#most unfairly maligned woman

[mizufae]

So, because of my kidney stone and the election happening at the same time, I started watching Friends from the beginning all the way through, as a pleasant departure from reality. Today I finished watching all ten seasons. I watched it when it was first airing on nbc and again multiple times throughout my life but I don’t think I ever watched it start to finish like this before. Notably it was as background tv to playing animal crossing and sundry tasks, so it’s not like I was truly binging it in the hyper focus sense. But anyway I have some thoughts.

One, Chandler’s dad is a trans woman who is also a professional drag queen and she is unfairly maligned by the entire cast repeatedly, which sucks, but if we extend the fiction twenty years she would be a repeated guest judge on drag race and Chandler would get cool points galore.

Two, Chandler is nonbinary. Obviously the language and common awareness of this way of being wasn’t really out there when the show aired but presumably Phoebe or his dad would bring it up eventually, and my god is it written into the show. Every time Chandler is powerfully uncomfortable and disingenuous it’s because of a failure of fitting into explicit gender roles. Every time he expresses disgust at girly things, he is shown indulging in them in secret or with his most trusted confidants later. Every time he enjoys girly things comfortably he has to balance it out with machismo afterwards, but he is hopelessly uncomfortable with machismo as well. And it’s not just that kind of stuff, it’s his role in the friend group as occasional genderless clown, his self presentation, his repeatedly acceptance of mediocre compromise in his professional and romantic life because to really ask for what he wants seems impossible… I could go on. But anyway hopefully mid 50s Chandler is signing his emails with “Chandler Bing, he/they” and crossing his fingers that nobody asks him about it and then his work friends throw him a surprise coming out party he didn’t want.

Three, Chandler, Monica, and Joey are clearly in a poly situationship - we have regressed societally in a lot of ways but the ease with which male friendship and deep affection was expressed on Friends sticks out particularly in light of our current culture, but the three of them have something definitely beyond that. Like, Joey has a room in their house. Joey asks if he can have an aquarium and a sex swing in that room. Who are you sharing the sex swing with out in the suburbs, Joey???

Four, a lot has been said about the insidious silent racism of Friends’ extremely white fictional NYC, but wholly shit it pales in comparison to the rampant, explicit, unquestioned fatphobia. The fatphobia shows up in every episode. There is not a single fat character presented in a positive light. The only reason ugly naked guy is ugly is because he gained weight. Monica’s entire character is built on fatphobia. Even the kindest characters most accepting of individuality use fatness as an insult. We never even get a fat and happy stereotype, unless you count oblivious past fat Monica dancing while eating pizza, but we know she becomes thin shortly after this and also immediately before that shot she is described as “a pile of coats” on a bed. So like, ew. Anyway, the time period the show was filmed during is one of the worst for fat positivity. The perilously thin ideal body type of the mid 90s to early oughts is reflected in the show, but the show was making the culture for nearly half its seasons so it’s not like the writers were powerless to stop it or anything.

Five, Rachel should have ended up with Ross but Ross should have given up tenure to go to France with her! What absolute bullshit. He could have taken sabbatical and spent a gloriously romantic French summer with her and then they could have done the international young parents thing for a bit and Rachel could have come back after a few years to an even better job in the city. The way the whole show was about her slowly growing up and becoming assertive and taking risks and then the complete doormat Ross keeps her from a Parisian high fashion adventure??? Complete dud. I remember thinking this when it first aired, but goddamn, as a 40 year old I am so deeply disappointed.

Six, Phoebe is obviously bisexual and hopefully she came out to everyone some time soon after the show end, and also Mike made no sense. Like, he was fine, and fit in with the friend group okay, and obviously he is Paul Rudd so he is super cute and hot enough for Phoebe, but he was obviously shoehorned in and then barely developed. Half of the boys’ single episode dates had more personality than Mike shows for his entire run. David on the other hand was romantically planted for Phoebe for the entire show and was shockingly memorable considering how few episodes he was actually in. Phoebe’s ending should have been her getting a passport and flying to France with Rachel to be her translator and David meeting them at the airport because it turns out he and Phoebe had been penpals the whole time. But I digress.

Seven, did Ben and Carol die? Ben is phased out slowly, like, he shows up a few times as an older kid and then is mentioned in passing a few times, but Carol is basically disappeared into the void. She is seen like, once in the back half of the seasons and then never shows up or is mentioned again. She should have been there to tell Ross to go to France. She was supposed to be his friend. And his coparent. The rest of the friends all really liked her, and she fit into the expanded world perfectly well, alongside characters like Janice and Gunther, both of whom had important scenes in the last few episodes. So why not have a Carol cameo? A phone call??? Anything? A mention that Carol and Susan had moved to the burbs earlier and now Monica and Chandler were doing the same? Something?????? Poor work.

Eight, despite some of my issues above, Friends is an incredible piece of television. The ensemble never stops having chemistry. The combinations of characters always reveal a new element or dynamic. The costumes and sets are absolutely iconic, in ways I only now appreciate but inherently understood the first time. There is some of the tightest sitcom writing of all time. The guest stars were outrageous but always integrated, and the ensemble actors stood toe to toe with them no problem. There are genuine moments of love and stupidly funny gags all the time. Like, I’m annoyed by plenty of little things. But taken as a whole I now get why it was so big at the time and why it continues to endure.

[thewarmestplacetohide]

With gore and such in horror movies, particularly where the victims are women, where do you typically draw the line between genuine horror and just torture porn? I've seen a lot of debate about the Terrifier franchise in light of the new one - I've not seen any of the movies, and I'm also not super well-versed in horror film in general. What do you consider gore/slashers done well?

this is going to be long and a tangent. apologies ahead of time.

1 - i rarely, if ever, use the term "torture porn." i think it's a means of classifying movies that needs to be retired.

this is not a criticism of you, just to be clear. it's just that:

i have seen people apply it to fantastic movies solely because they disapprove of/dislike gore. this unfairly maligns films while perpetuating the idea that violence is always cheap, tasteless, and without purpose or meaning.

i have also seen it used to frame horror fans as twisted "degenerates," which is very ugly when you consider horror is often used to challenge societal norms, and many horror fans are marginalized people. additionally, liking gory movies =/= approving of real violence or being turned on by it.

on the flip side, using it as a classification can also lead people to overlook issues present in many horror movies. calling Cannibal Holocaust, for example, "torture porn" is reductive in its own way. it ends the conversation. it says, "this was bad because it was shallow violence," when, in reality, it is so much worse than that as a deeply racist and misogynistic piece of media that exploited indigenous people and facilitated real animal abuse.

2 - i can't really draw any kind of universal line. the necessity of gore is a film-by-film issue. rather than asking, "is this movie too violent," i typically ask "why does this movie feature graphic violence? what does it do with it?"

graphic violence can be:

used to portray horrific historical events honestly (ex: Come and See),

used to drive home points about violence, those who perform it, and/or those who endure it (ex: Pan's Labyrinth, Lady Vengeance)

used to evoke strong emotions from shock and disgust to grief and rage in audiences (ex: Oldboy, The Sadness)

exaggerated for comedic effect (ex: Evil Dead II)

and/or implemented solely to show off impressive effects work and artistry (ex: Terrifier 2).

3 - women being victims of violence in horror movies is not inherently misogynistic. i'm not saying you're implying this, just pointing out that this is a fact worth keeping in mind. i've seen people act like violence is inherently anti-woman solely because it's happening to a female character, which is ridiculous.

i can also personally watch movies with problematic elements, like misogyny, if i enjoy other aspects of them. what matters is that i consume them critically.

4 - i do want to clarify that i dislike Terrifier. i find its plot shallow and most of the performances bad. it's just a vehicle for violence that, imo, is far too directed at women. it left a bad taste in my mouth.

at the same time, i enjoyed Terrifier 2, which i thought was flawed but sincerely funny with a great villain and some awesome special effects. (even then, there is an overly-long torture scene that i found weirdly mean-spirited and uncomfortable to watch as a woman).

5 - i'm not the best person to ask about slashers! i like some but it's far from my favorite sub-genre. off the top of my head, some good proto-slashers are:

The Virgin Spring (1960)

Psycho (1960)

Blood and Black Lace (1964)

and some good slashers are:

Straw Dogs (1971)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Deep Red (1975)

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

Halloween (1978)

Opera (1987)

Scream (1996)

Inside (2007)

Sweeney Todd (2007)

Eden Lake (2008)

Midnight Meat Train (2008)

The Loved Ones (2009)

Dream Home (2010)

The Woman (2011)

Green Room (2015)

Don't Breathe (2016)

Hush (2016)

Revenge (2017)

Halloween (2018)

Darlin' (2019)

Pearl (2022)

as always, i recommend checking for trigger warnings before watching films.

[rhetoricandlogic]

The Book of Gothel Reimagines Rapunzel’s Witch As the Hero of Her Own Story

By Lacy Baugher Milas  |  July 26, 2022 | 1:15pm

Usually, Rapunzel retellings tend to focus on the princess in the tower, the sad and lonely girl imprisoned by an evil sorceress who uses her stolen daughter’s golden hair as a ladder. But in Mary McMyne’s debut novel The Book of Gothel, there are more references to rapunzel the plant than Rapunzel the person, and that’s just the first of the many surprises in this exceptionally original, propulsive fairytale reimagining that feels a bit more like a reclamation than anything else.

A retelling of Rapunzel that centers its story around the witch who held the princess prisoner, The Book of Gothel will delight fans who have reveled in publishing’s recent trend of giving the often unfairly maligned and supposedly evil women from folklore and mythology their voices back. (And, not for nothing, a story about a woman who secretly helps other women deal with unwanted, problematic, or troubled pregnancies from her mist-shrouded magic tower feels especially welcome right now. Just saying!)

The story follows Haelewise, daughter of Hedda, a sickly young woman who has been plagued by mysterious fainting spells for as long as she can remember. Her mother is their village’s midwife and has done her best to teach her daughter her craft, though their neighbors are occasionally leery (read: wildly superstitious) about taking assistance from a girl with black eyes and a strangely inexplicable lingering physical malady. That Haelewise is branded a witch soon after her mother’s death probably won’t surprise anyone, but instead reminds us of a sad fact of human society throughout the ages—-when a woman is different, that difference all too often makes her a target. And that goes double if that woman has any sort of power of her own.

Left penniless by her father—who’s preparing to marry a rich widow, because of course he is—Haelewise is forced to sell the last of her mother’s handmade poppets to survive, even as she clings to the hope that her childhood friend Matteus will decide to defy his father’s social climbing dreams and marry her. (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t, another twist I don’t think anyone reading this will be surprised by.) Forced to flee into the forest after being pursued by an angry mob threatening physical violence, Haelwise discovers the mysterious tower called Gothel and the magical wise woman who lives within its walls.

Through her subsequent lessons with Kunegunde, Haelwise slowly begins to learn more about her supposed sickness, her own abilities, and the hidden side of her mother she never knew. She learns how to project her soul into animal familiars and how the strange plants known as alrune can enhance her gifts. In the process, she begins not just to better understand her place in the world, and since The Book of Gothel is told by a Haelewise looking back over the course of her own life, she’s also a woman who’s well aware of the ways her story has been warped and altered in the frequent retellings of it. This nuanced layering is perhaps most interesting in the ways we see her refer to her own choices, as well as the often selfish reasons that drive her to make them.

As a heroine, Haelewise is both brave and infuriating, a woman whose determination is as admirable as her stubbornness is annoying. McMyne doesn’t shy away from the fact this purported villain is actually a complex figure who makes plenty of bad choices, and who rightfully deserves some of the criticism that’s leveled at her. Her Haelewise is simultaneously a brave young woman who (rightly) refuses to settle for the life she’s told is all she can ever expect to have and a frequently stubborn child who (repeatedly) refuses to deny her own wants.

Her insistence on having her own way and her refusal to admit that anyone else could have a valid point about why the things she wants are…if not outright wrong, at least extremely questionable, feels beyond frustrating at various points in this novel. (Particularly when terrible things could so easily be avoided had Haelwise simply chosen not to lie to the people trying to help her or accepted that perhaps someone other than herself might know best.)

In addition to being a fairly groundbreaking reimagining of the Rapunzel story, The Book of Gothel is also an excellent piece of historical fiction, weaving a complex tale that both reflects medieval society’s discomfort with female power and features real-life examples of the extraordinary women who nevertheless rose to wield significant influence during this time period. (Hildegard of Bingen, Walburga, to name just a few.) The book’s depiction of life in twelfth-century Germany is rich and thorough, and its blending of familiar elements from fairytales and legends into the real-life reign of King Frederick is deftly handled.

The honesty with which the book treats unpleasant realities—that merchant’s son Matteus would never have been allowed to wed Haelewise, that even queens and princesses are generally powerless in the face of their royal spouse’s desires, that antisemitism was both real and generally widespread—is refreshing as well.

And though your mileage may vary when it comes to the wildly convenient way that the issues of Matteus and Haelewise’s love story are ultimately resolved, the deft way McMyne sets the pieces in motion that lead to (at least part of) the story we’re familiar with—Rapunzel, Mother Gothel, a magical tower that can only be found by those who know where it is—is simply delightful to watch unfold.

[warningsine]

With the release of Kevin Can F—k Himself on AMC, a genre-bending dark comedy drama that takes deliberate aim at the misogyny that sits at the heart of our most popular and enduring pieces of pop culture, it seems that perhaps the time has finally come to publicly reckon with the way we view wives—sitcom and otherwise—on the television shows we watch. Even the show’s name is a play on the CBS sitcom title Kevin Can Wait, whose narrative storytelling was so lazy that they killed off Kevin’s wife Donna between its first and second seasons because they were “literally just running out of ideas,” and then barely mentioned her death onscreen.

Kevin Can F—k Himself openly acknowledges that the advantages Kevin McRoberts receives—constant adulation, an almost preternatural ability to luck his way out of ridiculous situations, a devoted wife whose hard work and constant presence he simply accepts as his due—only exist because the rules of the show he stars in require it. In the gritty prestige drama half of the series, which presents his wife as a character with interiority and her own necessary point of view, Allison realizes that she deserves better than a life cheerfully accepting uncomfortable period jokes as her lot. And her rage feels like a revelation.

It’s worth noting that AMC has something of a history with unfairly-hated TV wives. While Breaking Bad is frequently hailed as one of the best television series ever produced, the series is also memorable for something far less laudable. On the one hand, its complicated tale of a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher turned vicious drug kingpin is a harrowing watch, as Walter White descends into the worst sort of darkness and drags viewers right along with him. Its scale was somehow both grand and immediate, a morality play that carefully tears apart its characters’ lives on the way to an ending that still stands as one of the few examples of a prestige drama really sticking its landing.

And yet, for all the areas in which it excelled, Breaking Bad was never a show that really knew what to do with its female characters, and Skyler White—Walt’s put-upon wife who spent multiple seasons living in ignorance of his illicit and illegal extracurricular activities before being forced to become a co-conspirator whether she wanted to be or not—often seemed to exist solely as an object for viewers to despise.

Given that Breaking Bad is a story full of generally vile, reprehensible people doing everything from committing petty theft to engaging in torture and murder, it’s never really made a ton of sense that Skyler somehow emerged as the series’ most hated character. Unfairly maligned by many viewers for what essentially boils down to harshing Walt’s buzz, Skyler was constantly labeled a nagging killjoy for simply having the nerve to dislike the fact that her husband repeatedly lied to her about the most basic facts of their lives.

Narratively speaking, Skyler is meant to serve as Breaking Bad’s moral compass, a figure whose presence tarnishes Walt’s ambitions by reminding him that, actually, cooking crystal meth is both bad and illegal. Her unique point of view as the woman who has known Walt at his most normal and average helps puncture the fantasy he creates of Heisenberg, the badass one who knocks. Instead, she reveals him as he is: a delusional, ultimately pathetic man whose good intentions became monstrous in the end.     

That she ultimately becomes complicit in Walt’s crimes is another layer of tragedy in a show that already has multiple layers of heartbreak, but even at her worst, Skyler’s primary goal—ensuring the safety of her children—is generally a selfless one. (Walt’s, on the other hand…) Perhaps Skyler is judged harshly because she is both a woman and a mother, roles we have been culturally conditioned to see as both necessarily good and moral, therefore we just expect her to both know and do better than her reprobate spouse. After all, men are allegedly more susceptible to temptation and are always easily more forgiven when they fall short of the people they’re supposed to be, right?

Despite the fact that he is a criminal several times over, Walt is never blamed for putting his wife in an untenable and impossible position. Instead, it is Skyler who is disparaged as a grating, shrewish ball and chain who somehow just keeps getting in her amoral husband’s way and preventing him from doing crimes exactly the way he wants to. And Breaking Bad sadly does precious little to push back against that perception; the show is deeply uninterested in Skyler’s point of view, and rarely allows her character any sort of depth or nuance that might help viewers better grasp the difficult choices she’s facing.

Unfortunately, Skyler is hardly the only prestige TV leading lady—or even the only woman on an AMC network drama!—who is judged and found wanting for the crime of not being deferential enough to the man she married. Betty Draper Francis over on Mad Men certainly seemed to attract more than her fair share of criticism for simply having the nerve to divorce a man who cheated on her all the time. (How very dare!) And AMC’s The Walking Dead isn’t just famous for its array of grotesque monsters: Just say the name Lori Grimes to any longtime fan and you’ll learn pretty quickly that sexist double standards did indeed survive the zombie apocalypse. These women, like them or not, deserved better then and now—and they deserve to be remembered as more than flashpoints for fan vitriol.

In Kevin Can F—k Himself, Allison is given what Skyler, Betty, and Lori all lacked—a storytelling framework that makes the audience complicit in their own response. The sitcom segments of Kevin try to gaslight viewers into thinking that the often abusive way Kevin and his world treat his wife is not only acceptable, but it’s also hilarious. Except it isn’t, not even a little bit, and the drama half of the show refuses to let the folks watching it look away from that fact. It encourages us not just to sympathize with Allison’s anger, but to share it, and to hold ourselves at least partially responsible for all the years we spent laughing at women like her.

Perhaps if there had only been a Walt Can F—k Himself, we might have gotten to see Skyler in the same light.

[bitch-butter]

I joked that I was going to make a Lifetime movies rec list a while ago and Truly being bored at work has given birth to worse ideas, so this is one for my fellow cinephiles lol

My Highest Recommended Lifetime Movies in the Order in which they Changed my Life

Small Sacrifices (1989)

I'm honestly unclear whether this was intended originally to be a Lifetime movie because they showed it on a few different networks, but this was the first one that I ever remembered seeing and it Rocked my world. It's a true story about a woman named Diane Downs who attempted to murder her children and my mother and her friends lived for this film in a way that like is actually bonechilling. But I was spellbound by Farrah Fawcett in this movie, I thought she was the greatest actress I'd ever seen, and the story was really dark and scary and felt disgustingly salacious. So everything I'd come to like about Lifetime movies lol.

No One Would Tell (1996)

All my mom loved in the world was to wake up hungover on a Sunday and turn Lifetime on and proceed to fall asleep again while my tiny child peepers beheld Truly heinous shit. This one is one that I continue to make people watch because I can't be alone with the memories, but basically Candace Cameron is in a horribly abusive relationship with her boyfriend, Fred Savage, and he ends up murdering her and it is Incredibly sad and traumatic. There's a historic scene where she's taking a shower and her entire body is just littered with bruises and I will Never forget it!!!!!!!!! Very, very dark. But....iconic.

Odd Girl Out (2005)

This was the point in time where Uncle Television was very much concerned with telling young girls about bullying (for a different and just as good interp of this theme see ABC Family's Cyberbully starring Emily Osmont). But this one was the first and best to me, I related to it very much as an ostracized teen. It stars Alexa Vega, and she's a teen that has her whole popular friend group turn against her and she gets bullied bad lol It gets dark but only for like 20 minutes and then her redemption arc is nice. I loved this movie to death until I discovered Thirteen (2003), which is Way darker and had girls kissing in it for a few seconds.

Fab Five: The Texas Cheerleader Scandal (2008)

This movie was my identity. This movie was my child. Every time it was on TV I stopped whatever I was doing and watched it. I have no idea why, because I have been told people mainly find this one boring, but I think it's mostly due to the fact that I really do love movies where teenagers behave badly with impunity. This was a Ripped From the Headlines Lifetime movie about a roving band of cheerleaders that terrorize everyone in their wake at a Texas high school and basically get away with it because one of their mom's is the principal. I think it is a lol and a half, it's actually pretty competent, and there's like Good performances in it from actual actors. Highest rec possible.

Liz & Dick (2012)

Lindsay Lohan gets so unfairly maligned for her performance in this, it's sick. My most cherished memories of my last year of High School are watching this movie late at night and reading all of Lindsay's blind items and every article that was being written about her failed comeback. Again, I think she's actually okay in this, but for a lot of people it was insulting to cast Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor and to those people I say haters get thee behind me. It's fun, it's campy, it's not too long, everybody watch it and relax for a while.

Flowers in the Attic (2014)

DARK DARK DARK but also STUPID STUPID STUPID. Seriously this movie has no business being as funny as it is given the subject matter. Basically a bunch of kids are uprooted by the death of their father and their mother forces them to live in the attic of her wealthy parents home under false pretenses, and incest ensues. Which, again, sounds really upsetting but is actually pretty funny a lot of the time lol. Their evil god-fearing grandma is played by Ellen Burstyn and she's So over the top, and their mom is my queen Heather Graham who is actually pretty chilling. The other movies in the saga are Also pretty dark, stupid, and fun, but this one was a legit phenomenon. Me and my college roommate would host viewings of it in our dorm room, it's really fun to watch in a crowd of people that don't get darked out by poorly handled incest.

Harry and Meghan: A Royal Romance (2018)

This is part one of a trilogy, but it's probably the best one even though the third is pretty fun. Honestly, you guys, this one is just Nice. Truly dgaf about the irl Harry and Meghan but this movie is actually a very fun love story, and it's sweet and has a few legitimately compelling twists and turns, and ultimately has a really satisfying ending. The actors playing Meghan and Harry are stellar, it's funny, it's cute, another highly recced film.

Who Killed Jonbenet? (2016)

An unhinged Eion Bailey performance for the ages with added child murder. Sarah and I are Definitely recording an episode about this one in the future, but truly it's almost too bleak to be chic and gets saved at the last minute by how inadvertently goofy it is. Eion's character develops a psycho-sexual (to me) fixation on an older detective who comes in and basically upends his investigation, and everything about it gives "but daddy please" and I love it and hate it at the same time.

Death of a Cheerleader (1994/2019)

Both versions of this movie are elite, the original is truly iconic and the remake is actually deluxe and makes some changes that I think make it an actually interesting movie. In Lifetime fashion it is Based On a True Story (fun fact: in my younger years I listened to My Favorite Murder and this story gets mentioned in one of their first episodes and they offhandedly mention that the murder weapon was like 8 inches long and That is a fact that has stuck with me in the middle of the night). I'd say watch them both, because the OG has a Tori Spelling performance that cannot be missed and is just a basic mean girls comeuppance story, but the redux is a lot more thoughtful and actually reflects some humanity on all characters which (if you haven't noticed) Lifetime isn't always great at lol.

Too Young to Be a Dad (2002)

UGH. Me and my girlfriend Just watched this and honestly that's a shame because I wish I'd had this movie my entire life. Paul Dano is a teenager that loses his virginity and impregnates his friend in one fell swoop and he has to Step Up and become a Man as like a fifteen year old, which sounds crazy and is but is legitimately a captivating movie. And Paul Dano is sooo fucking good in, it's not even a joke, watch it for his performance alone. I laughed, I cried, a perfect film (even though they never address abortion as a viable option lol Lifetime can only go so far ig).

This was Purely just for me but if you read this and watch these movies please lmk what you thought ~

[thefabelmans2022]

i find it so fascinating how the actual persecuted people during the salem witch trials (and most other witch trials) were overwhelmingly women but the most popular uses of the 'witch hunt' metaphor refer to men being falsely accused or unfairly prosecuted like the crucible is a great example it's literally all about a teenage girl who's been taken advantage of and ruined by an older man who she believed loved her and she's framed as vindictive bitch for wanting revenge, the clinton impeachment was compared to a witch hunt but again the unfairly maligned party was the older man sleeping with a much younger woman, and how many men now have called the me too movement a witch hunt? much to think about.

[natequarter]

"most unfairly maligned tudor woman" is a fascinating question bc it's not just asking "who has been treated the worst?" but also the very stupid question "who deserved that treatment the least?" which is, i don't know, ridiculous

[xtruss]

How To Eat To 100

Dan Buettner’s book explores America’s healthiest cuisines

— Jan 25th 2023 | Culture | World in a dish

Nearly 70% of American adults are overweight; over a third are obese. Grocery shops contain aisle after aisle of salty crisps, sugary drinks and processed snacks. Cues to eat unhealthily abound. But if this is your archetypal American diet, argues Dan Buettner in “The Blue Zones American Kitchen”, a work of anthropological reporting posing as a cookbook, you are looking in the wrong places.

Mr Buettner studies and writes about “Blue Zones”, areas where people tend to live long, healthy lives, with unusually high numbers of centenarians and long life expectancy in middle age. In this book, he finds the principles of Blue Zone diets—very little meat and processed foods, with most calories coming from whole grains, greens, tubers, nuts and beans—in the cuisines of four demographic groups: Native Americans, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans.

The recipes that Mr Buettner presents do not necessarily represent what most people in these groups actually eat. For a variety of reasons, for instance, Native Americans and Latinos suffer higher obesity rates than non-Hispanic whites—which would probably not be the case if they all ate as this book recommends. But, historically, each of these groups had healthy cuisines, and Mr Buettner talks to people trying to revive them.

African-American cuisine is often unfairly maligned for over-relying on fried and processed foods. Mr Buettner says this aspect of it is an artefact of the Great Migration, when black people left bountiful gardens in the South, which provided greens, beans and root vegetables, for industrial northern cities. And so the recipes in this part of the book feature crops such as okra, collard greens and Carolina Gold rice, a delicious west African strain. All these played crucial roles in African-American diets for centuries.

Diverse as the recipes collected here are, most rely on seasonal, fresh produce, often home-grown. Mr Buettner recounts his confusion when following his gps directions to meet a Hmong woman in her garden, and ending up in the car park of Target, a department store. Behind a row of trees, he found a five-acre garden bought by Hmong refugees in the 1970s that, he says, “looked like Cambodia in the morning, [with] fields of bitter melon and zucchini, and people walking around with wicker baskets.”

He says the encounter left him convinced that “there’s so much culinary genius in America that also lines up perfectly with the dietary patterns that produced the longest-lived humans in history. It’s so easy if you look for it.” The truth is a bit more complicated. For urbanites without a garden, these recipes may prove expensive and time-consuming. And as Mr Buettner’s other work on Blue Zones attests, food is just one part of the longevity puzzle. Centenarians tend to live active, purposeful lives centred on family and community.

So this book is not a shortcut to a 100th birthday. But anyone who wants a shot at a century should probably eat less meat and munch more legumes and whole grains. ■

— This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline "Eating To 100"

[bethanydelleman]

Mrs. Churchill: The Most Unfairly Maligned Woman in Jane Austen

We never meet Mrs. Churchill in Jane Austen’s Emma, everything we know about her is second- (Frank) or third- (Mr. Weston) hand. But once you read the book a second or tenth time, it becomes clear that Mrs. Churchill was getting progressively worse, ending in her death and Frank knew this. 

Mrs. Churchill is far more sick than Frank ever admits. He often uses her as an excuse to neglect visiting his father.  Everyone in Highbury thinks Mrs. Churchill is faking because it's so convenient that she's sick when Frank is supposed to visit. But we know the truth, he doesn't visit until Jane comes to Highbury, he is staying away on purpose.

But she does decline during the course of the novel

Evidence of her decline: 

We know that the Churchills go to London yearly with Frank, “He saw his son every year in London” and yet, Frank says to Emma, “and if my uncle and aunt go to town this spring—but I am afraid—they did not stir last spring—I am afraid it is a custom gone for ever.” This custom has happened every year of Frank’s life and now is suddenly ended. Sounds like Mrs. Churchill was too sick to go the year prior and Frank does not expect her to get better.

According to Mr. Weston, Frank can come if the Churchills do not visit a family called the Braithwaites, “But I know they will, because it is a family that a certain lady, of some consequence, at Enscombe, has a particular dislike to: and though it is thought necessary to invite them once in two or three years, they always are put off when it comes to the point.” But the Churchills do actually go for the visit. As if they are saying goodbye and seeing people for the last time.

Mrs. Churchill does allow Frank to stay in Highbury for the ball, and then suddenly withdraws consent, “A letter arrived from Mr. Churchill to urge his nephew’s instant return. Mrs. Churchill was unwell—far too unwell to do without him; she had been in a very suffering state (so said her husband) when writing to her nephew two days before, though from her usual unwillingness to give pain, and constant habit of never thinking of herself, she had not mentioned it; but now she was too ill to trifle, and must entreat him to set off for Enscombe without delay.” This seems like a petty power play until we remember that she does actually die at the end of the book. Several close calls are normal for a person experiencing hospice care or a sudden decline in health.

Then Mrs. Churchill suddenly decides to go to London, which makes sense if she’s been getting much worse and wants to consult the London physicians:

“The evil of the distance from Enscombe,” said Mr. Weston, “is, that Mrs. Churchill, as we understand (in italics in the text), has not been able to leave the sofa for a week together. In Frank’s last letter she complained, he said, of being too weak to get into her conservatory without having both his arm and his uncle’s! This, you know, speaks a great degree of weakness—but now she is so impatient to be in town, that she means to sleep only two nights on the road.—So Frank writes word. Certainly, delicate ladies have very extraordinary constitutions, Mrs. Elton. You must grant me that.”

Frank actually stays away from Jane against his inclination when Mrs. Churchill is in Richmond. Mrs. Churchill is actually getting worse and he's not a complete dick, he stays with her:

This was the only visit from Frank Churchill in the course of ten days. He was often hoping, intending to come—but was always prevented. His aunt could not bear to have him leave her. Such was his own account at Randall’s. If he were quite sincere, if he really tried to come, it was to be inferred that Mrs. Churchill’s removal to London had been of no service to the wilful or nervous part of her disorder. That she was really ill was very certain; he had declared himself convinced of it, at Randalls. Though much might be fancy, he could not doubt, when he looked back, that she was in a weaker state of health than she had been half a year ago. He did not believe it to proceed from any thing that care and medicine might not remove, or at least that she might not have many years of existence before her; but he could not be prevailed on, by all his father’s doubts, to say that her complaints were merely imaginary, or that she was as strong as ever.

and later: The black mare was blameless; they were right who had named Mrs. Churchill as the cause. He had been detained by a temporary increase of illness in her; a nervous seizure, which had lasted some hours—and he had quite given up every thought of coming,

Also, let us consider how much hatred is directed at Mrs. Churchill for wanting her adopted nephew to stay by her while she is dying, whilst Mr. Woodhouse, who basically imprisons his daughter with all his fancies of ill health, is widely loved. Mrs. Churchill is the alleged hypochondriac who is actually sick, while Mr. Woodhouse worries about his health, but has no recorded illness through the entire book.

To sum up, Mrs. Churchill was getting progressively worse over the course of the novel. She very reasonably wanted her adopted child to be near her. Frank does actually do his duty to his aunt, indicating that he is well aware of how sick she has become. Mrs. Churchill’s death was not sudden, it happens at the end of a decline lasting about a year, or a bit longer.

[rocket-candy-heart]

Sometimes I just think about how much of an impact the media circus around Anna Nicole Smith in the late 90s-2000s had on US culture and its bad

[violue]

Normally I'd probably just have scrolled past this, as I saw it while looking for new Mel fanart, but seeing that it had 200 notes made me so sad.

I just can't agree with this at all. I've been black for nearly 41 years and I would have killed to have media like this when I was a young anime loving nerd. Not just because every frame is art, or because the music was so on point and impactful, or because every character was so damn interesting, or because I was a League of Legends player.

Because it was special.

Mel was incredible. Just because Jayce and Mel parted ways (ish)? Doesn't mean she was treated as disposable. She was a straight up Deus Ex Chosen One Perfect Goddess Wolf, and the narrative gave her plenty of growth, character, and plot. She had a deep and interesting dynamic with her mother, with Jayce, with the Black Rose, with her own self. The show also made it clear by the end that her story was just getting started.

The same goes for Ekko. Him being the single most important part of the final act is huge. Him getting to experience that happier world was part of his story, the romance was an aside. It wasn't his main purpose. If anything, Jinx is a side character in his story in many of the scenes they share. He is a genius inventor, he had a life changing impact on a 300+ year old Heimerdinger, he was a revolutionary part of a crucial resistance against Piltover, Jinx, and any other threat that came by. Maybe you just didn't care about his story aside from how it developed with Jinx?

Sevika had an incredible arc that started with her as a snarky henchman to Silco and the chem barons, to an aimless "henchman without a boss", to a momma bear, to the sole voice of Zaun on the Piltover council. And she did a lot of that with one damn arm. As for the ogre thing; she's tall and muscular. If she was the only character with brown skin on the entire show and that ogre line came out, I'd be side eyeing it too, but she wasn't.

Sky existing only to further Viktor's storyline to ME feels a lot more like lazy misogyny than purposeful misogynoir. She got fridged, but she was still an intelligent woman of color, not the most common thing even in these 2020s.

You didn't mention Ambessa, but what a character. Aggressively flawed, powerful, shrewd. A type that's usually designed for white male characters, but instead she's a powerful Black leader commanding an entire army.

Now I'm not Jewish, so there's always been a lot of antisemitism in media that went completely over my head, but when in the world did we decide Silco was supposed to be Jewish? I even tried googling it while typing this post, and I can't find anyone suggesting this. Is it possible you're projecting Jewish stereotypes onto him???

I also definitely disagree with the idea that they went for a "both sides are bad" cop-out. They went out of their way to show why both sides are extremely complicated, and how different those factions can be depending on their leader. Piltover was always the city on a shining hill, and Zaun was always the unfairly maligned undercity rebelling against their unfair circumstances.

I'm frustrated, because to me, it feels a little like you're creating problems out of thin air so that people can congratulate you on being the one person smart enough to acknowledge them.

Look. If I come off over the top, it's because this bit of media meant a lot to me. The show's central (canon) romance was two women. There were multiple, smart, clever, powerful, black and brown female characters that were written to have multiple dimensions, purposes, and fates. They had a surplus of powerful, intelligent female characters in general. They had disabled, neurodivergent, queer characters. They left the Bechdel test in the dust.

They explored the way the wealthy can exist in comfort and ignorance at the expense of the poor, and how law enforcement is used as a tool to further that agenda. It explored corruption in law enforcement, government, and even criminal enterprises.

For me it was mindful and inclusive, which really impressed me considering the writing staff is mostly a bunch of white people.

... the pacing in season 2 was a mess though.

Now that arcane is over im seriously starting to doubt its “inclusion”

Mel being the disposable black girlfriend

Sky existing solely for the development of a white man (viktor)

Ekko and sevika both dedicating their lives to the betterment of zaun and getting absolutely 0 recognition and instead being favored for the white girl that didn’t even want the position (jinx)

Ekko having no personal development outside of jinx (white girl) and his only real purpose in arcane being to save the day and never being mentioned again

Silco being an antisemitic stereotype

Sevika being called an ogre by a white girl?????

Now that I’m actually looking at this shit, it kinda sucks. And when you consider the fact that the whole p/z conflict was thrown out the fucking window with the “both sides are bad” p.o.v + the fact that the whole reason the p/z conflict exists in the first place is because of ship angst, it feels like they never cared about any of it. The inclusion, the commentary, the mindfulness, it was all fake. Like damn. They really dont give a shit and never did. Its all just racism in pretty packaging :/

[finitefall]

Hot Take: all the nonsense uttered by the HotD team about Daemon only getting love "because he is hot and a badass with dragons" and not a "bad person doing bad things we should have seen fom the start" is transparent copy/paste of all the vile crap the GoT team tried to push to justify Daenerys' S8 arc. Looks like HBO, Condal and Hess are secretly big fans of D&D's writing style and see them as unfairly maligned tbh. It's not hard to guess what the writers' concept of Daemon's arc will be.

It's very similar, yes, but Condal didn't exactly criticize D&D when he said "The first thing is always the hardest…When that work is cleverly done in the first go, as it was by David and Dan…the work of the person who follows becomes that much easier." (source) So I don't think they're "secret" fans of their writing. And I can see them doing this: “don’t worry, it’s not the woman this time, it’s the man so you can’t say the writing is misogynistic”.

What bothers me the most though with the similarity between what people said about Daenerys and what they say about Daemon is that they're completely different characters. Even if both shows sucked at writing both characters, Daenerys is a heroine while Daemon is a morally grey character. Making Daemon more of a villain and chosing similar words to compare him to Daenerys really just seems like a way to justify Dany's ending in the show. I'm not okay with their characterization of Daemon, but Dany's characterization in GOT was a whole other level of awful writing.

[hellsbellschime]

Yes, Rhaenyra trying to put bastards on the throne is the wider political issue that’s most pertinent to the war. Legitimacy of heirs is literally the foundational deception that kicks off the entirety of Game of Thrones with the War of the Five Kings. The stigma of bastardy is the foundation of Jon Snow’s character! This is the point where Rhaenyra turns from ‘unfairly maligned woman opposed just because she’s a woman’ to ‘complete liability’. Skipping over the ramifications of that fuck up and the violence she and Viserys were capable of dishing out to those who spoke truth removes virtually all nuance from the Green vs Black claim, because if the rest of the realm in the show doesn’t care about the bastards then the Greens aren’t justified in caring. They even removed the fact that Rhaenyra had to engage her boys to Laena’s girls very early on to stop Corlys kicking off about the obvious, just so they could have the scene where Rhaenyra looks reasonable in trying to marry Helaena and Jace. It’s a big mistake IMO in the world building to have made those adaptational choices, because it reduces Westerosi politics to the depth of a puddle.

Yes exactly, again it's bizarre that people are so anti-Greens when the Blacks were constantly doing shit that guaranteed a war was imminent no matter WHO their adversary was going to be. I definitely don't think Alicent or the Hightowers are above reproach or perfect, but FFS in a situation like this they'd have to be borderline lobotomized to not have enough sense to gain as many advantages for themselves as possible before shit inevitably hit the fan.

[vestigiallegs]

And more specifics: 37 Sam, 22 Ike, 36 Ancha, 41 Mira, 14 Stranger, 1 Terry, 44 Chris

THIS IS A BIG ONE!!

37: Do people have justified grudges against your character?

Oh, certainly. Another way in which Sam is a Shrek recolor is that she is not merely unfairly maligned for circumstances out of her control, she also creates problems for herself and makes situations worse than they need to be.

There are a  few ways in which she contributes to this problem, in general:

1. If someone thinks she is scary and it annoys her enough she will lean into it, “for fun.”

2. She interprets a lot of conflict as fun and games because she is kind of a dick and she does just... enjoy fighting. Since she shrugs off this fighting as fun and games, she often misjudges how much her opponent might forgive because she’s using her own skewed metric as reference.

But those are general statements. You’re probably looking for specifics, and I’m afraid I must let you know I do not really have them at this time. Despite Sam having a variety pack of enemies, I’ve developed Sam’s relationships with the people SHE has grudges against (ie Lance, Page) more than I’ve developed the specifics for anyone who has a running grudge against HER. It’s more of a nebulous crowd of people whose toes she has trampled, some from her shitty younger days, some fresh new enemies...

(I do have one specific Person With A Justified Grudge On Sam that I keep contemplating but I’m not sure if he/she/they/??? will ever make it out of the development phase and become a real character/story element.)

22: What is the worst thing your character has ever done? 

My idea was that I was going to answer this disincluding things Isaac has done to himself because that’s a rock bottom that he keeps digging deeper, but even when he does bad stuff to other people it tends to be in tandem with bad things he is doing to himself...

Isaac has plenty capacity for being a dick, and spent a good portion of his life not considering other peoples’ feelings very hard. But, at the same time, he's naturally reserved and at the time where he was the most empathy deficit he also was in the habit of minding his own business. So he was more of a jerk in passing to people than out there doing real heinous shit...

I don’t want to say “cheating with Mira and everything that happened for years after is the worst thing he has ever done” because that feels like a cop out even if it’s probably technically true...

Lying to everyone with his “ah yeah, that’s me, Able-Bodied Man” LARP is bad but in the end he’s doing more damage to himself than anyone else with that one... not that the emotional damages it does to the people who care about him don’t matter because they do...

I guess he doesn’t have a whole lot of Big Worst Moments, just a long resume of being kind of a shithead, letting himself get worse by putting himself in the company of other shithead(s) and taking their shithead advice, and then course-correcting his behavior in a way that makes him also kind of a shithead in a different way.

36: Does anyone want to harm your character?

Oh, probably. Ancha is good at making enemies for a gentle pacifist.

In her youth, participating in politics games routinely earned her all manner of dangerous enemies. Of course, she’s long since outlived anyone who wanted to assassinate her, considering that she’s outlived politics and Atlantean society in general.

Considering there are other (undeveloped at this time) immortals out there, she probably still has SOME enemies...

At the very least, Lucas would probably take a shot at her if he thought he could get away with it!

41: Would your character want to have any children?

“No” with exceptions. Mira is not a nurturing person, nor does she particularly like children, and doesn’t put any value on ideas of “continuing the bloodline” or “making the next generation better” or anything like that. She doesn’t dream of having a family. She’s very much a career woman to the exclusion of other things in life. It’s an easy cut and dried “she shouldn’t raise children which is okay because she doesn’t want them anyway” situation until it isn’t.

You see, all logical reasoning points to “Mira doesn’t want and therefore wouldn’t have children,” but she’s also not immune to the allure of dramatic projections of the future. I could see her keeping an accidental pregnancy, or procreating on purpose if her partner framed it in a romantic, ego-buffing way.

The reality would remain unappealing to her though. Best case scenario she is one of those overbearing achievement hyper-focused parents who is extremely invested in and proud of their child’s talents and accomplishments but emotionally not there.

14: What is the cutest thing your character has ever done? 

You come to my own home and ask me to write a hit piece on my own character. How dare you.

I suppose Stranger’s #1 “cute” behavior is how they behave when they fail to find an excuse to hate someone or be rude to them. Stranger doesn’t need a big reason to dislike someone, and will often pick out little things to justify being a prickly son of a bitch. But there is a method to their misanthropy, a sort of equation/assessment they run in their head in order to determine that they are Right to be a bitter and rude in a given situation. Despite the fact that this assessment is extremely rigged, occasionally they run into someone they just cannot justify being an asshole to (example: Nikki).

When this happens, they have no choice but to try feign being normal despite the agony trying not to be a freak to people brings them. They make small talk like it’s actively killing them, hissed and grunted through gritted teeth.

It’s like aw. They’re trying. Not doing a good job, but trying.

1: What is your character's biggest fear? 

Terry doesn’t have a lot of big, conscious fears. If you asked him his biggest fear he’d probably say something like, Santa Claus, or a specific Five Nights At Freddy’s jumpscare, shit in that ballpark. He’s not terribly in touch with the concept of fear, same as he’s not super in touch with the concept of mortality.

He does worry about some things that are actually real, but not very deeply and not very often. None of those worries are centered on himself either, he’s confident that he can bounce back from anything and more or less sees himself as endlessly smart, talented, evasive of consequence, and unkillable. Instead he worries about things he knows to be more fragile than himself, like Nugget with her fragile avian bones and respiratory system, or Ike with his fragile human feelings.

44: What is your character proud of? 

Chris is not proud of much, and she undermines her few real accomplishments as incomplete or not counting. During her youth as an ELF WIZARD competing in the championship challenges, she was quite accomplished. She withdrew from the tournament, though, and never made it to her televised match. She’s got one of those “if you aren’t first you’re last” sort of attitudes, so as far as she’s concerned, it’s failure all the way down.

THAT SAID she can do a sweet kickflip. She’s proud of that. She has a SWEET GAMER COLLECTION of VIDEOGAME, and she’s proud of that. And she makes for a great, reliable mafia goon! She’s really proud of that one.

[space-feminist]

the tin man already has an on-the-nose human name - nick chopper. not sure why we needed to reinvent the wheel here

after the witch dies, the tin man takes over as leader of winkie country and the scarecrow moves in with him. they are ~very close friends~. friends of dorothy, one might say. making them date women feels like straightwashing

relatedly i cannot emphasize enough how few human men there are in those books. there's like 5 in the entire 14-book series. plenty of male characters that are fantastical creatures of some sort but human men? flirting with human women? for all that people talk about wicked being gay it is WAY straighter

elphaba can run from shiz to the deadly desert yet the emerald city is a short train ride away. the deadly desert encircles oz and the emerald city is in the center. the math is not mathing

the wizard did not usurp an ancient prophecy, he arrived when the heir to the throne was missing and he had his initials o.z. on his balloon. also idk if this was in the movie but i saw a post saying he was from kansas and he's actually from omaha nebraska. not much difference but this post is me being pedantic so i feel like i have to point it out

the 1939 movie fuses glinda and the witch of the north (the witch of the north is the person who greets her in munchkinland while glinda only appears at the end) and wicked goes with that while also expanding the worldbuilding which is disorienting. like it was condensed bc the balance of witches in oz doesn't matter to the main plot really but now that the witches are central the absense of a cardinal-direction witch is confusing

glinda in the books is the most powerful magic user in oz. when the wizard is revealed to be a fraud dorothy goes on a quest to seek out glinda because she's ACTUALLY powerful. glinda eventually takes the wizard under her wing and teaches him some real magic so he's no longer a fraud (redemption arc!) and there's a scene where he does some magic for ozma and dorothy and they're like "great job!!!" and he's all like well i suck actually glinda's the REAL deal. so you can imagine how jarring it is to see glinda do zero magic for an entire movie

i think that's the core of my resentment actually. it has this whole "this is the REAL story about the unfairly maligned woman" thing going on but oz was female-led to begin with. you're not subverting anything by saying that a woman is powerful and trying to unmask a fraud. that was already part of the story. it's a good story on its own but i like when aus are actually trying to have a meaningful conversation with the original and this really isn't

watching wicked as a fan of the oz books is just. well that's not correct. actually in the books it was different. fun fact this actually directly contradicts established worldbuilding. ooh fun easter egg! that's not correct