#like maybe she is. and youre mad why. can we get a non misogynistic non lesbophobic reason for the way you act n the standards youre holding

[ispyspookymansion]

i dont care about chappell roan but some of you arent seeing the gates of heaven for the incredibly harsh way youve been talking about her. maybe contemplate why you feel the need to be so shitty about one of the only young lesbian popstars and unpack that before you sooooo bravely make another textpost calling her a bitch i mean a cunt i mean a stupid fucking bitch wow i MEAN a hack musician 🙄🙄🙄

[littlemissidontcare]

I agree, it's a terrible story. But for me personally, Pamela now appears almost like an angel, there is now a vegetable garden. She was just pushed here by younger and more beautiful people, and all her time was wasted. Otherwise, I would still be undressing and ordering boobs and more.It seems to me that at that moment it was not such a tragedy. It became a tragedy after the series aired, because she changed. And then she had attics and pubs, busty implants and lips, sex and drugs.I just want to say that if I were her, I wouldn't be offended by the series. Because the series really showed her from a better side, perhaps, than she really is.Therefore, all these howls that poor Pamela was offended and Seb should not even mention this series... This is some kind of nonsense. Because the series really showed them both at their best. Pamela is even a little better than Tommy.So stop trying to stymie the owl with your non-existent theories. You are so pathetic that it is impossible to be happy for Sebastian, as they do in other fandoms.The same Adrian Brody is dating Weinstein's ex-wife, but no, you're attacking Sebastian

Since you are running from blog to blog with this I’ll follow with mine this comment is misogynistic. I replied to this comment on a different blog here is that same reply.

This quite and interesting take. I think it shows a huge problem and disconnect in today’s society. People lack empathy and compassion. The comment he made was gross regardless of his intentions. It comes off as “oh she’s gotten this success because of me and the show” he’s sounding like he’s saying the show is responsible for her success that’s not true she’s always been famous regardless if she was in the spot light again you all getting mad at criticism that should be given to public figures you look up are showing you lack empathy and compassion and how you idolize him and put him up on a pedestal. He’s not a god. He can be called out for saying something that is gross. He’s a celebrity he’s going to be criticized for his work and for things he says. Coming and throwing fits because you take it personally maybe should be a moment to reflect and step back. There’s nothing wrong with having idols but you should absolutely hold them accountable and call them out when needed I do the same to people in my personal life. No one is being disrespectful or calling names but so far in this peaceful discussion I’ve seen quite a few on here try to cause chaos because they simply can’t take that Sebastian a celebrity none of us know personally is being criticized. We are not hating or nitpicking him or anything disrespectful this whole comment is extremely disrespectful about Pam though. Why does it matter if she had any work done? It has nothing to do with anything. This comment comes off as quite misogynistic. It’s tearing her down and defending seb even though he’s the one who made the disgusting comment kind of places blame in a way on Pam in my opinion. Stop being misogynistic towards women whose feelings are valid. Pam was abused it was her story to tell not Sebastian’s or Lilly’s she is in her right to be upset and want nothing to do with that show or anyone involved if she chooses to Sebastian isn’t the fan fiction man that is read about. Some of you need to come to that reality. He’s human celebrity or not and regardless of status if people mess up hold them accountable and help them learn from their mistakes.

[notafunkiller]

agree, it's a terrible story. But for me personally, Pamela now appears almost like an angel, there is now a vegetable garden. She was just pushed here by younger and more beautiful people, and all her time was wasted. Otherwise, I would still be undressing and ordering boobs and more.It seems to me that at that moment it was not such a tragedy. It became a tragedy after the series aired, because she changed. And then she had attics and pubs, busty implants and lips, sex and drugs.I just want to say that if I were her, I wouldn't be offended by the series. Because the series really showed her from a better side, perhaps, than she really is.Therefore, all these howls that poor Pamela was offended and Seb should not even mention this series... This is some kind of nonsense. Because the series really showed them both at their best. Pamela is even a little better than Tommy.So stop trying to stymie the owl with your non-existent theories. You are so pathetic that it is impossible to be happy for Sebastian, as they do in other fandoms.The same Adrian Brody is dating Weinstein's ex-wife, but no, you're attacking Sebastian

This quite and interesting take. I think it shows a huge problem and disconnect in today’s society. People lack empathy and compassion. The comment he made was gross regardless of his intentions. It comes off as “oh she’s gotten this success because of me and the show” he’s sounding like he’s saying the show is responsible for her success that’s not true she’s always been famous regardless if she was in the spot light again you all getting mad at criticism that should be given to public figures you look up are showing you lack empathy and compassion and how you idolize him and put him up on a pedestal. He’s not a god. He can be called out for saying something that is gross. He’s a celebrity he’s going to be criticized for his work and for things he says. Coming and throwing fits because you take it personally maybe should be a moment to reflect and step back. There’s nothing wrong with having idols but you should absolutely hold them accountable and call them out when needed I do the same to people in my personal life. No one is being disrespectful or calling names but so far in this peaceful discussion I’ve seen quite a few on here try to cause chaos because they simply can’t take that Sebastian a celebrity none of us know personally is being criticized. We are not hating or nitpicking him or anything disrespectful this whole comment is extremely disrespectful about Pam though. Why does it matter if she had any work done? It has nothing to do with anything. This comment comes off as quite misogynistic. It’s tearing her down and defending seb even though he’s the one who made the disgusting comment kind of places blame in a way on Pam in my opinion ( not coming at you anon just stating my opinion and take on your take all love 🫶🏻)

Well said!

[masterthespianduchovny]

As much as I understand the need for queer representation, queer shipping around mlm ships tend to be misogynistic as fuck. Doubly so if one of the male characters has a canon female love interest. They have to shit on her and "punish" her for interfering with a ship that isn't canon and was never going to be canon.

And that's important to note because, within the last few years, fans of these ships frame these relationships as barriers to their preferred ship or they get mad that there isn't an open ended to pretend these two characters ended up together.

As if this is somehow the fault of the female characters and not the writers. Most importantly, it overlooks the fact that, more times than not, these character sexualities were considered and there is a vague outline of where they might end up. It's unfortunate that queerness isn't often considered, actually very little, but it's not okay to engage in misogynistic rhetoric all because your mlm ship didn't happen.

From my own personal experience, a prime example is Steggy.

Steve is framed as straight. Maybe there's a chance that his bi--idk. But the MCU has always positioned him as being into women with the subtext that he'll end up with a woman. Yet, because he ended up with Peggy, she's constantly attacked and doesn't "deserve" him because she didn't know him as long as Bucky. She's been called all sorts of derogatory things, slandered, criticized for random bullshit, etc. Reduced to just her reproductive parts, having ageist remarks leveled at her, and so forth.

Most of this didn't exist before Endgame, but after Endgame, the attacks are non stop. People are triggered whenever she comes her. All because Cap chose her over someone he wasn't even interested in. All because fans shipped him and Bucky together and the MCU didn't bend to their will.

Another example: Darvey. Harvey and Donna from Suits.

No one has to like a character, but usually, the way certain fans rip into Donna usually ends up with it being a Marvey shipper. They'll contort truth, ignore details, and color her in the worst possible light to prove how she's bad for Harvey, yet ignore all of Harvey's bullshit to prove how he and Mike are MFEO.

Let's be clear: I don't fucking care if people ship non canon ships or think two other characters, whether or not they're the same gender, are better together. However, When you're being misogynistic and sexist to upload your OTP, you can rightly fuck off. It's so easy to ship what you like without bringing that bullshit into it.

Tragically, many of these critics are women who have massive internalized misogyny, but believe they are being progressive, inclusive, and ship without prejudice. If you're tearing women down to uplift any ship, even if it's queer, that's not progressive and feeds into the patriarchy.

It's okay to prefer something else, it's not okay to feed into a pre-existing, harmful, and sexist narrative.

And it's really bothersome because these same people call themselves trying to validate the LBGTQ community, many of these shippers are straight (which this opinion is based on various discourses and criticisms of how gay characters are written in these stories and dialogue surrounding them) and ironically end up invalidating Bi, Pan, and NB people.

Some of these ships are due to these characters being hot, which is fine.

Other times it's due to chemistry, which is also fine.

But as another person argued years ago, one of the reasons why mlm shipping is so popular and prevalent is because male dynamics are actually fleshed out and explored meaningfully. This leads to wanting to ship characters who have real relationships, conflicts, and history with each other no matter how small or large.

However, the issue comes in for some because it's not canon. These meaningful relationships aren't romantic and many women tend to want some romance included, which isn't a bad thing. But when you know the romance will never happen, it's easy to get upset about that. And they know people who ship canon pairings have that over them, which is infuriating.

Which is understandable.

Regardless, diminishing, trivializing, and insulting women is not okay, esp when some of these women have the relationships with men that are usually reserved for male dynamics.

Donna and Harvey have a long, complicated relationship that is based on a professional dynamic, friendship, and romantic yearning. This was established in the first season and didn't come out of nowhere, yet people either ignore that, play it as one sided, go on and on about why they couldn't be just friends (they never were), and hilariously, refer to it as fan service.

Peggy and Steve develop a friendship of sorts, are supportive of one another, genuinely are in love with each other, and have worked alongside each other is criticized because Peggy didn't know Steve as long as Bucky. Appalling things are said about her.

Thing is: these aren't the only fandoms that do this. Trust and believe, whenever there is a major male pairing, if any woman is canonically paired with ether one of them, she's being attacked and called gross things. That's not okay even in the name of representation. If you genuinely hate this female character because of who she is and not because of her gender, I get that. However, a lot of it is gender based and it's quite obvious when reading these criticisms.

Wanting better and more representation doesn't excuse or justify shitty behavior.

Lastly, people factor in compulsive heterosexuality regarding their criticisms of various straight pairings. That's a validate take, however, we need to be honest about our issues with certain pairings rather than piling on undeserved hate towards female characters, and then have nuanced conversations about what this means in context to that specific series.

No. You're not going to have these conversations with show runners, writers, and actors. I get this. But some of you need to stop harassing others and acting like assholes because they don't support your pairing (which they don't have to). If you believe Steve is bisexual, then stop fucking harassing people who ship him with Peggy. If deep, meaningful relationships are important, then stop undermining them to push a ship. And stop turning women into fucking mascots in your fanfic and fan art to prop up your ship--that shit is so dehumanizing. Often times, when these shippers don't hate the women, they only exist to say, "when will these two silly kids get together?" OR "I'mg lad you two silly kids finally got together."

Turning a woman into a mascot isn't any better than harming her or killing her to fuel a man's story--even if the man is gay.

Ironically, I'm less likely to see this from wlw ships or ships that has more queer support and than het support.

Quite interesting.

[greenhatsinthesky]

lockdown film no. 42 - Bombshell (2019) dir. Jay Roach

02/06/2020

- i just watched a youtube video about Charlize Theron’s makeup and it was so good that they had to put a statement at the beginning saying that all the portrayals in this film are by actors

- I really hated the title card on the lift. come on. give me more

- CASEYBABY

- “Trump has a problem with women” “can you back that up?” “yes” *whacks down The Folder*

- my god this cast is outrageous. I can't recognise Charlize Theron at all; Noah vosen is Nicole Kidman’s lawyer; one of the sisters from a cinderella story works in makeup and bloody Malcolm mcdowell is Rupert Murdoch ?? 

- wow the scene with Rudi bakhtiar when he said he wanted to see the inside of her hotel room and internally she was going “apologise. Make it your fault.” Ow 

- the moment where Kayla was in that guys office and he shuts the blinds and we’re excluded for a millisecond was fucking creepy

- it’s really cool to see Kate McKinnon in a non comedy role. We see her on snl and all these fantastic comedies (some less fantastic but she’s still great) but I hadn’t seen her in a really intense drama before, especially

- oh my god I remember when I first watched this I absolutely lost my mind when Kate mckinnon and Margot Robbie started having a gay time 

- “yes well you have to bring a vibrator from home to the convention. The question is what does a man do with a vibrator?” Their chemistry in this scene I’m literally dead. 

- holland Taylor taking Kayla to see Roger felt an awful lot like Daniel going to the lion’s den. And then Kayla walks in and holland Taylor closes the door and were on the outside again

- first time I watched the scene with Kayla in rogers office when he tells her to pull up her skirt I legitimately thought I was gonna throw up

- it makes me really genuinely upset the amount of women in this film (and absolutely the amount of women in real life) who are apologists for rapists and all round despicable men because they’ve been brainwashed to believe that everything that happens to them in trealtion to men is their fault. Or even if they know its not their fault (see Rudi bakhtiar) they know they have to make the man as comfortable as possible to try and preserve their own safety because there’s no knowing what they would do if you made this person more angry, even though its not their responsibility to monitor someone who’s feelings are their own problem 

- maybe I was just watching it wrong but I felt like the scene where there were different cards with the women talking about what had happened to them could have been much stronger

- i think one fundamental problem with this film is that there are literally no people of colour here at all. We all know fox is racist and so it would likely hire white people at a greater rate than people of colour but I cannot believe it was only white women being harassed in this workplace. As well as this, Kayla is a fictional character. Jess isn’t based on a real person, but someone like her probably existed, and both of their storylines are really interesting. Racist white people have space for people of colour if they aren’t “loud” about their identity and if they can imitate the racism of the white people around them. In the same way that the men in this film have time and space for misogynistic women. I’m just a bit mad that the writers decided to add fictional characters but the only fictional characters are white, in a sea of characters based on real white people. Also, the only talk about race is the bit about father christmas, really ?

- the scene with the news women saying how great Roger is and how they’ve never been told what to wear and how they need trousers because it’s kicking off about a leg cam but they’ve never been fitted for trousers and they’re putting these crazy high heels on their feet with plasters all over the gaff was pretty wild. I liked it. It was very sad

- even on second watch the scene where calls jess and they talk on the phone. Fuck. Robbie’s acting here is outstanding and mckinnon takes it perfectly from having jokes about having a heart attack about bill o’reilly calling her when actually its Kayla to being so supportive about talking to lawyers about what Roger did and why she wasn’t able to help her before all the stuff came out and how her position at her job is so precarious because she’s gay. And then she can tell Kayla’s not ok and she can’t really do anything but she’s there for her as much as she can be. I also appreciate the fact that there isn’t actually a scene in this film where anyone is physically harassed — the scene where Roger tells Kayla to pull her skirt up and the flashback where he goes for megyn is all we get

- it might not have been deliberate but in the scene where Rupert Murdoch says “i hate that its come to this” and Roger says “me too” made me a bit yiKES

- overall I think this is fine, but for a topic so rich its kind of a shame the film isn’t better. I’m not sure what its lacking but I think of other things I’ve seen like the show Mrs. America and how the ending of that absolutely shattered me, and that’s what I wanted from this. The jess/kayla storyline I found to be one of the more engaging things about the film, which like I say is strange in a film with this topic. I don’t know. The acting is good, the makeup and prosthetics are frankly out of this world - it was just a shame to me that other aspects were a bit lacking

[alovevigilante]

Me: Ok. I’ve made an executive decision on behalf of all of us...

Me also: are you an executive?

Me: yes.

Me also: at what company?

Me: ours. Yours and mine.

Me 3: and mine too!

Me: yes, at threes company, ok? Will you just listen to me? (The other me’s sit, silent) thank you. Now, we have all come to terms with the fact that we’re 46 and still not sure where the hell we fit in in society, let alone a career to help aid it, right?

Other me’s: yes, Agreed, (hub hub etc...)

Me: ok, good. Well, not good, but yes, we all concur. Now, we, collectively, are a fucking mess, so I propose this: we start from scratch. At zero point, ok? Ok! Great!

Me also: um, question?

Me: yes?

Me also: I don’t mean to be a contrarian or anything, but we’ve been here on earth now for 46 years, and we’ve experienced a butt ton. So, how do you just scrap it all, and have that be something that’s widely accepted by society as a whole?

Me 3: yeah! Cause I saw this one “I love Lucy” where she couldn’t even audition for a tv show without having some experience.

Me: yeah, but we’re completely walking away from the entertainment industry...

Me also: yeah, but what are we going to do? Walk into a different profession, let’s say, being an astrophysicist, and they say, “hey lady, where are your degrees and your on the job training, & oh, I see here on your non resume that you have never even taken a physics class. Were you in a coma for 50 years or something?” And then we’ll look like an asshole.

Me: good point. So, since we can’t start at a zero point, how do we make life ok from where we’re at if we’re feeling lost and confused about what to do next?

Me 3: I dunno.

Me also: well, maybe we can mediate.

Me: eh. You feel like that?

Me 3: not particularly. Me also?

Me also: I was hoping one of you would do it for me...

Me: no.

Me 3: no.

Me also: fine. Any other ideas?

Me: well... how about thinking about shit.

Me also: that’s what got us in this mess to begin with!

George Carlin: hello ladies! May I be of some assistance here?

Me 3: why not? We’re plum out of ideas...

George: ok, well, let’s simplify a bit, Kari, singular, let’s chat.

Kari: hey George.

George: love the pic you choose to rep me.

Kari: yeah. You’re being a lil Italian when you talk with the garlic clove shaped hand you got going there. 🤌 🧄 🇮🇹

George: Yeah. I’m diggin it. But you know, in your mind, I’m one of the reasons you’re here in this ass place.

Kari: you are? how do you figure?

George: people don’t like the fact that you write on behalf of the deceased.

Kari: well, Tim burton did it in beetle juice and a lot of folks love him..

George: ok Kari, can I be Frank... Sinatra-like with you?

Kari: I dunno, can you?

George: yeah. Just pretend I’m sporting a fedora, a cigarette in one hand, and throwing my jacket back over my shoulder with the other looking at you coyly.

Kari: ok... if you want to... but is the cigarette in his pocket? Cause if it’s lit, that shits gonna hurt his Netherlands eventually....

George: (like Sinatra) no. Now listen up, baby, it’s not normal to write on behalf of a dead person that was not a character, and that whom was once alive. People get touchy about it. We have friends still alive that knew us and probably don’t dig it.

Kari: I see.

George: so it seems like we’re at a crossroads here. What do you want to do about it?

Kari: do about what?

George: your writing! It’s freakin everyone out! Kari, look, you know how normal Hollywood is, ok? They are all normal, non creative, in the box gladly thinker kinda people...

Kari: they are?

George: yes!!! Come on, keillor, get with the program! You are too far fetched for these folks! They want normalcy, and sameness, and only all the shit that’s ever been shat!

Kari: George, are we talking about Hollywood California, here? Or Hollywood podunk nah? Because Hollywood California is where all the creatives go to create!

George: right! And guess what, Kari Keillor! You are not welcomed in Hollywood, California! They have a sign up with your picture on it at the airport that says, “beware! No to this woman! Too much with the weirdness! She writes dead people!”

Kari: I write live people too... hey, do I have a cowboy hat and a mustache on for my mugshot on that sign?

George: nice one Cookie Monster! Well, Keillor why not?! You may as well, because this story has as much validity as any other story you make up and make worse in your head cause you’re sensitive about of your writing...

Kari: you’re the one that said all that shit! You planted it in my head!!!

George: so I did, but remember, I’m a facet of you. So, decide. Is there any validity to what I/you said?

Kari: how the hell should I know?! I haven’t been in lax recently...

George: right! So you never know until you try talking to some people.

Kari: I’ll call the airport... Listen, George, I’ll be perfectly Frank Sinatra with you now, ok.?

Don rickles: no mere woman can be like ole blue eyes...

Kari: Shut your misogynistic, ass-kissing pie hole, Pickles.

Pickles rickles: oh fuck... she does it to me every time...

Frank Sinatra:, you tell him, baby!

Kari: I’m 46. (Back to George Carlin) Anyway, look George, I have had a few successful people from my entertainment past either shun or block me for no apparent reason, so I’m pretty sure that I’m not well received again, for whatever reason... probably because I wrote the truth about a second city class I took when I was 16, about the current state of snl which I am completely unfamiliar with because I do not watch it, and the way comedy has changed or not over the last many years. Come to think of it, maybe it was because I love frank oz, and frank was mad cause I wrote that belushi John was teasing him and calling him an asshole, another ironic statement because clearly frank oz, NOT an asshole, was many of the muppets for years, and Frank is one of my idols! (Not a true central religious figure to me, but someone I admire a lot...)

Frank Sinatra: who loves ya, baby??

Kari: (to Frank) kojak. (Back to herself) Or it could be because i called bill murray, the beloved patron saint of comedy, an asshole like me, yes, I said like ME, out of jest and irony, because yes, he cared about the kid in meatballs making friends, ok?! That’s probably it. & yes, i was kinda stoned when I wrote it, and also yes, I still can’t figure out why the movie was ducking named “meatballs”, cause there wasn’t an Italian to be seen in it! Ok?! And come to think of it bill as Peter venkman in ghostbusters 2, written in part, by him I think but let’s just say yes cause it supports my point, called all of New York City and it’s tri state area, all 3 million people, miserable assholes, and they took a head count, & they still (probably mostly) all love him! & that shit was good (I love that movie so much) and it was made in 1989, and that was a long ass time ago, ok? And some of those people, have procreated since then, and again, they all love bill Murray and now those “miserable asshole’s” kids, ALSO love Bill now! Double the miserable assholes! Why?! Because he’s funny, and much like me when I’m being tongue and cheek, he didn’t mean for people to take the shit he says seriously! See for yourself! https://youtu.be/t1gkRAWvxOs (1:15 on)

So yes!!! I just think people are not into that kind of talk from me and me alone, even though it wasn’t coming from a mean or spiteful place. It was coming from a place of love for my craft, and of both frank oz, and bill Murray. The rest, as I say once again... I dunno....

George: Kari, frank just told you he loves you, and you blatantly ignored him...

Kari: no, he asked who loved me. He didn’t say he loved me.

George: Keillor, stop being so mean to the dead crooners, ok?

Kari: pickles isn’t a crooner! He’s a ye olde well paid curmudgeon who made fun of everyone like a jerk fach.

George: um, Kari...

Kari: no, ok? No! The difference between me and pickles, besides everything under the sun other than the fact we’re both human, is the fact that I am pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of the way we are set up as society, and wanting to heal it within myself to make it a more palatable world for me and my family and friends and acquaintances to live in. And pickles thought making fun of people was ok. What royal lineage did pickles come from that he’s able to rip on everyone the way he did? And even if he was of a royal bloodline so fucking what?! And dude got paid to be mean! And normal people made him rich and famous! And how did that become prevalent, let alone celebrated in this world?! Roast em! Yes! Hilarious.

Dean Martin: oh noooo... hey, listen pally...

Kari: dean, don’t get me started, ok? Cause I like you, I really do, but you know how I feel about that shit... Listen, Dean, you left a legacy here that was mostly great, but in my opinion needs a lil tweaking. Instead of “roasts” which people do to this day, and I can’t see how it can make the honoree feel anything other than like major ass, we should have “toasts” (copyright Kari keillor 3/19/21 actually before this date but I never published publicly...)

Pickles rickles: toasts?!? What is THAT supposed to mean?!

Kari: it means, my curious lil ornery pickles, that instead of roasting someone and being a mean rotter egg to them, you can “toast” them. Cheers to you, honoree, we salute you, in a hilarious way, by being honest about you but not vicious, viper like, and cruel. It’s where everyone laughs together cause it’s not a character assassination, instead of ripping on someone. It’s being funny, and yes, in a KIND and uplifting way. Where you actually celebrate the person being honored. Now, will that take a lil more brain power then the go-to usual jerk fach? Yes. But, it’s a challenge I hope everyone will accept for the good of all of us. Cause I guarantee that no one walks out of a roast feeling great. And if they do, cause they thought they killed or whatever, they probably did. And not in a good way. And that, again, is ass. No one wins. It’s a short lived feeling, the feeling of “one upping” a person. It never makes you feel better about you in the long run.

Dean: I see. I think I’ll go work on my volare now...

Kari: see?!? Now THAT I like! It’s not at anyone’s expense!

George: oh shit.... kari.... Why do you give a fuck about all this?

Kari: you know why George? Cause this has become our accepted collective energy! The haves and the have nots! Take away your money and what have you got?! Who are you, without the people who have made you who you are?! People, make other people in the 3D reality we live in. So take away everyone’s cash money, homes, clothes, and all the cars, and all the shit, and what do ya got? A bunch of naked humans starring at our different body bits, ok?! We’re All the f’n same. So think about it. What are we each individually contributing energetically to the whole of us? What message are we sending the next generations In our every day lives? I’ll tell you what message. Whatever we feel about ourselves individually both good and bad. THAT’S what energy we all give, and receive from one another. That’s what we’re teaching the kids. They model themselves after how we feel, and how we choose to think, and how we decide to act toward others. So let’s all collectively recognize that, and how we treat other human beings and wake up first inside ourselves then beyond ourselves so we can all make the whole, better.

I am not an asshole or a human joke or any other kind of joke. I’m not going to cry over the fact that I’m not accepted by people who’s energies don’t match mine. And by the by, no one is a joke, no matter who they are, or what their socioeconomic standing is. So I don’t wear an ascot and a smoking jacket, and a neck full of gold chains and chest hair, holding a whiskey on the rocks with an umbrella in it saying “see that?! be somebody!” ok?! I’m not Steve Martin in the jerk, ok? https://youtu.be/tBfXTyzaUfQ

I’m not even close to Hollywood! I live in the Midwest! I’m Kariwood, ok? And I’m not even kari wood, I’m no woods, ok? cause I’m pretty much never in the woods or the outdoors for that matter, so much so that I just purchased a sweatshirt that says, “indoorsy” on it, ok? True story! So yeah. Cause one time I was in Wisconsin in the woods, and I was thinking, “look at me! I’m in the woods! Weird, no?!” (Cause never in the woods, but I thought, I’ll give it a shot! What’s the worst that can happen?) And guess what? Despite my shower the night before, I felt something on the base of my skull the next morning, and I picked out a really nasty, creepy and scary tick. And it was alive, and disgusting, and wiggly. And I started screaming. And I am still freaked out to this day about it. And that happened at least 17 years ago. And I didn’t like it. So that’s how “non woods-y” I am... I’m not even a fan of woodsy the owl, ok?

So I don’t know how I feel about all that. All this to say that I am definitely not Hollywood, but yes, I am included, as a “somebody”. I may not be an award winning, keillor, but I am still somebody, and I may not be rich and famous, but yes, I am somebody, and I may have been on one trajectory and now I do t know what the heck I am now, ok? It’s true, and yes, I’ve posted this before and I’ll keep posting it until everyone in me gets on board with it, yes! I am still somebody because yes, dear me, we are all this: somebody! : https://youtu.be/tu0lNcrZjG8

George: hard to argue with that.

Kari: eh. You know what I am, George?

George: yes, Kari. I know what you are. But do you?

Kari: well, I feel, like I’m one of those kids on Sesame Street sometimes, looking up at and intently listening to Jesse Jackson, wondering how to get from small to big, and from where I am, to the success that he reps, you know? The importance of being admired by many. Having a big platform to play on. A huge soapbox to stand on, you know?

George: yes. I get it, Kari, I really do. And we’ve all been there. But everyone’s story about themselves, is different. How we all got to where we are, was our own personal trajectory that we designed with our beliefs. And our thoughts. There’s no set pattern or manual to follow. The only energy you must follow, is your passion and your joy, aka the love. That’s it. So, if you want to be, and decide to be, you ARE Hollywood,. Because Hollywood isn’t a specific person or group of people, it’s a place, and an energy. Hollywood is what you make it to be with how you view it. You don’t have to “be” Hollywood to be in Hollywood...

Kari: you said I wasn’t allowed in Hollywood..

George: you may not be. All I’m saying, is that you are whatever you decide you are. The end.

Kari: well, am I or not? Cause I don’t want to go and be turned away. Besides, I love visiting olvera st.

George: Its a fine street, it is. Great margaritas... listen Kari, you cannot achieve anything in this life that you don’t truly believe is in the realm of your possibility. So yes! You can be, and pretty much are are Hollywood keillor, even if it’s in the Midwest in your own home.. You are creative, and love the arts, and are nutsy, and ballsy, and you may hold the title as being the first person to ever separate the two, and bring them back together in a scote sack, ok? So keep writing, and be yourself.

Kari: I dunno. But what I do know is this: I did it again...

George: did what?

Kari: reactivated all the shit memories and feelings from the past that I’ve felt about my career, allowing myself to relive all those fun feels of inadequacy and upset alllll over again.

George: aww, it’s happened to the best of us. Listen Kari, you are, in my humble not so humble opinion, since I’m still you, a loving person. So you reflect that way; with humor, and yes, absurdist, surreal comedy.

Kari: well, I’ll try.

George: You already do. Your credentials are superfluous. Your love and support of you no matter what you do moving forward is what you’ll feel when you choose to, and it’s available anytime you want to feel it. And when you feel that, it really doesn’t matter what you do.

Kari: ok, well, thanks George. It’s nice to know I have you around.

George: Kari, you were once told that you are golden, no?

Kari: well, I was told that I’ll be golden at some point moving forward doing whatever it is I choose to do.

George: right. So, when are you going to decide to experience that?

Kari: hopefully soon.

George: Kari, why do you chop to talk to and write about us “passed over folk”?

Kari: I dunno. I guess it’s cause I love and miss you guys in theory, even though I didn’t know you personally. And I like to re-experience your energy, as I appreciated and admired it. It helps me feel better.

George: you’re now golden.

Scene.

Appendices: if you choose to perform this scene, good luck. I’d like you to do it all in one breath, if you are a more advanced, and professional actor. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣💕💕💕💕

[roominthecastle]

Hi Room! Did you read Bokenkamp last interview?? Imo, there’s hope for Lizzington, am I right?? I like his explanation about John’s parent-child thing! Idk if you are going to read it, but if you do, I would love read your opinion! Thanks!

Okay, I went and looked this up and I agree, anon.

for those who don’t know what this is about, there’s a JB interview that came out a few days ago where he - unprompted - finally addresses in detail what many of us have had issues w/, that is:

“On the parent-child thing, you know, John says that often in interviews and I sometimes get after him about it because it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what it is — a parent-child relationship. What he means is that it is parent-child baked into the DNA of their roles. He’s a more experienced, seasoned, crazy bad guy. She started — and is still, in comparison to him — learning. And learning from him. And he has lots of advice that she takes. And so, you know, it doesn’t mean that he’s her father or, Troy, her mother, or, you know, and that it’s parent-child in that way (although it could mean that). But it doesn’t — that’s not what John’s saying. He’s just saying that there’s a — an inherent sort of parental nature that one is learning from the other.” (transcript courtesy of @alyblacklist, thank you! read the whole thing here)

Now, this is one of his better interviews, I admit, and despite everything I feel grateful that this show exists and that JB (in all good faith) tries to give us an insight into the messy balancing act of writing for a network show, but I still have 2 main issues here and both stem from the same source:

(1) “crazy bad guy” – seriously? Red is a beautiful, classic Byronic hero (or, in a broader, more modern sense, an antihero) for crying out loud. The troping is already laid in thick and somehow they still cannot articulate what it is that they have in him. I know Red is mostly James’ own creation (it shows, lbr -- the emotional intelligence, the eloquence, the self-awareness, the delicious nuance in everything he says and does) but still how can you dismiss his character like that even if it was just an attempt to be idk… funny? This is exactly what grates me to no end when these guys try to talk about Red and his relationship w Liz. It comes across so reductive, disrespectful, and disingenuous most of the time. Which brings me to

(2) apparently the actual (non-offensive) term to apply to Red/Liz is/should be adult mentoring. And when you mentor another adult, you do not label them a child ffs. This isn’t the norm btw professors and students at my uni and it’s def not the norm at workplaces where you’re assigned a mentor to supervise and orient you as you learn the ropes (at least not at those I’ve been to). In fact, it would be deeply insulting to be labeled a “child” in this situation, esp when you are an adult woman and you are mentored by a man. Also, if you insist on this being some defining element of their dynamic (I am all for it when done right), then maybe we should see some actual consistent mentoring btw these two bc it was great and def there in S1 but became kinda sporadic after that. In S6, for instance, it’s completely absent. Red giving Liz & the task force cases and then leaving them in the dark and to their own devices is not mentoring, it’s delegating.

To me it was already clear that James dislikes/dismisses the “parent-child” label (he shut down JE at SDCC, he never uses it during interviews and it’s in his portrayal of Red, too) and now it seems JB actually has a somewhat similar attitude but he’s still wishy-washy about it for some reason. “It is not that but it could be but in fact it is not but no” Come on.

Apparently, their entire reasoning behind using this label is that a hardened crime lord knows more about the practicalities of being a criminal than an FBI agent does and that he cannot stay mad at her when she rips his heart out. Okay, then. He also knows more than Cooper or Ressler, and he lets a lot of stuff slide w/ those two he normally wouldn’t w/ associates, yet those men are not characterized as “children”. I wonder why. And not being able to stay mad at someone “just” means you’re invested in them bc you love and care about them. Cooper couldn’t stay angry at his cheating wife, either. Liz couldn’t stay mad at Tim, not even after he beat her and coerced sex from her. So are these now parent-child dynamics, too? Please.

It’s a ridiculous, misused label that – at this point – is likely kept alive to appease the crybabies who need a security blanket now bc their simplistic, misogynistic fixation on “he can only be her parent” isn’t being humored on-screen anymore. It’s irritating but at least now we have additional confirmation about how little water this holds, which feels vindicating. I doubt it will resonate much w the rabid idiots who claim our ship is incest and pedophilia (bc that’s what you call shipping two unrelated adults these days when you don’t have a real argument) but oh well… JB was prompted yet refused to say anything against Lizzington (while he kept shutting down DG and MG), and he also let it slip that Red/Liz is “more” than Red and Dembe’s dynamic. That’s certainly nice to hear.

bottom line: the antis’ sad little hate platform is sinking fast and it’s amusing to watch them thrash about.

[unwiltingblossom]

Magicians s4 is garbage and here’s why. Spoilers.

Can we take a moment to appreciate just how bad Magicians s4 was, as a whole? I know, people are mad about the whole ‘going out of their way to hint at Eliot/Q for no reason when they had just as much of a connection as friends, just to upset the people that shipped it more when they killed Q’ but

Honestly, there’s so much more broken garbage about this season than just the one part of how it ended that the writers WANT us to talk about. So yes, let’s take a moment first to appreciate how the writers hate Quin and refused to let him grow as a character ever or give him the moments of success he had in the books, until they pointlessly murdered him instead of letting him finally be happy with the ending he should have gotten. It deserves derision.

But let’s focus on other things, too.

It’s long. It’s ranty. It’s going to rip apart season four and its finale and also touch on season three. It’s already tagged spoilers, but there’s more spoilers in here than out of the cut. Also, yes. We’re gonna talk about how the show pretends that it’s empowering females while it takes away all of their agency and makes them all about their men. And other hypocrisy.

First off. The fake female empowerment crap. And yes, it was so fake. We know it because the show itself utterly undermines and destroys it at the end of the season. Or sometimes literally right after they flex.

First: IT’S OKAY TO CALL MARGOT BY THE GENDER APPROPRIATE TITLE FOR ROYAL MONARCH OF A LAND. I know that by magical technicality she has to be ‘high KING’ (more on that later if I remember, because they actually ignore some of that) but there’s no reason Margot herself and other characters need to insist on ‘king’. Queen Regnant has the same ruling power and authority as a King Regnant. That’s why a non ruling Queen is called Queen Consort. Unless, of course, Magicians and SYFY are implying that Queen Elizabeth I and II are somehow inferior to King Edward and Henry the VIII(s) because they are only queens? Nevermind Elizabeth II has been queen so long her crown would have fossilized on her head by now if she wore it like fictional royalty always did.

Anyway.

Show. You’re not progressive because you have Penny smugly smile and say ‘let go of your cishet white boy bias, the main characters are the women’. You’re just obnoxious. Especially when Penny immediately finds out the cishet white boy he’s talking down to is actually his boss. Oof.

See, if you want us to believe other characters are actually the protagonists? You need to treat them like protagonists. You don’t do that, though. The only reason I remember the blonde librarian’s name is because it’s Zelda.

The episode builds up how important Fen is and how she has her own quest that will do something important, but what happens literally the very next episode? Oh right, Margot steps in and takes control of that, seizing the quest for herself. The only reasons I can presume this is for is #1 - the show writers despise the books and want to undermine everything about them, down to ensuring none of the humans get to rule Fillory even after they wasted multiple episodes democratically handing Margot the crown. Too bad for the talking animals, eh? and #2 to set up the sequel hook in the ending that, while interesting purely because it’s a Prince Caspian set up, was entirely unnecessary and could have been replaced by a series finale ending instead.

It actually makes no sense. Margot doesn’t contribute in any significant way she couldn’t have if she were still High King, because Fen could have done the entire black sand mission herself, because she is married to Eliot, remember, let’s not make fun of her feelings for him just because she’s not the main character (but she is! screeches smug penny!) - could she have seen the fairy? No, but she would have been able to work it out anyway, because it just wanted to help her. And here’s the kicker? The reason West Loria is against Fillory (aside from lol plot) is because OF FEN. Margot wasn’t ruling when Fillory chose the wrong side! Margot hasn’t weighed in at all, so why IN THE WORLD would this woman decide that she absolutely wouldn’t deal with any High King EXCEPT THE ONE WHO DID THE THING SHE DIDN’T LIKE?

Quick, tell me what Margot contributed to the plot from the point she left Fillory that Fen couldn’t have done, or that couldn’t have been accomplished by Margot still in Fillory.

Whoops, you’re out of time! There’s nothing. She did nothing of consequence that Fen couldn’t have done just slightly differently to suit her skills and actually justify the BS Penny spewed about her being a significant protagonist figure. Margot got swapped with Fen primarily because, no matter what self congratulatory subversive crap the show patted itself on the back with, Margot is actually a main character and Fen isn’t, so Margot needed to at least be near the action, and get her own quest, even if it was just taking Fen’s away from her. And also having a weird rushed romance with Josh for some reason. Who knows. I miss the genuine connection Margot and Eliot had for seasons that this season chose to throw away on a boring monster plot. I also miss Margot and Q’s friendship that this season ignored because we needed to focus on romance instead and pretend Margot doesn’t make friends.

Which reminds me, it’s super great how we went from Josh detesting Margot for making him help murder one of his only friends to Josh wanting to be her boyfriend because they share an STD. Really important and believable romance, there.

Kady also did fairly little from the point of that episode onward. They had to bring the Hedgewitches plot in to make her important, and even as the defacto ruler of the HW she still did very little except suggest that they could help the completely improbable ‘let’s just skip over the mechanics of making this work’ collaborative spell. And Alice and Julia already had the contacts to allow that to work anyway

ANYWAY MOVING ON

but not too far, because I need to talk about that awful red sand episode.

First, an aside: just because people liked your two musical episodes over the span of the entire series doesn’t mean you need to start stuffing singing into everywhere because ‘SINGING’

If only the problem with the episode was that the singing didn’t end with dancing Eliot. But no. This episode was PEAK fake female empowerment.

Margot finds a tribe of nomads who inexplicably choose to live in a desert that’s constantly trying to kill them. Every time women have an over the top emotional eruption (the show keeps saying ‘the tiniest bump’ or whatever but that’s a bunch of crap, it’s very clearly only when they have an eruption or tantrum), red sand appears and tries to kill them via possession. Men in the tribe protect them from this by jumping in the way and getting possessed instead, and then  USUALLY DIE because the method of fixing them is to effing stab them with double axes and pull out the spirit, then try to fix them with desert medicine.

Raised knowing that their lives are in constant danger, and that if they fly off the handle about something not only are they in danger but the men around them, whom they purportedly love, may very well die, the women of course are incapable of just controlling themselves and will erupt in rage regularly like some modern city girl even while being actively cautioned to calm down and knowing they’re endangering their entire settlement.

Upon hearing that men consistently risk their lives to protect their insane girlfriends who literally cannot control their emotions on pain of death, Margot concludes ‘wow, this culture is mighty misogynistic. sucks.’

but then, oh no. The sand isn’t trying to HURT them, the sand - for no reason anyone in the show bothers to explain, because world building isn’t important to the writers - it actually just wants the women not to be sad and will grant their any wish if one so much as has a temper tantrum. Trigger scene where Margot beats up all the evil menfolk for oppressing these poor, helpless, weak women who need a sassy foreign girl to save them from themselves and literal fairies to look after their every boo-boo. There’s brief lip service given to the idea that maybe the women themselves DON’T hate all the men around them, but Margot shrugs it off and suggests that now the women of the camp are free to literally murder any man who makes them mad, or ‘just’ force them to slave for them for however long they want.

PATRIARCHY DESTROYED, GUYS. EQUALITY ACHIEVED. MEN ARE NOW ENSLAVED AND KILLED OVER NOTHING!!! LOOK AT THE STRONG WOMEN WHO LITERALLY NEEDED A FOREIGN WHITE CHICK TO SHOW UP AND SAVE THEM SO THAT A WHOLE SPECIES OF FAIRIES COULD CONSTANTLY CODDLE AND LOOK AFTER THEIR EVERY NEED.

SO STRONG.

I’m not even joking, though. They tried to write a “YEAH! WOMEN!” plot but just made the women there look completely inept and incapable of fending for themselves at all without a smart American there to teach them. And that’s without getting into the horror of setting up a slave society where men are objects that can be killed on a whim. eugh.

Anyway, so Margot does all that and spends just...all season insisting WOMEN ARE STRONGER. WOMEN ARE TOUGH. WOMEN ARE STRONNGGG. DON’T NUTSACK OUT ON ME MAN. BE A PUSSY AND TOUGH IT OUT!!!!! OF COURSE THE WOMAN IS THE VIOLENT AND UNSTABLE ONE (wait--)

But where’s that all lead us to?

The season finale.

Before we dive too deep let’s take a brief moment to look at poor Julia through all this season.

#1, in some twist that doesn’t really make sense, the dean hides all of the main cast as alternate personalities under glamors with some heavy witness protection magic as a deal to the Library so they don’t have to die...and so naturally the Library has a dead or alive bounty on them.

huh?

Whatever, let’s not focus too hard on the garbage pail of a plot the monster plot is, because that’s tied into the huge dumpsterfire that season 3′s finale was, and the best to talk about that is how these smart and manipulative people literally couldn’t be bothered to lie to and trick a simple childlike monster into thinking he was their ACTUAL FRIEND no matter how often he looked for validation from them (maybe he wouldn’t have been so keen on clinging to Eliot if he thought you guys liked HIM, not just the body, you nimrods) and who began to get some development and understanding of living life normally without killing everyone right before they imprison him and send him to ultra-hell.

No it’s cool. Just imprison the childlike creature who you didn’t bother to try to teach morality to after it desperately sought some kind of affection and acceptance from literally anyone. Seems like the good guy thing to do. I mean, you showed that mean ol’ child molester by getting him to trust you, using his knowledge, and then literally trying to murder him, so honestly this isn’t out of character at all for our ‘good guys’. 

a n y way. JULIA.

It’s hinted at in season 3 that burning up all your god magic to make keys is actually temporary (but renders you able to be killed, so season 4 literally got it opposite of right, whoops), so obviously Julia really wants to get that back. She’s been motivated and shaped by magic as much as Q. She has been raped, lost her shade, suffered, had people die protecting and helping her, and became a goddess entirely by her own merit. She reasonably wants to get that power back, since she can’t die and isn’t really affected by magic in a normal way so she’s not fully human still.

Julia rescues everyone from the mindwipe by dying literally hundreds, maybe thousands of times and coming back. She gets a Mainaid (who I don’t feel like spelling right) that comes to believe in her and worship her as a goddess, and what happens? Well, first Penny who wants to get his dick wet gets jealous and runs off because he’s not the center of her world for like an hour. Partly because of this, the girl whom she rescued from suicide gets pointlessly murdered protecting her.

But hey, they’ve confirmed Julia is still a deity mostly but just can’t seem to access her powers. So Julia keeps digging and looking for a way to get them back. This leads to discovering an ancient book in the mirror version of the library who confirms that yes, she’s basically a demigod who won’t ever die, but needs to complete the transition either back to full godhood or to full humanity or she’s always be a little wrong, basically like she dislocated her divine limb fixing the keys and it can either be put back in or chopped off.

Now, this book (the Binder) warns her that both options are going to be long and painful and have their downsides, and implies they’ll be permanent, so she’s going to have to be SURE of what she wants. This warning is the ONLY reason Julia doesn’t immediately jump to a decision. And then the Monster shows up and kidnaps her. She calls the Lady Underground, who is unhelpful and just says ‘gotta make a choice yourself girl, no wrong answer’ and then the lady gets herself killed for no reason after Julia is immediately possessed.

Penny ‘rescues’ her by stabbing her in the back to pull the spirit out, and then blah blah her demigodhood doesn’t like that stabby thing, and it won’t let her die but also won’t heal. Solution? Make the choice and go full god or human and it’ll fix. Naturally, even though Julia’s been awake this whole time, she’s now unconscious ‘for the pain’ and Penny who is A POWERFUL TELEPATH can’t be bothered to pop in her head and ask what she wants under those circumstances.

no, he makes her decision FOR her. This is important, we’ll get back to this.

Penny has been chasing Julia(’s tail) around all season now. He’s been a part of her path to godhood this whole time, knows what she’s done to try to get it, so when forced to make a permanent choice for her

THIS

DICKHEAD

CHOOSES TO MAKE HER HUMAN. Against EVERYTHING he’s seen of her up until this point, and against whatever he knew of his Julia. Why? “I was selfish” WELL THANK YOU, MISTER “I JUST WANNA GET LAID” FOR AT LEAST ADMITTING YOU ROBBED A WOMAN OF SOMETHING SO UNBELIEVABLY SIGNIFICANT AND IMPORTANT AND LITERALLY LEFT HER WITHOUT MAGIC BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO STICK IT IN.

That’s right. Fandom’s all mad that Quentin died and they glorified suicide? Yeah, they just stripped away ALL AGENCY from a woman and made a choice for her that he KNEW she didn’t want just because it would be more convenient for him. Just violate the trust and remove the agency of the woman you already raped on screen once, show. Seems smart. Plus, now she does nothing for the rest of the episode and gets unfairly saddled with the guilt of Q’s demise because you just had to hamfist in his death.

ohoho but it doesn’t end there, no.

Penny, a man, takes away everything Julia earned HERSELF and locks away her path back to godhood (despite book Julia staying a goddess and becoming a Dryad) and then leaves her helpless and pointless sitting at home hoping everyone does okay, wrestling with her new existential crisis of being a weak, magicless human after all she did to get magic in the first place...and then Quentin dies, and because she’s so sad about him, suddenly she can do magic again! Weird internal consistency there considering how little is present in s4.

So Julia goes from a self-made woman, whose primary connections outside of her childhood friend are other women, to a woman whose whole life is now dictated by men. Important choices are made for her, she is passive in a crisis about her friends, and then her breakthrough to regain magic is...because of a man.

(BTW Kady also breaks down and decides she’s all about Penny, even though she’s kind of already worked through this last year and had plenty of other stuff to do this season)

And since I’m talking about consistency, let’s glance at THAT can of worms, shall we?

First and foremost: the High King of Fillory shouldn’t be able to leave Fillory. Remember when that was a huge plot point that caused great angst for Eliot in season 2? And how it only stopped because magic went away so the spells involved no longer worked?

Let’s assume Margot was grandfathered out into the normal world, and further assume that an election still makes her High King, not Eliot. As soon as Ember’s Emanation snapped her back into Fillory, she shouldn’t have been able to leave until MAYBE she was ‘overthrown’ (which might have given a REASON for her to be overthrown, if her location on earth mattered)

Yet that’s not a concern at all. Margot also doesn’t really bother to rule much so. sucks. but whatever. Clearly they just wanted King Fen here. (Again, ‘king’, because ‘queen’ is weak somehow. ew girls.)

NEXT

Eliot. How do you mess up Eliot when he’s in like three episodes and barely in two of those? I don’t know but they did it.

Here’s the problem with his ‘darkest memory’ thing. It’s not that Eliot might have feelings for Q, this surprises NO ONE, it’s everything else about it.

First. Puzzle Quentin marries PEACH GIRL. He’s not married to Eliot, they just share an extremely deep bond. It’s pretty much explicitly nonromantic though, given that Quentin marries and breeds with some girl he never mentions nor appears to mourn again. He’s hit with a lifetime of feelings, and instead of thinking “I had a wife...and a child...what happened to my child?” he thinks “Gee, I should hook up with Eliot even though I’m bicurious at best.”

This. This is while he is self-professed to be in love with Alice, around the time of his fling with Poppy, and again, right after finding out he was married, widowed, and a father. This is when the writers decided to stage “Once, Quentin wanted to marry Eliot.” It just makes Quentin look fickle, unfaithful, and frankly some kind of addicted to relationships, like he’s terrified of not being in one.

But it’s also? Not a good look for Eliot. Because this season basically MOCKS his marriage to Fen. He’s shown to be affectionate to her, she is in the trio of the people that he loves (Margot, Quentin, and Fen) who he summons to protect him, but very very very little is spoken or suggested by him to be missing her or wanting to see her again, and more importantly, it doesn’t ring true for him to be ‘afraid of commitment’ or whatever it is he was suggesting by rejecting Q here.

Why? Because he already did this arc. Season 2 is all about him accepting his role of King (which they take away because lol) and more importantly, his marriage to Fen. He has to learn to accept monogamy and actually build feelings for Fen, eventually starting a family with her - that is tragically ripped from him by the Fairies. He then spends s3 with Fen as his wife and with a fake daughter, adventuring and questing and crap, and during the time the scene is set very clearly fine with commitment, as he’s actually in love with Fen at this point and not running away from the marriage. During this time he’s also totally cool with marrying another king for peace because he likes that guy, but I guess we should forget him because...I don’t know? He’s black, maybe?

By the way, he mentions how he ‘has sex with people’s boyfriends’ and shows the scene of his doppel getting it on with someone who has a boyfriend and ignores that he is actively cheating on Fen while he is doing this.

And the show makes fun of Fen mourning the death of her husband, and also implies something like Fen maybe didn’t really love him because she didn’t see herself as a person and was only raised ‘for the high king’ (nevermind she used to be a FU Fighter, they forgot), and that she’s dealt with losing her child TWICE now. Nah, she’s mostly for laughs because DAGGERS.

This is all done just to diminish Eliot/Fen so they can pretend Quentin was in a triangle with Eliot and Alice literally just to make it more sad when he dies unbelievably pointlessly.

Gosh.

Am I forgetting anything? Hm.

The library plot was garbage, but that ties into the dumpsterfire of s3 finale.

Oh yes. Isn’t it great when Marina is just a repeated trope forever? Ah, yes. Me too. I love when characters are super flanderized instead of being allowed to grow and change. All characters in Magicians basically just need to spin their wheels and retrace steps over and over until they die.

Ah yes.

Quentin, thy name is hypocrisy. You’ve been abusive to Alice for three seasons, and then you have the nerve to freak out at her over the keys? Sure it was a dick move, but honestly this only happened because you kept abusing Alice and manipulating her into loving you over and over. Because you’re a dick.

And let’s close out on that, I think, not on a bizarre rendition of Take on Me.

Alice, ex-Niffin, smartest and most talented and most capable mage they know, does not get any say when Quentin stupidly kills himself (by the way he only dies because for reasons known only to the writers he STOPS running and just stands there until he dies). She doesn’t throw the thing in WITH Quentin stopping the crisis before it happens (why were they moving so slowly when there was such a short timeframe? Just LOB EM IN, MAN! Alternatively wtf was the library still forcibly shorting people when there was a universal crisis and Zelda KNEW IT?)

Nope.

Our girl power season ends like this:

Julia loses her agency and has her life defined by the two main men in her life

Alice has no agency in how things play out in the mirror and has her life defined by the two (same) men in her life

Margot is told to ‘go cry outside or something’, and has fallen in love with a random white dude because she banged him once rather than literally let him die. This is character development, because none of the other relationships she’s ever had matter or affected her because they weren’t a romance.

Kady decides to define her life around the (dead) man in her life, until the other man in her life makes her realize he needs her still.

Fen is overthrown by some man offscreen

Zelda refuses to own up to the Library’s problems and try to fix them herself, and instead decides she’s going to pick someone else to do it for her. Also arguably she just sat back and let two men decide how the world would play out.

But it’s okay, guys. The Magicians is very subversive and not like other shows. The white cishet men aren’t main characters, and they proved that because Quentin died, and that’s WAY more subversive than the books, where everyone gets stories and endings that ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE FOR THEM and Quentin actually gets to eventually be happy.

But it’s not a suicide, because Quentin’s friends love him and therefore he had a good thing going, and Quentin has never ever missed or thrown away a good thing before.

Remember guys

it’s really realistic, because ANYONE CAN DIE IN REAL LIFE GUYS

OH MY LORD JUST GIVE US THE EMMY AND TELL US WE’RE PROGRESSIVE, PLEASE. WE’RE ALMOST THERE!

That’s season 4 of Magicians.

It’s bad.

[destroyyourbinder]

rethinking butch while doing my laundry in buckets at 8 PM

You know, I never thought there would be anything on this earth that could make me re-think my commitment to pants over skirts and dresses, a vow I had made to myself over and over again since my childhood days of being crammed into tights and lace, but doing my laundry in a series of five gallon buckets in the bathtub of our dingy apartment was it.

I was thinking yesterday, while staring into our shared closet and remembering when I had a purple closet full of clothes that I had to tug at, clothes that I tried to ignore that they existed even when I was wearing them, that I probably haven't worn a skirt outside of a Halloween costume in almost fifteen years. When I moved out of my parents' house I ditched my last one, a vintage skirt that had always stayed on its hanger, part of a pair with a yellow blazer that I had loved but didn't fit anymore. I felt vindicated, but a bit lost, as if a high school presentation was going to leap out of the void at any time and make me regret my decision. I didn't bring any skirts with me here, to the city; it felt daring and somehow pathetic at the same time, a sign of how stunted my life had been that it seemed like a bold move at all. It was a tiny hop into the deep end of a lesbian kiddie pool. Skirts do lurk around the corner at any old thrift store, but somehow I felt like there was no going back; I had banished them, and they would not return.

My girlfriend and I share most of our clothes, as we're close in size-- she's a bit broader, I'm a bit taller-- and our clothing tastes are pretty similar. She has her favorites, and I have mine, and we don't tend to share pants or shoes due to the particulars of how we wear them out, but the rest are a big indeterminately owned mass of potential dress options. The thing is is that she's supposed to be a "man"; she still lives a life where she doesn't tell people she's detransitioned, generally, and most people take her to be outright male or a trans man. I'm not supposed to be a man; I don't pass except maybe from afar and behind, and I assume I mostly come across as tired and dumpy and gay. I don't really know if people notice that our shirts and shorts and socks swap between and across us. Maybe they're too confused by the other things going on with us to see that one. When we worked together doing early morning stocking we used to fuck with people, we'd switch our jackets and hats every so often and see who we could fool, which was way too many people at way too close a range for a pair of human beings supposed to be at the opposite poles of Gender. Nobody was particularly apologetic about it either when they mistook us, even though that kind of outright misgendering is supposed to be a major faux pas. They usually just laughed in a way that indicated that, well, of course. I laugh in the same way when people tell me that Trans Men are Men, that everyone treats them just like any other male person, that nobody knows they aren't male, that they never experienced sexism and never will, that the gap between them and A Woman is incomprehensibly large. A waiter's never handed me the check at the diner when I was out with a dude, but they do it all the time when I'm with my girlfriend, and then she has to use the men's room after dinner.

I've somehow gotten more "masculine" since I stopped seeing myself as transgender, which I think might surprise people who know nothing about the process of desisting or reidentifying or detransition, but doesn't surprise women who have been through this. I feel a lot less neurotic about wearing men's clothes, about buzzing my hair off, about being hairy elsewhere and not hiding it, about stepping out into the world as an unacceptable female person, uncontained and unbridled, edging in on men's turf. The stakes aren't quite as high, now, honestly, even though they're higher than they have been before. I don't have my family to fall back on if I lose my job due to being an unrepentant dyke, but now that I'm not in her house, I don't worry about my mother discovering my secrets, including that I'm not the daughter she wanted me to be. I'm scared to go out after 7 PM if I can't sufficiently cover up the fact that I'm female, but my entire sense of self worth isn't riding on whether or not someone perceives my ham-handed attempts at not-being-female correctly. I worry about my rent, but I don't worry about where exactly it is men pull up their socks to on their legs, and I don't worry about whether I'm not really worthy of living if I can't do it right, because I don't worry about if I'm not really a man or just a fuck-up of a woman, and I don't worry about whether or not a fuck-up of a woman is the worst thing I could possibly be. Well, I worry about it sometimes, still, because it matters to other people, even if I don't think it matters to me. But I've stopped trying to compensate for my fuck-ups by wearing the right earrings with my undercut, or hiding my breasts under a binder, hidden under a blouse. I can leave the house without having twenty thousand insecurities about the masculinity or femininity of my leg hair growth pattern or the color-contrast of my lips. So I leave the house in shit my nine year old self would probably appreciate: a flannel, a shirt with a cat on it, yellow pants with functioning pockets. I try to take stupid thoughts about whether the pocket style of said pants makes my butt look girly the same way I took my skirts, which is to chuck them out in honor of living a life without gender neuroses.

They always say that gender is culturally contextual, limited to time and place, and while we all pay lip service to that in some way or another when we get mad that our favorite historical figure got parsed as one thing or another, I think we all like to think we would be butch lesbians or trans men or whatever it is we are in another life, that we probably wouldn't have ended up like our great-grandmothers but something like female husbands, passing soldiers and sailors, instead. I spent a lot of time as a kid wondering why the hell girls did this or that, wasn't it harder, it's so stupid; I felt so betrayed when I hit middle school, and everyone was tripping over their purses, pursed lips in candy-sparkle lipgloss, on the way to idolize boys. I wanted to be among boys, I wanted to be a boy, somehow at the same time I thought girls were stupid for admiring them in the other way. I think a lot of us carry this into adulthood; we figure femininity's a bunch of dumb crap we can't be bothered to do, and besides we're unsuited for it, constitutionally incapable of hoisting a tube of fabric above our pooch. We escaped from it because we kept our heads (non) straight or maybe because it wicked off us like pink droplets on a Teflon pan, which we definitely use to make burgers with and not cute hors d’oeuvres. We know what a dress means and how it works, and we know how it makes us feel, and we know we would never wear it, not on a desert island nor to our sister's wedding.

After washing my clothes in a bucket, I don't think you should do disservice to your grandmothers like that. I had to sit on one of my other buckets-- there are three in this clothes washing system-- and think for a bit about what the hell I was doing with all this gender and anti-gender shit, what the fuck I was doing with my life at all. Because the thought I had, which surprised me, was that pants are fucking bullshit. They're fucking bullshit when you wash your clothes by hand, which is what generations of women did before me. My value system got turned upside down; I spent my whole life thinking skirts and dresses were frilly nonsense, floofery intended to hold women back from participating in the world, an "easy access" hole to parts I didn't want to exist. And it's not like that isn't true: women's dresses and skirts have been artificially cumbersome throughout history, full of engineered contraptions to enhance women's decorative-sexual living-pornography value, whether literally stuffed with metal cages and yards of fluff or whether tightly drafted to form a second skin. When you can't fucking sit down or lift your legs or bend over it's a problem, when your teeth chatter in the winter on your way to school it's a problem, when you can't be a lawyer or a senator without wearing the appropriate kind of Leg Tube it's a problem. It was a problem when my mom put me in a velvet thing that rested just above my knees, and I wasn't allowed to play or even spread my legs while I was in it, lest I render myself an obscene five year old girl. But the Leg Tube isn't the problem, it's all the other shit, and I had never taken that seriously, never really dug into it, until I had to confront the inconvenience of manually sloshing around my pants for ten minutes.

I had confused symbolism for reality. I thought I was done with that, over that, now that I was out of the trans shit. I was living in some patriarchal dollhouse, and I had thought I busted out, but now I'm in another one, better maybe, but just as artificial, because the grass being greener over here all hinged on having a washing machine. When do I get to leave? I am suddenly afraid I'll spend my life in an infinite nested universe of misogynist fuckery, having existential crises about the fridge or maybe the carpet next.

I guess my girlfriend and I got into what you might call "urban homesteading" by accident. We didn't set out to do this out of convictions or philosophy, it was mostly because we were cheap, and also we're lazy in a certain kind of baffling ADHD way where it's easier to make a curtain with your two damn hands than navigate thirty, fifty pages of advertising-merchandising to find one that will ship to your house for not-sixteen-dollars . Car insurance in this town is absurd, so we just don't have a vehicle. We also don't turn on the heat in the winter, or the air conditioning in the summer. We bake bread, make yogurt, make shampoo, wash out and reuse plastic zipper bags, don't flush the toilet for stretches of time. Clothes get patches upon patches, breadcrumbs go in a jar, there are lots of systems for a lot of things that nobody really thinks about anymore. My dad told me his family used to sleep on the porch of their farmhouse in the summer; I can't do that here, but it comes to mind anyway. He was from that kind of people where you did it yourself or you didn't do it at all, German farm folk born in nineteen-oh-something; my mom was from people that didn't do it at all, her father too drunk to give a shit, her mother feeding her seven kids out of cans. There's a weird mix of shame and pride when you end up doing your laundry in buckets, dual gene lines, dual angel-devils sitting on my shoulders: someone clapping me on the back for my resourcefulness, a job well done, and someone asking me why the hell I stooped to this when there's a washer in the basement, didn't I work hard so you didn't have to live this way.

We saw it on YouTube and thought we could save some money on electricity or water because our landlord isn't going to replace our 30-plus years old washing machine anytime soon. I thought maybe doing it in the buckets would help my busted brain a little, 'cause I could do it every couple days, fifteen minutes at a time, instead of in big piles once a week. I like shit I can touch or otherwise it doesn't feel real, I can't keep track of it, it feels like the sort of work women with tight lips and long nails do and they make their lips tighter when I can’t hack it. There could be a system, tangible, clothes I can see in places where they belong, hands on a plunger pushing soap and water and fabric up and down, you can tell if they got clean yet or not if you open the lid. I don't like dumping them in a machine, an unknown hole of productivity, input-output, assembly line nonsense. I'm not productive anyway, so what do I care?

When you're doing your laundry by hand like this something occurs to you, which is that this is a lot of work, and maybe you don't want to be doing this all the time, so you should be careful with how dirty your clothes get. I realized real quick I wasn't going to be doing this every day, and that it would be wasteful, worse than the water usage of some old-ass washer to try. You start realizing how dumb it is to wear your clothes once and only once before you wash them, as you plunge up and down, up and down. It occurs to you that ten minutes is a pretty long amount of time, even though you're in your late twenties and winter just showed up again and you keep wondering where the hell the time goes anymore. You start resenting how stupid and arbitrary it is that you're supposed to be squeaky clean in public, that stains and wear are unacceptable, that they mean anything at all about anybody except that they live a life and entropy exists. You think that if you have to put this much arm power into washing your clothes, then how much power has to go into a damn washer, and you start thinking about the arms that shovel coal out of the ground, into rail-cars, into boilers. You start getting real mad about how much shit the world puts people through just so clothes can get clean and floors can get clean and skin can get clean and nothing will look like it's ever been touched except by a very conscientious housewife. Your brain starts contriving things while your arms are going, like some wild-haired inventor, like maybe if you had an underlayer of clothing all the time you could just wash that and the outer layer would be allowed to get dirty for a while. Brilliant! And then you feel stupid because well, that's what we always did until you could dump your shit into an electric machine, and then they raised the standards to keep women busy doing something they didn't need to do. It occurs to you that pants are dumb because they're heavy and sopping wet, one big lump of fabric, and you can't wear an underlayer unless it's really cold outside. It occurs to you that pants are not worth it unless you are doing certain kinds of manual labor all the time or you need to protect your legs. You understand why the women in YouTube videos about washing your clothes in buckets are really mad at their husbands and sons, and some generational rage takes hold of your arms as you agitate the clothes in the bucket. Why do men get to be dirty in their stupid pants. Why do women have to clean them. You never want to hear anybody talk about fashion ever again. You never want to hear anybody talk about the gender of clothes again unless they've wrung out denim in anger and they're willing to wring a man's neck the same. Now you get to drain the bucket. Now you get to refill the bucket with clean water and agitate again. Now you get to drain the bucket and press the water out of your clothes with the full bucket. Now you get to hang up your clothes over your tub.

When I stopped seeing myself as transgender I told myself I would consider very carefully the value of anything I did, and I would let practicality and ethics dictate my life rather than sucking up to gender, to men, to the women pandering to them and afraid I wasn't going to. It's taken me some wild places, for real, and I didn't think it would take me to a place where I was questioning wearing pants. But given this, I find myself all the same cringing at wearing a skirt or something else other than those damn pants, other than the thing that men wear and women fought for, willing to violate my newfound guiding forces... and for what? Butch cred? Womanly pride? Can't I just shove it all in the washing machine and stop thinking about this? Do I need to live in the woods to tie something around my waist and get on with my life? If I've learned anything there's really nothing neutral when it comes to gender shit, and no matter how far you get in processing the patriarchy there's always something else at the bottom of a bucket, a broom, a sink strainer. How many years worth of women have had these thoughts while scrubbing something, however they cut their fucking hair? I try to focus more on that these days, rather than what I call myself or what pronoun I use. My grandmother, my mother, all those girls in my class who I thought were big idiots, the women out there bigger and badder and butcher than me, the trans men I envied for living in my dream world, all these female people I defined myself against all these years, we all end up here, staring into a drain, hoping the man won't crush us. When does it end? I want it to end. I'm done spinning my head in circles about the cut of my jeans, whether I wear jeans at all, and I hope you are too.

[crashdevlin]

Bottle- 4: Mine

Author’s Note: Originally posted to ao3 (This is an edited and improved version), I work in info from the comics (Like Hawkeye was married to Mockingbird and Red Skull had a disappointing daughter) and I took a few liberties with what the scepter could do (but not really because the Mind Stone was used to create the Twins so what I did is not that far-fetched). This is a lot more angst than I realized when I wrote it, but it’s compelling angst.

Summary: Cassandra Campbell is a Stark Industries lab tech with dubious genetics and a history with the new Director of SHIELD. She’s been working in New York since right before the Chitauri invasion. What does she have to do with Loki, and what will happen when he returns? Starts post TDW and continues to the end of AoU.

Pairing(s): Phil Coulson x OFC (Past), Loki x OFC (Non-con), Clint Barton x OFC, Steve Rogers x OFC

Word Count: 3729

Story Warnings: So many, worst (to me) are bolded. Younger woman/older man relationship, non-con, mutilation, torture, mind control, PTSD, depression, alcoholism, forced abortions, bad things (non-con) in a church, insomnia, memory manipulation, eventual consensual oral sex (female and male receiving),

Chapter Warnings: non-con (past), mutilation (past), torture (past), PTSD, depression, alcoholism, possessive Loki, mind control, mentions of a forced abortion

Cassie went through her closet, full of modest dresses and high-necked blouses, and picked out her most modest dress, a light brown 3/4 sleeve with a loose turtleneck. She put on opaque black tights and lined her eyes with brown liquid liner, and added a cream-colored eye shadow. Cassie added a wine-red lipstick to pop against the neutral color scheme. Looking in the mirror, she felt she looked gorgeous in a classical way.

At exactly 7:30, a knock came to her door. She opened it for Steve, who was dressed in slacks and a light blue button-up shirt. He offered her a bouquet of three deep-red Gerbera daisies with a smile. "You look beautiful. This look, it kinda reminds me of... girls from my day."

"Modesty works for both of us, then." She said, setting the flowers on the table next to the door and walking out. She closed the door and followed Steve to the elevator, where he pressed ‘L’. As the lift started moving she smiled to herself. “So, be honest, did you wait in the hall for a few minutes so you could knock exactly at the half hour?”

Steve chuckled. “No. I did wait in the lobby until 7:28, though.” He admitted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"The look on the Colonel's face when Bucky and I walked into camp with all those POWs behind us, it made the whole thing worth it."

Cassie giggled. "Wow. That is great. You know, I've heard that story 'cause my ex was a bit of a fanboy, but it's so much better from you."

"So, what about you?" Steve asked, taking a polite sip of his water and then setting it back onto the table. "Any interesting stories from your life?"

Cassie shook her head. "No. I spent my ten years in a Hydra lab, then I spent my ten years in a SHIELD lab at the Fridge. Then I spent two years in Cali, and I’ve been here for a little over one. Never really made any waves or created any stories."

"What, no one has ever died in your labs?”

“Well, Hydra lab… probably, but I don’t remember it at all.”

“I wasn’t expecting an actual answer, Miss Campbell." He said, laughing. "So, why don't you tell me about your SHIELD agent ex?"

Cassie’s face sobered. "What do you mean?"

"Well, this modesty of yours isn't an act. It isn't entirely something that Loki thrust upon you. You are naturally modest and shy. So, you wouldn't have been so forward as to be with someone unless you were absolutely comfortable with them: the comfort of years. The only people you were around long enough to build that kind of rapport with were SHIELD agents."

She blushed and looked at her lap. "You don't get enough credit for your brain, Steve."

"Behind the times doesn't mean stupid."

Cassie took a deep breath and smiled, deciding on a mostly-true version of events. "I met him on the jet when Fury was taking me to the Fridge. He was taking some weapon to be locked up. He called me 'Jo' because Joanna is an old lady name.” She gave a small chuckle thinking about being ten years old, finally getting a real name, getting her first nickname. “He gave me a blanket when it got cold on the plane. He was nice to me, when no one else really was. He’s the first person I can ever remember being nice to me. I didn't see him again for 5 years but he apparently intervened on my behalf with Fury a few times. Ultimately, my stay in the Fridge was much nicer because of him… and once I'd learned how to read and write, Fury let us be pen pals."

"Pen pals? That takes me back."

"Well, I wasn't allowed tech in my cell. Everything had to be on paper, checkable. Not like I had an email in the first place, or really knew what email was. Anyway, he got a promotion from what he was doing, which was tracking down alien tech, to being in charge of several labs. That put him in charge of my yearly exams. So, we kept writing but I got to see him a bit, a couple times a year. After my year 17 exam, he started writing me more often... and it was different, you know, the tone. He didn't see me as a kid anymore, I guess. He started coming by more often to see me and then, one day, he just kissed me."

Steve raised his eyebrows, slightly. "Fury must have been livid."

She nodded. "Yeah. He ordered us not to see each other and set Maria Hill on a collision course with us. My ex kept writing, though and when Fury finally let me out into the real world, he defied orders to come be with me."

"So, what happened? He's not around now."

She scoffed, derisively. "He found someone else. Someone closer to his age. I mean, she was still younger, but… only by a few years. She was a woman who knew more about the world than just what she'd read in books. I saw a picture of her... online. She's pretty gorgeous, but she's modest-looking, too. I could see how he would fall out of love with me for her."

"You still love him, though?" It was less a question and more a statement.

Cassie shrugged. "First love never dies, does it? I'm sure you have a memory of a girl long gone who you can't ever have. Doesn't make you love her any less."

Steve nodded. "Well, maybe it's not too late. He might still realize his mistake."

She shook her head. "Not likely. He was in the facility when Loki came through the Tesseract."

He pursed his lips. "I'm sorry."

"It's not like he was mine when he died."

"Doesn't make it hurt any less." Cassie nodded. Steve looked around the restaurant. "I think this is probably a pretty bad topic for a first date." Steve mused.

She gave a genuine smile. "Well, pardon my not knowing the etiquette."

"I don't know much more than you." He admitted.

She chuckled. "Well, we seem to be doing all right."

"Yeah. We are."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Steve walked her to her apartment, hands behind his back. Once they got to the door, they turned to each other.

"You know, I wasn't expecting much from tonight, but... I really enjoyed myself, Steve. You are a breath of fresh air in a world full of guys just trying to get laid. You are a total gentlemen, without the misogynistic undertones: the whole Mad Men thing." Cassie rolled her eyes at herself. "Point is, I had a lot of fun."

Steve nodded with a smile. "Me too. I mean, I haven't had this much fun since the 40s."

This drew an honest laugh from the woman. "From anyone else, that would sound pathetic, but from you, I take that as a high compliment."

"It is, Cassie. One of the highest I am prepared to give. Maybe, we could do it again, sometime, for our benefit instead of Loki's." He said, a bit awkwardly.

"I would really like to, Steve..." She started, unsure of herself because she honestly wanted to but she wondered what that emotion meant when held up against the way she felt for Clint.

"Oh, it's fine either way." Steve said, covering himself from the rejection. That shy act made up her mind.

"That's the end of the sentence. I'd really love to, Steve."

Steve smiled, brightly, showing all those perfect white teeth. "Well, let me know if you have any issues. I will be right upstairs with Tony, keeping an eye on your apartment."

"I'll make sure to change for bed in the bathroom, then."

He chuckled. "Well, have a nice night." Steve said, before leaning down to kiss her cheek.

She walked into her apartment, misty-eyed, with her hand over her cheek. "Just marching through the Avengers roster, aren't you? Who is next? Banner seems lonely and Romanoff seems up for anything."

She turned to her bathroom, her throat going dry, all the happiness draining out of her. Loki was sitting on the edge of her tub. She reached her hand into her purse, feeling for the orb. Loki moved his leg to show the sceptre leaning against her bathroom wall. "I wouldn't." He warned.

"How'd you know where the cameras are?" She whispered.

"Your patriotic friend would never allow Stark to completely blanket this place in cameras."

"So, what? You have to know that I have other ways of alerting them to your presence."

"3 minutes. That's what it will take for Stark to put on his suit and come to your rescue. Rogers will have to wait on the lift. You will be mine again long before they make it here." Loki said, matter-of-factly. He stood, picking up the sceptre.

"JARVIS, door!" She shouted, running for the living room. Her front door swung open as she heard Loki moving behind her. She ran for the elevator, not deterred as a copy of the god popped up in front of her. Unfortunately, her short legs and the 3 inch clogs she chose to go with her vintage dress proved to be too much of a hindrance and Loki quickly caught up with her, grabbing her wrist and spinning her around. He touched her chest with the sceptre and she stopped dead.

He smirked as he looked down at her. "Your date will be exiting those doors in a moment, Joanna. We cannot risk letting him get the better of you. You don't have his training… yet. Let's make haste to the end of this hall." He gestured way from the elevator with the scepter.

"Stark will be waiting outside those windows. If I may..." Loki nodded, proud of how quickly this strong-willed woman turned. She walked purposefully to the elevator. "JARVIS, stop the elevator car for me, but open these doors."

"Of course ma'am, but I will have to inform Mr. Stark of this occurrence."

"That's fine, JARVIS, thank you." She turned to Loki as the elevator doors opened to an empty shaft. "Stark gave me voice controls over the elevator. We should have time to get to the basement levels and out of the building through the sewer systems before he has JARVIS let Rogers out."

She reached a pale hand up to grab her collar, before ripping it off in a long strip, which she pulled in half. She wrapped the pieces around her hands, tucking the ends to prevent them unravelling. "Hold onto my shoulders, mi'lord."

Loki complied, an awkward configuration due to their height difference, but the formerly modest woman didn't seem to notice as she jumped to the elevator cables like a cat and started slowly sliding down them. Her clunky shoes caught most of the friction, a sickening smell of burning rubber and leather wafting up and making Loki's nose wrinkle.

As they reached the halfway point in their journey down, the sound of glass breaking above them hit their ears, right before the elevator began its descent. Cassie let the pressure off of her feet and slid down the rest of the way. She pulled open the sub basement elevator door and led Loki into the sewers as she unwrapped her hands. As she threw her wraps to the ground, Loki noticed large burns across her palms, but she ignored them as she continued along her planned extraction route.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"So, Loki wins. He's going to get his army, after all." Bruce shook his head, sadly.

"Not if we can get her back before she can replicate the serum. Which, being honest, she's likely to fail at." Tony reasoned. “I mean, how many other real scientists have tried since Cap’s days?”

"And how do we plan on getting her back? He's possessed her again. She won't even want to be saved. She's going to be working against us." Natasha seemed apathetic, but there was an edge to her voice.

"Not by choice.” Steve reminded. “If I could manage to get Bucky to recognize me after Hydra wiped his mind, maybe we could get Cassie to."

"What, appeal to her humanity? Her memories? We barely know this girl." Widow said.

"I think I got to know her pretty well last night. I think there is a lot in her that we could appeal to if we had the chance."

"We just need to bash her on the head real hard." Clint said, causing everyone to turn to him. He shrugged and looked back to the arrow in his hand, which he was sharpening. "It fixed me."

"Have to find her first." Stark said.

"I might be able to provide assistance in the endeavour." A booming voice came from the doorway.

"A well-timed assist from the thunder God. How's Asgard?" Tony said, turning to the Asgardian.

"It is well. All realms are harmonious in the wake of Malekith's demise. Except Midgard, of course, which seems to enjoy chaos."

"Well, no wonder your brother wants Midgard." Natasha mused.

"Yes. Loki died in my arms on Svartlefheim, but it must have been an illusion concocted in order to avoid being taken back to prison.” Thor turned to Steve. “I'm mortified that my gullibility has caused this pain. I promise we will get back your woman, Steven."

Clint kept his attention on sharpening his arrows tips as Steve blushed. "She's not my woman, Thor. We only went on one date."

"And he didn't get nearly as far with her as Barton did."

Clint calmly blew on the tip of an arrow. "Natasha, you petty bitch."

Natasha gave a small smirk. "I didn't know it was a secret. You did know you were on camera."

"That's why she hesitated." Steve muttered under his breath.

"This isn't important. What's important is that Loki has her." Everyone stared as Clint dropped his feet from the back of the chair in front of him. "Look, I've known her for years longer than any of you. I've been flirting with her for a week. She was not at all surprised when I kissed her. She liked it. She just didn't want me to stay."

"Wait!" Thor said, staring at the screen and completely ignoring the human drama behind him. "Reverse the flow of this image."

Tony hit a button on his tablet and rewound the video. Thor put his hand up when it got to the point where Cassie ripped the collar off of her dress. "There. Stop."

The Avengers squinted at the Asgardian runes clearly visible once she'd thrown modesty to the wind. "So, what's it say?" Tony asked.

"It is a gruesome, antiquated Asgardian ritual, similar to your ring of engagement. The translation is approximately 'The bearer of the children of Loki, God of Lies'. This girl, is she special?"

"Uh, she's like me. Super strength, amazing reflexes, accelerated cellular regeneration." Steve responded.

"Then she may survive." Thor said, smiling as he turned to the rest of the Avengers.

"Survive what?" Banner asked.

"While Loki appears similar to you and I, that is just a bit of our mother's magic. He is by birth of Jotunheim, land of the Frost Giants."

"And I take it they aren't called giants ironically?" Stark already knew the answer.

"Not at all."

"Great, so now we have the time crunch of saving her before he re-consummates their marriage and puts a baby in her that's gonna destroy her insides." Clint said, exasperated.

"They'll be looking for a lab. She promised him an army, that'll take precedence." Widow reasoned.

"I've got an idea.” Barton said, standing. “It might take a bit of time. Hill, I'm going to need contact with Fury." Barton turned to Hill, who had been unnoticed standing in the back.

"Why?"

"Because SHIELD may be dead but Fury is not and I'm not disobeying a direct order without at least letting him know."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Natasha walked up to Steve at the coffee maker as the other Avengers milled around the Tower. "Sorry about that. I didn't mean to make a spectacle about it. I just didn't want you getting hurt. She's the first one you've opened up to since they thawed you out." She said as Steve poured himself a cup.

"It's fine. I was a bit mad at first, but... Barton has been wearing her down for a while, and she told me that she wasn't expecting to have a good time with me. It was supposed to be pretend so I understand her keeping her options open to his intentions.” Steve took a drink of his coffee and shrugged. “But she chose me, Natasha. Not in any permanent or especially important sense, but.. I asked her to go out with me again and she said 'yes', even after her whole event with Clint. That means something."

"Maybe she wanted to have you both?" Natasha could tell from the smell that Steve had made the coffee 'Army strong'.

Steve shook his head. "That's not her style. She's shy, reserved, not a two-timer. She wanted to date me. She wanted respect, not someone aggressively trying to bed her."

"I just want you to remember that you have only been on one date with this girl. You barely know her."

"I will keep that in mind, Natasha."

**********************

"All right, talked my plan through with Fury, he seemed convinced. We are gonna head to the Playground." Clint said as he walked into the lounge half an hour later.

"Which is?" Banner asked.

"Top secret base in a location I can't tell you. It's got a lab with everything Cassie would need to analyse her blood. Loki will be watching us, we lead them there."

"Why the hell would we lead them there if it’s got everything she needs?" Tony asked, his eyebrows pulling close to each other.

"Because there is a small group of SHIELD agents there, one of 'em is very important to her."

"Her ex? She said he died." There was a break in Steve's voice. He'd been lied to.

"He did, but this is SHIELD we're talking about. They brought him back with an experimental procedure based on alien tech. He's alive and mostly well. She sees him, remembers who she is, we fuck up Loki. Pretty simple." Clint ran down the plan quickly.

"How do you know who her ex was?" Rogers asked, defensively.

"I've known her for years." Barton dismissed.

"You keep saying that, but she doesn't have friends, Clint. She didn't take any personal mementos from her apartment except a blanket and a photo album. She doesn't have people, Barton." Tony clarified.

"I said, I've known her for years, not that we've been friends. It was my job to know her, everything about her."

"She was a mission." Natasha wasn't asking.

"She was the daughter of Red Skull and she was fucking a high level SHIELD agent. Fury would've been an idiot to let her out into the world without surveillance." Clint snapped.

"So your job was to follow a twenty year old girl and her boyfriend around?" Bruce seemed appalled.

"Just her, and only until she left him. Fury didn't feel she was worth the manpower afterwards. He thought I was of better use on the Tesseract project."

"She said he found someone else." Steve sighed, upset about the way she’d lied, but also that Fury had been watching her.

"He did, but he wasn't going to dump her. He isn't the type to break hearts. She saw that he'd be happier with the other woman, so she got a transfer to New York while he was on a mission. Dear John note and all that. Now, can we focus? Playground Base."

"Grab a go bag and suit up." Tony announced.

Widow walked up to Clint as he packed his bow and arrows of many different types. "So, did you decide that you wanted to get her in bed while you were spying on her for Fury or after?"

Clint didn't turn to the arrogant-sounding woman behind him. "I watched this woman for almost two years, Nat. I know her. Probably better than she knows herself. I watched her learn to live in the real world for the first time. I watched her thrive. I saw her match wits with the men in Stark's labs and I saw them begin to love her. I watched her become better and better." He straightened and looked the Russian in the eye. "I watched her swell with excitement when she learned she had created life with the only man she'd ever loved. And I watched her decide not to tell him, not to use that child against him, so that he could be happy with someone else. I saw her take the three material things she gave a damn about and sandwich them between the few outfits she could fit in her suitcase and leave everything else behind. I watched her write that letter. I could recite it to you if I wanted. She blamed herself 'cause she didn't want him to feel guilty. She is this amazing, intelligent, beautiful, selfless woman and I handed her to Loki."

The regret in his voice made Natasha falter. The petty feeling she'd been holding onto disappeared. "You didn't have any control of that."

"Yeah, I can use that for most things. I can write off the things I did in the past because I'm making up for them now. I can ignore the things I've done for SHIELD because the ends justify the means. I can forget the men I killed, the things I did under Loki's thrall because it wasn't really me, but not this. Not her." Clint shook his head. "There is no redemption on this. Loki took this perfect woman and broke her. This isn't about bedding her, Natasha. It's about fixing her."

"And if Steve is the tool to make those repairs?"

Clint looked down. "Then he is. Or Phil is. If it's not me, so be it. I just can't leave her undone."

Natasha nodded and Clint began to walk away. "And the baby?"

He turned back, slinging the bag and his bow onto his back. "Loki couldn't have his woman carrying another man's child. Why do you think he was so rough?"

[joannalannister]

Ok I'm sorry I'm asking a lot of questions. Do you think Jaime has a stronger feminine side/is more in touch with his feminine side then most guys in westeros due to his hella close relationship with cersei? And if so, how does it manifest itself in his thoughts/feelings/actions/beliefs? Also, do you think Jaime thinks about women in general differently then other men due to his relationship with cersei? (Btw I've also sent a similar q to queenaly to see what she has to say - is that ok?)

I thought about this for a few days, and I guess I’m not sure what it means for Jaime to be “in touch with his feminine side”? What is a feminine side, exactly?

For example, when Jaime and Cersei switched places as children, Jaime might have picked up a few skills that are considered more “traditionally feminine” like sewing – but Tyrion knows how to sew as well, and he specifically says he enjoys needlework, so could we also say that Tyrion is also more in touch with his feminine side? And Jaime occasionally dressed in Cersei’s clothes as a child, but Samwell was also dressed in women’s clothing as a child, so does that make him more “in touch with his feminine side”? 

So I guess I don’t think it has to do with activities or clothing. But I don’t know if the conventional definition of being “in touch with his feminine side” has to do with those things?

I’m literally gonna go google “in touch with his feminine side meaning” because I don’t know how else to approach this? 

OK top result on google: “6 Ways To Get In Touch With Your Feminine Side.”  This is how it starts:

Everyone has feminine and masculine qualities that define who they are. Your masculine side gets expressed when you’re working toward a goal, making progress, getting things done, and pushing forward. 

Ok, wow, y’all should see my face rn reading this is sexist bullshit. I didn’t know that getting shit done was considered masculine.

Google Result #2: “In Touch With His Feminine Side -TV Tropes”

A character who is In Touch With His Feminine Side, also known as a Tomgirl or Janegirl, is a male who lacks certain stereotypically male traits and may adopt some stereotypically girlish traits. Such characters are sometimes referred to as being “sensitive.”

Ok, this is slightly more useful. TV Tropes goes on to list a number of traits, so let’s see if those apply to Jaime:

Lack of athleticism - nope, not Jaime.

Lack of aggression - ohhhh boy, definitely not Jaime

An Open, Emotional Personality - No? Jaime’s rather emotionally guarded? It took him ~16 years to open up about killing Aerys.

Typically (traditionally) feminine interests - No. Jaime likes “swords and dogs and horses”. He “thirsts for battle” 

Effeminate or Non-Masculine Appearance - No. “This is what a king should look like.” 

“To qualify a character must have a large percentage of these traits and/or have their effeminate-ness be remarked on in-universe“ - No.

Imma say no, not in touch with his feminine side by this definition. 

But I think this feminine side/masculine side thing is kinda BS to begin with 

(women aren’t athletic? Catelyn Stark wasn’t ready to murder people with her bare hands on behalf of her family? Women have a monopoly on emotions now? See, this is BS) 

so let’s try a slightly different question:

Compared to the average male, does Jaime have a better understanding of the female experience in Westeros, given his incestuous relationship with his twin sister?

I think not. 

(Honestly, text format can never accommodate my sweeping hand gestures while answering questions.)

Take it away, Cersei:

“Yet even so, when Jaime was given his first sword, there was none for me. ‘What do I get?’ I remember asking. We were so much alike, I could never understand why they treated us so differently. Jaime learned to fight with sword and lance and mace, while I was taught to smile and sing and please. He was heir to Casterly Rock, while I was to be sold to some stranger like a horse, to be ridden whenever my new owner liked, beaten whenever he liked, and cast aside in time for a younger filly. Jaime’s lot was to be glory and power, while mine was birth and moonblood.“

“But you were queen of all the Seven Kingdoms,” Sansa said.

“When it comes to swords, a queen is only a woman after all.”

Westeros systemically denies women their humanity. Even a queen is worth so much less to Westeros. 

I don’t think Jaime could ever understand what it was like for Cersei to have her body commodified and sexualized since childhood, to be wedded off without any say at all, to be raped as often as Robert liked, whenever he liked, without any recourse at all. 

I don’t think Cersei ever shared or expressed these things to Jaime, either. For example, I don’t think Cersei ever told Jaime how Robert would hurt her: “Never on the face before. Jaime would have killed him, even if it meant his own life.” If Robert had hit Cersei in an obvious place that wasn’t covered up by clothes, one that Jaime could see, Jaime would have flown into a murderous rage. So Cersei has to hide that shit.

(I guess this is an unpopular opinion, but I think Cersei is very guarded, even around Jaime? Like, I don’t think she confides everything to him. She never told him about the valonqar, she didn’t tell him about Robert’s abuse, she didn’t want to tell Jaime about Rhaegar as a child when she was drawing that picture. And same goes for Jaime - Jaime didn’t tell Cersei about the wildfire / killing Aerys. Even in his own POV, Jaime leaves so much unsaid to Cersei / says it only to us. How close are Jaime and Cersei, really?)

(God, I sound like an anti! Sorry! But my love for Cersei and Jaime derives from the tragedy of their relationship. Their misconceptions. The ways they hurt each other. The intensity of their love and hate. Their mutually-assured destruction. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold….) 

Also. There’s this passage in AFFC, and it has one of my favorite lines:

“I took her on Raymun Darry’s bed after stepping over Robert. If His Grace had woken I would have killed him there and then. He would not have been the first king to die upon my sword … but you know that story, don’t you?” He slashed at a tree branch, shearing it in half. “As I was fucking her, Cersei cried, ‘I want.’ I thought that she meant me, but it was the Stark girl that she wanted, maimed or dead.” The things I do for love. “It was only by chance that Stark’s own men found the girl before me. If I had come on her first …”

“As I was fucking her, Cersei cried, ’I want.’

Jaime thinks he understands, he thinks Cersei wanted something as simple as one dead child. 

I don’t think he understands at all. 

Cersei’s wants are so deep, so vast, that she doesn’t even have the words to articulate them. “I want _______.” 

Cersei wants everything, she wants it all, everything that’s been denied to her. 

And Jaime’s had all these things. They all came so easily to him that he valued them very little. 

“You were Robert’s queen. And yet you won’t be mine.”

I really don’t think Jaime understands at all.

(If anyone understands what it’s like to be Cersei, and what a precarious position she’s in, I think that’s Tyrion. Cersei was denied, because she is a woman. Tyrion is denied because he is not able bodied. Like, there’s this quote of Tyrion’s in AGOT: 

“Tyrion wondered what it would be like to have a twin, and decided that he would rather not know. Bad enough to face himself in a looking glass every day. Another him was a thought too dreadful to contemplate.”

That’s one reason why Cersei and Tyrion hate each other. They’re twins, in a way. It’s hard enough for each to face himself/herself. Cersei and Tyrion facing each other … “too dreadful to contemplate.”)

So how does Jaime’s complete lack of understanding of the female experience manifest itself?

In really gross ways tbh:

Sansa Stark, that ought to put a smile on Tyrion’s face. He remembered how happy his brother had been with his little crofter’s daughter … for a fortnight.

When Jaime hears that Tyrion has married Sansa, he thinks nothing about how Sansa was a hostage, married off into the family who murdered her father. He thinks nothing about a little girl, not yet 13 years old, being forced into a relationship where she must always be available for sexual intercourse with a member of the family who murdered her father. 

Literally all Jaime’s think of is, “Way to go, bro!”

Sure, in very obvious cases of rape, Jaime is against it. For example, he wants to protect Rhaella from her husband, because he could hear her crying out. Jaime’s not 100% awful. 

But it didn’t really bother him that Sansa could have been raped on her wedding night. 

And now he wants to smash Cersei’s teeth in, because she’s slept with other people. He’s mad at her, because she hasn’t been faithful, without understanding that Cersei never had the luxury of being faithful to Jaime. 

Jaime’s misogynistic. He’s not as bad as someone like Randyll Tarly, but that’s setting the bar pretty damn low. 

So I’m sorry, I don’t think this was the answer you wanted. 

You said you also sent this question to @goodqueenaly? She writes much better things than I do, so maybe she can give you a better answer?

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

AHS: Cult Revisited (Spoiler Warning: It Sucked Then and It Sucks Now)

SOME CONTEXT: Since I discuss the politics of AHS: Cult in the following article, new readers should probably know that my own politics are leftist and generally liberal. As such, it’s worth bearing in mind that part of my annoyance with the series does stem from the fact that most of its liberal, left-leaning characters are inadvertently written as total bell-ends. Most of my annoyance, however, comes from the issues I’m about to discuss.

SPOILER WARNING: Lots of spoilers ahead.

I’ve been re-watching American Horror Story: Cult, despite the fact that it’s the absolutely worst season of the anthology series, because some family members wanted to see it and I wanted to sit in and crow about where it all went wrong. And you know what? I’d forgotten how deceptively good the first half of the series actually is. It’s funny, unsettling and camp in that way that only AHS can be, and it contains lots of satisfying moments where absolute bell-ends get punched in the fact or killed with gym equipment. When I reviewed it about a year ago, I kind of forgot that there was the root-system of a decent TV show buried under all the crap. Y’see, the thing about AHS: Cult is that it’s only a shitshow in retrospect. After you’ve chewed your way through the increasingly dumb and unsatisfying second half of the series, you reach a conclusion that renders 99% of what you’ve just seen completely pointless: a whole lot of sound and fury signifying fuck-all.

The core of the problem is Kai, the blue-haired cult-leader supervillain and psychotic clown enthusiast who serves as the series’ antagonist. The motivations that he pretends to have in the first half of the series are way more interesting than the real motives that he’s revealed to have in later episodes. You see, early-episodes Kai is deliciously complicated an apolitical. He doesn’t celebrate Trump’s election to president because he thinks a Cheetos-hued former gameshow host will actually make a good president, but because his presence in the White House will spread fear and chaos that Kai can use to his own ends. He’s like a less slapstick-y version of the Joker, revelling in chaos and collective national misery and only allying himself to one side or the other so far as it promotes those things. In some places, his ideology seems downright and actively non-partisan. There’s a bit where he talks to a downtrodden and much shat-upon news reporter about her anger as a black woman in Trump’s America and legitimates her rage- which feels like “wanting to be the last person alive on Earth- because then you got to watch every other motherfucker die first”. He recruits a buff gay guy by killing his homophobic boss. On the other hand, he also gets a disenfranchised prospective Trump-voter on side by reminding him how he’s been told he’s obsolete and irrelevant because he’s a working class white male. In the early series, Kai’s ideology doesn’t seem to have much to do with left and right: his message is more along the lines of ‘modern America is a worthless shithole that fucks everybody over, regardless of politics or demographic, so let’s burn the whole thing to the ground and put me in charge’. It’s genuinely compelling to watch... and then the second half of the series happens and it turns out Kai was basically lying about all this complex motivation. He’s actually just a misogynist who wants to hurt women. Well, fuck. And there was me thinking we were getting an interesting and nuanced character who walked the line between villain and sympathetic protagonist. Nope- apparently he’s just a jerk. That’s a pretty accurate portrayal of the way sociopathic cult leaders work in real life, but it’s not very narratively compelling. 

Here’s the trouble. I know plenty of jerks in real life. I don’t find them fascinating. I don’t think they make interesting viewing. They’re not good TV: they’re just fucking morons in need of a good, hard slap. I get what AHS: Cult is doing- it’s making the point that cult leaders and far-right, regressive politicians can seem more complex and compelling than they really are in order to get what they want before they reveal their true colours. It’s an allegorical warning against charismatic, evil, morally-bankrupt politicians like Trump. And that’s a fine point to make, in an online article or a short story or... well, basically any media that doesn’t have to keep me entertained for 10-12 hour-long episodes. AHS: Cult chose to make a point instead of making a consistently good, watchable TV show. And that’s a problem.

Of course, Kai’s increasingly tedious and stupid character isn’t the only problem. AHS: Cult wants to be all feminist and get you to root for its oppressed, trod-up women. Which would be great, if its female characters weren’t mostly loathsome dipshits. There’s Ivy, who deliberately gaslights her lesbian wife and drives her mad. There’s Meadow, who more or less embodies the concept of vapid self-absorption, seems to start improving as a character, and then commits suicide before she can become genuinely sympathetic. There’s the reporter who starts off sympathetic but who ends up egging Kai on to greater feats of cruelty and chaos (when she finally turns against him, it’s not because she has a moral epiphany, it’s because he decides to consolidate power rather than go with her plan of causing as much random destruction as possible). Oh, and then Valerie Solanis and her ‘SCUM’ cult turns up and starts butchering men (and any woman who doesn’t hate them to a sufficient degree) while spouting grandiose horseshit. In fairness, the grandiose horseshit comes from her book, ‘The SCUM manifesto’, which is a real thing that actually exists... but bringing it up just serves to make Kai’s eventual adversaries seem as crazy as he is, just when the narrative needs them to seem like a heroic alternative. How so? Well, it was written by a literal schizophrenic just before she tried and failed to assassinate Andy Warhol.

After episode seven, AHS: Cult is increasingly framed as a struggle between Kai’s far-right misogynist cult and his former supporters’ self-justifying revenge-oriented cult-within-a-cult of revenge. Who are apparently preferable because... reasons maybe? Well, at least they’re not out for world domination and don’t give their recruits names like ‘Speed Ball’, which is something.

The final issue is Ally. Poor Ally. She starts off as a slightly pathetic, slightly pampered but basically decent person. She’s a left-wing liberal and broadly on the side of good, even if her many phobias do prevent her from getting her shit together. After wife Ivy steals their son from her using Kai’s cult, Ally goes through a pretty good character arc and learns to conquer her fears in order to save her son from Ivy’s increasingly unhinged grip. She’s basically the show’s happy ending waiting to happen... and then, in the very last fucking scene, she dons a green hooded robe and takes up the mantle of the leader of the deranged SCUM cult. Because of course she does. Because we couldn’t just have one likeable, uncorrupted character, could we? She reacts to the traumas she has survived by recreating a secret organisation that already demonstrated its impotence in changing the world and will definitely cause more trauma for other people down the line. For some reason, the show seems to think this is some kind of victory.

AHS: Cult has a lot of good ideas and interesting characters, which is why the first half of the series is so compelling. Unfortunately, it squanders them one by one, until we’re left with a left with a bunch of petty, simple-minded jerkoffs playing tug-of-war for the nebulous, symbolic prize of cultural dominance. Maybe that’s an accurate portrayal of our echo-chamber-fuelled, divisive, crude political landscape. Tragically, I fear that it is. But it isn’t good TV.

[tremendouspeachduck]

Besides the regular stuff

and could they be talking about education issues or problems?

Maybe she's thinking about  .  .  . something substantial.

Of course, he's so sexy and appealing she’s thinking.  Maybe I should turn up the heat.

Could they be interested in . . .  EDUCATION? - such a difficult subject, right?

In 1998, a high school junior named Eric Harris from Colorado wanted to put on a performance, something for the world to remember him by. A little more than a year later, Eric and his best friend Dylan Klebold would place bombs all over their school — bombs large enough to collapse large chunks of the building and to kill the majority of the 2,000 students inside — and then wait outside with semi-automatic weapons to gun down any survivors before ending their own lives. “It’ll be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together,” Eric wrote in his journal. “Maybe we will even start a little rebellion or revolution to fuck things up as much as we can. I want to leave a lasting impression on the world.” Eric was a psychopath, but he was also smart. Despite what media outlets would later claim, Eric Harris was not the victim of bullying any more than other students, he was not a goth or a member of the “Trench Coat Mafia.” Eric was a straight-A student. He read Nietzsche and Hemingway for fun. He had friends and girlfriends. He was charming and funny and had a disarming smile.

But Eric also understood people. And because he understood people, he changed everything. By 1999, there had already been a series of school shootings across the United States. But Eric wasn’t interested in those. They were small-time jobs, amateur hour. Eric was far more interested in Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, which killed 168 and injured 600. Eric wanted to top that. But he didn’t just want to top the body count, he wanted to top the notoriety, the fame, the horror. He wanted to terrorize people and he understood that his best weapon was not the guns he secretly purchased or the bombs he built in his basement — it was television. He would not kill jocks or preps, he would kill indiscriminately, because that’s what caused the most fear and got the most attention. He wouldn’t just blow up the school, but he’d blow up the parking lot, the police cars and the firefighters and the journalists who rushed to the scene. He would, quite literally, go out with a bang, the shockwaves of which, carried by mass media and the internet, would reverberate through the world for decades. On April 20th, Eric and Dylan arrived at Columbine High School and opened fire on teachers, students, administrators, janitors and police officers. Eric’s largest bombs failed to detonate and bring the building down as he had hoped, but that did not prevent the ensuing carnage that would last for almost an hour, leaving 15 dead and 24 wounded.

As chaos engulfed the school in Colorado, it would quickly fan out across the country, commanding more or less 24-hour television coverage for weeks on end. The drama would be replayed endlessly — bloodied and crippled students climbing out of the library window, the heroic coach who lost his life saving dozens of kids. And then there would be the questions and the speculation. Why? First, it was goth culture and Marilyn Manson. Then it was bullying. Then it was being social loners and outcasts. All of the explanations were later discovered to be untrue. The event truly seemed inexplicable. And because it was inexplicable the media and the viewers couldn’t let it go. Books were written. Memorials were built and ceremonies filled out. Eric Harris got his death wish: “Columbine” was a household name.

Recently, a student named Elliot Rodger from Santa Barbara City College killed six and injured 13, the latest in a long series of school shootings that are all but becoming a normal part of American tradition. As usual, the killer left a cache of material behind to explain his intentions and milk as much publicity for his personal grievances as possible. This time, the focus was on women, and how they wouldn’t have sex with him.

Like they always do, the media have descended to explain away the madness. And like a Rorschach Test, each outlet had its own pet cause primed and ready to be read into the situation. Gun control advocates used the event as an opportunity to campaign for stricter gun control, despite the fact that Rodger bought his guns legally and easily passed the background checks. Mental health advocates used it as an opportunity to urge better mental health care, despite the fact that Rodger had a small army of therapists and social workers working with him for practically his entire life.

First, come and get the USA history and more NOW, before it’s not taught, erased from the net and books or before it’s tweeked, tampered-with or getting the waterdown disturbing version.  

What is Melania doing to help our kids?

Time to lighten up - see video -

Feminists used it as an opportunity to promote awareness for violence against women, despite the fact that Rodger killed indiscriminately and the majority of the victims turned out to be men. Social justice advocates used it as an opportunity to rail against white male entitlement, despite the fact that Rodger was mixed race and a significant number of school shooters have also been minorities (Two examples: Seung-Hui Cho and Kimveer Gill). All of these issues are legitimate and deserve a conversation. But they are not the singular cause. They’re not the point.

However, the Fed. Govt. is not in charge - you are. There are many home school options available.   Or go to curriculum meetings at your child’s school.

If you want some curriculum changes what do you do besides go to the PTA, get group together and approach the principal?  You seek help from:   Parent Revolution, Education Reform Now, and Stand for Children.

What kind of parent are you?

Elliot Rodger was a member of a number of sites, email lists, and Facebook groups. And all of these authors and dating coaches — some of them legitimately decent men, others shady marketers — are all frantically trying to cover their tracks as best as possible. But this “witch hunt” we go through every time a school shooting happens is a total ruse. Elliot Rodger didn’t become a killer because he was a misogynist; he became a misogynist because he was a killer. Just like Eric Harris didn’t become a killer because he loved violent video games; he loved violent video games because he was a killer. Just like Adam Lanza didn’t become a killer because he loved guns; he loved guns because he was a killer. Every school shooting incident comes in the same dreary package: an angry, politically-charged rant, shrink-wrapped around a core of mental illness and neglect. These shooters leave behind journals, videos, diagrams, manifestos, and treatises. They broadcast their plans and intentions to their friends and family. They email news outlets minutes before they start firing. They write down their plans and make checklists so that others may follow in their footsteps. They go on angry rants against materialism, hedonism, the government, mass media, women, and sometimes even the people close to them.

Trophy Wife prose, not poetry

And each time, as a culture, we work ourselves into a frenzy debating the angry exterior message, while ignoring the interior life and context of each killer. We miss the point entirely. Reality Check According to the FBI, mass shootings (defined as shooting events that kill at least four people) occur on average every two weeks in the United States. Yes, every two weeks. Yet we rarely, if ever, hear about most of them. The reason is that these shootings are easily explainable. In most mass shootings, the crimes occur at a private location and the victims are people close and well-known to the shooter — family members, neighbors, friends. Many of them are attributable to gang violence or illicit criminal activities. Others are a crime of passion. School shootings only account for 4% of all mass shootings and yet they dominate the news media and get the entire country talking about them for weeks on end. There are a few reasons for this: They occur in everyday public locations which are supposed to be safe. The victims are targeted and killed at random.

You missed the March, 2018 update: 

The victims are innocent bystanders and often children. The killers leave behind large amounts of material about themselves for the media to share. The perpetrator and victims are generally upper-middle class, white, and privileged. These shooters know what they are doing. They’re not “crazy.” They don’t just “snap.” Most of them spend months or years planning their massacres. Elliot Rodger had apparently been planning his shooting for over a year. You don’t just show up with a 140-page manifesto and a large stockpile of weapons one day. You work at it for a long time. And you plan not only the violence but the presentation for the audience, the performance — what they will see from you, what they will hear from you, the reasons why, the message. It’s all very conscious and deliberate. And it works. Their killing sprees are specifically targeted to generate the most fear and uncertainty from the public, because the more fear and uncertainty they generate, the more attention they get. They then use all of the attention as a platform to promote themselves or whatever complaints they may have against society. It’s the Columbine formula. It works. And as Eric Harris pointed out in his journal, it’s not about the guns. It’s about the television. The films. The fame. The revolution. If this sounds like a familiar strategy, that’s because it is. Mass Shootings as Non-Political Terrorism

Parents ATTENTION – build this for your daughter 

For a country that is so single-mindedly obsessed with terrorism, it’s jaw-dropping that almost nobody recognizes that school shooters use the exact same strategies to disseminate fear and their twisted agendas throughout society. Terrorists use violence and mass media coverage to promote political or religious beliefs; school shooters use violence and mass media coverage to promote their personal grievances and glorification. When viewed in this way, our responses to the school shooters look juvenile in comparison. Can you imagine arguing over whether misogyny made Osama Bin Laden plan September 11th? Or whether video games caused Dhokhar Tsarnaev to plant bombs at the Boston Marathon? Or whether heavy music inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City? You would be laughed at. And in fact, when anyone goes as far as to suggest that Islam causes terrorism, they are immediately and rightfully scolded for it. Yet when it comes to school shootings, these types of discussions are not only tolerated, but engaged in willfully. It’s not that we should respond to school shootings the same way we respond to terrorist attacks. It’s that we already do. We just don’t realize it.

  What are the 10 best states for K-12 ed?  Are you ready to move?

If you can’t move, then do you prefer charter or voucher choices?  Transportation to/from should also be considered, right?  What about low income before/after school meals, tutoring or sports activities?  Perhaps charter, voucher or public choices should be contingent on anti-gang, low-income after school participation, right?  No participation = no school = mandatory work program in Sudan or Uganda.  I’d like to see some corporate, ball player and entertainer money come forward to fund before & after school meals/tutoring/sports.

I’d also like to see some funding go fornutrition parenting and school meal classes:

When Elliot’s creepy YouTube videos went public, declaring vengeance upon every college girl that wouldn’t sleep with him, every woman who had ever heard a guy mutter something similar suddenly felt a chill run up her spine. And that chill caused the video to be posted and reposted, sending more chills up more women’s spines until it had spread across the country. My guess is that’s exactly what Elliot would have wanted. And we’ve seen this viral dissemination over and over again. After every school shooting episode, writings and videos of the killers get passed around on the internet. Television specials show and reshow the footage. Books are written. Experts are hired. Rinse and repeat. Last year, I wrote that terrorism works because it takes advantages of psychological inefficiencies in our brains: we pay a disproportionate amount of attention to threatening events and we always overestimate how likely it is for a random event to happen to us. School shootings transfix us by leveraging the exact same inefficiencies in our minds. And once they’ve dominated this mindspace, we can’t seem to shake them out of it.

Common Core is no longer mandatory for Fed money.  States can now choose and let’s not forget about STEM career prep.  

Next subject is about college loans.  Predatory lending is any lending practice that imposes unfair or abusive loan terms on a borrower. It is also any practice that convinces a borrower to accept unfair terms through deceptive, coercive, exploitative or unscrupulous actions for a loan that a borrower doesn’t need, doesn’t want or can’t afford.

If the terms are unfair or abusive then seek another loan, right?  How can a college loan officer be deceptive, coercive, exploitative or unscrupulous?  Maybe someone has a recording of such, who knows?

Yet, for some reason, while we seem to imagine potential terrorists everywhere — in airport lines, at stadium gates, in subway cars — we never see the school shooters coming. We’re always caught by surprise. Hiding in Plain Sight When we think of terrorists, we think of some alien “other” — the bearded, turbaned man hiding in some cave on the other side of the world. Because he’s so distant and different, we let him eat at our imagination — he could be anywhere, ready to strike at any moment, hiding in behind every bush, planting a bomb on every bus or plane. We clog our airports and blast warnings through our public buildings for some imagined bogeyman who is never actually present. By contrast, we fail to spot shooter after shooter because they are so close to us and so much like us. We miss them because they are our neighbors, our classmates, our friends or even our family members. They are right in front of our noses and we ignore them for a whole host of trivial reasons. Maybe they’re too weird, or awkward, or they’re a loser. We don’t want to talk to them. We put our blinders on and pretend that they’re not miserable, we pretend that they didn’t just have that awkward outburst, we pretend they didn’t just make a joke about killing their own parents.

Pipeline info       more pipeline info

In writing, in the loan paperwork do you see any lies or anything to mislead a borrower?  The lender must be protected from students trying to pull a fast one, right?  No lenders = no future loans for students.  Betsy Devos, Sec of Ed, is fighting for our students to have loans to use to finance their college costs.  A very good fight, right?

College costs are high, so it’s no game or time filler.  The potential student must be serious and have the desire and ability to finish, right?  Most people old and young know that any loan has rules and risks, right?  

Signing without reading and understanding is at your peril, right?  If you are a student what should you look at?  

Eric Harris’ friends later said that he would often “joke” about blowing up the school and murdering classmates. Even after they discovered he was building bombs in his basement, they never put two-and-two together. They just couldn’t believe it. Not Eric. Not the guy they had played video games with and toilet papered girls’ houses with. Meanwhile, the wrong sarcastic word at the airport and you can be held in jail for days. An FBI study on school shooters found school shootings are never a result of a crazy person “snapping.” Most shooters do have serious mental health or emotional issues, but they all plan their attacks months or even years in advance. And as they plan, they almost always “leak” information about the attack beforehand, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes in incredibly obvious ways.

Are there any debt elimination scams?  

Some qualify whereby most fees can be paid through scholarships, grants or military service benefits, right?  If yourgrades suck, can you get a scholarship?

Are students aware of jobs for the future - dealing with the robot issue?

Many students get Fed. loans, grants or military benefits and most colleges/univ get Fed help.  Perhaps it’s time to  eliminate Fed loans or help, if the campuses are not safe for conservative speakers and still turn the eye at life/death hazing practices. Are parents aware of the current harm education is perpetrating on the youth?

Both Harris and Rodger had the police called on them multiple times due to suspicious behavior. Both of them had a history of strange and violent outbursts towards friends and those close to them. Both put their intentions and their angry rants up on the web for everyone to see. Elliot Rodger wrote and re-wrote his plan out, sometimes including murdering his family members and stealing their car. He wrote that if someone had just searched his room, it would have all come apart, he would have been found out. Eric Harris wrote almost the exact same thing 15 years earlier. Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter who killed 32 people, turned in paper after paper that depicted gruesome killings and gun violence. He had a history of mental health issues and had been reported to the campus police four times for aggressive and antisocial behavior, particularly towards women. One of his professors went so far as to tell the board that she would rather resign than teach another class with him in it.

Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, also had a history of mental illness and inappropriate anti-social behavior. And he too, began sharing his intentions online through forum posts and audio. Lanza had paranoid delusions about mass media and the government, and began to argue that school shootings were justified as a form of protest or revolt. People humored him and ignored him. No one realized he had a small armory of semi-automatic weapons in his house. Then there are those who are simply ignored. Dylan Klebold was suicidally depressed for over two years. He fantasized and wrote about killing himself liberally. Despite getting into trouble with the law, turning in school assignments that glorified murder and suicide and failing most of his classes senior year, his parents and friends claimed that they had no idea something was amiss.

If people insist on living on islands or near beaches, then the hurricane is a constant fear, right?  What would a hurricane proof house look like? Perhaps it’s time to have the conversation about Fed help to public schools K-12 to be contnigent on ROTC and a business subject or job readiness program.  What is your opinion? 

The above katana homeis unique, right?

what about his one?     what about a velvet blue sofa?

George Sodini, a middle-aged Pennsylvania man who shot up an aerobics class full of women, wrote in his journal that since he spent the past 20 years of his life alone and miserable, there was no reason to think that the next 20 wouldn’t be lonely and miserable as well. His mother had been emotionally abusive. His father hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with him in over 30 years. Simply put: he had nothing to live for. So why not take some revenge on your way out? Gun control gets the headlines. Mental health care gets the headlines. Violence and video games and misogyny and internet forums and atheism — the list is endless at this point. Here’s what doesn’t get the headlines: Empathy. Listening to those around you. Even if you don’t like them very much. We have come to live in a culture where it’s taboo or unacceptable to simply check in with people emotionally and offer some empathy and understanding. I’m not saying this would magically fix all gun violence. I’m just saying that all of these things — the lack of gun laws, the lack of health care, the inability to have basic conversations with friends and neighbors about what’s going on with them, these are all extensions of a callous and self-absorbed culture that lacks any real empathy.

Despite being relevant and important discussions, the glamorous headlines are ultimately distractions — they just feed into the carnage and the attention and the fame the killer desired. They are distractions from what is right in front of you and me and the victims of tomorrow’s shooting: people who need help. And while we’re all fighting over whose pet cause is more right and more true and more noble, there’s likely another young man out there, maybe suicidally depressed, maybe paranoid and delusional, maybe a psychopath, and he’s researching guns and bombs and mapping out schools and recording videos and thinking every day about the anger and hate he feels for this world. And no one is paying attention to him.

Are parents teaching kids to be responsible? 

Betsy Devos is also promoting the rewriting of college harassment proceedings.  They call on schools to conduct objective investigations and provide “prompt and equitable” resolutions. And, for the first time, the administration explicitly says that just as an institution’s treatment of a complainant could constitute sex discrimination, so would the treatment of the accused.  Under the new rules, schools would be held to a new standard for determining whether they took the proper steps to address the allegations. It sounds as though the proposed rules will go a long way towards restoring meaningful due process protections to the campus justice system, which will benefit both accusers and the accused.  What do you think?

What is rape? 

THIS IS MY CALL TO ACTION - schools need huge changes **   many do not believe adaptation in teaching environments will be sufficient to teach new skills at the scale that is necessary to help workers keep abreast of the tech changes that will upend millions of jobs. 

  Vote GOP and help make advancement easy and smooth!

[my-sweet-pea]

Who Are You? - Part 2

The story continues! This one is a little longer than the previous chapter. I decided to name the first person character. Hope that doesn’t throw any of you out of the story. Would love feedback/criticism.  

Warnings: girl is in the hospital because she was drugged, some swearing.

Part 1  /  Part 2  /  Part 3  /  Part 4

I was sitting in the waiting room 7 hours later. I had rushed Gen to the Emergency Room, knowing that she would be mad when she woke up, but I knew how important it was to go get medical help before it was too late. The staff had been taking care of her since we arrived. They told me 2 hours ago that she was doing well, but they also said that they were going to pump her stomach.

I anxiously picked at the skin around my thumbnail. It had begun bleeding about 3 hours in, and I was just making it worse. I couldn’t help how anxious I felt. I had hated hospitals since I was a kid and had seen my grandmother slip away in one. She had been my rock and the only real family member I had ever had. My mother was still around, but she was either at work or off somewhere drinking herself into a stupor. I had been fending for myself since my grandmother Esther left me.

I hated the smell of this place more than anything - mint Tic Tacs and sadness was the best description. I glanced around at the sparse décor. The drab colors and uncomfortable chairs didn’t add to my comfort.

I had tried to call Gen’s brother to let him know what was going on. So far, he hadn’t answered my voicemail or my 13 text messages. I wasn’t really that surprised. It was early on a Saturday morning, and he was probably still drinking and getting high with his friends. He was only 20 but he was technically Gen's legal guardian, and the hospital needed to talk to him. I checked my phone for the 400th time. Nothing.

When I looked up, the doctor was walking towards me with a smile on her face.

"You're here with Genevieve Wong?" she asked, already knowing the answer. The waiting room was not very full.

"Yes. How is she doing? Can I see her?" I demanded, jumping to my feet.

"She's doing very well, and yes. She is sleeping right now, but she was awake for a few hours and she knows what's going on."

I sighed with relief, following the doctor as she led me to Gen’s room. I paused in the doorway, taking in the sight of my friend. I made myself comfortable beside her as she slept.

I hoped she wasn’t too mad about coming here. I know most people would have just brought her home and dealt with her there, but I wasn’t taking that chance in case whatever that guy had slipped her was toxic. I had a bunch of money saved up from working at a gas station in town, and I would try to help pay her bills if she needed it.

As I ruminated, I felt my phone buzz. I pulled it out quickly, hoping that Kyle had responded, and was surprised to see that Sweet Pea had texted me.

“You good?” said the abrupt message.

“All is well. Pumped her stomach and she’s just sleeping now,” I replied quickly.

The butterflies in my stomach were back despite the fact that he had only said two words to me. I hadn’t stopped thinking about how kind he had been last night. I still didn’t understand, but considering I’d never talked to him before, I kept assuming that his reputation was just grossly out of proportion.

He didn’t respond within the next couple minutes, so I started scrolling through my conversation with Rosa and Scotty, two of the other girls from the party and two of my best friends. They were concerned about Gen but were waiting to come visit if we were still there when they sobered up and got some sleep.

The lack of sleep was starting to hit me. I hadn’t eaten anything since supper last night, and I was exhausted now that the initial fear was leaving my system. I drifted off to sleep, sitting upright in the uncomfortable chair.

Later, I awoke to Gen talking with the nurses. I groggily checked my phone, noting that I had been asleep for around an hour. Gen turned to me with concern on her face as the nurses left the room.

“What happened, Char?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and began to describe the events of last night. She listened attentively, holding her temples as she heard that she had been drugged. At the end of my story, I trailed off, unsure what to say.

“And a Serpent helped me??” she said in confusion. “I didn’t think the Serpents were usually interested in the all-school parties.”

I shrugged. I had wondered that myself but had been too distracted to actually ask Sweet Pea why he was there. I had seen one or two other Serpents milling around the crowd too. While they did very rarely go to the parties, they never stayed long and really only seemed interested in finding out if there was free booze.

Gen shivered beneath her hospital gown and blanket. I got up.

“Are you feeling ok?” I asked with concern.

“Yeah, I’m physically better than ever, thanks to you,” she laughed shakily, “but I’m just thinking about that creep who did this.” She lifted her eyes from her lap to meet mine. “I don’t want to press charges. I don’t want to think about it any more than I’m already going to.”

I nodded. I could understand that. I reached out and gently held her hand.

“It’s ok. Do what you have to do. Sweet Pea seemed to be taking care of it in a non-violent way for now, but hey, we could always ask him to beat the guy up, right?” I tried to sound cheery, like maybe I was actually joking.

She laughed, a genuine smile crossing her lips. “How did you convince him not to beat the guy up on the spot? Or did he just not care enough because he doesn’t know me?”

I quickly shook my head. “The guy got away while he was trying to get to you, and then he stayed with you until I had you in the car.” I hesitated for a moment before adding, “He was actually being very nice last night. It was....jarring, to say the least.”

Gen was looking at me with curious eyes, but she just nodded. “Very nice of him. Though, for all their faults, I don’t think you could really accuse the Serpents of mistreating women. Especially compared to the misogynistic Ghoulies.”

That was very true. The Serpents treated the women around them as equals, though that did sometimes seem kind of scary when it came to things like physical violence. Still, drugging someone definitely didn’t seem like something they would be ok with.

We were interrupted by the doctor returning to let us know that Gen could check out now. Her brother had arrived and was signing the necessary forms. I got up to go talk to Kyle while the nurses helped Gen get dressed.

I saw him standing by the front desk. He was weaving slightly as he squinted at the paperwork. I stalked up to him, shooting him an icy grin when he looked up.

“Well look who it is. What hellhole did you just fall out of?” I said scornfully.

Kyle and I were not friends. I didn’t approve of his immature choices and his awful lifestyle. He was responsible for Gen, and Gen really needed him. She looked to him for advice, even though she knew how terribly screwed up his own life was.

“Better than the hellhole you crawled from. Why the fuck did you bring that slut to a hospital? She coulda slept it off. That’s more than she deserves.”

I raised my hand to slap him but decided it wasn't even worth the energy. My blood was boiling. I couldn't talk to this man-child if that was his attitude. I had never known Kyle to change an opinion once it had formed. I spun on my heel and hurried back to Gen’s room, so mad that I could barely see. I walked around the corner and ran straight into a thick chest.

“Oooofff-“

Two large hands reached out to steady me. I looked up and found Sweet Pea staring at me with an amused smirk twisting his lips. He was wearing the same leather Serpents jacket from last night and jeans just tight enough to hint at the shape of his thighs. His silky black hair was raked back from his face. He looked amazing.

Beside him were two of his friends. I recognized Toni Topaz and Fangs Fogarty from school. I looked at the three of them, mouth working but no words falling out.

Toni smiled at me and stuck out a hand. “Toni. I’m in your English lit class.”

I shook her hand, feeling very formal and awkward. “Charlotte.”

“We just came because we heard you were still here. We wanted to see how your friend is doing and see if you needed any help,” she continued.

I blinked, still confused as to why they wanted to be here.

“Umm, well Gen is doing fine now. We’re actually just checking out now that her brother showed up.”

I was still enraged from Kyle’s words, and I’m sure that seeped into my words. I noticed Fangs raise his eyebrows and Sweet Pea frown.

“Do you guys want to say hi before she heads home?” I asked to fill the silence.

“Sure,” Toni said with an easy smile.

She elbowed Sweet Pea and he quickly grunted affirmation as well.

I led them to Gen’s room, pausing to see if she was dressed and if she wanted to say hi. Her eyes grew round and large at the mention of three Serpents standing outside her doorway. She swallowed and nodded.

I opened the door the rest of the way to let Sweet Pea, Fangs, and Toni in. Toni gushed over Gen while the boys stood behind stoically. Finally, Gen looked at Sweet Pea.

“Char told me what you did. Thank you. Really. This morning would have been a whole lot worse if you hadn’t stepped in when you did.”

Sweet Pea seemed extremely uncomfortable at her words, and I could tell that Gen was anxious. I ended the visit there, leading them back into the hall so Gen could grab the rest of her stuff.

“Thanks for coming,” I said uncertainly.

“No problem at all! Right, Sweets?” Toni elbowed Sweet Pea again and gave him a knowing look.

Sweet Pea looked at me and cleared his throat. “Yeah, no problem. Glad she’s ok.”

With that, they moved to leave. As they walked past me, Sweet Pea paused and leaned closer to my ear.

“Is she going to talk to the cops?” he whispered.

I shook my head in response. All the air had left my lungs at his close proximity.

He nodded grimly. “Do you want me to take care of it?”

I hesitated, remembering Gen’s laugh at the same suggestion. But I also remembered the things Kyle said and how it made my blood boil to think someone would hurt one of my friends. I nodded tersely.

He didn’t seem surprised. He told me it would be taken care of appropriately, and then he followed after his friends.

I stared down the hall, watching them until they were out of sight.

I drove the three of us home in Kyle’s truck, not trusting Kyle’s sobriety. He fell asleep on the short 10-minute drive to their small home, so I was glad I did. We arrived to find Rosa, Scotty, and Sarah sitting on the steps. They rushed to Gen, enveloping her in hugs and kisses as they helped me collect her things. We left Kyle sleeping in the car, mostly out of spite, but partly because he was known for punching people who woke him up.

When Gen was safely tucked into bed with snacks and drinks surrounding her, I asked if the girls minded if I went home. I was bone-tired and needed to rest. The girls assured me that they would take the best care of Gen, and Gen pushed me to go home to sleep. She hugged me and thanked me again, tearing up. I couldn’t help but tear up as well.

I walked home, arriving at the small two-bedroom bungalow shortly. I pushed open the door and headed straight to my room. My mom didn’t appear to be home, and that was alright with me. I fell into bed, pulling off the party clothes I had been wearing for about 13 hours at this point, glad at the lack of restriction. I didn’t bother finding my pajamas, preferring to slip under my covers and fall instantly asleep.

I woke up many hours later. The sun was in a different place in the sky, sending shadows across my small room. I groggily sat up, still feeling tired. I noticed my phone buzzing as it rang beside me on the bed. It was Sweet Pea.

I answered while leaning against the wall behind my bed. It was warm and cozy here, and I didn’t want to let the cool air hit my bare skin.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Char.”

I started. It was the first time he’d called me by name, and he’d used my nickname. Somehow, that felt right.

He continued, “I found our man. I have a plan for him that he’s not going to enjoy all too much.” He hesitated. “Do you want to help?”

He added the last sentence as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to offer the option. Well, I wasn't going to let that discourage me.

“I want in. What do I have to do?”

There was a moment of silence as he considered my response.

“I’ll pick you up and we can discuss it. You live in the bungalows by the bank, right?”

My mouth fell open. “Umm, yees...number 7.”

How the hell would he know that?

“See ya in three,” he responded, the roar of his motorcycle engine filling the line before he cut it off.

Three minutes?! I leaped out of bed, running for the bar on the wall which held my clothes. Thankfully, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice. I whipped on the first tee and hoodie I touched, pulling on my favorite black leggings as well. I had just dashed to my mirror and swiped a brush through my unruly hair when I heard a firm knock on the door. I froze for a moment, excited and anxious in equal parts. Realizing I’d have morning breath, I grabbed a pack of gum out of the kitchen as I bolted to the front door, popping a piece into my mouth. I took a deep breath as I stood with my hand on the handle. I pulled open the door just as he was raising his hand to knock again, looking peeved. Sweet Pea’s eyebrows lifted as he took in the sight of me.

“Is that your beating-up-scum outfit?”

“Not really. This is my I-wear-the-same-thing-everyday outfit,” I retorted sassily. Despite the anxiety, I was feeling ready to take on Sweet Pea and his many moods.

Or so I thought. This mood was not the same as the one from last night, nor was it the mood he’d had at the hospital.

He smirked, his tongue darting out to lick his lower lip. “Is that so? Because I definitely don’t remember ever seeing you dressed like you were last night. And believe me, I would have remembered.”

I felt my mouth open but I couldn’t think of anything to say in response to that. After a moment of stumbling over my tongue, I managed to say, “Um well those clothes were my friends’ clothes. They thought I should dress up. I don’t really go to parties so I don’t have any fancy clothes.”

“I know,” he threw out nonchalantly. “Now come on, we have work to do.”

I hurried after him and his long strides. How was he so tall? I’m considered average and it felt like he was almost a foot taller than me.

“What do you mean, you know?” I demanded. “Is my loser status that well known across the whole school?”

I was feeling insulted. Just because I don’t like parties doesn’t mean that I don’t have any friends. What exactly were people saying about me? I didn’t usually care but found myself really wanting to know what Sweet Pea had heard about me.

He glanced down at me and shrugged. “I just know you don’t go to many of the parties. You probably only go to as many as I do throughout the year.”

That was probably true. Despite how infrequently the Serpents attended the parties, I swear I’d seen one of them at all five of the parties I’d been to this year. It still felt weird to hear that people I didn’t know were aware of how frequently I party. Yeah, ok, I knew that same fact about the Serpents, but I could justify that because they were a group and that was their group behavior.

We arrived at his bike on the street. He handed me a helmet which I put on without a fight. I’d been driving and riding along on motorcycles since I was 13, and if the driver hands you a helmet, you put it on.

I climbed on behind him, hanging on very strategically. I didn’t want to touch him as much as I could help it. I didn’t want him to think that I was brushing against him to feel him up. I wish. I pursed my lips, horrified at the direction my thoughts seemed to take when I was around him.

I heard Sweet Pea chuckle as he started the engine. I narrowed my eyes, about to ask him what he was laughing about when we were suddenly taking off down the street, going much faster than necessary and much faster than I had prepared for. I instinctively grabbed his hips as we neared a corner. He felt warm and strong in front of me despite the cool air rushing past. His large body protected me from most of the elements.

All too soon, we arrived at our destination by the bodega. We slid off the bike together. I handed the helmet back, refusing to look him in the eye. I had clung to him like a baby, and I’d enjoyed every second of it.

“Ready to hand down some justice?” he asked cheekily.

I finally peeked up at his face. He was smirking again, looking entirely too pleased. I narrowed my eyes as I considered his driving. He had wanted to throw me off, make he hold on tighter. If he wanted to play a game, I would play as well.

Staring directly into his dark brown eyes, I licked my lips and bit my bottom one slightly. “I live for it,” I said breathily.

His eyes darkened as he gazed at me silently, his smirk slowly slipping. He stepped closer to me and leaned down. “You don’t know it yet, but you’re playing with fire,” he said solemnly.

I hesitated for a moment. Was he still playing the game, or was that a genuine warning? I leaned closer until our faces were inches apart. “I think you’re the one who might get burned here.”

His eyes dropped to my lips for a split second before he drew in a shaky breath and took a few steps back. Sweet Pea shook his head, seeming angry. “I knew this wasn’t going to work. I should never have invited you!”

The words stung. He had initiated this game, and now he was mad that I was playing along? I swallowed hard. “I’m here because it was my friend that this guy hurt, and I’m not letting him get away with that.” I turned on my heel, walking towards the nearest building.

I heard Sweet Pea huff some air through his teeth before I felt his hand on my arm. “Wrong way, princess.”

I instantly froze at the tone of his voice and the use of that pet name. Princess? I couldn't imagine anyone else ever calling me that, but I didn't really mind that Sweet Pea had. He sounded chastened. I searched his face.

“I’m sorry. I have some things to talk to you about, but I don’t want to get distracted once we have the guy. I don’t want him to get away or...hurt you, ok?” he said in a rush.

I agreed. "Let's get him then."

What things did Sweet Pea have to tell me? I felt afraid but also very intrigued.

Part 1  /  Part 2  /  Part 3 /  Part 4

Let me know if you want to be tagged in future chapters!

Tag list: @superoptimist1997​

[hotelconcierge]

THE GENDER NULLARY

Trigger warning for everything that follows: the coddled, over-sensitive, “triggered” millennial crybaby does not exist. Hold your applause—the COSTMC is an oxymoron because coddling does not sensitize, it scleroses. Have you met these people? They can’t feel an emotion without an audience and a week to rehearse. The performative offense of this group results from high emotional tolerance, not low; sad-rage is heroin to everything else’s Motrin, and no matter how vast the safe space, some kids are gonna hang at the outskirts hoping to score.

Of course, even the phoniest opportunist has a few real triggers—the type that precludes rage because you’re numb in the fetal position. And of course, there are many uncoddled e.g. traumatized people who are genuinely vulnerable to the many, many instances of genuine cruelty and callousness.

Every community with a code of conduct is a safe space to some extent. My lawyer advises no comment on whether safe spaces are good or bad in principle, because it depends: who is being included, who is being excluded, where will they go, and who is enforcing the rules.

My concern is the way these debates are settled. And when the excluded protest against political correctness—that human resources plot to merge all safe spaces under one state capitalist thumb—they ditch culture war bushido and strike at whomever can be hurt the most.

What you have to understand is that the PC debate is a farce. When the public demands a witch for the stake, the NYTimes selects David Brooks,

perhaps the most balding, white, sanctimonious chump at a newspaper full of balding, white, sanctimonious chumps. Here are four critiques; don’t read any of them unless you still find it exciting to watch a strawman burn.

What’s more interesting is that while Brooks criticizes upper-middle-class culture for being “laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class,” his article is nothing but illegible cultural signifiers. Which, duh, he’s writing for the Times. Brooks thus renders himself irrelevant (which was the point): his critics focus on his blunder of political correctness (the high school grad intimidated by a chicken pomodoro) and dismiss him as classist accordingly.

Lesson: Anyone who opposes political correctness from within will lose and be humiliated. Even without the unforced error, Brooks could have been dismissed as rich and white. His archives could have been mined for hypocrisy. Even a charged non sequitur would have crushed his argument: “So it’s no big deal that it’s legal to murder transpeople in all fifty states? No, I’m David Brooks, better focus on political correctness!” Of course, plenty of non-bourgeois oppose PC, but you’ll never hear that point of view in the Times because, yikes—internalized racism.

The result is that the anti-PC viewpoint is only taken seriously when it refuses the framework of PC. I don’t mean “taken seriously” like there is a meaningful debate. But when an internet troll calls you, say, “a fucking spic faggot,” you can’t reply “hah, well that just shows your heteronormative, colonialist assumptions!” without looking like a wimp. You have to reply with equal bile, which smells of hatred, maybe fear. And it’s no fun to be on the receiving end of hatred, but it’s better than being treated—like Mr. Brooks—with contempt.

Trolls, like catcallers, flashers, and school shooters, are men who ran the numbers and found: being hated > being invisible > being humiliated in the official channels. The first two go back to chimps, the third variable is society-dependent, and wowza does ours fuck it up. Men want to become masculine, citation needed, and when society shit-talks the honest path to manhood then it is inevitable that those foolish enough to listen will turn to the black market. And once that’s your game...

This blog is far from politically correct, but I try to mock only the deserving— bureaucrats, demagogues, cowards, and conformists—and for behavior, for the things people can change rather than those they can’t. But people tend to be insecure about the things they can’t change, and it just so happens that in America insecurity is always wound up in sex. Every debate about safe spaces thus devolves into a debate about gender: a catalog of body dysmorphisms, a who’s who of racial castrations, cuckold, bitch, cunt, whore, freak. You’d think everyone would be against this level of discourse, but gun control means one thing on Park Avenue and another thing entirely in Wichita. The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both the popular and unpopular from being unpopular. Calls for PC go nowhere because cruelty is the best weapon some people have.

Idiot [unemployed, probably no friends]: “So you’re sympathizing with racist, misogynist trolls. Wow. Just—I can’t even.” I didn’t say anything about sympathy. I said that a society gets what it pays for. IMHO, most shock-value trolling is both ineffective—it strengthens the case for Big Brother—and morally disgusting. But it’s a symptom, not the disease. Like oxycodone, trolling is recourse for people with nothing better to do, and like The Opioid Epidemic, the hand-wringing has less to do with fixing the problem than with making it so consumers don’t have to look at something ugly.

The content of trolling is thus extremely not the issue, but even so, I’ll take the bait. To accuse someone of failing at gender is the worst sort of punching-down. It’s not just hateful, it’s lazy, it’s bullying the foreign kid to make up for getting your ass beat at home. And it’s dumb. Forget about the moral argument—my critique is that the gender police are not even wrong.

Judith Butler (Gender Trouble), who coined the term “performative gender,” the antecedent to “sexuality is a spectrum,” has reached Antichrist status in some circles and in fact received a personal diss from Pope Benedict XVI. She’s good, and if you wanna throw down you gotta throw down with the best. So: Does Butler write like a pedant getting paid by the syllable? Does she open each topic with a chain of passive-aggressive rhetorical questions? Does she have the worst fanbase this side of Harris and Klebold? Does she have a point?

Hemlock time. How do you define gender? “Gender is a set of behaviors and attributes that correlate with sex.” Okay—what’s sex? “Aren’t you a doctor or something? XY and XX.” I’m flattered by the appeal to authority, but weren’t you the guy complaining when the CDC lowered the normal testosterone range? How do you feel about androgen insensitivity syndrome?

You can deny your eyes and insist that having an SRY gene makes Eden Atwood male, but from a medical perspective Eden is estrogenized, at risk for osteoporosis, and going down in the chart as an F.

“Look, fella, I know a dime-piece when I see one.” So modify your definition: hormone levels, fertility, waist-hip ratio, empathizing over systematizing, long bathroom lines, 10 Things I Hate About You...The first problem is that all of these traits exist on, sorry, a spectrum, from menopausal women to full-figured men. The choice of which traits to include—and where to draw the cut-offs—and if the division is binary or quaternary or nullary—is just like, your opinion, man (woman/they/them). The bigger problem is that now you’re defining sex as gender.

This reduces your original statement to, “Gender is a set of behaviors and attributes that correlate.” Which is true. And as far as stereotypes go, gendered ones ain’t bad, maybe even necessary to function, the guy wearing a V-neck probably does like shaving his pubes. But they are still stereotypes, man-made, imperfect, and punishing to those who do not conform. I’m no cultural relativist, some people suck and deserve cold and swift judgment, but is the presence or absence of armpit hair really the hill you want to die on?

There’s a practical argument to be made against fractalized gender: it’s confusing. With 3^^^3 possible sex-gender-orientation combos, how are kids supposed to know how to grow up? Aren’t imperfect gender roles better than 24-year-old otherkin? I hear you, guy wearing a Harley-Davidson jacket and listening to Mötley Crüe, but Tumblr semantics are a consequence of twenty-teen spirit, not the cause. If we weren’t arguing about the gender binary (and before we were) we’d be arguing about the range of femininity or masculinity; the crusade would be for pixie cuts and stick-and-poke tattoos to be considered as feminine as Brazilian butt lifts. Don’t be fooled by words—do you really want society to have one idealized template per gender? How would that ideal be decided? Majority rule?

There’s a hilarious overlap between the people who get mad about preferred pronouns and those who call for a return to “traditional masculinity.” The idealization of some Hollywood-ified tradition isn’t the problem; if you want to roleplay a fursona, go ahead. No, what’s pathetic is the begging. Rather than be a man, in spite of the system, you demand validation from the system for aspiring to be a man. Being against identity politics is the new identity politics. That’s why right-wing culture warriors are so into the idea of crybaby millennials—it’s comforting to believe that you’re actually strong (since you don’t drink from plastic water bottles) and that anyone getting laid is actually xeno-estrogenized. Even if this was true, obsessing over it, masturbating to it, using it as an excuse for self-pity and inaction—that makes you a  _ _ _ _. Four-letters. Multiple choice. Maybe hangman will teach you something.

The foundationalist reasoning of identity politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently, political action to be taken. (Gender Trouble)

My beliefs are no doubt way south of Ms. Butler’s on the political compass, but we agree about one thing: that ain’t a nice way to go out.

But this is precisely the way in which the laundry-is-a-social-construct movement has failed. I have held off on criticizing them because it’s too easy, when you mock Rachel Dolezal for being “transracial” you get to pretend your own self-image is meaningful, but no, all identities are power poses in front of the bedroom mirror, meaningful only insofar as they help you with the rest of the day. “Well, SCIENCE says that—” You sure you want to play that game? Again, I respect anyone who has the courage to defy their assigned caste. I have no purity objections to a transhumanist society where the tap water runs ecstasy and you can get augmented genitals at Starbucks. I don’t even mind Bushwick. The problem with the mad libs youth isn’t the slew of labels—intersectional, nonbinary, pansexual, curious kinkster, ethically polyamorous, empath, casual baby witch (mostly crystals, auras/energy)—the problem is, what are you going to do with them? And there’s a patriarchy-approved answer: buy shit and beg for validation.

If gender is performative, if identity is not necessary for political action to be taken, if the possibilities are infinite once freed from the bounds of phallogocentrism, then why is it that so many cultural subversives sound exactly the same? You know the stereotype. Bondage. Anxiety. Smoking when drunk. Circlejerks of praise for completing the most basic of tasks. Very, very bad poetry. Expensive fashion draped across waif-like models. Guilty pleasures: junk food, liquor, and problematic TV. Hated roommates. Emoji marxism. Twitter. “today i feel cute enough for a selfie, might delete it later.” “didn’t get out of bed until 2 i’m trash lol” “wow, some casual racism at work today. i’ll just laugh and someday burst because i hate confrontation. but whatever.” I’m not saying these traits describe anyone real, although they might. I’m saying: why is this the stereotype?

Discussion questions: When people type in lower case, what emotion do they hope to convey to the reader? The alt-right often asks if “liking feminine traps” is “gay”—is there anything more heterosexual than wishing you had a weaker male friend to validate your penis? Would trans rights even be an issue if the majority were FtM? How many modern protests can be summarized as “consumers demand product”? Who would win, every chafed masculinist and joyless academic or one flamboyant 19th century playwright? As Oscar Wilde put it: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”

Choose:

HYPOCRISY’S BAD, BUT YOU’RE WORSE

THE FALSE NEGATIVES

[lucidpantone]

So, I'm going to be controversial on main...I'm a poc woman who loves Wtfock.

At first I was really angry about the desicion of a white main and then I was ready to stop watching when Kato made her first racial comment but I keep on watching and with today's clip and commentary by fans, I think I kinda understand where the show is either coming from or going to.

All people is mad about watching Kato falling in love of a poc character and "curing" her racisms or experience racism trough a withe girl pov instead of a poc pov but let's think beyond the anger...

1 the show mayor viewers are white people I even read is not common to have on Belgium black main roles, so on that it was expected.

2 it's not poc people obligation to educate white people at all!!!, but let's be honest who is going to do it if it's not us? How they are going to know a comment or attitude is more than just that if that's the only thing they have experienced and learn?

Kato is a racist girl because that's how society has tell her the things should be as Moyo was "homophobic" and makes misogynistic comments as society show him it should be...and he was forgotten quick, why if what we want is equality we are doing this big difference? Both as all of us need to learn, need to see beyond "society", prejudices, fear and anger plus the whole point of Skam is the main fuck it up something and learn of it.

We could have had all of this trough Moyo? And I would prefer his pov on this?! Of course!!! But I think that's the point, we aren't having that non on real life non on the show and that needs to change but for that change to happen, we need to work through uncomfortable.

Now I agree there's no way of justify her racist self, it is what it is, as there's also no way of justify Moyo way's of talking about a woman; I don't think love solve any of this, any of them are gonna be "fixed" magically just because they fall in love and that's why I'm ok with Kato not magically stop being racist just because now she has a relationship with Moyo...they both need to open their eyes.

Now this weird way they got on this relationship plus the passing plus the slowly episodes I think are more related to Kato herself, she's a influencer so we all expected a crazy life out of her and instead of that she's just boring, she seems to be perfect, she's pretty, the only problem she seems to have is her parents being "strict" so she of course is hidding something and we are just watching the surface...

I went off you can read the rant after the cut

Now this is an Anon(I didn’t know anons could be this long). Secondly “controversial on main”?!?! I think you mean my main since you sent this to me your not signing off on it publicly. I presume you read my blog and so you know am a listener and try to rationalize all sides so lets get into it. I think you and I have vastly different views and expectation of white society as a whole. I live in a hardcore progressive environment so I have come to a point in my life where my expectations of white people is that they possess a basic understanding of systematic racism. If they do not and they live in the western world then they are willfully ignorant and subscribe to a structure that has oppressed and at times enslaved other groups of people. If they still lack the fundamentals to acknowledge this then I am sorry I have no interested in giving them any more leeway or time. Your statement “it's not poc people obligation to educate white people at all!!!, but let's be honest who is going to do it if it's not us? How they are going to know a comment or attitude is more than just that if that's the only thing they have experienced and learn?” is extremely concerning and makes me ask you, Why don't you value your time? and that of the people in your community who look like you? and why are you willfully jumping at the chance to “educate” those who have every modern resource available to them to expand their knowledge and empathy levels to the struggles of others. I am not implying validation I am implying that as a society poc have always been conditioned to give white people slack, to be patient cause you know its hardwired into them to just be a little racist and maybe it is but at one point we need to stop dumbing down white society and simply acknowledge that its time for them to take ownership of their “wokeness” and if they won't then as poc cut them off and send them a reading list instead. Also you bring up Moyo’s misogyny but I think you are missing that its actually somewhat contextualize for the viewer. We know Moyo has no at home male father figure, we know he is black and his socio economic status, we have spent 3 season examining toxic masculinity via Jens, Senne, and Robbe. So in-turn we have enough to contextualize Moyo’s pov even if we dont agree with it. With Kato we have none of that she is a pretty robot who is a racist that's it. We will be on ep7 in 2 days and thats all we got almost 7 episodes in. Lastly, this “Both as all of us need to learn, need to see beyond "society", prejudices, fear and anger plus the whole point of Skam is the main fuck it up something and learn of it.” No one said Kato doesn't have an oppotunity for change because she does I just want her to be as far away from Moyo as possible when she does it because displaying racist ideology is not just a “fuck up” it has historically got boys that look like Moyo murdered.