#and like yes trying to invent patriarchy was a bad thing to do to her but like. it’s like the steven & the diamonds thing

[scholarhect]

i watched barbie again it was fun. honestly am more convinced of it having done what it set out to do than i was before. like i get it now. there are things you could criticize about what kind of movie they chose to make but i would say they were pretty successful in making a movie that worked

[herunswithscissors]

"The younger generation is morally better than us. They are kinder and more empathetic. They do work hard. But they far more clearly see where their work is worthwhile vs where it isn't and they don't waste their efforts on busy work or helping the rich get richer."

i sure asf am experiencing this empathy when i try to debate feminism on this site. feminists who prioritize their own sex def. don't get piled on by a bunch of jerks who cannot tolerate people with different priorities. the rape and death threats women get on here scream moral.

What you have experienced on Tumblr is horrific and evil. It is some of our worst parts of our culture that are wrapped up in our toxic male culture of misogyny and patriarchy combined with a bunch of might makes right and alpha male/sigma male bullshit.

I'm sorry for how you have been treated. It is wrong and every guy who has been part of that should have to read their texts aloud to their mother while Mom has her chancla. And then they should have to pay you a millions of dollars in damages in court for the damage to your quality of life and the terrorism that they inflicted upon you.

Partly it is because Tumblr is run by the same set of Aristocrats, techbros, and Muskrat fanbois as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and health insurance companies. I'm sure Tumblr's board of directors go skinny dipping with the Sacklers on Epstein Island. They all hate women and minorities and any kind of real diversity.

So they allow all the bullying and give terrorists freedom to keep you quieter or at least keep you angry, hurt, scared, anxious, and distracted to keep you from burning shit down.

All of that #MeToo stuff was just a peek behind our own curtain of boys-will-be-boys, bro culture that protects really bad guys and teaches all the rest of us to be more misogynistic and downright mean. And a huge portion of men (and their right-wing female allies) rejected the very idea and lampooned it to death.

And I know so many female scientists and professors who should be protected by their position in society, their well-connected colleagues, and universities/labs. They are harassed online mercilessly in the most ugly ways. And then they get it from some students and colleagues too. And their institutions sweep it under the rug or fire the woman because they are all run by Aristocrats and conservatives and Capitalists.

It is horrible and evil.

When ya'll get to burning shit down, I'll help.

But sadly, today is the best time in history to be a woman in our culture.

And for the vast majority of other cultures on Earth.

I've only been around for 45ish years. Up until 3 years before I was born, my mother could not get a bank account in her name. Not without either her father or husband as primary account holders on it. Timeline of some of the financial things here

Sexual harassment was a way of life for a huge contingent of guys when I was in my teens and early 20's. Most of the other guys just thought it was funny. It was only just beginning to get better in the 90s. By "better" I mean it became less socially acceptable to do in public and more guys would speak up in defense. But there were no real consequences and harassment in private never stopped.

Because kind of like racism and "diversity" and such, the people in charge of shit and a large contingent of the population refuse to change their hearts. They just want to stay out of trouble without ever changing themselves or allowing the culture to really change.

So, yes, this is the kindest generation we have ever had in America. Even if we aren't very kind compared to almost anyone else. We are generous, helpful, pleasant, friendly, and hopeful people, but we are not kind.

We are so far behind all the Brown nations in kindness and love, but look at our history. We started way behind thanks to the Aristocrats and their colonizing bullshit we got into bed with them on. But it really is kinder today.

That is sad, but perfection is a human invention. It is always about direction of growth or decline that any judgement of a people ought be made. That and how do they treat women. And how do they treat the poor, oppressed, and sick.

What direction are we moving and how do we treat the people who don't have the power to stop us or really just need some food and a place to live in safety?

That is what defines a good culture and a good people in my book.

So what does that say about us, that people like Anonymous are treated so horrendously on a regular basis and they are just a drop in the ocean? What does that say about us when we are the best people we've ever been in America (or Europe) and we are still this terrible?

[angie-j-kay]

Okay, here are my takes from Barbenheimer, and the messages the movies seem to be pushing:

Spoilers under the cut.

Oppenheimer:

If you're autistic, have anxiety, or are generally sensitive to loud scary noises, be warned that this might set you off. This was very much a horror movie, disguised as a historical thing. Also, Christopher Nolan music is Christopher Nolany. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

The great horror wasn't that the people involved were monsters, it was that they were just people. ANYONE handed enough fear and desperation risks becoming this. Yes, even you.

If the monster feels really, really bad about it after, is he still a monster? (Answer: YES, but you still paid to see this movie so now you're culpable too.)

A discussion of how responsible scientists are for what the powerful and cruel do with their inventions.

Ian Malcolm in the first Jurassic Park movie was right. "You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop and think if you should!"

Hey, it's that actor I had such a crush on when I was 14 and wow, he got old, and OH SHIT I'M OLD TOO... It doesn't matter which actor I'm talking about, MOST of them were that actor to someone or other.

Florence Pugh has nice tits, and Robert Downey Jr. should play more villains. Also, David Krumholz is slowly turning into Alfred Molina.

Spoiler alert: BOOM.

Men suck.

Barbie: This one's gonna get me SO MUCH HATE, because y'all love Barbie, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

They told me it was an empowering movie for women and girls to watch. I went through the whole thing, and was rather insulted by this claim. Yeah, the idea of "women can be whatever we want" was repeated over and over, but the actual movie showed very little of that. Only the DOLLS got to be what they wanted, not the "Real Women."

Barbie not having a vagina is played for laughs, and the first thing that happens when she becomes a Real Woman (Yes, this is a plot point.) is... going to the gynecologist, with her new vagina and uterus. The Mattel board meeting actually had a man ask "I'm a man with no power, does that make me a woman?" How Tumblr hasn't caught the transphobia there is beyond me.

Ha ha, pregnant Midge! Loved that!

Feminism is important, because the patriarchy hurts... Ken. And the other Kens. Look, I get that this plot point was aimed SOLELY at the men who were watching this movie, trying to force them to imagine the role reversal and see how awful it is, but it doesn't change the fact that the main plot point of a supposedly feminist movie was clearly targeted at men. Like... come on.

Why is Will Ferrel here? You could have replaced him with a broken lamp in the corner and the movie would have been just fine.

I can't think of a single time that Barbie invited Ken's company. He pursued her, and she tolerated him because that was just sort of her role and she felt she had to. He respected none of her boundaries, just constantly tried to push past them. Then when he went full incel to the point of violence (Yes, I count brainwashing and enslavement as violence and you should too.) and she defeated him, he threw a screaming, public, self-hatred tantrum until SHE was apologising to HIM and consoling HIM, just a few minutes of screen time after a rant about how unfair it is that women are held responsible for men's bad behavior.

Ruth - "I can't let you become a real woman without you understanding what that means." Ruth - shows a montage of babies and motherhood, with some random crap tacked on the end in hopes that we won't notice that.

Being vocally angry about the patriarchy, racism, and enforced femininity is for dumb, angry teenagers with daddy issues who don't know anything about anything, and growing up into REAL feminism involves pink dresses.

The Velveteen Rabbit walked so that Weird Barbie could somersault while doing the splits.

I did cry when Barbie saw the old woman for the first time and called her beautiful. That was nice.

The boy bands of the early 2000s are finally explained.

The only way out of the patriarchy is by women talking to each other and working together, then... men saying they're sorry and totally promising never to do that again. Because that always works.

I mean, the movie wasn't terrible. It just wasn't made for feminists. It was made to get men angry enough to go see the movie so they'd have something to make angry podcasts about, in hopes that a few of them would start to think about what garbage they're spewing. Also, to sell toys, Hummers and Birkenstocks.

Also, I'm not sure this was Greta Gerwig's fault. This whole thing reeks of studio meddling.

OH, and men suck.

[corneliushickey]

🔥 alicent!!

oh ho!!! my unpopular opinion about her is what makes her interesting to me: she's a bad person.

the whole point of hotd is that no one on either side of the dance is a purely good or purely evil person. they all have flaws and nuances and they are all three dimensional people and they are all saddled with the yoke of patriarchy, dynasty, imperialism, legacy, etc. all the things that make the iron throne the exact sort of endless death pit that it is.

alicent had horrible things happen to her. she was abused, taken advantage of, mistreated. she has had an ugly and difficult life shaped by the people who should have been caring for her.

and she also perpetuates her father's cycle of abuse with her own children!! she actively wishes and enacts harm on her childhood best friend, on the future queen of the realm!! she has all the tools at her disposal to change the narrative of her life and she won't because she can't.

that makes her an incredibly tragic and painful character. she is imo incredibly well written as both a victim and a perpetrator of abuse. the fact that she is sitting in her gilded cage and polishing the bars instead of trying to slip out from between them is both tragic and infuriating. that's the point. the cyclical tragedy of her miserable life is perpetuated by her own hand. that's why it's sad!!

i've been so disappointed by both people who like and dislike alicent because i feel like so many people just want to root for soccer teams instead of meaningfully engage in the story. yes, she suffers. yes she is in immense and terrible pain. no, she is not the virgin mary. no, she is not a catholic saint.

"But there is no mysterious virtue in Justine’s suffering. The martyrdom of this Christ-figure is absolutely useless; she is a gratuitous victim. And if there is no virtue in her suffering, then there is none, it turns out, in her virtue itself; it does nobody any good, least of all herself." <- i already have this in my justine/alicent comparison but it really rings sooooo true for me wrt like her own attitude toward her suffering and self-punishment and the comfort she takes in perpetuating her own oppression and imposing it on others

like, the child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort! it's just silly imo to act like alicent doesn't want the people around her to suffer. like she doesn't take pleasure in torturing rhaenyra and her husband(s) and her children.

and it's also so upsetting to me when people are like "ha ha alicunt deserves to burn in hell what a dumb bitch!!" because like... i'm serious she is a very well written and nuanced character and she makes me so sad and i can understand not liking her but if you just want to call her an annoying stuck up bitch like you are being willfully obtuse. you are purposefully watching this show with your eyes closed and your ears plugged.

"hurt people hurt people" is like sooooooo trite and overplayed and like we get it we all watched house md but the thing is that it is true!! people who were victims of abuse go on to abuse others that is what generational trauma is! how can you look at alicent and just expect her to like. fucking what. fucking what!! do you want her to do??? you want her to like invent DBT and then put herself through it??

also i've talked to you about this lol but there is no happy ending for alicent ever. like she simply cannot escape the narrative that she has spent her whole life cocooning herself in and smothering everyone around her with. she is never going to end up with rhaenyra, or criston, or find self actualization. she is doomed like capital D fucking DOOMED like old valyria. ring of fire baby. black earth. i love her so fucking much.

[fairestmusesismoving]

Regina Mills

Oh god why. Do you want me tarred and feathered?! Warning, right now? This is the spiciest opinion I can fill out thus far. Duck and cover, turtledoves.How I feel about this characterRegina makes me physically feel like vomiting. She makes me feel like crying. She makes me feel like ripping my face off and then taking a pair of scissors into smaller pieces. She makes my head spin and not in that cutesy “drunk love” way. She makes me feel like physical suffering and not many characters can accomplish this.I hate her. I hated her the moment Henry said “You’re not my mom!” And her reaction was to talk to Emma instead of going to comfort her son. In that second I realized she didn’t give a shit about her child. It was just about appearances to the outside. She’s a Stepford Wife. And she sort of looks like one in a powersuit. Putting a cookie cutter “perfection” image in those suits doesn’t make the perfection any less creepy, especially when you peel back those layers and realize how fractured that image becomes.Regina thrives by using the patriarchy to her potential and she benefits from white supremacy due to her enslavement of a black man in a realm that doesn’t actually engage in slavery. What do you call a person who manages to invent slavery in a universe where slavery doesn’t exist and genies don’t base things on class, skin pigmentation…? Regina is a rapist and guilty of acts of sexual assault and coercion. Every time someone yells “but she’s feminist” I want to cry. I could stomach everything bad about Regina if her fans didn’t try to convince me I was crazy.All the people I ship romantically with this character:A falling cinderblock.Every ship Regina has is built on abuse, be it canon or noncanon. To make Outlaw Queen work, you have to realize Regina is responsible for Marian’s death. Now really, truly… Try to give Robin a REAL arc for healing without throwing someone to have sex with. He’d have to truly accept Regina and start to heal. We can’t merely accept being told he’s fine with it. We have to see that healing take place, or it feels inauthentic and like we’re rewarding Regina for murdering.She’s getting a reward for rape and murder.The same goes for Swan Queen. Regina did indeed ruin Emma’s life. She separated a family over multiple generations and tormented them. At one point of the show, Regina declares that “killing a baby” is on her to do list. She fully intended to murder Emma just moments after her birth. At no point does Regina ever cease her verbal abuse towards any single character on the show, including Henry. This isn’t a person who is emotionally ready for a relationship with anyone other than a pet rock that’s actually foam so she can’t murder another person with it.My non-romantic OTP for this character:Cinderblocks. Falling from the sky.Regina is not able to hold real relationships. She expects not just Henry to parent her, but also Snow White. These are two people she has severely abused. Ironically, she’s placed sleeping curses on both of them. On Henry it was out of negligence, but it really doesn’t matter. Regina’s screwed up priorities and expectations for those around her are pretty shocking. This is pretty true to life as these people exist, but the fandom doesn’t take this seriously and dares to call her “sexy” for behaviors that often tears families apart. I know this first hand. It’s heartbreaking because I’ve seen and known Regina-types.The problem is it’s not as if they need your help, they just deeply desire this attention and will often get violent to force you to do this… Verbal abuse, using children as pawns, playing people against each other, etc.Regina shouldn’t be around people.My unpopular opinion about this character:And here comes the unfollows… While I will rp with Reginas who take the topics surrounding her character seriously, maturely, and with the decorum it needs? Regina does trigger me and upset me. I can talk about her calmly if someone wants to admit her wrongdoings and meet me there to admit that rapists shouldn’t hold office, but you have to meet me there. You have to make some concessions on your part and we can get there.Also, I don’t believe Regina was abused. I am a trained actor and with a few basic writing classes, I’ve analyzed Regina’s scenes. I follow a method called show, don’t tell. There is nothing to suggest Regina being abused by any characters. The single hint I get is Cora being rough in Stable Boy with Regina in pulling her off the horse. Unfortunately this is not enough to confirm abuse. This is enough to confirm Cora is what we call a “stage mom”, but that’s the only proof I have. I have no proof in the narrative that tells me anything else. Because there’s nothing there, I have to scrap this theory all together. Is Cora a good person? No. Is there hints that Regina is worse than her fans believe her to be? Sadly, yes. There is.Thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.I wish she had no fandom. I wish she died in S2. I wish Henry was able to have a HEALTHY relationship that he could examine instead of the pro-abuse dialogue that’s espoused. I wish Snow White could have her life back. I wish Emma was able to have her parents rather than share them with the abusive woman who took her family away from her… Need I go on…? Bold for abuse apologism is the worst.

[the-light-followed]

THE COLOUR OF MAGIC (1983) [DISC. #1; RINCEWIND #1]

Rating: 5/10

Standalone Okay: Yes

Read First: NO.

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x] 

* * * * * * * * * *

Ask any Discworld fan, and we’ll all pretty much universally agree that The Colour of Magic isn’t the pinnacle of the Discworld experience.  Nobody really recommends that new readers should start here, even if it is the first book in the series chronologically.  I’m pretty much a writing-order-equals-reading-order purist, for reasons best discussed elsewhere, and even I would absolutely never start people off with this one.  (I tend to go for Going Postal or Wee Free Men—again, for reasons best discussed elsewhere.)

It’s not Pratchett’s best work.  It’s not even his tenth best work.  If I have to rate it (and I do, because that’s kind of the point, here), compared to the rest of Discworld, it’s down at the bottom of my list.

It’s pretty damn good, though, for what it is.

For me, it’s a genuine joy to read the early Rincewind books. This is because, in my head at least, it makes total sense that everything involved in them is baffling and strange when compared to the settled absurdism you get from other Discworld novels.  Further into the series, it all feels a lot more comfortable and fleshed-out: yes, the things Pratchett writes about are often genuinely ridiculous, but usually the setting explains those things and packages them up neatly enough to make them acceptable. And the characters treat everything as perfectly normal, business as usual, so the reader is gently encouraged to do the same.  

Thinking about it, I would argue that a lot of the Discworld shenanigans aren’t all that different from a lot of the real-world nonsense that we all just accept as totally normal.  Discworld nonsense and our nonsense just come from different places. For us, it’s stuff like the fact that some cops still ride horses for absolutely no good reason, or that tipping is part of a server’s pay in an American restaurant, or that water is usually free but we all let movie theaters charge us like $5 for a bottle, and what’s that even about?  In the Discworld, the thieves and assassins have unionized, and if you slip up, it’s entirely possible to just fall right off the edge of the world.  It’s weird, and it’s not exactly fine, but it’s not about to kill us right this second, so we all just let it happen. We accept it.

This is not at all the case for our unwilling protagonist, the original Discworld hero-who-is-absolutely-not-a-hero, Rincewind. He’s scared of everything.  He is a genuine, bona fide coward.  Absolutely everything that happens leaves him baffled, terrified, and/or dismayed, and to tell the truth I unconditionally respect all of this about him, because most of the absolute bullshit nonsense going down around him is baffling, terrifying, and/or simply Not Good, and he and the reader have to learn to live with that together.

Over the course of this one novel, failed-wizard-slash-reluctant-guide Rincewind is:

Involved in burning down large parts of the city of Ankh-Morpork, because he left his friend unsupervised and the city really wasn’t ready for the invention of ‘insurance’ without the accompanying understanding of ‘insurance fraud.’

Chased, threatened, and variously menaced by a sentient suitcase known as the Luggage, which canonically has huge teeth, a mahogany tongue, hundreds of little legs, and an insatiable hunger for the flesh of its owner’s enemies.  Also, it does your laundry if you leave it inside. Isn’t that nice?

Forced into a duel by dragon riders, where he must fight upside-down while wearing boots that basically Velcro-attach their wearers to the ceiling.

Captured, imprisoned, and scheduled to be sacrificed to the anthropomorphic personification of Fate in exchange for success in a scientific endeavor—specifically, checking the biological sex of the giant turtle carrying the Discworld on its back through the universe.

Dropped over the Rimfall, the waterfall at the edge of the Disc, which in Roundworld terminology is something like tripping and falling off the surface of the Earth and flying into the abyss of space.

Repeatedly almost forced to speak one of the Eight Great Spells that created the universe, which will do…something, possibly catastrophic, when spoken.  No one knows exactly what it does.  Rincewind certainly doesn’t.  This spell attached itself parasitically to his brain years ago, and, in the meantime, has shoved all the other wizard-y type things he could have been doing right on out of there.

So, basically, he’s going through a lot.  And this list isn’t everything, just the bits I pulled out by opening my book at random spots and reading a couple of lines.  It kind of makes sense, in my opinion, that things feel a little topsy-turvy.  Shit’s wild.

On top of that, I’d also argue that Pratchett is playing pretty fast and loose with plot and story structure in this book.  It can feel sloppy at times, more like a bunch of little vignettes that have been strung together than a single, coherent storyline. The plot loosely wobbles along the tightrope strung between Rincewind’s uncanny luck, good and bad, and cheerfully-blockheaded-tourist Twoflower’s unstoppable ability to trample through the middle of every single situation that could possibly try to kill him.  Very bad things happen, but somehow, they miraculously fail to die, and so Rincewind is still stuck shepherding Twoflower along through the next incident of someone or something trying to brutally murder them both.  There’s no real greater plot or driving need, just Twoflower with his little camera, wanting to take pictures of every beautiful and dangerous part of the Disc.

If a rabid wolf the size of a bus came up and tried to eat him, Twoflower would take pictures of the inside of its mouth and say, “Oh, wow, I’ve never seen teeth that big before!  Rincewind, won’t you take a picture of me with this magnificent beast?”  And Rincewind wouldn’t answer, because he’d be half a mile away already and still moving fast, with nothing but a cartoon cloud of dust left behind to mark where he’d been.

[Here’s the boys, Rincewind and Twoflower, just doing their best.  From the BBC two-part miniseries called The Colour of Magic, which actually spans the plot of both The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. Yes, that is Samwise Gamgee playing Twoflower, and yes, I did get distracted by that a lot while watching. Twoflower has all of Sam’s earnest faith and absolutely none of his common sense.]

Fun!

The whole thing actually is pretty fun, though.  It’s witty.  It’s got something to say, even if that something is just “hey, aren’t all these identical High Fantasy Adventure books all overdramatic and ridiculous in the exact same ways?”  Pratchett is writing this book as one massive joke he’s telling about the genre, the tropes, and the archetypes, and he does a pretty decent job even by today’s cultural standards, let alone the standards of 1983.  Chances are that any point he’s making here in The Colour of Magic is something he’s going to make again, better, in a later book, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the seeds of something here.

As a main example, I’ll point out Liessa Dragonlady, who has arguably the biggest role in one of the major conflicts of this book.  Liessa is initially presented as the quintessential High Fantasy barbarian warrior lady, which would typically be more about sex appeal than any actual skill—except that Liessa is actually highly intelligent, 110% more talented and qualified as a leader and warrior than her brothers or literally anyone on the protagonists’ team, and is aware the whole time that she’s struggling against the patriarchy and her society (and the tropes) in trying to take what should be her rightful place as leader of the Wyrmberg.  The sexism exists in the Discworld, not in the writing.

[Liessa from the BBC’s The Colour of Magic, wearing—no joke—a crop top armor chest piece.  Actually, I think it’s technically a bikini, based on the bottom half of the armor.  Or should I say the lack thereof?  Classic.]

Liessa is a decent example of Pratchett’s ability to look at the tropes and the reader’s expectations, and then go and take his writing somewhere else.  But even so, I’d absolutely point to Monstrous Regiment or even Equal Rites first for anyone wanting to read a really solid exploration of femininity and what it means to be a woman in a traditionally ‘masculine’ field.  Or I’d suggest just about any book starring the senior witches or Tiffany Aching for examples of well-rounded female characters that demand respect in a world specifically designed to not want to give it to them.

But that’s just one example.  The Colour of Magic has the seeds of quite a few really good ideas that Pratchett will explore in more depth later on.

I think those seeds are part of what makes The Colour of Magic worth a read at some point, even if it’s never going to be anyone’s favorite Discworld book.  I love seeing the foundations of Future-Discworld, that settled absurdism I was talking about earlier, in this.  We’ve got our proto-Vetinari, long before he had a name, being generically threatening and Machiavellian and as close to ‘cackling evil overlord’ as it’s possible to get without actually cackling, or at least without some sort of thunderstorm rumbling in the background.  Ankh-Morpork is a wonderfully scum-filled cesspit of depravity and immorality.  There’s no effective City Watch to kick things into a rickety and leaking approximation of ship-shape, so it’s probably a good thing that the river Ankh is so thick with pollution that you don’t need a ship to cross it—you can just walk.

There’s even some early conceptualization of Pratchett’s special brand of everyday magic, the kind that will show up over and over again in the Discworld: the idea that even with a reality full of gods and wizards and hyper-powerful, monstrous things, there’s still a lot of power in everyday, ordinary people.

Pratchett is all about belief.  He preaches the importance of the self, in terms of making reality into the place we think it should be.  In Pratchett’s world, the things we believe in matter, and not just in a philosophical sense.  Belief is a real, tangible form of magic—in this book, specifically, Twoflower manages to summon an entire dragon out of nothing, just because he believes strongly enough that dragons should exist the way he’s always dreamed them to be.  In later books, sheer belief and willpower are shown to create and fuel gods and spirits, to contain quasi-demonic entities of vengeance and darkness, and to form the backbone of every other more ‘traditional’ type of magic.  

It’s nice to see the early forms of it here.  I’m not going to get too into it, because it’s going to show up a lot in later books in more significant ways (I’m thinking Hogfather, Small Gods, and even Pyramids) and I don’t want to beat that horse to death just yet, but it’s one of the foundation stones of the Discworld.  It’s somehow comforting to know that it’s been here since the very beginning.

It’s also funny as hell to see the stuff that Pratchett will eventually change, soften, or drop entirely as he settles into the way the Discworld will work.  Did you know there are eight seasons on the Discworld?  And that in my 1985 edition of the book, the footnote where he explains these eight seasons takes up the bottom half of two entire pages?

That’s one single footnote there.  The first ever footnote, even, and it’s almost a full page long and utterly ridiculous.  It’s incredible, and I love it a lot.  I also love that almost none of the details here are ever mentioned again, and if they are, it’s never in a significant or memorable way—and Pratchett certainly doesn’t waste a whole page on any of them ever again.  Well, except for Hogswatch, because Pratchett knows when he’s got a real winner.  It might have taken him thirteen years, but he wrote a whole damn book about it, and we all can agree that Hogfather is a joy and a delight.

Not so much “Autumn Prime,” “Crueltide,” “Winter Secundus,” and blah blah blah etcetera whatever.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I forgot them while I was literally still in the middle of reading them.  And what the hell is “Reforgule of Krull”?  No clue. It’s total nonsense, never seen again, and I think we can all agree we are fine with this.  

On second thought, I think Pratchett does end up using Hubward and Rimward pretty regularly as directions.  But without this info-dump, when reading other books, I think that even I figured out how “Hubward” and “Rimward” work on a flat plate of a world with a Hub in the center and a Rim along the outside.  And I am so bad with maps and directions that I literally get confused trying to give people directions to the parking lot outside my work.

I’m no good at wrapping these things up, so I’m ending this post the same way that Pratchett ends the book: with Rincewind abruptly falling off the edge of the Disc.

[Originally, I was going to go hunt down some fanart or something, but I don’t have permission to use any of that, so instead you get my doodles off the scrap paper I steal from work.  Luckily for everyone, I’m an artistic genius.  The dot representing Rincewind obviously isn’t to scale, since one human person would be much smaller than that, but if it represents the size of his body and the size of his scream, then it’s basically accurate.]

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

Rincewind’s insane luck, good and bad, is because he’s a favorite of the goddess referred to only as ‘the Lady,’ since invoking her true name means she has to leave.  She’s the anthropomorphic personification of Luck itself, and she’s the reason Rincewind always survives whatever terrible situation he finds himself in—but also the reason he’s stuck in that situation in the first place.  

Everything that goes wrong, and the dramatic escape that inevitably follows, is because the Lady likes to play dice games with Fate, using normal people on the Disc as game pieces.  

Rincewind, it turns out, is the human equivalent of her favorite Monopoly token. (The iron, maybe?  It has the same sort of Looney Tunes cartoon-anvil vibe as Rincewind’s whole, well, everything.)

Death as a character makes his first appearance in The Colour of Magic.  However, here it’s implied he actually is involved somehow in the killing process, and his role can be filled in by apparently random low-level demons on their days off, whereas later books make it clear he just collects and shepherds the dead onward, and actually the issue of his replacement is a big deal, cosmically speaking.  

Pratchett sort of avoids this issue by claiming that Rincewind’s life timer is so complicated and convoluted (because of all the weird accidents and magical incidents) that Death just can’t tell when he’s actually supposed to die.  

I guess Death shows up every time it looks like Rincewind might kick the bucket, just in case?  And in that case, all the threatening stuff he says to Rincewind in these early books must be because he’s so irritated that he has to keep coming out for no reason, only to find that Rincewind has, once again, managed to survive.  And maybe the low-level demon showing up instead was just, uh, Death trying to scare him into actually beefing it, this time…?

Although the Unseen University Librarian exists and is human for the entirety of this book and only this book, he does not appear at any point.  He’s briefly referenced—or, at least, a librarian is referenced, but this is referring back when Rincewind was young and read the grimoire that left one of the Eight Great Spells parasitically attached to his mind.  There’s no guarantee it’s the same librarian, and based on the turnover (read: murder) rate of University wizards at the time, I don’t think it’s likely that anyone managed to hold onto their job that long.  On Google, I did find a thing where someone cut together some shots of him in human form from The Colour of Magic BBC show, so that’s pretty fun:

Once he’s changed into an orangutan in The Light Fantastic, he’s described as still looking a bit like the human Librarian: with that beard and hair combo, I think they nailed it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Favorite Quotes:

“Inn-sewer-ants-polly-sea.”

“She was the Goddess Who Must Not Be Named; those who sought her never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest need. And, then again, sometimes she didn’t. She was like that.”

“It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows.”

“Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.”

“‘I’m sure you won’t dream of trying to escape from your obligations by fleeing the city…’ ‘I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord.’  ‘Indeed? Then if I were you I’d sue my face for slander.’”

“It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.  But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.”

[patricianandclerk]

Angua and Cheeri (you can skip the hotness question of course)

SEND ME A CHARACTER & I’LL ANSWER THE FOLLOWING ABOUT THEM!

Angua von Uberwald

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

best quality: I think Angua’s best quality is her like... Loyalty and care and attention to detail? These things are all wrapped up into one thing for me, but the fact that she went from being an unwilling princess in an awful place to just... Being a normal girl taken up with a (secret) prince, and caring so much about everybody, making up for where she came from? Trying so hard to make other people’s lives better? Connecting with others? Big respect.

worst quality: I think her... lack of self-respect. Not the low self-esteem, which is one thing, but the fact that she really has so little regard for herself, and thinks of herself as so unimportant, and so like... resigned to that, you know? Especially like, when she’s like, “ugh, we’re all someone’s dog” kind of language, like... That’s what she thinks she deserves, to be almost subservient to another person? And that makes me pang big time. 

ship them with: Sally!!! I love Sally/Angua just because like... Sally would work so hard to get Angua out of her shell a little bit, but the thing is, Sally is so good at challenging Angua’s self-flagellating behaviour, as much as Angua is good at bringing Sally down a peg? They really balance one another out in that respect, and the thing I love is how much that comes from a place of care for one another, even before that care is really personalised. 

brotp them with: Big time Cheri!! And also, of course, Carrot. And the thing is... Sam is her da, and I love it. 

needs to stay away from: Her own inner demons. 

misc. thoughts: I really love Angua’s relationship with Vimes, and how much she looks up to him. The wonderful thing to me is how much they have in common in terms of like... How worthless they both think they are, but how they set aside those anxieties in order to focus on other people? I love them. 

Cheri Littlebottom

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

best quality: Um, that she’s a gender-nonconforming ICON? Like, I’m sorry, but Cheri Littlebottom fucking invented bravery, and she’s so incredible, like!! She did that! She got herself some fucking skirts, some dresses! She said fuck the patriarchy! I’m a woman now, bite me! 

Biggest respect for Cheri Littlebottom. She’s so incredible. That willingness to spit in the eye of everyone else’s agenda aside, I also love how like... She doesn’t know shit about anything, and she’ll just admit to it. I love how she’ll ask basic questions and in front of you just fucking take notes on your answer. That’s a bravery in itself, and I’m not joking about that, I’m not taking the piss - she’s not frightened of looking ignorant or looking stupid, because she’s here and she cares and she’s willing to learn, and I love that. 

worst quality: I think her worst quality is like... I think that sometimes, she kind of resigns herself to... not even bad treatment, but just unluckiness, you know? I think that sometimes she’s just a little shy and uncertain, and I think that sometimes she worries about taking up space - she worries about asking the world for too much, for more than she deserves, but she does deserve it!!

ship them with: I don’t think I have any ship partners for Cheri particularly? I just want her to be... happy. 

brotp them with: Angua, big time, and absolutely the City Watch Igor! I also really love her dynamic with A.E. Pessimal. 

needs to stay away from: Dickholes in the dwarfish community. 

misc. thoughts: I write her name as Cheri because like... So, Cheri - and other dwarfs who are out as women and decide to present in any sort of GNC way - is an allegory for the trans experience. Yes, it’s different and coming from a different culture, but it came out of care and focus, and subsequently like.

I don’t really like seeing people style her name as Cheery, personally, because we know that she prefers to style it as Cheri, and that’s also what she wants to be called? So because it’s that trans-parallel experience, that’s what I do. 

[galbinuscarnation]

The Last of the Real Ones

Chapter 2

“Pass the salt please,” Lucie held her hand out before her brother, as they sat at a cafe table at a restaurant outside her workplace.James flicked his fingers at her and she huffed. “Jamie, I didn’t mean your arse!”

James snorted and finally passed the salt to his little sister, who was glaring at him while aggressively salting her salad. “Lucie, I think you’ve gotten lettuce on your salt.”

“James I am literally this close to throttling your insufferable neck,” Lucie threatened, her blue eyes squinting dangerously.

“I don’t see what the problem is, wouldn’t you rather I be ‘enjoying the sunshine’, which i remind you, doesn’t exist in London.” James ran a hand across his bangs, and narrowed his eyes at his sister’s reconsidering look.

“When was the last time you got a cut again?” she inquired suddenly.

“Dunno, less than a month ago?” James shrugged. “It’s fine, it’s not in my eyes or anything.”

“But it’s getting there,” Lucie pressed, before chewing on her lettuce. James shook his head and took a sip of tea. “Maybe if you call Matthew…”

“He’s probably busy.” James interrupted, staring at his tea. Lucie frowned, but nodded.

“It wouldn’t hurt to call him.” Lucie told James. James stared at Lucie’s peluntant expression and put down his tea.

“What aren’t you telling me Lucie?” He asked.

Lucie shook her head and bit her lip. “It’s nothing, I mean, compared to what we’ve heard.”

“About Branwell’s accident?” James elaborated.

“Yes,” Lucie took a deep breath. “I was kind of hoping…. You would befriend Matthew.”

If James had still been drinking he probably would’ve sputtered out his tea, instead he choked on the air and coughed. Lucie passed her chilled water towards him, and he took a gulp before getting his bearings. “What?!”

“I know you’re socially awkward Jamie, but spare me.” Lucie chuckled nervously, “When I met Matthew he was a delight. I passed by his salon numerous times and was so curious that I had to take a look. He’s so relatable, he loves books.” James nodded, his sister would always warm up to fellow book lovers. “I made sure to become a regular, whether I felt like having a do to look more professional, or even to simply chat. When...when mum told me that you had come back home I felt so guilty. Here I was, flourishing in my field, spending my free time with friends and pampering myself in salons while my brother was suffering in silence.”

“Lucie,” James began, rubbing his temples. Lucie was heading towards dangerous territory, memories James himself was trying to repress and move on from. “It’s wasn’t that bad… to be honest I shouldn’t have been that low, or worrying the family.”

“You were heartbroken,” Lucie shook her head, and reached over to grasped her brother’s hand. “No one could blame you.” James snatched his hand away, building up his wall in front of her again. “I won’t bring her up-”

“Then don’t.” James warned, as he stared at his cooling tea for a moment. He could already sense his fingers wanting to reach out and hold someone else’s hand, the delicate, enchanting hands of his fiance.

“Listen. The state you were in, I found an excuse. Here was a friendly guy that could trim my brother’s hair, and with his charisma maybe open a door into the real world,” She explained. “I shouldn’t have relied on Matthew so much…”

“No one could have known what would happen.” James stared at Lucie, who was now picking at her food. “Don’t hold yourself accountable for something out of your hands. Also, you should stop trying to meddle with people relationships, you can’t force it.” Lucie was able to distract his mind again, with the warmth of a kind smile he remembered was directed at him at that salon.

“I was hoping to come up with excuses to bring you to the salon again...” Lucie admitted. “Then maybe you would have formed it on your own.”

“Really?” James raised his eyebrows at the unbelievability of what she was suggesting. “You called me ‘socially awkward’ yourself. You thought I could be friends with someone as attractive as that?”

Lucie blinked at him, and James could feel the blood rushing to his face at her scrutiny. “Jamie, did you just refer to Matthew as ‘attractive’?”

“Well…” James eyes darted away, and he adjusted his glasses to mask his blush. “Yes, aesthetically I can admit when another man is attractive.”

“Oh if that’s all it is then.” Lucie sipped her water through her straw, giving her brother a knowing look. James sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Seriously Lucie, you, who advocate for equality and smashing gender norms and the patriarchy, should know it’s completely natural to find anyone attractive.” James tried to save face, but could immediately read in his sister’s face that she wasn’t buying it.

“While all of that is true, I know you.” Lucie clasped her hand on the table. “And normally I would be cheering you on, go! Acknowledge anyone you want to acknowledge, no one but you can stop you!”

“Okay you are losing me,” James interjected, growing irritated.

“Okay, so I, Lucie, know that her brother, James, doesn’t just throw out there that people are attractive, ever. So, considering your recent…” She winced when James scowled. “....history, it may just be a yearning in your heart for something, anything.”

“You are not even making sense!” James argued. How could even say that, suggesting that he was only desperately trying to patch his heart with Matthew, a man he hardly knew and only met once… who treated him so kindly and without any other motive other than simply to do his job of cutting hair?

“Okay okay!” Lucie put her hands up defensively. “I’m not a psychologist, I’m a writer. I observe people but I may not have the best interpretation of the situation. I admit it.”

“Clearly,” James let out a breath of relief, Lucie was rationalizing it herself in her strange way.

“So.... my lunch is almost up.” Lucie mentioned. James clicked his tongue and gestured for a waiter to come pack up Lucie’s lunch.

“Seriously, maybe we should stop these lunches. You only had a couple of bites...”

“But our parents want you out of the house at least once a day,” Lucie sighed and thanked the waiter when he food was brought back in a box. James took out his card and Lucie put her hand over the check.

“What are you doing? I’m the one working,” she insisted. James gave her an exasperated look.

“And skipping precious time for actually eating.” James shook his head. “Besides, may as well use my allowance for something…like you said, Mum and Dad want me to do something with my days.”

“James, there’s always an opening for interns, I could put a good word-” Lucie started but James shook his head vehemently.

“Don’t want to hear it.” He handed the check to the waiter. Lucie stood up and gave her older brother a hug.

“Think about what I said, despite how misguided or self indulgent it may seem.” Lucie kissed the top of his messy head and James pretended to look disgusted. She slapped him playfully, and he let out a laugh.

“Go!” He waved his sister away, as she weaved through the crowded street clutching her lunch. James knocked back his cold tea, just in time for the waiter to return and give him a pointed look. James shrugged and collected his things, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

He walked through the streets, where he passed Lucie’s office where the latest headlines were being broadcasted on the windows. He stared for a moment, as the household name Branwell caught his eye. It was news he had already known, but it still unbelievable that he had met the second son of the world renowned inventor Henry Branwell. James couldn’t imagine how he would feel if something had happened to his own father, and he couldn’t help but wonder how Matthew was handling everything, to have his family’s business in the spotlight for the world to hear. Despite only meeting him once, James wouldn’t wish this on anyone, especially someone as bright and kind as Matthew.

“...condition is stable and currently on the mend, says the family of the brain behind Branwell Bionics, Henry Branwell. What could this mean for the future of the company, experts theorize-”

James sighed and turned away from the building, striding down the street and making his way through the crowd. His feet were used to this route by know, having grown accustomed to this routine of sharing meals with his sister to appease his parents. His hand clutched his bag closer as the crowd grew denser, the hard covers of his books poking his sides through the material. Suddenly the path he was taking was so clogged that he couldn’t even move. James glared at the crowd in front of him and with a huff pushed against the mass roughly.

“Oy! What’s the hold up?” He tumbled as some people moved aside while others seemed to be leaning to look at something beyond the wall of people. There was chatter and some people with their phones out. James caught a flash of mint green and realized where he was. He had forgotten that the salon was on this side of the street, and it had never been so crowded, so he casually breezed by it on his way home various other times. Today however, the variety of screens were pointed at the door, waiting, for what, James had a hunch. A month ago if someone had told him that one of the sons of Branwell was a hairdresser, James would have snorted and taken it as a joke. Not, that the situation was in any way funny, no it was more complex than that.

James saw the news on the telly about how the man who invented a great many of the devices that the disabled community now used was rushed to the hospital because of an accident. He thought nothing of it until Lucie had called and explained that he was Matthew’s father. James didn’t understand at first, since the business card had Matthew Fairchild written on it, not Branwell.

“It was a precaution, to protect them when they were children,” Lucie explained. “It’s his mother’s maiden name.”

It was a precaution that James’ own parents considered, but despite his father’s accomplishments, Herondale wasn’t nearly as commonplace or famous as the name of the company that was branded on millions of accessible products globally. What was also extraordinary was that the Fairchild’s are a family of politicians, and the fact that one of the women in the family was quietly married to Branwell stunned James. Maybe he should have paid more attention to the elections recently, because after some research he was easily able to find information on many of the local achievements of a Charles Buford Fairchild, who was currently the treasurer of London.

So, with both families so high profile it was short of a miracle that no one had heard of a hairdresser named Matthew Fairchild, owner and best stylist of the salon on Great Marlborough street. That was, until today, as James continued to push through what he could now identify as a throng of paparazzi, curious tourists, and fans. Only James could find himself in such a predicament, but was now stuck in the middle of a crowd on the sidewalk with no way around because he could hardly move.

The crowd shifted and cameras flashed as a limousine pulled right up the curb with an escort. The police immediately emerged from their vehicle to control the crowd and make a walkway. Then, a hefty man came out of the passenger seat to open the door at the rear of the limo. When a flash of ginger peeked from the door the crowd erupted in noise as cameras flashed. James used this distraction to try and wiggle his way to the other side, but there was an officer keeping an eye out as a man in a suit stepped out of the car. He was poised and professional, giving a polite wave to the crowd, and matched his internet images to a tee.

James took his eyes away from Charles Buford Fairchild when he spotted an opening in front of the door to the salon as the crowd inched towards the street. Before he could decide to make a break for it himself, someone roughly thumped against his back, sending him face first into the cement directly in the path that the young politician was supposed to be on.

There was a collective gasp at his sudden appearance as James fumbled the reach for his glasses. A shadow loomed over him and he looked up as he adjusted his glasses to face Charles Buford. The man was staring down at him with an arched eyebrow, and the bodyguard was behind him glowering down at James. Charles seemed to be deliberating something before extending his hand.

“James Herondale is it?”

James stared opened mouth at him but accepted the hand and stood up. “Erm…”

“Charlie,” a voice greeted, and James was surprised to see someone he scarcely saw anymore emerge from the salon. Anna Lightwood, a older cousin of his, stepped out casually with a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and slim fit dress pants. She surveyed the situation with a look of distaste but her eyes landed briefly on James in recognition.The crowd gasp again at her arrival and continued to photograph and record and clog the streets. James had half a mind to simply leave now, but could see the expectant gazes that some people had on him made him freeze with nerves.

“Anna,” Charles Buford inclined his head, letting go of James clammy hands. “Would you mind fetching-"

“He isn’t here.” Anna informed him. Charles’ face tightened but he schooled whatever reaction he wanted to have in front of the audience.

“Any idea to his whereabouts? He mentioned he would be here.” He said with strained politeness. James tightened his grip on his strap, glancing between Anna and Charles, and overwhelmed with a sense that he was out of the loop.

“Haven’t the faintest, he took off after your very public announcement of heading this way.” Anna gestured pointedly at the murmuring crowd. “Took off?” Charles inhaled sharply and then sighed. “Fine. I’ll see him later, but I was only hoping to offer my brother a ride to our father.” He turned to go and nodded at James. “Grace sends her regards.” James took a step back as if he had struck him. He didn’t even notice Anna placing a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and ushering him back to the salon as the crowd followed the departing limousine. James tumbled into the establishment with Anna’s guidance, and he leaned against the wall with a head in his hands. He gasped for breath and Anna’s hands where firm on his shoulders as he choked on a sob.

“Oh James... “ Anna sighed mournfully, “How long have you been keeping this in?”

“I’m...fine…” James rasped, shutting his eyes and gritting his teeth to prevent himself from making more humiliating noises. Wiith Lucie’s questions from earlier, and Charles’ jarring words, everything that James was repressing overcame him in the last place he wanted to have a breakdown.

“Don’t take Charlie seriously, he’s a bloody insensitive twat, pissed with Matthew and took it out on you.” Anna reassured him with her crash remarks. James let out a faint chuckle and coughed some more, wiping his watering eyes.

“Thanks,” James mumbled and sighed. “Not exactly the reunion I was hoping for.”

“By the way I’m back in London,” Anna teased, letting him go. “In fact, I was here at the tail end of your haircut here, but was in the back with Barbara.”

“Really? I wasn’t paying attention,” James shook his head slowly, and his bangs shadowed his glasses. His head was being to hurt from literally swallowing away his sorrows, but he kept face in front of Anna despite everything.

“Were you on your way for another trim?” Anna inquired, leaning against the wall next to James.

“Not at all, I was passing by. Lucie works up the road.” James glanced outside the door, where the crowd was dispersing. He belatedly noticed the sign reading “closed” on the door. “You aren’t even open?”

“You recall I travel cross the country for conferences,not cut people’s hair for a living.” Anna reminded him. Anna was a renowned psychologist and activist, and was often invited to conferences as a speaker.

“Right, I meant, you’re here but they’re closed right?” James amended.

“Actually Matthew had been keeping the shop open, it was Charlie’s fault I had to shoo the walk ins OUT the door.” Anna ran a hand through her perfectly quaffed hair, and the motion made it seem even more stylish than before.

“...and Matthew?” James asked quietly.

“He went off, to Hyde Park to feed the ducks.” Anna told him offhandedly, pushing herself off the wall.

“You know where he is?” James barked out a laugh even though he shouldn’t have been so surprised, it was Anna after all.

“Yes, he could use some company,” Anna produced a pack of cigarettes and offered one to James, who shook his head, before striding towards the door. She peeked out, to make sure the crowd was gone and gave James a knowing stare. “It not like you’ve got anything better planned?”

James wondered if Anna was asking a favor for herself, to not have to chase after him, or for Matthew. James would like to think it was the latter, but he could feel uncertainty creeping through his thoughts.

“You sure he needs my company? I’ve been informed I’m rather dower these days.” James admitted.

“Good, then Matthew can latch onto that instead of wallowing and brighten up both of your afternoons.” Anna decided. “He’ll be at the pond.”

“And you?” James brushed his bangs aside with his hand and adjusted his frames to hide the redness of his eyes.

“I’m going to have a word with Charlotte about her son's behavior.” Anna gave James a confident smirk, and gestured for James to go ahead of her. James smiled back at her, and stepped out of the salon, glancing in the direction of the park and contemplating breaking whatever unspoken promise he had just made. “I’m locking up here, so let Matthew know the shop is taken care of.”

Oh, so now the security of another person’s business was in James’ hand, and James turned to ask Anna why on earth she had a key to the place but she was gone. He groaned and rubbed his aching forehead. Thousands of people went to Hyde Park, how on earth was he supposed to even find Matthew? Even if he went, was there any guarantee that Matthew would still be feeding the ducks? The ducks, James thought, and chuckled. His father would have been scandalized to discover that James had gone to feed wretched ducks today.

James was simply tempted to do it for just that reason, but his thoughts wandered back to Matthew. Matthew, whose brother so rudely dropped Grace’s name, even though it had been a couple of months since their marriage was abruptly cancelled. James put a hand over his eyes as if covering the world could make his body evaporate into the dark corners, a wisp of a shadow among the crowd. It was curse, James thought, to be someone like him, unnoticeable and with nothing in his life to show his potential. A long list of failures trailed behind him as he walked briskly down the sidewalk. He was nothing like Matthew, who was an accomplished hairdresser, charming personality, even accommodating a novice like himself with getting a simple trim.

James put it upon himself to walk the whole way to the park, forgetting how exhausting it would be to do so. He finally made it to the entrance and slumped onto a bench, tilting his head back and staring up at the cloudy sky. After a rest, he set out to find Matthew in the massive area of nature. It would take hours, but he felt compelled to seek him out despite the effort. It was worth putting in the effort for Matthew.

[facts-before-ideology]

It’s a clammy summer night. You’re 24, and you call a suicide hotline.

The nice lady who answers is probably in her seventies. She is very understanding as you explain to her that hundreds of people, thousands of strangers, are saying awful things about you, that some of them seem to really want to hurt you. You don’t know why. You’re just a writer, and you didn’t expect this. But some of them tell you in detail their fantasies of your rape and murder.

The nice lady is very sweet as she asks you if these voices ever tell you to do things. Yes, they tell you to stop writing. You inform the nice lady about this in a creepy whisper because your family is sleeping nearby and you don’t want to wake or worry them. These strangers tell you you don’t deserve to live, let alone have a newspaper column. Do they tell you to hurt yourself? Yes, every day.

The nice lady tells you to hold the line, because if it’s alright, she’s going to transfer you to one of her colleagues with specialist training.

No, wait, you say. You’re not hearing voices. You’re not delusional.  The nice lady can Google you. This is really happening.

* * *

The internet hates women. Everyone knows that by now, and nobody precisely approves, but we’ve reached a point of collective tolerance. It’s just the way of the world, and if you can’t handle it, honey, delete your account. Stop engaging online. Cut yourself off from friends, family, and professional contacts, shut down your business, blow up your social capital, stop learning, stop talking, just stop. Or else.

The U.N. Broadband Commission tells us that one in five young women has been sexually harassed online. Amnesty International’s latest report suggested that over three-quarters of women and girls expected violence and abuse if they expressed an opinion online. “Online” is the least significant word in those sentences. I have been asked enough times if “the internet is bad for women.” And yes, there is reason enough to warn your daughter, your partner, your friend to watch out for herself online, to think twice before “putting herself out there.” You’d warn her in much the same way that you might warn her not to walk through town alone at night, not to wear a short skirt, not to let her guard down, not to relax, ever. And the message is the same: The future, like the past, is not for you. You may visit, but only if you behave.

* * *

You’re 23. You’re an aspiring writer and the blog you write about gender, sex, and welfare from your roach-infested bedroom is nominated for a major prize. You get to go to a fancy ceremony. Your parents are proud. You put on your best shirt and try to look comfortable. All the other nominees are older, and most of them are men, and as you are stashing fancy food in your rucksack to take home and share, one of them comes over and whispers gleefully in your ear: How does it feel to be a hate figure?

You should have taken it as a warning. This is about the time when the death threats start.

* * *

The year 2010, according to a recent report from Manchester Metropolitan University, was when the snowball of new feminism got up enough momentum to become a threat to culture. That momentum came from the internet. “The ability to call out sexism and misogyny on social media has revolutionized the feminist movement,” writes Dr. Emma Turley, one of the authors of the paper.

When it comes to feminism, simply describing the world as so many of us actually experience it can be a radical act, and that’s what a lot of women started doing in 2010 in numbers too big to ignore. However, the report goes on to note that “Social media can expand the means to proliferate misogynistic and sexist narratives, and shame women and maintain power inequalities in the offline world.” The year 2010 was also when mob harassment started to be weaponized against women online in an organized way. That’s no coincidence. Just about exactly when women started to use the internet to organize in ways that kept patriarchy awake at night, it started to become a truism that the internet was a dangerous place for girls. This development is always described in the passive voice, as if there weren’t a lot of people out there determined to make sure it stays that way.

It’s easy to blame technology for this, and people do. I do. I have been known to tell concerned friends and family who are wondering why I suddenly seem so scared of my phone that “the internet is being a bastard today,” not because I really think that the internet is a sentient machine capable of specific and malicious bastardry, but because it’s sometimes too depressing to acknowledge that one is surrounded by moral illegitimacy on all sides.

Let’s be daring for a minute and consider an alternative theory: The internet does not hate women. The internet doesn’t hate anyone, because the internet, being an inanimate network, lacks the capacity to hold any opinion whatsoever. People hate women, and the internet allows them to do it faster, harder, and with impunity. It’s developed into a form of relaxation after a hard day of being ground on the wheel of late-stage capitalism. Melvin Kranzberg’s statement that “technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral” holds true here: The internet lets us be whoever we were before, more efficiently, with fewer consequences.

Misogyny is among many things millennials did not invent. Long before Twitter was a glint in Jack Dorsey’s eye, women who stepped out of line were being shamed by Left and Right alike regardless of which wave of feminism they rode.

The most damaging attacks, however, often came from inside the movement. Years after witnessing violent takedowns of other women in the late ’60s, Jo Freeman penned a desperate article in Ms. Magazine in 1975, “Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,” which rings a note of ominous familiarity for anyone who has watched what happens to progressive women who dare to display self-respect in public:

It is not disagreement; it is not conflict; it is not opposition. These are perfectly ordinary phenomena which, when engaged in mutually, honestly, and not excessively, are necessary to keep an organism or organization healthy and active. Trashing is a particularly vicious form of character assassination… It is manipulative, dishonest, and excessive. It is occasionally disguised by the rhetoric of honest conflict, or covered up by denying that any disapproval exists at all. But it is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy.

Forty years later, trashing is still progressives’ favorite tactic to deploy against uppity women. When it happens in the playground, it’s called bullying. When it happens in the workplace, the phenomenon is delicately known as mobbing. Again, researchers report high levels of post-traumatic stress among those who have been subject to it. Again, those singled out for mobbing are more likely to be high-achievers, more likely to be potential leaders, and especially likely to be women.

Freeman continues:

Trashing is not only destructive to the individuals involved, but serves as a very powerful tool of social control. The qualities and styles which are attacked become examples other women learn not to follow — lest the same fate befall them. […] This kind of woman has always been put down by our society with epithets ranging from “unladylike” to “castrating bitch.” The primary reason there have been so few “great women ______” is not merely that greatness has been undeveloped or unrecognized, but that women exhibiting potential for achievement are punished by both women and men. The “fear of success” is quite rational when one knows that the consequence of achievement is hostility and not praise.

Trashing is insidious. It can damage its subject for life, personally and professionally. Whether or not people sympathize, the damage has been done. It doesn’t matter if the attacks have any basis in truth: What matters is that she is difficult. This woman who doesn’t have the sense to protect herself from public shaming by piping down, by walking with her eyes lowered. She can be trashed intimately by people who don’t know her, people who are engaging, at best, with a flimsy caricature based on her worst qualities, and she might understand that it’s not really her they hate, but she’s the one getting those messages every day.

In the 1970s, trashing had to be done with analog tools. Today, it is faster, harder, more savagely intimate. It follows you to work. It follows you to bed. Freeman was talking about the feminist Left, but this happens everywhere. In fact, committed hatred of successful women and a destructive obsession with women who step outside their lane seem to be the sole point on which the entire political spectrum is in absolute agreement.

https://longreads.com/2018/03/28/who-does-she-think-she-is/

[qqueenofhades]

Hey, so I read your post on Richard the Lionheart and sexuality from a while back, and I found it interesting, but I was also wondering how much of that is colored by our modern view of things? Like, can we really know or is it just our way of reading things that they wouldn't? Thank you for your time.

Hooooo boy.

Fair warning, this will be long. It will also be ranty about queerness and history and other things that I have strong feelings on, so if that is not someone’s bag, I suggest you just keep on a-scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’ in the deep.

(Also in case anyone is wondering, the post being referred to is here.)

Honestly, I am not sure where to even start with my views on Straight Historians writing Straight History (as I have been complaining to @extasiswings about) and how I have encountered a particular amount of it around Richard. Basically, most of it ends up in two different camps: one, to “prove” that he was straight and also a good king, or to “prove” that he was gay and also a bad king. In short, the discourse around his sexuality has become tied to value-judgments on his success as a ruler. John Gillingham, much as I otherwise respect his work, is probably one of the biggest culprits in the former regard. After a lot of frankly sloppy work had been done on Richard, reacting against the idealized Victorian image of him as a glorious/righteous crusader and essentially painting him as completely undeserving of his heroic status, Gillingham showed that the historical reality was (surprise!) a lot more complicated and in many ways a lot more admirable than that. However, this involved having to bend over backward to discredit the numerous pieces of primary source material/comments in chronicles that seemed to suggest, shall we say, some questions around Richard’s sexuality. Whether Gillingham realises it or not, his agenda has pretty clearly been to strip any suggestion of queerness away from Richard, since in the existing paradigm, it would not be possible for him to be both not straight AND a good king. (And frankly it surprises me, although it shouldn’t, how much people have never even tried to go for a middle ground. I have never once seen a suggestion that hey, Richard might have been bisexual, or at least strategically so, in any published work on him, even though it’s imho clearly so.)

I dealt with some of the chronicle evidence commenting on Richard’s questioned sexuality in the post. There is more. There is the 1187 reference to his and Philip’s “vehemently” intimate friendship that alarmed Henry II. There is the 1191 penance in Messina for sexual sins (prior to leading the crusade, i.e. he really needed to be in squeaky-clean spiritual standing), there is the 1195 rebuke in Roger of Howden referencing the “fate of Sodom,” (which Gillingham is helpfully at hand to explain just means not obeying God well enough – WOW, GOOD THING SODOMY DIDN’T ALREADY MEAN A SPECIFIC SIN AT THAT TIME PERIOD AND EVER SINCE, JOHN, NOW THAT WOULD JUST BE CONFUSING, BUT I’M SURE IT WAS JUST A SLIP OF THE TONGUE. YEP DEFINITELY NO CORRELATION HERE AT ALL.) There is the 1198 rebuke from Hugh of Lincoln, once again for sexual sins. There is also a chastisement from Fulk of Neuilly, a traveling preacher, that referenced Richard’s transgressions in this regard. And oh boy have I listened to/read so much commentary from Straight Historians on how apparently this was just a particularly naughty kind of sex with women. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Let’s then ignore the fact that Richard’s father, Henry II, his brother, John, and his great-grandfather, Henry I, were rampantly known for their womanizing, that they had multiple illegitimate children (in Henry I’s case, more than twenty) and that we generally know some of the names of their mistresses, if not all. The lengths chroniclers went to excuse this, if they noted it at all, were vast: William of Malmesbury claims that Henry I only did so much porkin’ because he had a noble duty to beget royal blood into the world. You can also then helpfully ignore the fact that none of these men, again known very well for womanizing, were rebuked the way Richard was even once, let alone repeatedly. Yes, he had an illegitimate child. He had one. One son. And no recorded names for his supposed mistresses at all. So we can, following the Straight Historian paradigm, just assume that he was banging tons and tons of women, whose names we know nothing about, and apparently had really great 12th-century birth control because he had no children as a result, even though the rest of his family had done the same thing and indeed, had a lot of little Jon Snows running around. And that this was somehow Kinky enough to get the church on his case, explicitly referencing sodomy, multiple times from many different places, rather than turning a blind eye to it as they did to every other king of the time period because… well… The Gays Are Bad, I guess.

Frankly, I am not interested in reading the inevitable “here’s why all this evidence is definitely wrong” disproving section that comes up in most stuff about Richard. Protip, if you have to really labor to explain why multiple pieces of evidence, from multiple different sources, are all out of context, wrong, or Nothing to See Here… you might just be doing it wrong. 

On the other side of the coin, then, we have people like James Reston. I’m not going to link to his book, because frankly it’s terrible, but he wrote a historical study, purportedly of Richard and Saladin, that congratulated itself for “dealing frankly” with Richard’s homosexuality, or confirming it, or some other wording to that effect, and then went on to claim that Richard’s marriage was never even consummated, total sham, he was basically a really awful person and also Gay, Gay, Gay. Aside from the fact that there is no way we can know half of the stuff Reston claims with such confidence (and it goes against what we do know of Richard and his wife’s relationship, again in the context of the 1195 excerpt from Howden), it was just as clear that in Reston’s mind, Richard’s success or worth as a king was just as linked with his sexuality. Gillingham had to scramble to explain how all the pieces of evidence did not actually apply to Richard because he was a good king; Reston’s project is to tie Richard to them as closely as possible to confirm that he was in fact Bad all the way around.

Oy mother fucking vey.

I likewise don’t want to hear about how “we didn’t think Richard/William Shakespeare/so on and so forth were gay until the modern period, so it’s clearly just a matter of cultural context!” I have actually seen the argument made for Richard’s straightness that nobody actually wrote down/accused him explicitly of being gay (or the medieval equivalent), therefore he cannot have been gay. Yep. That is actually the criteria. None of this other chronicle evidence which exists uniquely around him, and nobody else of his famously womanizing family, can prove it, because nobody says it outright. We can barely get the Straight Historians today to write about it, when LGBTQ is a recognized and high-profile demographic with pride months, equality drives, political battles etc. What on earth makes you think that they would even remotely think of doing it beforehand? That is the entire f’n point of any academic discipline: to look at things with new information and to draw new inferences. We didn’t “invent” the fact that, say, germs made people sick instead of “foul miasmas” or whatever else; we learned that it had always been the case. We didn’t “invent” that the earth was round; we looked at the evidence and realised that it was. Likewise, we didn’t “invent” queerness; we just realised (very slowly and still in some goddamn cases not at all, in the year of our lord 2017) that it was the case. Which is why you get the Straight Historians, and the general operation of that system, working overtime to “prove” that no, no queer people ever existed before the 20th century, just as apparently feminism and resistance to the patriarchy was only invented in the 1960s and women were just silent and passive and resigned or even happy to be oppressed before then.

Oy MOTHER FUCKING vey.

We also see this with the other king who was almost certainly Not Straight, Edward II, in the 14th century. He is blamed as a bad king because he was too busy Gayin’ (remember the effete prince whose boyfriend gets pushed out a window in Braveheart? That’s him) and likewise, Braveheart goes as far as to (wildly implausibly) suggest that William Wallace was Edward III’s real father, because clearly Edward II could not a) have sex with a woman, when in fact he and Isabella had four children, and b) could not have fathered a famous warrior like Edward III what with all the fancy boy, limp-wristed homo bangin’ he’d evidently been doing. The other side of the coin is to describe Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser the Younger as Edward II’s “close friends” (he gave Gaveston the jewelry he was supposed to give Isabella as a wedding present, and had Gaveston sit in her place during the wedding feast, THEY WERE BONING) and try to blame Isabella and Roger Mortimer instead. In both cases, Edward II is presented as a Bad king because he was gay, or a Good (or at least Not That Bad) king because he was straight. Again. Bisexuality Does Not Exist. It Has Never Existed. Shhh.

Because the Plantagenets are also a popular subject for historical fiction, I always see this come up in some way as well. Take for example Sharon Kay Penman; I have read most of her books and enjoyed them. However, in her most recent novel about Richard, she basically apologized for writing him as gay in a passing mention in one of her earlier books, and said something to the effect that it was based on “limited research.” Evidently, she has now read the Straight Historians and can basically breathe a sigh of relief and make Richard safely non-queer again. Her version of Richard, likely not coincidentally, is also fairly likable. There are minor critiques of his peccadilloes here and there, but he’s still a character you can root for with no major flaws. Removing any “mixups” about his sexuality has made him a Good Guy again.

I encountered this in my own novel about Richard, on which I once got a review remarking that the reader liked my writing and my earlier stuff, but disagreed with all the “assumptions” I made about Richard’s sexuality and that basically the Plantagenets were interesting enough without getting into any of that Stuff, heaven forbid, and they didn’t like that I had included it. So yes. Evidently I made “assumptions” rather than doing, you know, research, and that if I was going to write a fictional version of Richard, the only one I should have written was one where I didn’t deal with his sexuality (or just made him Straight, I suppose). Because it was interesting enough if I didn’t.

Aaaaaand people wonder why THEY DIDN’T WRITE DOWN THAT THEY WERE NOT STRAIGHT ™, THEREFORE THEY WERE STRAIGHT ™!!! is almost entirely still accepted as an actual legitimate counter-argument.

It is also not the case, of course, that everything ever has actually been queer. I disagreed that medieval “brother-making,” or adelphopoiesis, was an actual, full-fledged form of medieval gay marriage once I looked at the evidence more closely, as while it was used to join two men together in a church-sanctioned relationship, it was probably then to live together celibately. However, I agreed that the practice of matelotage in the 17th-18th centuries absolutely was, and likewise, if historians have to write 12 books and pull all the receipts to even try to suggest that someone was, y’know, Not Straight, why don’t they have to do the same for the Straights? Because we are still operating in a system in which everyone is inherently and default-assumed straight, and which the Gays have never existed prior to the system finally acknowledging that they did in the 20th century. So, as we’re just barely starting to get a discourse acknowledging the existence and agency of women in history (you know, HALF THE GODDAMN HUMAN RACE), and that has come with considerable pushback anyway, we have even less that for a discourse of queer history that isn’t a very niche subject. Because history as a construct (and I say this as someone with multiple degrees in history, working on her doctorate) is still an incredibly white, androcentric, heterosexual space, so it’s NO FUCKING WONDER that it doesn’t accept the entrance and possibility of accommodating something else easily. Does it mean that those others don’t exist at all, and never did?

Spoiler alert: No. It does not.

IN THE YEAR OF OUR GOD DAMN LORD 2017.

OY MOTHER FUCKING VEY!

So yes. This leads me back to Richard. Can we “really know?” No, because we can’t get into the actual head of someone who’s been dead for 800 years. But that is the same with literally every other person ever on every topic and feeling they might have had, and it’s always funny how the sufficient level of “proof” necessary to claim that anyone was Different gets higher and higher, the further you get away from the “default” (that Straightness is the natural state of all human beings and anything else is a “deviation.”) And yes, of course we’re looking at it differently now, because we’ve learned new things. At least some of the time, and you can see how much resistance there STILL IS. We have figured out some absolutely amazing things, and yet sometimes we are so incredibly fucking god damn dumb about what should be the simplest and most evident fact of all of humanity: that people are different from each other, and always have been. There’s a surah in the Qur’an about God/Allah making us that way on purpose, so we could then get to know each other.

If only.

Lastly, I don’t give a big ripe fart if all the evidence about Richard is somehow, as Gillingham would like to think, totally wrong and he was Straight, because I have written a fictional version of him that fits with that evidence and which allows him to be much more complex than Good king or Bad king, Straight king or Gay king. Which allowed him, in short, to be frigging HUMAN. That’s also why I wrote Sam Bellamy the way I did in The Dark Horizon. There is not an actual document somewhere saying THIS MAN WAS NOT STRAIGHT, NOTARIZED BY THE GAY POLICE!!, but as I was researching him, I discovered that SO MUCH about his character, appearance, actions, backstory, etc was easily explained by making him queer, and which made him more interesting to me as a result. I am queer. Took me a while to figure that out, but it made SO MUCH of my life make sense, and for me to realize why I had been pushing against the “I bet straight women also find women very attractive/fantasize about marrying women/want to be around women/etc, I’m still totally straight I swear,” mindset as much as I had. Guess what! Simple explanation! I’M NOT STRAIGHT!

(I’m bi. Shh. Don’t tell anyone. We don’t actually exist.)

So yes. I am gonna write queer characters as a novelist/fic writer, and I am going to write a lot of them, because you can bet they existed, and I like to do my small bit for the “representation matters” train. As a historian, I am not going to be the person explaining why 58 pieces of evidence or whatever are Wrong and clearly, Watson, Straight. Doesn’t interest me at all. I want to be more honest to myself, and the world, than that.

So yes.

There you have it.

[humanoidkitten]

And think about the weight of time: yes, that means you feel it every day. On very rare occasions, I get caught in a moment, as if something’s plucked me out of the world, where I realize that I haven’t thought about my illnesses for a few minutes, maybe a few precious hours. These blissful moments of oblivion are the closest thing to a miracle that I know. When you have chronic illness, life is reduced to a relentless rationing of energy. It costs you to do anything: to get out of bed, to cook for yourself, to get dressed, to answer an email. For those without chronic illness, you can spend and spend without consequence: the cost is not a problem. For those of us with limited funds, we have to ration, we have a limited supply: we often run out before lunch.

Ann Cvetkovich writes: “What if depression, in the Americas, at least, could be traced to histories of colonialism, genocide, slavery, legal exclusion, and everyday segregation and isolation that haunt all of our lives, rather than to be biochemical imbalances?” I’d like to change the word “depression” here to be all mental illnesses. Cvetkovich continues: “Most medical literature tends to presume a white and middle-class subject for whom feeling bad is frequently a mystery because it doesn’t fit a life in which privilege and comfort make things seem fine on the surface.” In other words, wellness as it is talked about in America today, is a white and wealthy idea.

There has been a slew of writing in recent years about how “female” pain is treated – or rather, not treated as seriously as men’s in emergency rooms and clinics, by doctors, specialists, insurance companies, families, husbands, friends, the culture at large. In a recent article in The Atlantic, called “How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously,” a husband writes about the experience of his wife Rachel’s long wait in the ER before receiving the medical attention her condition warranted (which was an ovarian torsion, where an ovarian cyst grows so large it falls, twisting the fallopian tube). “Nationwide, men wait an average of 49 minutes before receiving an analgesic for acute abdominal pain. Women wait an average of 65 minutes for the same thing. Rachel waited somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours,” he writes. At the end of the ordeal, Rachel had waited nearly fifteen hours before going into the surgery she should have received upon arrival. The article concludes with her physical scars healing, but that “she’s still grappling with the psychic toll – what she calls ‘the trauma of not being seen.’”

Sick Woman Theory is for those who are faced with their vulnerability and unbearable fragility, every day, and so have to fight for their experience to be not only honored, but first made visible. For those who, in Audre Lorde’s words, were never meant to survive: because this world was built against their survival. It’s for my fellow spoonies. You know who you are, even if you’ve not been attached to a diagnosis: one of the aims of Sick Woman Theory is to resist the notion that one needs to be legitimated by an institution, so that they can try to fix you. You don’t need to be fixed, my queens – it’s the world that needs the fixing.

Sick Woman Theory is an insistence that most modes of political protest are internalized, lived, embodied, suffering, and no doubt invisible. Sick Woman Theory redefines existence in a body as something that is primarily and always vulnerable, following from Judith Butler’s work on precarity and resistance. Because the premise insists that a body is defined by its vulnerability, not temporarily affected by it, the implication is that it is continuously reliant on infrastructures of support in order to endure, and so we need to re-shape the world around this fact. Sick Woman Theory maintains that the body and mind are sensitive and reactive to regimes of oppression – particularly our current regime of neoliberal, white-supremacist, imperial-capitalist, cis-hetero-patriarchy. It is that all of our bodies and minds carry the historical trauma of this, that it is the world itself that is making and keeping us sick.

To take the term “woman” as the subject-position of this work is a strategic, all-encompassing embrace and dedication to the particular, rather than the universal. Though the identity of “woman” has erased and excluded many (especially women of color and trans and genderfluid people), I choose to use it because it still represents the un-cared for, the secondary, the oppressed, the non-, the un-, the less-than. The problematics of this term will always require critique, and I hope that Sick Woman Theory can help undo those in its own way. But more than anything, I’m inspired to use the word “woman” because I saw this year how it can still be radical to be a woman in the 21st century. I use it to honor a dear friend of mine who came out as genderfluid last year. For her, what mattered the most was to be able to call herself a “woman,” to use the pronouns “she/her.” She didn’t want surgery or hormones; she loved her body and her big dick and didn’t want to change it – she only wanted the word. That the word itself can be an empowerment is the spirit in which Sick Woman Theory is named.

The Sick Woman is an identity and body that can belong to anyone denied the privileged existence – or the cruelly optimistic promise of such an existence – of the white, straight, healthy, neurotypical, upper and middle-class, cis- and able-bodied man who makes his home in a wealthy country, has never not had health insurance, and whose importance to society is everywhere recognized and made explicit by that society; whose importance and care dominates that society, at the expense of everyone else.

The Sick Woman is anyone who does not have this guarantee of care.

The Sick Woman is told that, to this society, her care, even her survival, does not matter.

The Sick Woman is all of the “dysfunctional,” “dangerous” and “in danger,” “badly behaved,” “crazy,” “incurable,” “traumatized,” “disordered,” “diseased,” “chronic,” “uninsurable,” “wretched,” “undesirable” and altogether “dysfunctional” bodies belonging to women, people of color, poor, ill, neuro-atypical, differently abled, queer, trans, and genderfluid people, who have been historically pathologized, hospitalized, institutionalized, brutalized, rendered “unmanageable,” and therefore made culturally illegitimate and politically invisible.

The Sick Woman is a black trans woman having panic attacks while using a public restroom, in fear of the violence awaiting her.

The Sick Woman is the child of parents whose indigenous histories have been erased, who suffers from the trauma of generations of colonization and violence.

The Sick Woman is a homeless person, especially one with any kind of disease and no access to treatment, and whose only access to mental-health care is a 72-hour hold in the county hospital.

The Sick Woman is a mentally ill black woman whose family called the police for help because she was suffering an episode, and who was murdered in police custody, and whose story was denied by everyone operating under white supremacy. Her name is Tanesha Anderson.

The Sick Woman is a 50-year-old gay man who was raped as a teenager and has remained silent and shamed, believing that men can’t be raped.

The Sick Woman is a disabled person who couldn’t go to the lecture on disability rights because it was held in a venue without accessibility.

The Sick Woman is a white woman with chronic illness rooted in sexual trauma who must take painkillers in order to get out of bed.

The Sick Woman is a straight man with depression who’s been medicated (managed) since early adolescence and now struggles to work the 60 hours per week that his job demands.

The Sick Woman is someone diagnosed with a chronic illness, whose family and friends continually tell them they should exercise more.

The Sick Woman is a queer woman of color whose activism, intellect, rage, and depression are seen by white society as unlikeable attributes of her personality.

The Sick Woman is a black man killed in police custody, and officially said to have severed his own spine. His name is Freddie Gray.

The Sick Woman is a veteran suffering from PTSD on the months-long waiting list to see a doctor at the VA.

The Sick Woman is a single mother, illegally emigrated to the “land of the free,” shuffling between three jobs in order to feed her family, and finding it harder and harder to breathe.

The Sick Woman is the refugee.

The Sick Woman is the abused child.

The Sick Woman is the person with autism whom the world is trying to “cure.”

The Sick Woman is the starving.

The Sick Woman is the dying.

And, crucially: The Sick Woman is who capitalism needs to perpetuate itself.

Why?

Because to stay alive, capitalism cannot be responsible for our care – its logic of exploitation requires that some of us die.

“Sickness” as we speak of it today is a capitalist construct, as is its perceived binary opposite, “wellness.” The “well” person is the person well enough to go to work. The “sick” person is the one who can’t. What is so destructive about conceiving of wellness as the default, as the standard mode of existence, is that it invents illness as temporary. When being sick is an abhorrence to the norm, it allows us to conceive of care and support in the same way.

Care, in this configuration, is only required sometimes. When sickness is temporary, care is not normal.

Here’s an exercise: go to the mirror, look yourself in the face, and say out loud: “To take care of you is not normal. I can only do it temporarily.”

Saying this to yourself will merely be an echo of what the world repeats all the time.

[fionatlux]

STILL STAR-CROSSED SERIES FINALE

So… that happened. I’m not going to say much on this platform about the series as a whole. There were a lot of ways in which the project was mishandled on many levels: promotionally, yes, but also on the level of narrative, dialogue, and character (to say nothing of my loathing for the CGI camera zoom). There were also good things about it: the gorgeous and talented cast, the sumptuous costumes, the locations; the innovations of the source material into what is, I would argue, a very tired tale. As flawed as it was, I have a lot of affection for the show. And if you want more Rosaline/Benvolio goodness, go read the book by Melinda Taub (delicious bickering) and then Prince of Shadows by Rachel Caine (the slowest of slow burns). 

Without further ado:

[Episode 1 / Episode 2 / Episode 3 / Episode 4 / Episode 5 / Episode 6]

EPISODE 7

Previously On

CAPULET: BURN IT ALL DOWN.

LADY CAPULET: Same!

  The Gates of Verona

[An awkward party on horseback approaches the city gates.]

BENVOLIO: shit, I can’t believe Roz betrayed me!

ROSALINE: shit, I can’t believe B. didn’t notice that we were surrounded by armed guards under the command of a guy we knew to be plotting a hostile takeover of Verona!

PARIS: What a nice city. Pity about that giant column of smoke marring the roofline.

ESCALUS: Everything will be fine once I execute Benvolio!

Casa Capulet

[Everybody is happy to see Rosaline, who eyeballs Paris with dislike and suspicion.]

PARIS: See, I rescued her just like I said I would!

ROSALINE: You better not have hurt my baby sister or I will END you.

LIVIA: Rosaline!

ROSALINE: Livia!

CAPULET: Paris!

[Capulet is a lot more excited to see Paris than he is to see his niece.]

ROSALINE: Livia, can I help you get dessert so we can talk in private?

[Nope. A carriage from the palace has arrived for Lady Rosaline! Because this went so well the last time she was summoned to the palace.]

  The Smoking Ruins of the Capulet Montague Cathedral

MONTAGUE: HOW DARE HE! Capulet has ruined generations of work!

[It’s generations of Capulet work, but whatever.]

LADY M: This means war!

  Casa Capulet

PARIS: Rosaline knows too much and is impervious to blackmail! Can I kill her? Can I can I can I?

LADY CAPULET: I seem somewhat subdued by my recent visit to Juliet’s tomb, so no, you can’t.

PARIS: blah blah blah, metaphors, look, this whole thing was your idea, my minions are doing an awesome job of trashing the city, too late to stop now, etc.

[They both seem unaware that it was Capulet, not their clandestine army (“The Fiends”), who torched the cathedral.]

LADY CAPULET: I have a bad feeling about this.

  Escalus’s Bedroom, The Palace

ROSALINE: Can I talk to you? I really need to talk to you.

ESCALUS: Nope, I’m gonna do the talking. I love you!

ROSALINE: …

ROSALINE: I longed for years to hear you say that but WOULD YOU SHUT UP for like five seconds? This is important! Benvolio didn’t kidnap me, we were finding out who’s behind the civil chaos and it’s Paris and he’s plotting to take over your throne!

ESCALUS: …

ESCALUS: so what I’m getting from this is, you knew I wanted to see you so you USED ME to… tell me really important information that I should know? HOW DARE YOU. I FEEL SO BETRAYED.

ROSALINE: Also Benvolio is innocent, could you maybe not kill him?

ESCALUS: But I have already used him as a scapegoat because of my own jealousy and irrational possessiveness toward you! I am genuinely convinced that executing him for crimes he didn’t commit will unify the city and bring peace!

ROSALINE: ok, 1) you are literally the worst, do you not realize that a Capulet pleading for the life of a Montague is exactly the outcome you originally wanted from this bonkers marriage plot? and 2) give me 24 hours to prove his innocence.

ESCALUS: ok but only because I love you, not because I actually care about justice.

ROSALINE: Close enough!

  The Palace

[Isabella is back! Hi, Isabella!]

ISABELLA: I saw the smoke and heard Montague is preparing revenge, what’s up?

ESCALUS: nbd, I totally have a plan! oh and Benvolio is chilling in the dungeon and Rosaline is back safe thanks to Count Paris of Mantua.

ESCALUS’S LONG-SUFFERING ASSISTANT: There’s something about that guy I just don’t like!

[My working hypothesis: Paris, in addition to plotting with Lady Capulet to take over Verona, is actually Bluebeard and has a room full of murdered wives back in Mantua.]

ISABELLA: Well, cool. Here is your treaty I got the Doge to sign! I was manipulative and awesome and blackmailed a bunch of people and fell in love with a pretty blonde lady named Helena, tell you about it later, right now I need a nap.

ESCALUS’S LONG-SUFFERING ASSISTANT: “nbd, I totally have a plan!”? Oh, Sire.

  The Dungeons

[Rosaline has bribed, or at least substantially tipped, the dungeonkeeper.]

BENVOLIO: Come to twist the knife you stuck in my back, Capulet?

ROSALINE: Really? We’re back to using surnames? OK quick recap: 1) Paris has my sister, 2) he was going to kill us all if I didn’t play along, 3) I have 24 hours to get proof of your innocence because Escalus has suddenly decided to implement certain parts of due process when it is convenient for him, 4) my plan is to get the Nurse to testify, 5) obviously I will not let someone of your hotness get executed, any questions?

BENVOLIO: No, I think you covered everything. Could you hurry, though? This dungeon is doing nothing for my hair care routine.

  Casa Capulet

ROSALINE: I need you to tell Escalus what you know! also I can’t believe you let Paris seduce my baby sister, what the hell?

THE NURSE: I need to think about it, ok?

CAROLINA THE SERVANT: *lurks ominously behind a pillar*

  Casa Capulet

[The next morning, there is a magnificent wide shot of the Capulet courtyard water feature and then a piercing scream from Lady Capulet. The Nurse, unsurprisingly, lies bludgeoned to death at the foot of the stairs. Lady Capulet seems genuinely distraught. Everyone’s dressing gown game is extremely strong; it is like a scene out of Poirot.]

PARIS: I really did not think you would be so distressed at the murder of the woman who raised you and your dead daughter! Look, you wouldn’t let me murder Rosaline, this was the next best thing.

LADY CAPULET: *tear*

  The Palace

[To prepare for what will surely be a super awkward interview, Rosaline is dressed in yet another extremely fetching gown-cloak combo. I laugh when Escalus and Isabella wear the same outfit for three episodes, but Rosaline’s clothes are gorgeous and she wears them gorgeously and deserves many beautiful outfits, and also to be taken seriously by those in power.]

ESCALUS: Did you get proof?

ROSALINE: No. My witness was murdered, but that would take too long to explain.

ESCALUS: Oh, that is so sad for you, very tragic, no one regrets more than I, etc.

ROSALINE: I kind of doubt that.

ESCALUS: Well, you were alone and unchaperoned outside the city walls, there might be gossip!

ROSALINE: I honestly cannot believe that you care more about my virginity than justice. No, wait, I can believe that, I just think you’re stupid and the patriarchy is stupid and virginity = virtue/honor is a shitty social construct invented to oppress women. Also I’m pretty insulted that you don’t think my testimony is sufficient proof of Benvolio’s innocence. Given the fact that I was there the whole time.

[That’s my girl! I may have embellished slightly, but I’m sure this is what she would have said if the writers had thought of it!]

  The Dungeons

[I’m okay with the camera-zooming through this bit, because it’s all leering emaciated prisoners at odd angles in uncomfortable spaces and the surreal quality is effective. The camera zooms in on B., who is looking depressed.]

[…Nothing happens, the camera just zooms in on B. looking depressed and then cuts away to...]

  The Palace

MONTAGUE: You expect me to sign a peace treaty with the guy who burned down my cathedral?

CAPULET: Technically, it was my cathedral.

ESCALUS: Whatever. I will execute Benvolio and you will both call it square, agreed?

CAPULET: Agreed!

MONTAGUE: …I guess?

  A Wisteria Arbor, Casa Capulet

LIVIA: The Nurse was always kind to me!

PARIS: We should elope!

LIVIA: …?

  The Room Formerly Known as Juliet’s Room, Casa Capulet

CAROLINA THE SERVANT: Livia and Paris have eloped! So romantic!

ROSALINE: This is all your fault! How could you throw my sister at that murdering jerkface?

LADY CAPULET: He would never hurt her! Probably.

ROSALINE: He murdered the Nurse, and Juliet would be ashamed of you, and you should feel terrible!

[Lady Capulet actually does look like she feels terrible.]

ROSALINE: You are clearly going to be no help. Rosaline out!

 Maison Montague

LADY M: Remember how you poisoned our older brother? It would be so tragic if anyone ever found out!

LADY M: Also I thought at the time that letting Tiny Benvolio live was a bad move, and I was right.

[Well, that explains a lot.]

  Escalus’s Bedroom, The Palace

ESCALUS: All Montagues are terrible and you are the scum of the gutter! Unprincipled, undisciplined—

BENVOLIO: —don’t forget “often drunk”—

ESCALUS: —so why is Rosaline trying to save you?

BENVOLIO: Aside from the fact that I’m innocent?

ESCALUS: You tricked her into trusting you!

BENVOLIO: Yeah, honestly I kind of feel like that too, she’s a beautiful brave angel who likes to fight crime and cares about justice and I don’t deserve her, and yet she somehow trusts me and also I trust her.

ESCALUS: Tell her you’ve been plotting to take over my throne and be the New Prince!

BENVOLIO: Yeah no, I’m not gonna do that.

[Escalus, as usual, tries to justify his actions by pretending they’re for Rosaline’s own good.]

BENVOLIO: Have you tried taking her seriously, listening to what she has to say, and not lying to her? That usually works for me.

[This is so satisfying. I could watch people telling off Escalus all day.]

ESCALUS: No, why would I do that? Take him away!

BENVOLIO: Fine, it’s your funeral. No, wait, it’s still my funeral. Damn.

  Maison Montague

MONTAGUE: Sis! I’ve been going over some legal records! GTFO or I tell the king of Scotland that you’re not really dead. I’m sure he’d be super interested to know of the part you played in his father’s death!

LADY M: *sips wine ominously*

MONTAGUE: And take your ugly portrait with you!

  The Dungeons

LADY M: Hello, nephew! Would you like to know some interesting facts about our family history before you are executed?

BENVOLIO: Can I say no?

LADY M: Nope!

BENVOLIO: OK, I guess?

  Casa Capulet

CAPULET: Babycakes, what’s up? You seem agitated!

LADY CAPULET: Husband! Juliet’s ghost keeps saying “Beware!” because I’ve done a dreadful thing!

  Some Inn, Verona

[Paris and Livia are in bed, having presumably run off to whatever Verona’s equivalent of Gretna Green is. GET AWAY FROM PRECIOUS SWEET INNOCENT LIVIA, YOU GREASY MURDERING JERKFACE!]

[While he steps out for some reason, Livia blissfully wanders around sniffing his upholstered doublet. But what is this? A piece of paper falls out! It is the note Rosaline left her that Lady Capulet concealed and gave to Paris!]

ROSALINE’S NOTE: Dear Livia, I am going with Benvolio to solve a mystery! Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. Ish. I have definitely not been kidnapped, don’t worry. Love, your sister.

LIVIA: Oh, pardon my French, merde.

  The Dungeons

MONTAGUE: Hello, nephew! I brought you booze!

BENVOLIO: Thanks. Hey, Aunt Tessa was just here, she told me a very interesting story about how you killed my father. Care to explain?

MONTAGUE: She is crazy and cannot be trusted!

BENVOLIO: It does explain why you always hated me. This is some excellent paralleling to Rosaline’s situation with her aunt, pity we didn’t bring it up sooner.

MONTAGUE: If it helps, I feel bad about how I’ve treated you?

BENVOLIO: It doesn’t. GTFO, s’il vous plait.

[B.’s snark game is strong this episode. Benvolio: 1, Montague: 0. FINALLY.]

  Escalus’s Bedroom, The Palace

ISABELLA: You abandoned the city to go chase Benvolio? Are you out of your goddamn mind?!?!

ESCALUS: I don’t care about the throne! I love her!

ISABELLA: You are treating your hereditary office, which I only wish I could have, with selfish irresponsibility, but I’m gonna restrain myself and just remind you that our dying father’s last words were “strength and sacrifice.” Neither of which you are particularly devoted to at the moment.

  Casa Capulet

CAPULET: I can appreciate that you saw an opportunity to beat Montague to the punch after the old Prince’s death, but did you actually think Paris would stay loyal to you?

LADY CAPULET: Yeah, not my best plan, I admit.

CAPULET: So why did our daughter’s ghost say “Beware”?

LADY CAPULET: I have a crazy theory: she loved a Montague and wanted peace!

CAPULET: We’ve gotta tell Escalus about Paris!

LADY CAPULET: He’ll execute me!

CAPULET: He might not! I have a plan! Let’s go, quickly!

CAROLINA THE SERVANT: Sorry milord, milady, I was working for The New Prince this whole time and he says you stay right there!

LORD AND LADY CAPULET: Oh, shit.

  Some Inn, Verona

LIVIA: I found this letter in your jacket! What is the meaning of this?

PARIS: This is, I admit, somewhat awkward. Well—I did promise to make you a princess! Of Mantua and Verona, aren’t you surprised?

LIVIA: And you thought a Capulet bride would legitimize your power grab? Are you bonkers? I can’t believe I slept with you! I want to go home!

PARIS: Pack your things, you’re going to Mantua!

LIVIA: I am feeling pretty disillusioned, here.

  The Dungeons

BENVOLIO: I don’t suppose you have good news? Because I’ve had a shitty day so far.

ROSALINE: Afraid not. Paris killed the Nurse so she couldn’t testify and Escalus won’t take my word as evidence.

BENVOLIO: I dunno, maybe my death will do some good, somehow? Leaving aside the whole Paris-is-plotting-to-take-over-Verona thing, you should just marry Escalus and forget me and be happy. He seems like kind of a manipulative jerk, but I saw the two of you kissing back in episode 1, and you should be with whomever you love.

ROSALINE: B., that was six episodes ago, keep up!

BENVOLIO: …oh.

[You couldn’t be bothered to light the tearful clandestine dungeon makeout better? Sigh. D’awwww, my little bickering-and-sleuthing OTP. Your bickering and sleuthing were cut short too soon!]

  Execution Square, Verona

[Escalus has trotted out the guillotine again for the occasion. I’m not clear on whether the standard form of execution is the guillotine or hanging, at this point. Lady Capulet talked about being hanged for treason, but we’ve only ever seen people get guillotined, so who knows. Isabella is looking sharp, though.]

ESCALUS’S LONG-SUFFERING ASSISTANT [reading from a scroll]: In executing Benvolio, we somehow reclaim our city from violence. Despite the fact that there’s a coup d’état on.

  Some Gorgeous Candlelit Chapel, Verona

[Rosaline is praying. I’m pretty sure this is where Romeo and Juliet were married. It is symbolic of the futility of love in the face of entrenched patriarchal violence, or something.]

  Execution Square, Verona

ESCALUS’S LONG-SUFFERING ASSISTANT [reading from a scroll]: And Montague and Capulet have agreed to end the feud since they are both out of male heirs at this point.

[Rosaline, weeping in the crowd, refuses to look at Escalus.]

ECALUS: Uh…

ESCALUS: shit, I think I made a mistake.

[I think making the narrative turn on the whim of Escalus’s better nature was a mistake, but nobody pays me to write screenplays, so.]

ESCALUS: Is this justice or vengeance?

ISABELLA: Does it matter?

[Izzy, you could have been such an interesting antagonist! I weep for the times I’ll never get to yell at you for being a power-hungry bloody tyrant.]

ESCALUS: Yeah, I think actually it does matter. Wait!

[Rosaline, finally making eye contact with Escalus, looks like she is seriously considering uniting what’s left of the houses of Montague and Capulet against the Crown.]

BENVOLIO: Hello? I’m still awkwardly kneeling with my head in the guillotine, here?

ESCALUS: Yeah, you can get up, I’ve changed my mind about executing you.

ESCALUS: I’ve been told that this man is innocent, and I actually do trust the word of the person who told me. Benvolio is free to go!

THE ASSEMBLED CROWD: Aww, darn.

BENVOLIO: Is this the part where we should have a manly conversation about how I was right, you should take Rosaline seriously and listen to what she has to say?

ESCALUS: We would, but I’ve been shot by Paris’s insurgents and they’re swarming the city.

ROSALINE: Oh, this is bad. I mean, I’m delighted that B.’s not going to die, but this is otherwise terrible.

  Somewhere Outside Verona

PARIS: Hello! I’m here and for once I’m not upholstered! And I brought my army!

[The End.]