#frankly ridiculous amounts of ableism too

[frostycatblr-fandom-files]

Nothing "former" about that ARC trooper status. I have spoken.

[ailuronymy]

I doubt you'll remember this, because it happened such a long time ago, but it's been bothering me for years now and I wanted to get some closure on it. Many years ago, when I was 14, pretty new to roleplaying and completely new to Tumblr, I sent you an anonymous ask laughing about ridiculous unrealistic things that people were having their cats do in a roleplay I was in. Building blanket forts, among other things, and being transgender. At this point in my life I thought transgender only meant someone who had undergone gender affirmation surgery, and the idea of cats doing surgery on one another was hilarious to me. I shared it with the hope that other people would find it hilarious too. Instead, you told me that I had said The Wrong Thing and called me a bigot. I was confused, I was horrified, I didn't understand at all, and I more or less fled from tumblr for about two years. It was a formative experience for me.

Hello there. I do actually remember that post, although obviously since you were anon then as well, I didn’t remember you specifically. But I do remember. 

I thought about how to answer this ask for a few days. I’m not sure exactly what it is you’re looking for from me, but I’m going to give you the best reply I can and I hope that’s good enough for the both of us. 

When you wrote in to me, about eight years ago, I was younger than you are now. I was nineteen and I’d only been on tumblr for a bit over a year at that point, I think. I’d never had social media before, of any kind. It was all pretty new to me as an experience too, and I’d never expected this blog to get the attention that it did. I never even imagined that was a possibility. But it happened and I learned how to run a relatively popular ask blog on the job, as it were. 

There’s a lot I regret when I look back on that early era of this blog. The humour and jokes I allowed and sometimes encouraged and said myself here was often not kind, and that’s something I really regret. Eventually, I put an end to that because it just wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted any of us who have fun here to be doing. But I absolutely allowed it to happen for a long time first, and that’s on me. 

Also at that same time, there was a particular way of interacting on tumblr that was very popular. It was a lot of exuberance and hyperbole and insults, and being rude for fun, and overall very over-the-top and often harsh or just plain uncaring that there was someone else at the other end of the message. For everyone who was here in 2012, I think you can probably remember what it was like. It wasn’t a nice mode of communication, but it was popular and got great responses and a lot of people found it fun to read. For a couple of years after I started Ailuronymy, I was absolutely guilty of buying into it and acting this way, until I finally hated it enough to stop. It wasn’t who I wanted to be, in general or on this blog specifically. It felt mean and inauthentic and I wanted to be better. But I did act like that for a long time, and that was a choice I made. 

I’m not saying any of this because I want to make excuses for myself. I’m more aware than anyone else of the problems early on in this blog’s history, and it’s something I regret and wish I could go back to do differently with the knowledge and experience I have now. Unfortunately, I can’t change the past. I can only own up to it and do better going forward. 

I’m sorry for the tone I often used, including to you in that post, and I’m sorry that because of that behaviour, you felt scared and unwelcome here. That’s a failure on my part. I shouldn’t have used the tone I did, or assumed I had to take a defensive, intense stance the way I did. It’s very sad to me to know that because I did that, you were frightened and decided to leave. 

However, I would like to share my context too. Because at the time, I was nineteen years old (which I know probably sounds ancient to younger teens, but it’s not, really), and a bisexual guy (which I still am, obviously), and Ailuronymy was already a place that people (especially queer people) in the fandom were looking to for support and education. Insofar as this blog was developing a niche, that was it. I felt a significant amount of responsibility to champion and defend the people this blog was made for. 

2012 was also a time when the Warriors fandom on tumblr was genuinely very homophobic, and also quite volatile. It was common for people to be very angry (in general, and often at me) for saying that ableism isn’t okay, or that Warriors characters can be trans, or sometimes just “canon naming doesn’t make much sense.” I got quite a lot of hate mail--also sometimes just... confused, angry mail, for this naming system or any of the political things I talked about--and I was doing the best I could with what I had to give. A lot of what I learned during my years of running this blog came from making mistakes, but I always did my best.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because what you actually said was: “these cats can be homosexual, asexual, bisexual, pansexual, and transgender--don’t even ask me how that’s possible. I don’t want to know.” You came to me, a queer man, running a blog that in no small part is about how queerness is allowed to exist in this fandom and is in fact not implausible, during a time when the fandom as a whole was solidly anti-queer, with something like that. Like you said, you shared it with me--and the readers here--because you hoped we would find it hilarious and unrealistic too. 

But I didn’t, because, to me, that’s just what a lot of the fandom already was. It was a hostile environment that regularly argued that queer characters, or people, had no place here. That was the kind of things people on anon fairly often came to yell in my inbox about how I’m wrong, etc. etc., and how I’m bad, etc. etc. 

I reacted defensively, which I wouldn’t do now, because I’m much older, and I have experience and confidence I just didn’t then. At the time, though, what I heard in your ask was “queer characters are absurd and don’t belong here, don’t correct me,” and that is what I reacted to. I’m sure for you, it felt scary and disproportionate, and as I said before, I wish I had handled things differently, and gentler. 

But I don’t disagree with what I said. The points I made weren’t wrong. And my response--although not how I would respond now--was not wrong, even though it hurt you. It genuinely is horrible to know that because of my lack of tact, you were scared. It was also horrible to receive your ask at the time, just like many of the rest. It wasn’t hypothetical to me, because I’m queer. It was about me, and other people I care about very much.

The fact I’m queer is probably news to you, and you were new tumblr and probably didn’t know what was going on in the fandom, and maybe you would have said something different if you knew all this. 

Likewise, though, you were on anon and I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t know you were fourteen. I didn’t know you were asking in good faith, and not just another one of the homophobic fans thinking you’d found a friend in me, which frankly felt a bit insulting. I didn’t know you were and, again, although I wish I did more back then and was kinder in my approach, I didn’t have insight into your intentions. I also didn’t have the maturity for that not to matter.

That said, even in my very imperfect answer I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. I specifically said:

“Before you think I’m victimising you - I’m not. This is not personal right now; currently, this is a mistake on your part, and I understand that mistakes are incredibly easy to make. If, by the end of my post, you get where you went wrong here, then it will be like this ask of yours never happened and I will forget you ever said it. I don’t like to hold any kind of grudge if there’s any way to avoid it, and an acknowledgement of where you went wrong here would completely fix everything about this.”

&

“So what you’re saying when you say that you don’t believe that “homosexual, asexual, bisexual, pansexual, and transgender” cats are possible in the context of Warriors is, basically, that you’re a bigot. I am really sorry to say that, because the chances are - I sincerely hope - that you aren’t. You’re a good person. You’re a good person who said something bigoted by mistake. And if you don’t believe what you’ve said is a mistake yet, let me show you some interesting true facts about our world.“

Because I know how easy it is to make mistakes and how hard it is to get everything right all the time, and know everything, and never do something dumb or hurtful. It’s easy to fuck up. I’ve done it a lot. The answer I gave you back then is just one example.

That what you took from my answer was only fear and confusion isn’t something in my control, however. I hate that that’s what happened, and I regret not being who I am now back then, but even though I did fuck up back then, I still did what I could at the time to mitigate the damage and reassure you that a mistake doesn’t define you. I am sorry it wasn’t enough for you to feel okay coming back. But I can’t say I’m sorry for telling you that coming to me on my blog with that kind of mentality is something I’ll tolerate at all. 

Ultimately, I’m sorry that our experience of each other was not a good one. I’m sorry that your memory of me is someone scary and mean, and that you felt you had to leave this site entirely for two years because of it. I regret that my actions left you with such a negative experience, because that was never my intention, even though the way I handled things with you was very poor. 

I hope you’re able to find the closure you’re looking for and I genuinely wish you all the best. 

[brooklynboysficrecs]

Ria’s Top 10 Shrinkyclinks Fics

I will admit this isn’t my preferred AU -- I won’t immediately jump on a fic just because it’s pre-serum Steve and WS Bucky. I gotta like the plot, or the premise, or be really, really intrigued by the tags, but to be fair, that’s how I am with everything that isn’t Modern Bucky and Cap Steve, so. That being said, I have read some truly fantastic shrinkyclinks stories, and I do very much love Steven “Fight Me” Rogers at his scrappiest. And these fics also tend to feature protective!Bucky which is another personal favorite of mine. Oh, but also: shrinkyclinks generally refers to pre-serum Steve with actual Winter Soldier Bucky, but a lot of people use the tag just to imply body types, and when they say WS Bucky they mean he’s all huge and muscled and sometimes has a metal arm, though that isn’t required. That’s the definition I’m going with as well, so hopefully nothing’s confusing!

1. If Wishing Made It So by leveragehunters. Before I get into anything about the actual fic, let me say this: leveragehunters is probably my favorite stucky writer. Like, hands-down, I read almost everything they write, and they’re big into fantasy stories, which is a great bonus for me personally. So, so, so many good shrinkyclinks fics by them (Even Underneath the Waves, a mermaid AU that features equal amounts of pre- and post-serum Steve, and A-mage-ing Grace with mage Steve are two of my other favorites, and they would’ve been on the list, but I try not to put more than one story per author, ya know? And IWMIS kinda wins out above the others for me, so). This story features jinn!Bucky who finds himself in the baffled hands of Steve Rogers, who is perfectly prickly and stubborn and good. Bucky’s got a terrible past with humans in general (and Hydra in particular, what a shocker) that he and Steve have to overcome as their relationship progresses, but that progression is frankly beautiful to watch unfold. I come back to this story time and time again because of how much I love these versions of Steve and Bucky getting to know one another, learning to trust each other, supporting each other through the worst the world has to throw at them. Plus, there’s a few more stories in this series if you get as hooked as I am, which is always great!!

2. Roots Have Grown by AustinB. I remember reading this and just... completely feeling what Bucky is going through. Not everything -- he’s an agoraphobic veteran, and I can’t relate to either of those, really, but he’s so... awkward about his crush on Steve. And that’s -- that’s relatable to me. But it’s precious, really, how he tries to help Steve even though he’s afraid to actually meet him initially; he becomes Steve’s sort of... anonymous benefactor? Guardian angel with money? Like, it’s definitely a sugar daddy type deal originally but I doubt Bucky would describe it like that. I don’t know, it’s cute, though, and I loved seeing Bucky opening up to Steve as they became closer. 

3. Through The Woods by VenusMonstrosa, alby_mangroves. Okay, hear me out: werewolves. I fucking love werewolves in fiction; I mean, not really the romance novels you’ll see in the grocery store, but. Werewolf mythology is one of my favorite things, so seeing it in fanfiction almost always manages to lure me in. And I was so not disappointed with this story! Steve’s living alone in a cabin in the woods, which of course sounds like the opening to a horror movie, but here it leads to love. Werewolf Bucky is both charming and terrifying, to a degree, he’s a wolf, but he and Steve are fantastic together. This is another story that goes in on the trust aspect of their relationship and I for one am a big fan of that. There’s some violence, minor character death and the like, but it’s definitely not undeserved so. If you can handle that (and the sex, because there is sex in this) then I highly recommend this one!

4. The Joy of Little Things by obsessivereader, Sealcat. And so we move from werewolves to dragons. Yup. Dragons. Another of my beloved mythical creatures that I obsessed over when I was kid. Bucky’s capable of shifting into a human in this, but primarily he’s a big ol’ dragon that surprisingly doesn’t want to eat the scrawny sacrifice from the local village. Steve ends up working for Bucky, instead, and from there hilarity ensues. Steve’s obviously wary of Bucky, but Bucky isn’t at all what he’d been expecting, and they grow closer the longer Steve’s staying in Bucky’s caves. There are a couple of stories with Dragon!Bucky, but this is my personal favorite; it’s cute and heart-warming and, well. I just really like it. 

5. I Just Want to Love You in My Own Language by agetwellcard, inediblesushi. So this one has Cap!Bucky (Bucky!Cap?) but again, sometimes it’s more about how Bucky looks rather than his role as the Winter Soldier. Anyway, I remember my biggest take away from this story was how adorable Bucky was in his quest to win the affections of sassy Nurse Steve, who patches him up after missions and is probably playing hard to get. Bucky uses terrible pick-up lines, absolutely awful, and he is completely unashamed of that fact. Which is, as I said, adorable. Steve, initially, does not agree with my assessment, but he gets there eventually. After some requisite drama, of course.

6. Tint & Shade by forestofbabel. Oh, god, this one hurt me, I remember that pretty clearly. Bucky is the Winter Soldier in this, and Steve is a 21st century art therapist who just so happens to resemble his late grandfather, Captain Joseph Rogers, who fought in -- you guessed it -- WWII. Like I said in the intro, if I really like the premise of something I’ll usually read it regardless of the configuration of pre-/post-serum Steve and pre-serum/WS Bucky, and this was definitely one of the fics I got into for that reason. Having actual WS Bucky interact with a modern pre-serum Steve is always interesting, given how much they don’t have in common, generally (there isn’t even really the veteran status that modern Bucky sometimes has in fics), and it’s a journey to see how and why they connect. Having Steve resemble his WWII era grandfather caught my attention, and the fic itself made me grateful that I decided to go for it in the first place. This is another one where is trust is key to their relationship, considering the mental/emotional state Bucky is in at the beginning. Very good story overall!

7. Fourth Floor by dirtybinary, mithborien, picoalloe. So dirtybinary has written some amazing stucky fics, which is why I was so excited when I saw this being posted initially (a few years ago, but still). There’s magic! Mystery! Suspense! Some NatSharon! Looking this over, I’m wondering if I should’ve saved it for the Urban Fantasy list I wanna do (and If Wishing Made It So, if I’m being honest) but I do like it for the shrinkyclinks list. The writing is great, the characterization of Steve and Bucky is great, and like, they live in what is essentially a magical apartment complex, so what’s better than that? 

8. my heart tells me you are lonely, too by FanGirling. Alright, so I read this one as it was being published, and the slow burn about killed me. You know, in a good way, though. Bucky lives in Steve and his mother’s apartment building, trying to figure out where to go with his life now that he’s broken free of Hydra and gotten his autonomy back. He’s obviously wary, skittish, but he takes a liking to Sarah Rogers when she reaches out to befriend him, surprised anyone wants to be near him let alone take the time to get to know him. Steve... is not so easily sold on Bucky. And I’m not gonna spoil anything here, but the shit these two go through is intense, and I cried a lot during this fic, sometimes out of frustration because they’re both ridiculous about their feelings (of course Bucky’s fears are valid, the man has been through literal hell, but also I was internally screaming a little as Bucky continually talked himself out of getting closer to Steve.) I wanted to wrap the both of them in about thirty blankets for pretty much the entire length of the fic. God. They’re just -- they’re so incredibly sweet in this one, once they work past their issues (Bucky and Steve are both more than a little messed up from their respective circumstances, but they make it work). Mind the tags on this one, also, especially because there is a chapter that deals with attempted sexual assault against Steve (obviously not with Bucky!), but Bucky handles the situation before anything truly nasty happens, that I can promise. 

9. Local Raccoon Befriends Angry Chihuahua by charlesdk. This is yet another author I really love; they have a fantastic farmer!Steve/Modern!WS!Bucky story that I love to bits, as well as other great fics. But anyway, this one. The title sold me the second I saw it, honestly, I can’t even pretend that wasn’t the deciding factor in me reading this. I don’t think I can really do any better than the summary in explaining why I recommend it; feisty tiny Steve and lovestruck grumpy Bucky are a winning combination in my book. This one does feature the boys dealing with homophobia and ableism, though I can’t recall how severe it is. So I’d just mind the tags, and if you’re alright with them, thoroughly enjoy this story. 

10. The Road to Hell is Paved with Tony’s Good Intentions by pinlilli. Bucky as a mail-order Russian bride. That’s the detail that pretty much demanded I click on this fic, and oh my god, it was even better than I ever could’ve expected. Tony, in a bid to help Steve get over his awful ex-boyfriend (fuck Brock Rumlow in every universe, honestly), literally orders him a husband -- in the form of beefy James Barnes, who is a fucking gem and I will not hear one bad word against him. He does chores, it’s lovely and adorable, and you will definitely fall just as hard as Steve does. There’s some canon-typical violence in this one that relates to James’ past, but nothing super graphic as far as I remember. Again, Rumlow is a dick and should be treated as such, but he’s hardly the most important part of this fic and I urge everyone to take a look at it if they’re as intrigued by Bucky being a mail-order husband as I was. 

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 1.5.9 “Madame Victurnien’s Victory”

This is simply a translation thing, since Hapgood translates it as “success,” but I think the title containing the word “victory” is interesting because it really implies that Mme Victurnien got something out of what she did to Fantine, that she “won” against Fantine. What she got was a sense of sated curiosity, a curiosity whose satisfaction ruined another human being.

Hugo starts the chapter off saying that Victurnien’s actions did some good, only he then reveals that Valjean never entered the workshop and explains that the overseer was only charitable from a certain angle. How is this good? Valjean, who is described as “even the best men,” is trusting that this woman’s morals are in line with his own simply from word of mouth, rather than checking in. He never sets foot in the workshop and has given her full power. Again, no wonder people are turning to sex work as a side hustle. How many other women has this happened to? And the overseer thinks she’s doing some good!

The overseer is “full of the charity that consists of giving, though to some extent lacking in the charity that consists of understanding and pardoning.” But isn’t this the entirety of Madeleine’s system and philosophy? He helps people by giving them money. He tosses money at them but doesn’t want to see the aftermath and doesn’t want to be the one doing the face-to-face benevolence. He can’t handle being responsible for problems that a little bit of money can’t fix. The only time he seems to do things face-to-face with others is when they specifically come to him (like as a judge or a settler of conflict); he doesn’t ever go to them. The overseer is full of the “charity that consists of giving” because that’s what Valjean’s rules teach. They don’t have space for sitting down and trying to understand. The morality of these rules don’t allow for that. If the only rule to work in this factory is to be an “honest woman,” how do you confront a structure that creates this desire to seek out and banish immorality rather than examine itself and its components for prejudices and then find ways to assist these women who clearly have little to no support?

I’m wondering too if Valjean’s rule fostered this rumor mill. Having a strict code of morality is a great way to foster ill will if people are more nosey or malicious or less mutual aid-minded than others. Especially in a factory where people are paid by their output. If someone is better than you at the job you share, it makes sense to start a rumor about them to get them kicked out so you become the one who gets their pay. This isn’t quite what happens to Fantine, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened to other women. In terms of Fantine and Victurnien, again this strict moral code is a breeding ground for the gossips and rubberneckers that Hugo described last chapter.

Valjean’s system just frustrates me so much. Again, putting so much power in the hands of a person without checking if they’re trustworthy or not, without having a system of “is this person treating my workers right” is just so....careless? That’s not exactly the word I’m looking for but it’s just like Valjean puts this morally strict system in place and expects it to just solve all problems. He’s busy helping other people solve conflicts and things and doesn’t seem to realize that these rules he’s put in place are going to create problems as well. Not to mention that everyone’s ideas of ethics or morals are going to be different. Would Valjean have condemned Fantine if he’d heard her story? We don’t know. But this overseer’s idea of the right thing to do and the right action to take may well be very different from Valjean’s intention upon setting these rules. Which creates circumstances like this.

Am I reading something wrong, or did the overseer not take record that she had given Fantine the 50 francs? I read “of which she rendered no account” as the overseer not bothering to write down the fact that she gave Fantine 50 francs from the money for donation and aid to workers. Is that right? If this is true than it would also give even more reason for Valjean to have no idea: if he doesn’t set foot in the women’s workshop but does look at the expenses, this wouldn’t have shown up either.

The landlord telling Fantine “you’re young and pretty” is a foreshadowing of the next couple chapters, but I also think it’s interesting that the landlord seems to insinuate that she could be a sex worker. Again, this is a garrisoned town. Sex work must be an open secret here, something Valjean maybe refuses to see.

I love Marguerite so much. I think this might be the first and only time Fantine has a friend who actually cares about her. It makes sense that Fantine would have a much older woman as her friend. Hugo says she’s wise, and I think that her sort of quiet wisdom would resonate more with someone much older than with grisettes her own age. Plus an older person might be much more patient with her when teaching her these new ways of living and maybe guiding her through actually noticing these social cues for the first time. Marguerite is kind of like Fantine’s Myriel; she is a pious and religious old woman who takes Fantine under her wing to learn how to live and survive. Only, rather than taking Fantine’s soul for god or anything, she’s giving Fantine a friend, which seems to be something she’s never had before. This is the first time we see Fantine talking to someone else as an equal.

Hugo mentions that Marguerite taught Fantine how to give up an expensive bird. It’s odd to me that this bird is never mentioned. When did she get a bird? If it was with her in Paris why did she not sell it to move to M-sur-M? However, I 100% understand owning a pet even when you barely make any money to buy yourself food. Pets make you feel better about yourself because you’re caring for and getting love from another creature. Fantine has now had to give up Cosette and her bird, both two small things she’s able to give her love to.

Fantine’s backstory is so odd. How did she not know how to “live poor” already? She was an orphan, and as we see later, orphans in the Brick (taken in or otherwise) are generally treated poorly and are exceedingly impoverished. How had she never lived in enough poverty to learn how to reuse things and give things up? This is clearly the most poor she’s ever been, and even Feuilly makes a good deal more than her later on, but it seems strange that even as a young child or teenager she didn’t live in similar poverty, if she was an orphan with no other monetary support besides her own work.

Fantine mentions that she only sleeps five hours a night. We don’t get a lot of mention of characters sleeping. A little here and there, but the Thenardiers don’t seem to sleep, like, at all when they’re in Paris. This is a kind of subtle aspect of it, but being this poor is crazy hard to get out of because it requires so much work. Fantine makes like 9 sous (I think?) making shirts. She’s taking up just under 19 hours of her day sewing, which I would imagine might produce maybe 3 shirts? Depending on whether she’s doing the entire thing from scratch or using patterns or taking someone else’s already fitted and cut out pieces and stitching them together. Either way, sewing takes quite a while, and if she’s taking 19 hours of her day doing that, she has no time to do things like look for a better job. And she’s also still in debt, so she can’t move somewhere with more opportunities, either. The Thenardiers barely sleep because they’re constantly trying to come up with ways to get money as well. Marius seems to barely sleep; he spends his time translating. Sleep is so rare in this book, it’s kind of a surprise when it’s mentioned.

“When one is sad, one eats less. Sufferings, troubles, a little bread on the one hand, a little anxiety on the other--all that will keep me alive.” More of Hugo’s weird thing about suffering. Even more than an ableism kink, he’s got this whole suffering = good thing going on. This is from 3.5.1, about Marius, but I think it summarizes Hugo’s opinion well: “Firm and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a step-mother, is sometimes a mother; destitution gives birth to might of soul and spirit; distress is the nurse of pride; unhappiness is a good milk for the magnanimous.” (Hapgood translation as I’m too lazy to transcribe from FMA.) Reaction to suffering is Hugo’s gauge for a character’s goodness.

Also, this line about bread reminds me of Eponine’s line about not eating for three days, only Eponine admits to the misery of not eating, while Fantine tries to keep things light and optimistic. Again, we have Fantine seeing things through a sort of rose-colored lens. This time I don’t think it helps much, but it’s also not concealing danger from her either. It’s just that Eponine has lived so long in poverty that hunger is just an aspect of her life, and misery is something she seems to have simply accepted, while this is still vaguely new to Fantine and she’s trying to figure out how to deal with it.

“In this distress, to have had her little daughter with her would have been a strange happiness.” Mostly I just want to hang on to this quote because it parallels the later line talking about Baron Pontmercy wishing to have young Marius with him. I made a post before about the parallels between Fantine and Pontmercy, and somehow I didn’t catch this one, but here it is.

Everything in this book is about money, about how to pay. Everything in life is about money. It puts Valjean in an expressly unique position as someone who has a frankly ridiculous amount of money compared to pretty much every other character. But everyone except Valjean and Cosette are so highly aware of money, of how much everything costs, and what it takes to pay for something. And really the thing about poverty is that “cost” isn’t just francs, it’s also time and labor and emotion. If Fantine had just the tiniest bit more money, she could send for Cosette, but would Cosette then end up like the child of Valjean’s sister, sitting out in the cold in the early morning after Fantine went to work but before the schools had opened? Sewing shirts takes time; that’s either less time to be with Cosette and nurture Cosette or less time making shirts which is less money. Making enough money to live means sacrificing so much.

Only now does Fantine seem to be aware of social cues, which now have turned into paranoia (though she’s probably at least a little right). Since the beginning, she hasn’t noticed when people are laughing at her or whispering about her or making fun of her to her face. Even when Tholomyes left, I doubt she noticed because all of the grisettes were abandoned at the same time; I don’t think she would have realized that for everyone else it was a little bit different. But now all those whispers and mocking and social cues have been thrown in her face, and now she’s seeing them everywhere. It sounds like paranoia, but I think she’s right, and Hugo basically says so about a sentence later.

“She came and went, head high and with a bitter smile, and felt that she was becoming shameless.” This is another reason why I Dreamed A Dream in English frustrates me so much. The French version at least touches on Fantine’s anger, on the ways she has begun to harden. The English version really does not do that at all. It is interesting that she longs for the anonymity of Paris, and in the end seems to decide to treat M-sur-M as though it was Paris, and go out brazenly anyway.

Mme Victurnien and Tholomyes are at opposite ends of the self-centered individual. Tholomyes fucked Fantine over but didn’t care or think much of it, because once he’d satisfied the amusement he got out of his affair with Fantine, he simply dropped her and probably never thought of her or Cosette ever again. Victurnien, on the other hand, turns Fantine into a weird sort of obsession. Instead of not caring about ruining Fantine’s life, that becomes a kind of pleasure for her. A “dark happiness,” as Hugo calls it. It’s a sort of sadistic schadenfreude. Tholomyes didn’t spend anything to abandon Fantine, he simply left to go back to the country. Victurnien spent money to destroy Fantine’s life. Both are so terrible because one is so deliberately careless and the other is so heartlessly deliberate.

A last thought which is just kind of a throwaway thing, but since gaining the “Fantine as autistic” headcanon from whoever it was that came up with it, I’ve been imagining Fantine’s love of brushing and braiding her hair as a form of self-soothing. I haven’t had long hair in over 15 years but I remember when I did, brushing it or having someone else brush it always felt really nice. Fantine’s hair is so beautiful (later on Hugo says it falls to her knees which is !!!!) and I wonder if part of that is because of how often she uses brushing it to self-sooth when things are terrible.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

"'You know what would be a brilliant twist now? If everything turned out to be just a guy in a mask.'"

Year Read: 2018

Rating: 3/5

Context: Is there a person alive who didn't love Scooby Doo at some point in their lives? Not surprisingly, it was a major part of my childhood, and I tend not to let go of the things I really love. I still watch Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island when I'm sick (and, in hindsight, that may have been the beginnings of the zombie love...). I would have picked up Meddling Kids for its title alone, but there's also that stunning cover. Trigger warning: suicide, mental illness, hallucinations, death, transphobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism.

About: When they were kids, Andy, Kerri, Nate, Peter, and their Weimaraner formed the Blyton Summer Detective Club. Every year, they joined forces to solve mysteries and uncover bad guys in masks, but their last case broke up the club and left them more traumatized than any of them are willing to admit. They're plagued by nightmares, mental illnesses, and Peter's tragic suicide. When the masked man finally makes parole, Andy confronts him and learns what she's always feared: something else was going on in the Deboen mansion that night. She urges the club to get back together and return to Blyton for one final mystery, but the monsters might be real this time.

Thoughts: There's so much potential in this story and equal amounts of expectation, so it was almost bound to go wrong. Within pages, it was clear that the writing style wasn't going to work for me. I can blue-pencil straightforwardly bad narration from my awareness after a while, but Cantero's is the kind that won't let me ignore it. It's constantly breaking the fourth wall and changing up the style for no apparent reason. Metafiction can be used to great effect, but I'm not sure what's to be gained by constantly reminding readers that they're reading a mystery/comedy. It's a cheap trick that does little besides make it difficult to stay invested. The dialogue periodically reverts to script style which, frankly, looks like pure laziness. The jokes are constant, the descriptions weird, and some of the words invented or mashed together into clunky portmanteaux. The prose is preoccupied with its own cleverness at the expense of telling its own story, and the level of attention I have to pay to Cantero's linguistic cartwheels isn't worth the payoff. It was a slog.

Humor as a constant wears on me quickly, or maybe the book just isn't as funny as it thinks it is. There are slapstick scenes where characters break someone out of a mental hospital or fight off hordes of monsters single-handedly that are reminiscent of the cartoons. The action scenes are excessive, at one point devolving into pages of run-on sentences. Feel free to skim because nothing important happens. The words "transphobic", "sexist", "homophobic", "ableist", and "racist" showed up in my margin notes. The jokes aren't as malicious as they are superficial--other than the astonishingly poor trans representation, they blow by as quickly as any other joke in the book, but that doesn't make them acceptable. I can see why some reviewers find Andy's representation as a lesbian troubling; Cantero doesn't seem to have a grasp of when the word "butch" is offensive and when it's empowering, and there are moments where it needed to be handled with more sensitivity. However, Andy and Kerri share a couple of semi-intimate moments that are never at all sexualized, so it has that going for it.

Once you get past all that (assuming you're still with Cantero at this point), the story itself is fairly interesting and moves fast enough. There seems to be plenty of actual science behind the creepy happenings at Sleepy Lake, with plausible monsters and a claustrophobic trip into the mine. The characters are, for the most part, well-drawn and more three-dimensional than their cartoon counterparts. I actually love that the main character, Andy, is a badass lesbian. She's always the one moving the story forward, unraveling plots, and kicking hordes of monster ass. Kerri is a close second as the scientific brain; she always has an answer to everything, and while the descriptions are excessive, I kind of enjoyed that her hair has its own personality. Nate is overshadowed by both of them, which is a nice change from the usual. The mental illness representation is dramatically bad though, as he hallucinates Peter's ghost throughout the novel. Ghost-Peter is a dick, and most of the offensive comments in the novel come from him.

The final confrontation balances between scientifically plausible and utterly ridiculous, with the end wrapped up a little too quickly and neatly for my tastes, but at that point, I was happy to be finished with it. I doubt I'll put myself through one of Cantero's novels again, but if not for the writing, it might have been enjoyable.

[allonsymiddleearth]

42?

42. What are you most proud of accomplishing?

Well, I haven’t technically accomplished it yet, two finals to go, but I decided at the beginning of the year that I was either going to graduate, die trying, or drop out by the start of 2019. I keep coming too close to that second one, but I did a frankly ridiculous amount of school this year, especially considering having EDS and Valley Fever the whole time, and I’m actually going to graduate! and then be done with school forever because unless they cure hEDS there is no way in hell I’m putting my body through grad school after all the ableism and bullshit I dealt with in undergrad.