#sorry in advance for mansplaining this scene

[genericpuff]

Can you give us your thoughts on Big Ethel Energy? I haven’t seen anything glaringly wrong with it tbh, but I might not be educated on the topics the comic brings up.

TBF I haven't read it as extensively as LO (though that's a loaded comparison because I definitely put WAY more into analyzing LO than most webtoons LMAO) but my biggest issue with BEE is just like... the main cast (primarily made up of women) are so manipulative and toxic all the time. A lot of the comic's narrative feels very preachy while not actually practicing that empathy, very similarly to LO in which characters will just yeet out Therapy Speak or whatever have you and then use it to justify their shitty actions, rather than actually learn from them/correct them/etc.

One big example I can think of that alerted me to its issues (as many others) was the scene where Betty tears into her boss (Seth):

And he totally has a point, he acknowledges that he made a misstep but I don't think the irony of her calling him a "judgmental jerk" has been lost here because she's literally basing her judgments of him off instant reactions (and hoo boy, do a lot of the characters in this comic do that, but we'll get into that shortly).

But then there's complete tonal whiplash where they go upstairs to the roof where he reveals that he's changed his decision about working with Veronica (thus correcting the misstep that Betty was calling him out on) and Betty is just SO overjoyed by this that she-

Like, this is her boss, for starters, who she's kissing (without his consent or even any signalling that he wanted to kiss her in that moment) literally MOMENTS after she called him a "judgmental jerk". And then when he rejects her because there would be a power imbalance in their relationship that he's not comfortable with (which is a VERY reasonable boundary to set), she just ?? Goes right back to being mad at him and the story paints it as if he's at fault ??

Like they actually had the opportunity to showcase a story in which a power imbalance in the workplace ISN'T romanticized (like it is in so many webtoons like LO and Let's Play) and instead it made the boss out to be the bad guy for rejecting the advances of a female lead. And so many of the female characters in the story are like this, it's like they're trying so hard to be "strong independent women" but then they just come across as manipulative and mean all the time. Like sorry, but you can't just use "progressive language" like "mansplaining" to make your characters seem smart, Betty is being a huge asshole here over something SHE caused. It's very "woman good, man bad" with no nuance or consideration for the actions of either party.

And of course, they follow it up with Betty actually realizing she wasn't in the right, only for Veronica to come in and be like "nah you're allowed to hate who you hate" even though that kind of advice totally isn't constructive here when Seth was being completely reasonable. So Betty is literally just flip-flopping between actually caring about Seth and his boundaries to hating on him for having them at all.

Like, this is so miserable to read. Don't get me wrong, Veronica is traditionally a very "fuck you, I do what I want" character, but it just feels so gross when we know what Betty did was wrong and Betty ought to know this as well because she's usually the more reasonable foil to Veronica. It's not like it's empowering either of them the same way it would if they were fighting over Archie (as they traditionally do in Archie comics) and then mutually decided he wasn't worth destroying their friendship over, this is Betty's boss who she kept changing her opinion about based on whether or not he sided with her. It's flimsy. And they never really address Betty's behavior here going forward or use this as an opportunity for growth (at least from what I read following this, mind you I haven't kept up on the comic in a while).

To talk about the main character, Ethel, there's actually another weird scene that comes after the Betty/Veronica exchange, this is after she's started seeing Moose (though they don't have an official relationship yet) and is going over to his house for the first time.

Like, these two aren't even officially dating yet and she's already nitpicking things about him and taking his choices personally. It feels very unnecessary and vapid - and if you're someone who's read Archie comics before, it feels very out of character for someone like Ethel, who's traditionally a very sweet (albeit hopeless romantic) girl, here she just feels mean all the time.

And the comic as a whole just has a lot of these passive aggressive scenes. The internal monologuing of Ethel is insufferable because it's often just her constantly judging people or jumping to extreme conclusions. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for characters who aren't morally good, but I don't want to read a story that lives in the head of an asshole LOL

All that said, I haven't kept up on anything from BEE in a while, from what I've scrolled through of newer episodes at a glance it seems to have dialed back on some of that passive aggressiveness, but I'm gonna have to do a re-read of it at some point with the newer episodes included to form a stronger opinion. So take what I say here with grains of salt.

I just don't think it's necessarily a good example of a "strong romance series". Everything feels so petty all of the time and when it does try to act informed or mature, it's completely undercut by characters who can't practice what they preach. A lot of comics on the platform tend to stress "women supporting women" but then really it turns into "women hating men" and it's just like...?? Is that really the point of the message we're trying to get across here?

Add in the extremely stiff dialogue and text dumping and cheap art, and this just doesn't feel like something that would be made for a series like Archie of all things. The Archie franchise has really been suffering from lame melodrama and unlikeable characters as of late, I know there's only so much one can do to re-adapt a series that was from the 1940's, but it feels like it's often misinterpreting the point of the more modernized messages they're trying to preach rather than giving us an actual story with characters who learn and develop along the way. It comes across more as the Archie franchise looking for shortcuts to connect with "today's audience" by using cheap buzzwords rather than put any actual effort into the writing.

IDK, it's just a very mediocre comic with very mediocre attempts at seeming "progressive" and it feels so disingenuous. The characters never feel like they have any real integrity or development, especially with how some of them flip-flop on a dime based on whatever the creators want the audience to feel.

It's just a big ball of 'meh'.

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

Marius’s Napoleon Speech

Not Empereur’s Mercy this time I Swear

This take is probably milquetoast, but I was rereading the Corsica speech (3.4.6) the other day for Reasons, and I know we (I) like to make fun of Marius being obsessed with Napoleon and his inability to read the room and to talk about Combeferre’s iconic takedown, and that’s great, that is not a bad or even wrong take,

however,

I invite the reader to please consider: Marius’s whole point in making his speech is not just to say “Napoleon is the best” but “I keep hearing you guys disparaging Napoleon, but objectively, he is a -- perhaps the -- greatest man to ever exist across the board: if not him in charge, then whom?”

What makes Combeferre’s response so earthshattering to Marius is that his answer is to basically tell Marius, “No one man should be in charge.”

Until now, Marius has been thinking in terms of the country depending on one person to run, and it’s a pretty black and white issue: continue with the royal family (as his grandfather believes), or allow this new blood in who has proven his worth again and again (as his father believed).  (It’s worth noting that, with the exception of Bahorel, the oldest ami’s birth year is listed as being around 1803/4, aka around the time Napoleon was coming to power.)  It’s a very binary decision, and Combeferre has just introduced Marius to the decimal system with eight more new digits.

This entire effect is even more profound if one considers it within its context.

Before this scene, Marius keeps hearing everyone discussing all of these new philosophies that he cannot even begin to wrap his head around: in 3.4.3, we see Marius basically thrown into Advanced Theory (Courfeyrac and Enjolras debate Rousseau, Bahorel and Combeferre make tongue-in-cheek comments about the bourgeoisie) without even a foundational class.  The only common knowledge they seem to share, Napoleon, they still have wholly different takes on that Marius cannot even begin to parse, so he keeps his thoughts and feelings to himself until finally, finally, in 3.4.6, he sees his chance to contribute to a conversation in a way that he thinks can beget an academic and meaningful discussion.  He is given ample opportunity to explain himself in a whole and complete way and make his point as completely as possible,

and in one move Combeferre has him at checkmate.

And it’s not a snide thing!  No one else really knows where to begin with responding to That Whole Speech without really giving Marius the entire Introduction to Representation schpiel, and it’s not something they really think warrants a debate either because, well, it’s clear that Marius is not only not on the same page, he’s in an entirely different book.  With one phrase, Combeferre is able to concisely introduce Marius to this entirely new philosophy.

Now let’s get on to the part no one discusses despite it clearly being the funniest thing in this whole damned book:

After all of this happens, Marius just.  Loses sense of his surroundings for a bit.  We don’t know how long, but when he finally recovers he and Enjolras are the only ones left in the room.  At some point, everyone had filed downstairs, and while I’m sure Combeferre was very composed after that mic drop, I have to assume that the general mood by the time they made it downstairs was p much this

because Combeferre is singing, and not only is he singing, he’s singing

If Caesar had given me

Glory and war

And if I must abandon

The love of my mother

I would say to great Caesar:

Take your scepter and chariot

I love my mother more, alas!

I love my mother more.

so clearly He Knows What He’s Done.

(sidenote: 1972 Les Mis has this scene with the song, and you cannot begin to imagine the sheer glory)

Thing is, Marius still isn’t convinced, he thinks he can salvage this whole thing if only he had the audience, and he attempts to gather his thoughts to make this final rally before hearing part Deux of Combeferre’s (and everyone’s) stance, the above refrain.

Marius begins repeating this, “My mother, my mother, my mother,” et cetera, which I interpret as him trying to make sense of the song and its meaning (note: Napoleon is often compared to Caesar, especially in the bricc), and he’s like, “Who is ‘my mother’ referring to?”  He’s still thinking in these very singular, binary, one-to-one correspondence terms.  Who could possibly be more important than a leader who can lead your country to glory?

And Enjolras tells him, since he’s clearly struggling:

“‘My mother’ is the Republic.”

(With that being said, although it’s probably not correct, the first time I read this scene the song was in French but the dialogue was English and I wasn’t reading the translation notes as I went, so I just thought Marius was asking the Virgin Mary for, idk, mercy on his soul, or praying to his deceased mother for help in these trying times, and Enjolras was like, “HAH, look at this nerd, still hasn’t learned his lesson about idolizing a single figure, I’ll show him” and just

Water Tribe��d Marius’s ass with a “My 'mother' is the Republic” -- which may not be correct but definitely sparks joy.)

To be clear: I don’t think this was Combeferre or Enjolras or the Amis making fun of him (okay, maybe a little bit, but not meanly).  I think they saw this as the perfect opportunity to once and for all clear and prepare the fields for planting of new ideas (a metaphor that continues into the beginning of 3.4.6:

He was experiencing what the earth may experience at the moment when it is opened by the plough so wheat may be sown: it feels only the wound; the thrill of the seed and joy of the fruit do not come until later.

)

One final note: although we’re never given an express timeline for this event, we do know that Marius met Bossuet and Courfeyrac in 1828, can infer that he met the rest of the amis shortly after, and can also pretty reliably assume that this incident took place within the first six months of them becoming acquainted.  With this in mind, the “seed” that has been “planted” here has, minimum, three years to germinate before the June Revolt.  I like to believe that, in this time, the amis continued to spend time with and educate Marius.  In the beginning of 3.4.3, after all, Courfeyrac introduces Marius as “a student” after declaring Marius’s political stance to be Pretty Fucking Middling With Potential, and I do think the amis knew what they were getting into with him.

[deadmunds-ghostbee]

Why does everyone dislike ep 2? I honestly don’t remember much of it. I only watched it the one time.

well first, you’d think for the shorter runtimes (53 mins??) it would be…perhaps more economical or efficient. But I think there was a lot of stuff that was done lazily bc it didn’t advance/introduce the characters meaningfully even tho it was still so early on.

It’s also the beginning of a lot of confusing plots/motivations. AND the stuff they filled the time with, even in the main plot didn’t land.

This turned into a rant so…

The ascot was fun purely for the Kate+Anthony scenes. Like when she mansplained the track that was fun. The beginning with the suitors was fun.

Other than that though? The time spend with the girls and the queen was wasted. Didn’t learn anything new or interesting about Edwina. Didn’t find myself interested in what the queen and Lady D has to say. The horse thing was strange and In hindsight ooc for show Edwina? Like everything else we saw of her wouldn’t indicate that she’d tell Anthony she didn’t want the horse.

The poetry reading??? Was straight up cringe for everyone. I lost respect for everyone in that room in that scene. Edwina for liking his dumb speech. Anthony for the tropiness and superficiality of his speech even after he threw the poem away. That scene with Kate and Lady D where she talks about how Kate shouldn’t want to be alone? Lady D completely changes her tune where Kate is concerned after the proposal so that felt kinda needless. Bens poem wasn’t as good as fandom is making it out to be? It was kinda basic (sorry my opinion 😂).

Other than that Eloise and Theo didn’t get off to a compelling start in that ep. I don’t even know what pen was doing tbh. Colins entrance had extremely weird vibes?? 💀 showing up unannounced? And everyone kinda forgot about it five minutes later? The only time Edwina ever has a conversation that doesn’t hinge on Kate and Anthony’s plot is her scene with pen?? About Penelope’s fucking dress what???

I could keep going but I really don’t want to.

There was very little well done about this ep it and felt like mindless filler to me, esp when more time was desperately needed to pull off stuff in later episodes. They should have done more efficient set up! Given character moments to make motivations more clear! It honestly watched like a filler chapter of fanfic where the author just wrote ‘setup/hijinks’ in the outline and wasn’t sure what to do.

In the end it’s quality in writing was so so low compared to the others it’s almost confusing to me. Oh well.

[triviareads]

ok so I have no one to pitch this idea to except your messages. sorry in advance. i’m a show only bridgerton fan so take this with a grain of salt probably. i’ve spent the past month kinda following the discourse around people (me included) wanting queer representation, specially considering how much eloise and benedict were queer coded in s1 (and still tbh), and some people bringing up that genderbending the sophie storyline would be kinda misogynistic. i see where the second group is coming from, and agree that the intersections of class, probably race AND gender are important to explore. but hear me out. what if instead of genderbending b and e’s stories, they switched them? make eloise meet a mysterious lady at a ball at the beginning of s3, a lady who she hangs out with now that penelope is out of the picture and that she has great conversation with, who has fascinating things to say about women’s lib, who is fierce and brave and interesting. have the lady disappear, and eloise not getting her out of her head, in a VERY different way than theo. i think it makes sense with the way eloise’s character has been developed so far that she keeps poking around outside of the ton either way, but specially if she’s intrigued by someone and wants to find them and thinks that that scene is where she might. maybe it’s even a way for penelope to start trying to mend their friendship, if she somehow finds out and wants to help eloise instead of discouraging her like with theo. and I feel like if eloise was having a crisis with her feelings and sexuality, she’d need a friend. benedict is there of course, but someone else as well. anyway, rebellious eloise seems like a great person to have a story with a working class woman that is not only a good romance but a good opportunity to tackle the issues people have been saying sophie’s story does. it’s even a good way to contrast privileged white liberal feminism with more complex struggles, a way for eloise to also grow and learn from someone as she falls in love with them. i also feel like the queen might be kinda lenient towarda eloise since she accused her of being lady whistledown and even without that, the queen is so much about love above all else that I don’t see why she wouldn’t be on board with a sapphic marriage. i guess this idea would mean changing the story orders but i’ve read that might happen anyway. and then s5 can be benedictxphillip crane (after s4 polin), hopefully without marina dying. maybe she even knows, and it’s part of their arrangement, phillip married her for honor but also because he wasn’t planning to marry anyway. then marina can get another chance at an actual happy and loving romantic relationship. i just think show!phillip’s nerdy sensibilities and love for nature would be a good match for benedict’s artist soul. so as a book fan who knows these characters much better than i do, how do you think this would work?

I don't see Benedict x Phillip happening, and I'm not the biggest fan. I'd much rather Benedict end up with a man we've yet to meet.

It would be interesting to see Eloise with another working class love interest, but this time, a woman. I'd be curious to see whether they handle the intersectionality of feminism and class better than they did in S2, esp. with Theo mansplaining feminism to Eloise, and Eloise (lowkey rightfully) being accused of just wanting to slum it for a bit.

But yeah, otherwise, I'm all for the queer!Bridgerton agenda, because quite frankly, in a family with 8 siblings, surely a few of them are queer, and more importantly, in a romance show in 2022, surely the writers realize that we deserve queer love stories that aren't sidelined, because they sure as hell existed in 1814.

[nutterwithasolderingiron]

so. let’s talk about tramp stamps seriously.

this has been a topic on my mind since my friend first sent me one of their tiktok videos saying “lol, look at this cringe” and indeed, it was cringe. next i started seeing more and more videos about how bad they were and how much astroturfing they were doing on social media to get attention. when this level of astroturfing goes on, it’s most people’s first response to look into things deeper. and there we found problematic tweets, cringe lyrics, cousin loving cousin, dr. luke and much much more. during this time, i seen a few people saying “oh, you only hate these guys because your a sexist fuckhead” even when women and queer folk were criticizing them.  then they came to tumblr..... and left tumblr 5 hours later. then the stans started doing what they do best. seeing how some of the stans have responded to the release of the new record, this is going to be me “mansplaining” or whatever. this is me explaining what i see the 2 major problems people have with tramp stamps.  the woke aspect the most common complaint i seen with the tramp stamps was their politics and almost co-opting left wing talking points without any understanding or nuance on the situation at best. this is why people dislike the whole “girlboss” thing. not because they are sexist, but because it’s often invoked in “fuck everyone, i can do this because i’m a badass bitch” which is really just the middle class millenial version of a karen. at worst, some of their lyrics are problematic. need i bring up the lyric about her drunk boyfriend not getting it up? if you don’t know what’s problematic about that, think of her intent in the situation, now picture the genders reversed? yeah. 

the “authenticity” aspect. 

this is the one i feel more inclined to talk about. i’ve been a part of the punk/post-hardcore/emo scene since i was in my teens. i’ve played in a lot of local bands, ran shows, social media accounts, street teams, repaired guitars, pulled sound for 15+ years. now, in these scenes, there can be some gatekeeping BUT usually that attitude gets called out. i’ve had afab bandmates get heckled like crazy and in those situations, we’d pull a kathleen hanna and escort the fuckers out the venue. so what i say when i bring up this next part is not “gatekeeping” it’s just how the scene works and has always worked. 

these scenes foster a community based on authenticity and the attitude of having to grind to get results. most the all time great bands in the rock/punk/metal/hardcore/emo/post-hardcore had to grind but also come across as authentic, you gotta network, you gotta send out hundreds of demo’s. spend thousands on recording, touring, merch, promotion. you know what a 20 year old ford transit with 6 people in the back, all of which have not showered in 2 weeks? i do. most bands know it’s all about luck and connections and grinding, but they still do it. 99% of your favorite rock bands had to do it.  my chemical romance? yup, i remember them on their first uk tour.  green day? part of the gillman punk scene. fallout boy? pete wentz was in the vegan straight edge scene. 

what people are objecting to is the tramp stamps using their connections before they’ve even really played a gig or tried immersing themselves in the scene and tried making connections. the felt fake from the very beginning. “oh but marissa did grind at her publishing job” maybe, i dunno what her job really was. but the point is, it felt very fake, it felt like there was astroturfing. it didn’t feel like 3 girls who wanted to make this music they wanted, it felt like marketing folk at her publishing job said “hmmmmm, the whole e-girl/tiktok/pop-punk revival is going well, how do we jump on this band wagon?” and people seen it for what it was. 

so, tramp stanz or whatever your fanbase is called. before you call me a sexist asshole, i’m going to give you some homework. i’m going to list a few great bands with a strong female creative voice (even if they’re not the singer), my tastes tend to lean a bit weirder so i’m sorry in advance. listen to these, not all of them are all female bands since i often feel separating female/afab musicians from male/amab doesn’t create a good scene.  patti smith (often considered to be the godmother of punk) bikini kill (remember when tramp stamps would hashtag riotgrrl everything? bikini kill were the band that coined the term)  bratmobile (same vein as bikini kill)  jack off jill/scarling (if there’s such a thing as a musician i’d simp for, it would be jessicka addams)  babes in toyland (some super noisy girl grunge) l7 (heavy alt-rock/grunge with some super catchy hooks)  slant 6 (what kind of monster are you is a fucking freight train of a song) hole (as much as we make fun of courtney love’s shit stirring, she could write some of the best choruses ever)  unwound (my favorite band and their drummer sara is the fucking heart of the band)  rolo tomassi (eva spence’s voice will blow your socks clean off) distillers (brody dalle is a fucking queen and you can’t convince me otherwise) against me (transgender dysphoria blues is an album that makes me tear up everytime i hear it but in a good way)

[whitehotharlots]

No one is gonna “gaslight” you about the pandemic. They don’t need to

I took a break from my daylong panic attack to read through a piece that I saw dozens of people sharing on social media. If you’re in the mood to take a glimpse into the abyss of hopelessness, give it a read. 

This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read, but it’s instructive in the sense that it shows us just how absolutely liberalism is not prepared to handle the current moment. If this is the intellectual vanguard of the #Resistance (and judging by those who have shared it, it seems to be), then we should begin mentally preparing ourselves not just for Trump’s reelection but for the very real possibility that he’s just going to be president forever. 

The piece is called “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” so right away you know where it’s coming from. “Gaslighting,” has recently surpassed “mansplaining” as the liberal buzzterm that’s become the most meaningless due to overuse. It used to refer specifically to emotional manipulation. Now it basically means “anything that a liberal doesn’t like.” Liberals read a neurotic amount of importance into petty matters of taste and interpersonal relations. They begin, at times, to understand social problems in a structural sense, but they always--always--turn their analysis back to meaningless bullshit that takes place on an individual level. The liberal would never be so gauche as to indict an entire system, no matter how at fault it may obviously be. Instead, he will place blame upon the individuals within the system, those selfish and savage brutes who betrayed the magnanimous intentions of society’s elite engineers. 

This author’s analysis is unsurprisingly very muddy. He mentions, correctly, that there is an eerie serenity to scenes of American cityscapes already being reclaimed by nature. He cannot, however, decide whether or not this is a good thing. This is because of the liberal’s fundamental ambivalence toward malignant social structures. Their ethos is founded on pretending to sympathize with society’s misbegotten, but their status and jobs and personal standing demand that they also apologize profusely for the institutions that reap so much misery upon us. This neurosis is somewhat politically viable only because it usually goes unspoken--and that’s why this piece is worth digging into, since it’s so rare to see them attempt to actually articulate this shit.

The author realizes that our society is deeply poisoned. In a twist, he says that such a sad state is not due to any of the litany of usual, intersectional reasons, but because of the pace at which our social lives are conducted. I am dead serious:

The cat is out of the bag. We, as a nation, have deeply disturbing problems. You’re right. That’s not news. They are problems we ignore every day, not because we’re terrible people or because we don’t care about fixing them, but because we don’t have time. Sorry, we have other shit to do. The plain truth is that no matter our ethnicity, religion, gender, political party (the list goes on), nor even our socioeconomic status, as Americans we share this: We are busy. We’re out and about hustling to make our own lives work. We have goals to meet and meetings to attend and mortgages to pay — all while the phone is ringing and the laptop is pinging.

The problem is, see, that we’re thinking about stuff wrong. Not that the ruling elite are openly corrupt or anything. Oh no. I mean, they must be since they’re about to gaslight us, but also they’re not, they’re basically okay:

The greatest misconception among us, which causes deep and painful social and political tension every day in this country, is that we somehow don’t care about each other. White people don’t care about the problems of black America. Men don’t care about women’s rights. Cops don’t care about the communities they serve. Humans don’t care about the environment. These couldn’t be further from the truth. We do care. We just don’t have the time to do anything about it. Maybe that’s just me. But maybe it’s you, too.

Again, he’s coming to the precipice of a worthwhile realization--that we all know society is unsustainable but we can’t do anything about it--but he has to pull back so as to avoid implicating any of the people who actually wield power. That’s the main thrust of contemporary liberalism: sure, society may be fucked, but that’s your fault, not ours.

The ending is a tour de force of empty liberal platitudes that is breathtaking in its ability to place blame upon anyone and anything aside from the people and things that are actually to blame:

From one citizen to another, I beg of you: take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. [ … ]

We can do that on a personal scale in our homes, in how we choose to spend our family time on nights and weekends, what we watch, what we listen to, what we eat, and what we choose to spend our dollars on and where. We can do it locally in our communities, in what organizations we support, what truths we tell, and what events we attend. And we can do it nationally in our government, in which leaders we vote in and to whom we give power. If we want cleaner air, we can make it happen. If we want to protect our doctors and nurses from the next virus — and protect all Americans — we can make it happen. If we want our neighbors and friends to earn a dignified income, we can make that happen. If we want millions of kids to be able to eat if suddenly their school is closed, we can make that happen. And, yes, if we just want to live a simpler life, we can make that happen, too. But only if we resist the massive gaslighting that is about to come. It’s on its way. Look out.

Just… dear god. Dear god. 

We are not facing a crisis of conscientiousness. We are not suffering through mass existential dread because we weren’t mindful enough or didn’t make the right consumer choices or didn’t, like, live in the moment, man. We are staring down the absolute end stage of global capitalism and the complete abandonment of all the pretenses associated with liberal democracy. We are at the start of a very different and much worse stage of existence.

This is why the piece’s central conceit, gaslighting, is so fucking annoying. Because if we’ve learned nothing else from the past 12 years (and apparently we haven’t), it’s that the ruling elite do not need to bother establishing pretense any longer. No one thought the recent Corona bailout was anything other than an upward transfer of wealth and a complete abandonment of the wretched--no one even bothered to argue otherwise, because they knew they didn’t need to. At least a half dozen US senators received advance notice of the pandemic’s severity, and instead of warning people or otherwise working to help their constituents, they sold off stock and kept mum. None of them have received any formal censure, as their behavior was absolutely within the realm of what is acceptable in 2020. Andrew Cuomo, the man presently being lauded as the firm and competent opposite of Trump, used the pandemic as a pretense to push through cuts to social services and renege on bail reform that was past just weeks ago--undoing the last vestiges of progressivism both old and new. Even bleaker: an EU member state is now being ruled by dictatorial fiat under the pretense of the virus, and everyone’s just kind of rolling with it. I mean, really, what’s gonna happen? Brussels gonna step in? NATO gonna invade? Pfft… Not for such a trifling matter as the abandonment of democracy. If they missed a debt payment, on the other hand…

The point is, you’re not going to get gaslit because there’s no need for that any longer. The people who are profiting off of the collapse and destruction of society don’t even have to bother to lie about it. And the only ones doing any gaslighting are the smug liberal twerps who are too scared of upsetting their boss to allow anyone to point out this fact.

[thedateranalyst]

LA Bae

Ok, so Brazilian Bae may not have turned out to be the absolute love of my life but he was definitely a vast improvement on Interchangeable Bae. I seemed to be on a steady incline and, feeling rather bolstered from the experience, decided that my plan to venture into the more international waters of the dating pool was worth sticking with. Enter Brody. I matched with Brody on Bumble. His profile told me he was from LA and an Art Director in Television. The smouldering looks and wide brimmed hats in his pictures, combined with the fact that his bio also stated his year 5 teacher would describe him as “filled to the brim with rebellion”, suggested that he was going to fit every stereotype I could mentally concoct of someone from LA. I swiped right. It was a match.

The cyber small talk commenced and things got better and better from the word go. Not only was Brody from LA and working in television, he was currently travelling around Europe working as a videographer and a tour manager from an American band called Twin Peaks. London was the last stop of their tour and he had decided to stay on for three days to explore the city before heading home. Now, my rule so far with The Dater Analyst has been to go into every date with an open mind and the hope that the person I am about to meet could be the love of my life. The fact that Brody was only in the UK for three days strongly suggested that even if this was the case, geographically, a blossoming romance was going to be challenging. Come on though, a Californian videographer on a European tour with a band - that shit’s got perfect blog fodder written ALL over it, it was too good an opportunity to miss.

The cyber small talk continued and I asked what he was doing with his time off in London. A photo pinged back to me. I have never received a photo on Bumble before, how modern! Well, technically, I didn’t immediately see the photo. The Bumblebees clearly aren’t naive to the genre of pictures one might find on a dating app so you actually get a blurred out square with directions to “tap to view image”. An attempt to avoid being blindsided by a big willy. I had only just matched with this man though, how did I know that that wasn’t what I was going to get. Tentatively, I tapped to view the image with one hand whilst using the other to shield my innocent eyes. I peaked through splayed fingers and what greeted me was so much more entertaining than a dick pic. It was a carefully staged cafe scene - a scrubbed wood table, a bunch of flowers and a cup of coffee next to an open window overlooking a quaint London street. It gets better. Front and centre of the photo was a watercolour painting of the scene and a box of paints. Brody was proud enough of his artistic endeavours to not only admit to the fact he was spending his day painting (which, let’s be honest, sounds a bit wanky) but to actually send a picture so I could see his skills for myself. How very LA!

Right, I thought, two can play at that game. I happened to be working from home that day so I curated my own still life. I moved a vase of lilies to my own scrubbed wood table, in front of a gilded mirror and placed a lit candle, open laptop and notebook in the foreground. Even sexier than a tasteful nude, some might argue. I sent it off and told him I was just doing a bit of writing. “What are you writing?” came the response...

Rule two of The Dater Analyst is that I never tell the datees about the blog. In this instance though, I was willing to bet money on the fact that Brody’s ego was a big enough that he would see a dating blog as a challenge rather than a deterrent so I told him the truth. Within two minutes I had a response: “A dating blog! Can I steal you away for a date night? You can write about it. What if we meet for just two hours and you write while I paint. We don’t even have to talk.” Boom! Hook, line and sinker!

I actually had plans that night so sadly the artistic date did not take place. I was free the following afternoon though so we agreed to meet then in a microbrewery in Coal Drops Yard, obvs! I’m about to break a third rule of The Dater Analyst here. I never normally divulge the contents of the cyber small talk but I feel it would be beneficial here in order to give a more rounded impression of the character we are dealing with. The reason I couldn’t make the original date was because I had Book Club. This got us on to the topic of literature and what Brody liked to read. I quote: “I do love Christopher Hitchens, it’s truly stimulating and chillingly current how he addresses the inevitable collapse of capitalism and things like the likelihood of Trump and Brexit but this is stuff he wrote in the 1990s...Huxley fucked me up. Have you read Doors of Perception? That book and its encouragement to experiment with hallucinogens changed my life for the better...I have done my share of experimenting and consciousness expanding but all that is only as valuable as your intention and your mentality”. You get the idea.

I arrived at the arranged microbrewery and there was absolutely no mistaking Brody. The paints were still with him but thankfully stored in his man bag. He also had a baker boy hat and a multi-coloured patterned scarf with a gold thread running through it which I’m sure had a deep meaning and was a gift from a Sharman on a yoga retreat in India but looked more like one of those ones you can buy for a fiver in Camden Market.

As his messages should have highlighted, Brody did not do small talk. We quickly covered both of our career ambitions, an extended American history leading up to the civil war, my neurological disorder and the fact that he could relate to this because his cat also had a neurological disorder. Surprisingly though, he wasn’t as wanky as I had expected. He actually came across as more self-assured than self-righteous. Conversations were two-way and he would quite often start saying something and then say “sorry, I interrupted you, carry on”. This sounds small but is amazingly rare, especially on dates.

Although it’s not something I have discussed a lot on this blog so far, I’m normally quite open about talking about the neurological disorder I was diagnosed with last year on dates (this is largely because it causes me to have shaking fits at random moments - I remain totally compos mentis through these but I kind of have to pre-warn people in case I suddenly start manically shaking with no advance warning). I don’t normally tell strangers though that one of the things I do to help manage it is Qi Gong, a movement based meditations which I do every morning. You can see why, it sounds hippy dippy, fairly out there and a difficult one to explain on a date whilst still sounding halfway normal. I thought it might be Brody’s cup of tea though. Indeed it was, he already knew all about Qi Gong. We had a long discussion about it and a specific type of yoga he used to practise which involved getting up at 4:30am and lots of chanting. It sounded suitably on brand and soul-searching for Brody. Then I realised though, that the way I judged him for his yoga routine was exactly how I was nervous that people judged me for my Qi Gong. Brody didn’t care or judge me though, he was comfortable with what he enjoyed doing, happy to talk about it and open-minded to different interests.

One beer down and I felt I hadn’t got all the details I could out of Brody so I agreed to show him a bit of London. We walked along Regent’s Canal, through Camden Lock and Camden Markets, past the zoo where you can see the warthogs and lions from the canal path, through Regent’s Park and up Primrose Hill for a sunset view of the city (I smashed it as a tour guide). I was right though; I had only seen the tip of the iceberg. Brody’s family life sounded suitably wacky. In brief: he had grown up on a ranch somewhere in the mid-west, which was sold when his parents, Steven and Angela, had split up. Steven currently holds a world record - he had a heart attack and was officially dead for fifty-two minutes whilst they did CPR. That is one of the longest times someone has been technically dead for and been resuscitated with no long-term physical or mental implications. Steven now lives on a houseboat with his new girlfriend. Pretty cool! Angela met her first boyfriend when he moved to America from Greece to avoid conscription. Their next-door neighbour reported him for selling weed though so he had to move back to Greece and Angela went with him, travelling around Greece for two years. It was all a pretty colourful past.

There were other parts of our date that were slightly more dubious. I’m all in favour of vegetarianism but wasn’t quite prepared for an in depth discussion on the perception of an animal’s soul. I swiftly moved the conversation along. I do which I had proved more on one of his more recent ventures though. He told me he was currently involved in the art direction of an all-male feminist magazine. The more I think about this, the more questions I have. I am under no doubt that men can be feminists but to make an exclusively male feminist magazine sounds slightly counter-intuitive to me? Surely this is just more men excluding women from a conversation that is about them, men mansplaining feminism to women? Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick but this seemed to be the patriarchy jumping on the zeitgeist to maintain their control? You never know though, maybe I’m being defensive; maybe this is going to be the next big thing. If you suddenly hear about a new and trendy male feminist publication do let me know, it could be Brody. 

Eventually it began to get dark so the tour came to an end and I dropped Brody off at the nearest tube station and bid farewell before he flew back to LA the following day. I came away thinking that Brody really hadn’t been as narcissistic as I had expected. In many way, I had drunk the Californian Koolaid: as much eye-rolling as there was at the LA cliches Brody embodied, he also had that American confidence that made him totally comfortable in his own skin and with his own interests. He was unashamed in discussing his flaws and his strengths and skipping straight past the small talk to try and really get to know a person.

That would a sickeningly soul-searching end to the post though and absolutely not the light-hearted, scathing judgement that any of you read this blog for. If I’m being totally honest, what really happened was that I just enjoyed the opportunity to be as wanky as he was. For an afternoon I could happily discuss humanitarian politics, the benefits of meditation and what I felt fulfilment looked like rather than dissecting Love Island and complaining about commuting. It’s quite fun to be a knob every once in a while and I would happily spend a similar afternoon with Brody if he were to find himself back in the UK. If distance wasn’t an issue though, would Brody be The One? I think, realistically, probably not. I had had an engaging and enlightening afternoon but there weren’t exactly many lols. I think I’m looking for someone who can chat shit rather than chataranga. Or at least a bit of both.