t want anyone knowing just how weird I am, just the kind of freak that I am. I want them to think I am normal. It’s easier to pretend to be normal when everything is calm, when people don’t freak me out.

One of the biggest social mistakes I’ve made is engaging in conversation with a person claiming to need money to take a bus to the dentist. They claimed that they had a dentist appointment, and in fact, it was paid for. They just didn’t have the money to pay for the bus. They needed me to give them just that little bit of money to buy a bus ticket. Simple, right? They were eager to convince me, so they began sticking their finger in their mouth, pointing at the tooth that needed to be pulled out. I told them that they didn’t need to show me, I believed them. But of course, I only said that because they made me feel uncomfortable. Did I believe them? Of course not. The person was clearly just looking for cash, a real scam artist, but I wasn’t socially adept enough to dismiss them. Sure, I can look back on it and think about this or that thing I should've said. Instead I just awkwardly mentioned needing to catch my own bus and that I didn’t have the time to talk. The scam artist followed me, continuing to engage me in conversation. I tried to appear sympathetic, I tried to appear normal, and the person took advantage of that. They needled me. They urged me to pay attention to them, making me feel like a monster if I didn’t. In the end I told them I would get them the money, but instead I ran and stepped on the bus heading back home to my place. They didn’t follow me. Of course they didn’t follow me. They didn’t have a bus ticket.

I came across them later, days later, at the subway. They saw me, tried to get my attention, but I ran into the crowd, hitting the escalator before they could get close. Later I saw them get accosted by security guards, clearly reprimanded for their behaviour, scamming people. Cornering people, telling them lies, then asking for cash. That’s not virtuous behaviour. Still, the security guards could only do so much. Did they stop the person from trying to scam people? Of course not. The person kept on badgering whoever paid them just the littlest bit of attention. Whoever looked kind. Whoever would be inclined towards making charitable donations. I had escaped that one time, but the person was adamant that they wanted me to give them the money they thought they deserved. Whenever I’d take the subway, they’d be there, trying to get my attention. And I kept running. I kept doing my best to avoid them. I felt like a real fool. Why couldn’t I just assert myself, pump up my chest and tell them that I was on to them? I knew the truth, I knew they were a fraud. Yet, I just wanted to avoid it all. I wanted to pretend as if I didn’t know them. That everything was just calm and peaceful, and there wasn’t a storm brewing somewhere nearby. This was everything about being surrounded by people that I hated. This, right here, was the ultimate reason I knew for wanting to become a hermit. Not having to put up with this kind of bullshit.

One time, the last time, the person came up to me, I couldn’t escape. I was waiting for the train. I was about to get to a lecture. The person saw me, and they stood right in front me. I was wearing headphones. I pretended I could not hear them. I pretended I could not even conceive of them, as if my mind were someplace else entirely. I pretended as if I had erased them from existence. They didn’t immediately catch on. They stood in front of me and they began commenting on my appearance. They decided, quite unusually, to congratulate me for my beard. Stating that I looked good with facial hair. Of course, I do. My beard looks amazing. I am not insecure about my beard. I may be insecure about my weight, I may be insecure about some things, but the two things I am not insecure about are my height (I’m 6’2”) and my beard. Still, I refused to acknowledge the scam artist’s existence. Other people waiting for the train were looking at us. They thought it was strange that I just stood there, looking straight ahead ignoring the person standing in front of me. But I did what I needed to do. The scam artist touched me, I still ignored them. Honestly, that is one of the most uncomfortable things I have ever experienced. Their hand on my chest. Them touching me. Still, I didn’t budge. Eventually, they gave up. They went away. I had won. I should’ve felt good about myself, I had come out on top. But I didn’t. I still felt awful. I had hurt their feelings. Why am I so weird, why am I so awkward? I really don’t know how to behave like a normal person.

I think I do better in long conversations with people than in short little chats. You can’t just get a quick impression of me and think you know me. One reason why I don’t think I could ever make for a good one-night stand. Unless you know me, I’m not a real person. I am just a caricature. I don’t feel as if I am really there, as if my presence alone is enough to make me a person. I am only a person through commitment, through being understood by someone else that has the right kind of patience to put up with me. For the most part, only I myself have that kind of patience. That’s why I enjoy my own company. I feel as if I freak out too easily when meeting new people. I feel as if I overwhelm them with information, like as if I am some walking thunderstorm demanding their attention. Yes, that’s the great irony of it all. I say that I struggle to put up with the chaos of others, the wild sea of people swarming the city, yet I am the worst chaotic agent of them all. I am a mess of a person. I am hullabaloo incarnate. And that is why I feel such an incessant need to repress. Don’t press the button that lets open the floodgates. Keep it all bottled up. Keep on being repressed. Keep on staring straight forwards, ignoring that person trying to scam you for money.

Of course that person isn’t reading this blog post. They’re busy trying to find some other sucker to pay for their drug fix, or whatever it is that they need money for. Maybe they’re just trying to pay for rent. In any case, if I had the person here with me, right at this moment, I would tell them… Well, I would yell at them… I would absolutely admonish them… I would... I would… I would probably just ignore them. It is so easy to try and pretend as if you’re more sociable than you actually are. In your head, things seem so easy. Yes, I know what I’d say, I know exactly how to express myself. But in reality, well, things are complex, the overwhelming actuality of it all swamps you. When haven’t you had that idea for the perfect comeback of a line to sling at a person you’re quarrelling with only after the argument is over? When haven’t you had an idea for just the right and proper way to awe another person with your mind and your words. I am sure they will be impressed with me now, if only I say the right things. If only I can act the right way. If only I don’t fuck it up. If only I don’t act like such a dork.

This blog is easy. I get to think about every word I express here. I get to erase sentences I don’t like. That backspace on the keyboard, it’s well-worn with use. Some folks don’t understand how I can be autistic and still be as good with words as I am. This is my second language that I am writing in. I am not some mute little chicken, some gagged little monkey. I know how to express myself, when I get the time. When I get that moment to write, I will write, and I won’t stop until I am done. All my posts I tend to write in one go, late at night when I should be going to bed. When I am in the right mood. When all those synapses in my brain fire the right way. Those moments, they are common, but they aren’t to be summoned just when I need them. They come when they wish to come. I can only be a passenger, going along with my brain, doing whatever it demands. In those other moments, those moments I am standing there, waiting for the train, I may become entirely mute. I may not have a single thing to say. I may look like a real dummy, some real himbo, utterly lost for words. I am not pretending, at those moments. I truly am lost for words. At some times, language is easy. At other times, I don’t even understand how to string a basic sentence together.

I am tired. I am going to go to bed.

[whookami]

Whats your opinion on Steve's apparently strained relationship with his dad? And how this could've possibly shaped his former bully persona and the facade he used to put on in S1? I know theres very little to go on in canon about his dad but i'd love to hear your thoughts...

Okay, I’ve been sitting on this for a while because I was trying to think honestly about this and separate what I think is likely from what my own personal headcanons are, as well as the common headcanons a lot of the fandom shares for Steve.

I think Steve’s dad isn’t a bad guy, at least, not openly abusive. I don’t even think he’s all that emotionally abusive. I think he’s a very traditional man, very much entrenched in the idea that the husband goes out and earns the money while the wife stays home and raises the children, and those children are expected to be well behaved, obedient, and good at both academics and sports. A very proper 1950s family. The problem is that this is the 80s, a time of rampant greed and pro-capitalist propaganda. Greed is good! The 80s were a very image-conscious era, very much concerned with making as much money as possible and projecting out an image of wealth and success, and Mr. Harrington was ALL ABOUT THIS.

I think the first problem comes in when Mrs. Harrington is not well suited to this life. I don’t think she would like being in a small town like Hawkins. I think she would desire more of a social atmosphere, a place where she could be involved in charities and auxiliaries and womens’ social clubs. I think in Hawkins she finds herself bored and unoccupied. I think she loves Steve, but isn’t great at motherhood. She more or less leaves him to his own devices and doesn’t much understand her son. She feels alienated and alone and subconsciously she is perhaps resentful. When Steve is finally old enough to be left alone she travels with her husband on business trips to keep him in line. This shows that there is no trust in this marriage and it’s an openly known fact that Mr. Harrington cheats.

The next problem is that Steve isn’t at all academically inclined. Now, I admit that I think it’s partially due to an undiagnosed learning disorder, but ultimately that doesn’t matter. His father has his own ideas as to why Steve isn’t pulling the grades he thinks his son should be, and they mostly boil down to laziness. A learning disorder doesn’t fit with his view of a perfect family, so he can’t even conceptualize that Steve might have one. He can see Steve as just not trying hard enough to live up to his potential though. From Mr. Harrington’s point of view he’s given Steve everything he needs to succeed: a nice home, all the best school supplies, nutritious food, the best clothes, and anything else that has a clear monetary cost attached to it. Love and attention don’t fit his idea of being a father, he’s only there to provide and discipline. His role is to be the one to mold his son into a man, and that means he has to force Steve to act and behave certain ways.

This is where we get King Steve from. I have written extensively that I don’t actually see Steve as having been a bully, he was more of that rich douche, the clueless trendsetter that others flock to because of his wealth and ability to raise their positions in the social hierarchy. Steve also possesses a natural charisma (or rather, Joe does, and Steve got the benefit of that) that draws people in. Unfortunately this has the problem of drawing in the type of people who want to use others to their own benefit, to advance themselves. Steve is desperate for meaningful connections with people due to his lack of parental attention, and as such willingly goes along with people who aren’t a good influence on him but who make him feel validated and appreciated. He basically lets Tommy and Carol call the shots and only gives token protests when they’re making hurtful or bullying statements. He doesn’t want to rock the boat too much and find out that he doesn’t have as much power as it would appear from the outside. He acts in the confident, self-aggrandizing manner that further projects the image his father wants the family to be seen as. To this length he even bought his sixteen year old son a super super expensive car, an ultimate demonstration that they have so much money he can waste it like this on his kid who is only learning to drive. I can’t even begin to imagine what Steve’s insurance must cost per month!

So yes, ultimately most of who we first see Steve as is a reflection of his highly successful, but emotionally absent father. It’s about portraying that image to the best of his ability when in public. In the very first episode we see that when Steve is in private with Nancy he’s actually a big ol’ dork. He’s also pretty respectful for a horny teenage boy, not too pushy about the making out. When Nancy seriously tells him to stop he picks the flashcards back up and gets back on task. He’s a good kid on the inside, but is being pressured by his family and his ‘friends’ into the image of a slick, womanizing, jock, one who only cares about himself. Not to say that Steve can’t be selfish, as he definitely is at times, but that also comes from his unbringing and problems relating to his father. He is legitimately worried about his father finding out about his party, despite said party being four kids and a couple of beers. Like, that...that isn’t a party?? I get why any kid would be worried, but ultimately it’s not like he threw a giant shindig and destroyed his house.

I think after his fight with Jonathan, Steve realizes something. I think the words he threw at Jonathan are the sort of words he’s heard from his father before, the type of disapproving gossip the elder Harringtons would talk derisively about at the dinner table, the one time of day the family is actually together. I think Steve suddenly realizes that he’s being a version of his dad, that he’s on a path that leads to becoming him for real. He realizes his friends are actively encouraging this transformation. I honestly think Steve really dislikes his dad, not just for neglecting Steve and never trying to forge a connection with him, but also for how the man’s treatment has affected his wife, how his infidelities have turned her bitter and untrusting. Steve got upset at Jonathan and Nancy because he thought they were cheating, and that’s something Steve can’t tolerate. It’s pretty much the ultimate betrayal and I think it’s probably where most of his derision for his father comes from. He’s more easily upset on the behalf of others than on his own behalf. He resents his father for not loving his mother enough to be faithful to her. So he lashes out when he thinks he’s been treated the same way, only to realize that it made him act more like his father than ever. This took him aback to the point that he turned his back on the people who had been his ‘friends’, and caused him to make the most impressive and nature decision that he ever has: he apologized. Like, that legitimately awed me. It is so hard to admit when we’re wrong, even privately to ourselves. For Steve to admit that and want to actually fix it, to go to the person he’d hurt and tell them he was wrong? That really shows the kind of person that Steve is on the inside. Who he is when stripped of his artifices. A person with a huge heart that truly cares what others think of him and who wants to be liked for the right reasons, but who sometimes fucks up because he was never given positive demonstrations of how to be that person.

Tl;dr Steve’s dad is a emotionally absent traditionalist who resents his dumb son, and his mom is a bored housewife who takes any opportunity to find something to distract her from her dull day to day existence. His father’s cheating greatly affected Steve and built a wedge of resentment between them, further destroying their chances at a meaningful relationship. Somehow they produced a son who has a huge heart and a desire to be loved, but who never had the encouragement or tools to express this and was instead led down a path of bad behaviour by those who wanted to exploit the Harringtons’ ‘perfect’ image.

[leslea]

Ready Player Two: The Mysognist’s Love Song

This is a review. Spoilers & typos to follow:

I enjoyed Ready Player One (RP1). It was quirky and fun. The dystopian setting was disturbing, especially as the kid who served as the story’s protagonist didn’t actually do much to make the world a better place, once he became its newest prince. We’re told from the git-go that the world is spiraling downhill, and what does Wade/Parzival do at the end? The bare minimum. He lets the debtors go. He shares his riches with his friends. Well, he was literally just a teenager, and most assuredly a feral one, at that, so you could excuse his lack of vision. Certainly there would be a Ready Player Two (RP2) that would redeem our child champion?

Haha, no.

RP2 is the story of what happens to a neglected impoverished child when he lucks into immense privilege, but lacks the heart, charm, or charisma to be anything other than a hermit and an incel. Where Harry Potter could arguably be said to have started from a similar circumstance, yet grew into an actual savior role in his fight against Voldemort & the Death Eaters, Wade Watts’ character in RP2 is unabashedly a less-loveable version of Donald Trump in a world where he is, in all practicality, king. 

As RP2 begins, Wade owns everything. Not just the Oasis, but a futuristic tech that allows one to record their own visceral experience of being alive. This tech, called ONI, goes even more viral than the Oasis, and makes Wade rich beyond the human mind’s ability to calculate. He has power--so much power, he can control anything. He is literally the richest man in the world, and most assuredly its most envied/hated. Nothing is out of reach for him--and though his friends from RP1′s ‘Gunting days are portrayed focusing on developing real relationships (marriages, babies, etc.), working on improving their environments, and delivering aid to their communities, our dear Wade simply pines for the one thing that eludes him: Samantha, aka Artemis, his fierce and determined love interest from RP1.

He brags about the one week he spent in seclusion with Samantha in a bedroom. He talks way too often of his other sexual exploits via ONI, allowing him to experience sex from the POV of other men, women, transpeople, and non-binary folks. He has done the deed every which way but loose, and author Ernest Cline is as eager to share those details with the reader as he is the spout off acronyms and descriptions of fictional technology. Whereas the latter will have you yawning in boredom, the former will simply turn your stomach. Raise your hands if you were hoping for more cybersex in RP2. Anyone? Anyone? Right. 

Before I delve too deeply in how important it is for even blockbuster authors like Cline to CONSENT TO QUALITY EDITORIAL INPUT, I need to outline some important problems with this story beyond “What’s wrong with Wade, items 1-999.”

Samantha is justly described to have turned her back on Wade over some important issues. She is a woman of integrity, and for years Wade stalks her virtually, even though in all reality he grows a smaller and smaller figure from her past. Think about any woman you know who moves on and gets things done in life: they do not sit around pining for a dickhead ex who they slept with once, years prior. They just don’t. Samantha, however, despite all her success, integrity, and morals...just can’t help but fall back in love with Wade.

All powerful Wade. Involuntarily celibate (in the “Earl,” as Cline calls “in real life,” [IRL]), plugged into the internet from his spinal column or brain stem or whatever, 12 hours per day Wade. Childish destroyer of dissenting user accounts Wade. Stalker Wade.

Although Samantha refuses to make eye contact with him for years, the moment he needs her help...poof. She’s back on his jock like static cling, if I may borrow Cline’s penchant for quoting nostalgia in lieu of creating new content.

While Samantha’s inexplicable change of heart is problematic enough, it is only foreshadowing for a bigger problem with the story. Wade, as owner of the Oasis and all that digital shit, ends up on a quest to restore the Siren’s Soul. This is the “egg hunt” of RP2. Instead of eggs, this time he’s hunting shards, which is fitting, really, because Cline left me feeling sharted on by earlier than midway through the text. 

Where were we? The shards. Right.

The singular essence of Kira Underwood, constantly referred to as “Og’s wife,” has been divided into seven shards and hidden around the Oasis--that is, until the end of the story when Cline mercifully hid the last two together. I might have wept if the story had gone on one chapter longer than necessary. When the shards are collected and merged, they will...? What? Oh, they will coalesce into the actual soul of the departed woman. They will bring her back, digitally.

Now, not only is it creepy on many levels that Wade--let’s call him Parzincel--is repeatedly referred to as Kira’s owner, but his idol before him, James Halliday, is characterized has having created this ONI technology for the main purpose of bringing Kira back, so that a digital version of himself could finally possess her. While “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,” is certainly a handy commandment, “thou shalt treat women as FUCKING PEOPLE WITH THEIR OWN INHERENT RIGHTS” would perhaps be a better placard to engrave and set on the desk of Halliday--to then be passed down to Wade. It never seems to dawn on Parzincel that he has no right to possess Kira, or any other ONI user. 

The in-game avatar of Halliday eventually explains that Kira’s “siren” avatar was able to explain to him that possessing her, manipulating her, etc. was wrong--but ONLY after Halliday hooks himself up the ONI and lives some of Kira’s experiences. Cline plays Halliday off in both books as an Aspergian genius, someone very high functioning on the Autism Spectrum, but as the mother of a young man with autism, I am beyond disgusted at the idea that you would have to hook one living being up to another human being’s synapses for them to have ANY understanding that the other person is a free, competent human being with agency of her own. Kira is repeatedly characterized as an artistic genius with a great heart. She, like Samantha, is demonstrated to be loving and kind. Generous. And yet both Kira and Samantha are primarily belongings for men to possess, control, pursue, and lose. Oh, if only they did lose them...because of course, they don’t. In Parzincel’s dream future, the best thing he can do is create a double of himself, so that he can experience the inexplicable love of Samantha in the “Earl” as well as in an ONI paradise. 

Kira, as the “first stable AI,” is never once shown having any sort of existential crisis. She simply loves being a pretty plaything for Wade and Jim and Og, digitally--and naturally she is “still in love with Og.” Okay, whatever. By this point in the story, Og and Kira are nothing more than paper dolls set up to somehow replace Wade’s missing mother/father figures. You can almost see the author sitting spraddle leg on the floor of his study, pushing dolls around. “You are the mommy now, and you are the daddy...and Wade is the baby! Now kiss!”

In a world as technologically advanced as that of RP2, there would be nuances to digital characters, right? If only there were nuances in the humans who created them, I suppose.

Cline’s Parzincel has a weird weird weird way of looking at women. So does Halliday. Even the benevolent Og only barely registers as showing any interest in Kira’s consent, and then, only when he is, himself, close to death. It’s like Cline knew the only decent human being in this story was Ogden Morrow--and possibly Kira. We don’t really get to spend enough time with the Kira character to know. 

But why would we? We are just readers, and she is, after all, Og’s wife.

I won’t get started on the Lo-Five or what he did to Aech. I’ll let Tim take over for that bit.

[mahvaladara]

What happened to Gamall Sullyvan - A Lore of Astreia Oneshot

This story is being told by the POV of the Wanderer. The Wanderer is talking about Gamall Sullyvan to someone who asked. He gets a bit off topic here and there. 

Warning: Graphic descriptions of abuse, torture. It a point it becomes... bad. Baaad! Very bad!

“What happened to Gamall Sullyvan?”

“Gamall Sullyvan, you say?”

“This man, you know this man, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, yes I do!”

Gamall Sullyvan. I knew him.

I knew him intamately. 

His fears, his dreams, his ambitions.

35 years old in age, tall, flimsy, a bit of goof who’s not overly expressive. Not particularly smart or good looking. Not rich, nor wealthy, no over the top status. Avarage man, a good man. A family man. 

If you looked at him, you’d wonder if he was half Sillarin, his eyes certainly looked Sillarin, but his skin was too pale. Must have been those Aklory genes. He was Aklory, born and raised and dead for those lands. 

But he was a good man, you see. 

He was born in Calldragon. His entire nuclear family was expelled from the city and he lost right of citizenship. 

But he was the grandson of the Scholar Gamall Callarius. Yes, that Gamall Callarius, the one in the Royal CallDragon Archives. But he was no one. He dreamed of being a librarian like her, but he was not particularly smart or talented. He was curious and determined, but he wasn’t a genius. 

Gamall was not his grandmother. He only shared her name. 

Yes, I know it’s a woman’s name, but Gamall didn’t much care of things such as female or male. No, he was much more ambiguous when it came to these things. You see, he used to pretend to be a woman. When he took care of a bed ridden, demented mother he had to. He even dressed like his grandmother. 

When he met the woman who’d become his wife, at first, she thought he was an abnormally tall woman. He did things humans tipacally atributed to women and he never questioned it. He was eldest, his mother was sick, his father couldn’t do it, so of course it had to be him. He raised all of his siblings while his father worked. And then, when he came of age, he ran away with Caitlin Sullyvan. 

Let his mother to Rot.

I don’t think he ever got over that guilt. She did rot, you know. Not that he ever saw it, or looked for it. But time and illness so says that she did Rot.

...   

Anyway, Gamall didn’t catch it or anything. They were inoculated.

He met Caitlin and ran away. Caitlin, his wife.

He was a good man, understanding, caring, a good husband, who was wholly devoted to his wife and son. Everything he did was for them and them alone. 

Gamall was altruistic, he never thought much of himself. It was always Caitlin and Seimei first, and when it wasn’t them, it was his neighbors and his friends at Riverrend. It was what he did. That’s where they lived, where they moved to.

Riverrend.

If you talked to them they’d always have something nice to say about Gamall. How he wasn’t expressive, like resting bored face. But he always tried to say some witty joke or lighten up the mood. He always helped. Quick witted, quick tempered. He was a good man, poor and struggling and the people of Riverrend liked him, like they liked anyone else in town.

The people of Riverrend.

Riverrend is a cemmetary now. Ravaged to the floor by the Ainlienists. You have heard of them, the “Church of Burden”. Follow the prophet Ainlie and his message of salvation.

Delusions of a sick mind. I know, I spoke to Ainlie and this “religion”, though it’s more of a cult, certainly got his words wrong.

Salvation my ass. Being burnt alive doesn’t sound very salvating. 

Fanatical assholes. Zealots. Prejudicious, racist, sexist assholes. No respect for anyone or thier beliefs. 

If they were like every other religions on our planet who have this mentality of “you believe this, we believe that. It’s cool, we’re neighbors” it wouldn’t be a problem. But they have a “the only good heretic is a dead heretic” mentality.

Thank the stars the Wanderer whipped them from the face of Akloria and promised to wipe them from the face of the Astreia.

Yet people get mad at the Wanderer for that, can you imagine? People mad at me! 

They call me evil! That I committed the mass genocide of a religious group. 

No I didn’t! There’s still some left! In Valora and the 1001 Seas. 

But I am evil one. They forget these same Ainlienists were trying to burn the entire planet to ash and kill everyone. They also forgot they strapped bombs unto children and sent them to the walls of the capital. 

...

Yes, they blew up kids.

But sure. The Wanderer is the evil one for wanting to get rid of them.

And yes, I am getting off topic, bult talking about the Ainlienists is also talking about Gamall. So I’m getting there.

He was a good man. Avarage man, but most certainly not a member of a fanatical religious cult.

But you know, it’s their fault. It’s because of them that Gamall is gone.

He was a good man. Good, understanding, caring, selfless! All he wanted was to own a horse and they killed all the horses. It’s a good thing he didn’t say his life long dream was to be a librarian or they would have burned all the books - though they sure tried. 

People died, but I saved the books! That’s what matters!

But Gamall!

The Sullyvan name he actually picked from his wife. He lost right to a family name when he lost right of citizenship. So, Sullyvan was his wife’s surname that he took at the time.

Gamall was a lumberjack in Riverrend, worked in Caitlin’s Mill and did some hunting on the side. He had a dream of being a librarian but had given up on that dream. He didn’t have any formal education. He knew how to read but he couldn’t exactly work as a scholar at the time because he lacked education.

As he was now a father and a husband, a very poor one in a country at war, all that he cared about was providing for his family.

Gamall had a son, Seimei, who got sick. 

Boy got blood rot, didn’t eat enough meat, got anemic. The boy wanted to eat greens only. Vegan I think that’s what is called. Gamall called it bullshit! 

But the boy was against eating meat, and Gamall was a hunter. Meat was the easiest thing to come by and the boy refused to eat it. Gamall couldn’t afford a proper “vegan” diet for him. So of course Seimei got anemic. One can’t survive of lettuce alone!

And Gamall couldn’t afford to treat him. The iron supplements and even the blood strengthening potions were expensive. They were millers and they couldn’t apply for government aid because Gamall wasn’t a legal citizen. So they were struggling.

Gamall joined the war as a contract Archer. It could give him a lot of money as well as right of citizenship. And as a contract archer, he could abandon the war once his contract was over. So he joined the war.

He said he wanted to use the money to treat his son and buy a horse. Wanted to become a courier, and if he had a horse, he could gain some steady income that way. Make sure his son never got blood rot again. He could also buy the right of citizenship and if he had a honorable conduit in the army, he could even earn it.

But was he wrong. 

He was not a fighter! He was a lumberjack who hunted deers on the side!

Of course he got captured during the war! 

Amarintia. That’s where he was captured. That’s another cemmetary there. All thanks to the “Church of Burden”.

They say the Ainlienists tortured him, broke him. The Ainlienists did horrible things to everyone. You saw the cities the Ainlienists destroyed. The dissected dragons, the decapitated humans and the burnt witches. All in the name of their maker. 

Eventually he was rescued and kept fighting in the war. I saw him a couple of times. He was still hopefull there was something worth fighting for, and he did. But I could see it in the mirror, that spark, that “humanity” of his be broken down, piece by little piece. 

War does that to you.  

He was tortured. Oh, was he tortured!

Tortured by the enemy. 

Used by his allies.

Betrayed by the people he loved and fought for. 

Used, tortured, beaten and abused.

You see, at a point, Gamall became a weapon, because there’s something particular about him. He couldn’t die. And he was becoming powerful and he was even able to manipulate his appearance. 

Isn’t that handy?

Should be easier to hide the scars, don’t you think?

But he was captured a second time, and the Ainlienists realized they couldn’t kill him so they exploited that. They had fun!

I heard they locked him inside a iron bull for three days straight. You know, Iron Bulls. Those iron contraptions where someone is locked inside and you lit the fire and let the person slowly cook alive. They did that to him. Cooked him alive.

Then healed him up and locked him inside an Iron Maiden. The one’s with spikes. When they left him out, there was a puddle of his own blood under it.

I heard one night they had fun with him. Raped him, sodomized him, made him wish he was neither man or woman. Made him wish he could die. Heard he squealed and begged and begged they’d just grab a rock and crush his skull.

And they did it!

But of course that didn’t kill him. 

So they did worse.

They sawed him in half.

They grabbed a rusty saw, held it firmly between his legs and sawed him in half. All the way up, slow pull by slow pull until the rusty teeth of saw got stuck right in his sternum and they still tried to cut further. But they were pressed for time.

They left him there. Litterally rotting.

Left the bacteria in his shredded intestines rot his body while his immortal cells tried to fix it. Like he was locked in this endless torturous cicle of rot and regeneration.

And no one saved him.

He had friends, you know. Friends who knew he had been captured.

“It’s not like you’ll die.” That’s what they told him, when he found a way home and was properly healed and treated.

I heard he actually lost a few inches of his entrails, but I am going to be honest. I didn’t measure them.

I think after that. After that moment Gamall realized how truly meaningless he was in the face of it all. That’s when he lost that “kindness” and “caring" and “altruism” and “hope”.

His wife went on with life. 

She died during the war. He never saw her again, not even her corpse. Only words that she was dead.

His son? Heard he was killed by his own hand. 

And you’ll ask, what happened to Gamall Sullyvan? Well...

I think that’s when Gamall Sullyvan was finally lost. That day. That day he escaped the Ainlienist hands and had to drag his own intestines through a desert, while rotting, only to be told to his face, by the people he loved that they didn’t bother to save him. Because...

“It’s not like you’ll die.”

I haven’t seen him since.

...

He’s dead. 

I'm all that's left.

[oxtoxtoxto]

Supergirl and What it Means to be Marketed To

i think what bothers me the most about supergirl ending isn’t necessarily that it is, itself, ending. that’s a weird sentence, sure, but i’m not entirely attached to the show as other people in the fandom are. i might be 150 thousand words deep into a crossover with the show and being told “hey it’s not going to get another season after the next” was a pretty significant blow to my motivation (which i think i’ll get over) but overall i always found the show... mediocre? okay? perfectly adequate for what it was (with a few choice exceptions)? 

supergirl was never bad, but to a point the day-to-day episodic nature of it didn’t really catch me like it might’ve others. maybe i’m just full of myself but i felt like i could figure out what the moral quandry of each episode generally turned out to be, so long as it was one of those episodes in which a specific moral judgement was to be made. medusa focuses on how fucked up the luthor family is, and it wasn’t hard to predict that kara’s own family might be brought up as a contrast. episodes generally had a formula and that’s, fine? okay? sometimes it grated that i could understand what the plot was about fifteen minutes into an episode, but it was, like, fine. 

no, supergirl no longer having episodes isn’t what bothers me. the cast has their own reasons to call the curtains; melissa wants to raise her kid, which is a decision i think was made with a lot of thought and care, covid-19 has rendered shooting kinda risky in general, etc. 

it’s none of that, it’s the fact that supergirl felt like a show for me.

it’s hard to explain, i guess? but like, i go into comic book-related shows (and to an extent sci-fi in general) expecting myself, a trans woman, not to be even remotely the target audience. at all. like maybe they might make token efforts to be inclusive? but i realize from the very beginning that i’m not the people they really wrote the show for.

supergirl was different.

supergirl is probably the first and only comic book-focused series that i felt was made for me. it felt like a comic book show for women, and did its best to include different types of women from different walks of life. i might be leery about its weird fascination with rich women and stuff but... it felt like it was written for me.

which is a very alien experience as a trans woman. literally sweet fuck all is ever written for me. even shows which ostensibly include trans women generally include them for shock value, to be sexualized, or generally exploit their presence as not something that is normal, but something that is other, just to varying degrees of bigotry.

comic books especially are bad about this. they’re bad about marketing towards women in general (despite, you know, women being showed to buy comic books if they’re written by someone who has met a woman before) and as a result the setting of a comic book serial has always been vaguely out of reach for me. i could never fully get into them because, even before i figured out i was trans, it all felt very... male-focused. female characters were rarely the viewpoint of the story or the focus, and when they were it was a genuine dice-roll if you would get a realistic depiction out of it.

not only that, but female side characters always ran the risk of being bizarrely sexualized or twisted into knots over male characters, usually the main. 

point is, supergirl didn’t feel like that. supergirl felt like a show written by someone who was marketing it towards a female audience and not in the misogynistic way sitcoms and shit market towards women with shallow approximations of abusive relationships played off as ‘quirky’ or ‘broody’.

even throughout all of its incredibly... interesting choices it still never felt like the show had suddenly become a show for guys. it was always grounded in feeling like it was written for women, regardless of its ups or downs, and that was very, very nice.

and now it’s going to be gone. i’m not... really attached to supergirl as a construct, as mentioned before, it’s more that i’ve attached myself to the idea of supergirl. the idea of a mid-budget superhero show marketed for women and not being weirdly exclusive about it. not just that, but it wasn’t a show featuring teenagers--it wasn’t about young girls, or coming-of-age, it was about women who lived and existed in a world and who occasionally had to fight aliens. it was nice, it wasn’t perfect, sometimes i put the speed on 2x to skip through some of it, but... it was there. it was an option. i could, after slogging through another release of a comic i had high hopes for but had long since abandoned them, gone to it and went ‘yeah, sure, things might suck on that end, but at least i have this’.

which i don’t anymore. i get that batwoman and legends will still be around, i do, but... neither of them felt, like, as resonant with me as supergirl did. neither of them focused on marginalized groups of people like supergirl did (with it’s aliens -> immigrant allegory) and frankly none of them had a trans character.

as much as i might not be 100% in the brainia camp, i can at least appreciate that the one trans character wasn’t left out of the romantic weirdness of cw shows, the constant rotating door of interpersonal drama. it was nice to see a trans woman on screen and not feel like a shoe is going to drop and i’m going to have to endure The Transphobia Episode, where the main character - not the trans one - comes in and stops the bad things from happening so as to be elevated into being more morally good than anyone else.

i never had to worry about nia nal being written... well weirdly. you know what i mean, right? when a show gets an lgbt character or a poc and there’s just something very subtly wrong about how they’re written vs your experiences? i get that experiences aren’t universal and vary wildly depending on where you live (me being in canada has separated me from the severity of transphobia in places like the us and uk) but even then you can just kinda tell that whoever wrote the character doesn’t... really understand them, either.

i never had to worry about alex being turned into a predator, and however much i might fucking hate them reusing the old weird fixation with lesbians hating the idea of kids, it... still wasn’t that horrifying. people split up for reasons surrounding kids all the time, i did. i have experiences that mirror that, though we split up more amicably than others.

the point is, supergirl always felt very safe. it always felt marketed at me, it always felt like it was meant for me to watch, and that wasn’t something i’d ever experienced as someone who deeply loves comic books. it has always been out of the range of my expectations to find something that resonates with me despite its plot, despite everything.

and now it’s going to go away.

and i’m upset about that, i guess.

because i’m not... entirely sure there’ll be another. i desperately want there to be, but you have to understand my expectations are absolutely rock bottom. supergirl is not the change in a stale river to me, it’s not the turning tide, it’s the outlier. it came from cw for gods’ sake, noted bury-your-gays enthusiasts. i went into it expecting exactly the same thing i expect out of every superhero franchise, marvel, dc or otherwise.

and it completely blew my expectations away. it made me feel like it was for me in a way not even some of the better written-by-women comics have, despite everything, which is why i stuck around even through the weird shit around lena/kara, even through all the posturing and alex/maggie’s breakup and mon-el and season 5 as a concept and, and, and...

now it’s going to be going away, and i’m not entirely sure how to handle that.

i know i can rewatch it, i know it’ll always be there, even if netflix takes it off. i know.

but it means someone won’t be writing a woman-focused superhero show anymore, and i’ll really miss that.