I posted 2,140 times in 2022
That's 560 more posts than 2021!
910 posts created (43%)
1,230 posts reblogged (57%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@brown-little-robin
@scarvenartist
@fictionadventurer
@isfjmel-phleg
@lady-merian
I tagged 2,133 of my posts in 2022
#random personal stuff - 585 posts
#the blackberry bushes - 169 posts
#asks - 166 posts
#scarvenartist - 117 posts
#fictionadventurer - 115 posts
#brown-little-robin - 109 posts
#thank you! - 90 posts
#lady-merian - 79 posts
#elystan liddick - 76 posts
#an illusion of wings - 76 posts
Longest Tag: 139 characters
#relatively down-to-earth commoner child paired with and often annoyed by a royal child with a weird upbringing and overwhelming personality
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
So we're doing Bingo again?
63 notes - Posted November 26, 2022
#4
Not much of a one for gushing in general, but this is me politely banging pots and pans outside your door and informing you that you need to
READ LEAVE IT TO PSMITH
READ IT
READITREADITEREADIT
It’s so good, it’s in public domain in the US, I promise you will enjoy it, what’s stopping you?
121 notes - Posted April 19, 2022
#3
(Young Justice 1998 #7 and #55)
Attitudes toward mortality at the beginning and end of the series.
154 notes - Posted November 14, 2022
#2
I finally put my finger on why a lot of adaptations and retellings of The Secret Garden feel thematically off to me.
So many of these interpret it as a story about healing from grief and loss. Which is very true of Mr. Craven’s subplot, but not for Mary and Colin.
It’s about healing from emotional neglect.
This is mirrored in the neglected garden and how the children’s restoring it--giving it the love and care and attention that they themselves have lacked--heals them in turn. Forming emotional connections is the first step in Mary’s recovery, and the Sowerbys are crucial to the plot because they’re the first people Mary has known who take an interest in her emotional well-being. Colin meanwhile has his turning point when Mary confronts the root of the emotions he’s never been able to address to anyone. These are very different issues from those surrounding loss of a loved one. In fact, these children are the way they are because they’ve never had loved ones.
So to rewrite the story as centrally a tale of overcoming grief recontextualizes everything about the protagonists, and the characterization either makes less sense or needs to be altered accordingly.
Nothing wrong with stories about overcoming grief, of course. That’s just not the story Burnett was telling, and I’m not sure where the shift in interpretation comes from, or why it’s so prevalent.
213 notes - Posted July 16, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
We’ve finally arrived at an infamous line from Dracula, and I’d like to share some thoughts before anyone (like many, many critics before them) reads too much into Lucy’s comment about her three suitors.
From what we’ve seen (and will continue to see...I’m going to refer to some things that haven’t happened yet), Lucy’s intelligence is primarily interpersonal. She reads others’ mental states well, she’s strongly empathetic, feels things more acutely than others, and speaks out against what she sees as insensitivity. She has an interesting blend of demonstrativeness and reticence. Although she expresses her emotions readily when writing to her friend and when turning down Seward’s and Morris’s proposals, the way she declares to Mina, “There, that does me good,” after confessing her love for Arthur and thanks Mina for allowing her to be “able to tell you and to have your sympathy” suggests relief at being able to express something held back. She admittedly tries to be “a tough nut to crack” in front of Seward and is reluctant to give even Mina the full details of Arthur’s proposal. As much relief as she finds in emotional openness, she also seems to need to self-censor.
The reason lies in the keynote of her character: her need to please other people. One literary critic I’ve encountered has criticized her for apparently having no life beyond her mother and suitors. Lucy’s suitors do indeed take up a lot of her letters’ content, but before these letters comes a request from Mina: “Tell me all of the news when you write. You have not told me anything for a long time. I hear rumours, and especially of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???” Lucy obligingly gives her friend the information she knows her to be most interested in hearing. As she tells Mina, “I have nothing to tell you. There is really nothing to interest you” (emphasis added). What we know of Lucy so far is only what she believes is relevant to Mina’s interests.
While she does love Arthur greatly, it's telling that the first thing she tells Mina about him is “he and mamma get on very well together; they have so many things to talk about in common.” Presumably he and Lucy relate to each other too, but her primary concern is her mother’s approval of her love interest. Once engaged to Arthur, she is careful to tailor herself to his preferences. Likewise, she filters her emotions through the need to please; she admits she’s “very, very happy” at her engagement but considers herself undeserving and vows to “try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful.” Even while struggling with some incredibly traumatizing things herself, she shows concern for Mina’s anxieties about Jonathan and tries to console her. Later, we’ll see that her letters to Mina and her personal diary present very different pictures of her state; she glosses over her own pain to keep her friend from worrying. She similarly tries to “cheer up” to keep Arthur from being “miserable to see me so” and downplays her problems for the sake of her ailing mother. Even her private diary’s last entry ends not with a comment for her own benefit but an address to others: “Thank everybody for being so good to me! Thank God! Good-night, Arthur” It is as if she struggles to conceive of an identity for herself beyond her relation to others.
Given Lucy’s family situation, it makes sense that she would grow up with this mindset. As the only daughter of a widow, she is her mother’s only immediate family, and pressure seems to be placed on her in this relationship. Her mother expects her to marry, and Lucy does so, with attention to which suitor her mother gets along with. Her mother’s will even leaves “the whole estate, real and personal” to Arthur, requiring that Lucy marry him if she is to have any inheritance. Lucy seems reluctant to be open with her mother, judging from her relief at being able to confide in Mina, and her insistence on concealing her increasing struggles from her mother. Although the delicate state of Mrs. Westenra’s health is ostensibly kept from Lucy, she is implied to be aware that her mother is not well and feels responsible for her health and well-being.
This quality places Lucy’s conduct toward her suitors in a new light. Her remark “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” is commonly interpreted by critics as voracious desire for as many men as possible. Lucy’s rhetorical question is indeed unorthodox, as she acknowledges, and viewed in isolation, it does appear to support a reading of an over-sexualized Lucy. However, placed back into context, it becomes more consistent with her desire to please than any unusual lust.
Lucy begins her account to Mina of the proposals with mixed feelings: “Just fancy! THREE proposals in one day! Isn’t it awful! I feel sorry, really and truly sorry for two of the poor fellows. Oh, Mina, I am so happy that I don’t know what to do with myself. And three proposals!” She is clearly flattered by the validation of attracting three men, but her happiness, as indicated later in the letter, refers to her engagement to Arthur more than to exultation at multiple conquests.
Her intermixed sorrow is not on her own account but on the behalf of the men she must reject. She shows no self-pity. Her empathetic nature takes on the emotions of her suitors in addition to her own; as she tells Mina, “it isn’t a happy thing when you have to see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and looking all broken-hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may say at the moment, you are passing quite out of his life.” So she feels “so miserable, though […] so happy.” After Quincey Morris’s proposal, she is overwhelmed with guilt for “almost making fun of this great-hearted, true gentleman” as she turns him down. This deep regret at having to disappoint another good, worthy person leads her to bring up marrying multiple men as a means to “save all this trouble” of the rejected ones’ pain and her own sorrow at not being about to please everyone.
Therefore, the emphasis in Lucy’s infamous line is not lust but her own sensitivity to others’ emotional pain. Once she is engaged to Arthur, she shows no sign of wanting the other two back or seeking them out in any way. This is not the behavior of a woman driven by desire for multiple partners. Choosing Arthur pleases her mother and herself, but for someone as committed to taking responsibility for everyone’s happiness as Lucy, a solution that does not satisfy all parties can be difficult to take.
For more on this reading of Lucy, I highly recommend Leah Davydov’s article “Why Can’t They Let a Girl Marry One Man?: The Origins of Lucy Westenra’s Suitors” (Journal of Dracula Studies, vol. 18, 2016, pp. 5-29).
777 notes - Posted May 24, 2022
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It always gets me that the name "Gandalf" literally just means "Wand-Elf" or "Stick-Elf". I'm imagining old Gondorians just being like:
Librarian: I saw that weird guy at the library again today.
Guard 1: What weird guy?
Librarian: The old guy with the beard? Kinda elfy-looking, apart from the beard?
Guard 1: Oh, with the big-ass stick?
Librarian: Yeah, looked like he was carrying an entire tree branch.
Guard 2: Yeah, that's the Stick Elf.
Guard 1: Hell yeah, I fuckin' love the Stick Elf.
Librarian: The "Stick Elf"?
Guard 2: He comes by every few years, usually after some weird book or other.
Librarian: Oh. Yeah, he wanted a treatise on goblin breeding habits.
Guard 2: Like, how they have sex? We have books on that?
Librarian: Yeah, turns out we do. I was as surprised as you are.
Guard 1: What'd the Stick Elf need a fuckin' goblin-fuckin' book for?
Librarian: I didn't ask. So you just call him "Stick Elf"?
Guard 2: I mean, he looks kinda elfy and he always has that stick, so, like, yeah.
Guard 1: Dude also has some fuckin' dope pipeweed.
Guard 2: Oh yeah, his pipeweed is awesome.
Librarian: How long has he been coming here?
Guard 2: Oh, for decades. He's, like, super old.
Guard 1: More like fuckin' centuries. Dude's old as balls.
Guard 2: Wait, really?
Guard 1: Yeah, my gran-gran used to talk about him. She loved his pipeweed too.
Librarian: So he's… an immortal pipeweed dealer?
Guard 2: I think he's just, like, a connoisseur. He doesn't sell it or anything. He just always has some really top-notch pipeweed on him.
Archivist: Oh, are we talking about Stick Elf?
Guard 1: Hell yeah we are!
Librarian: You know about the Stick Elf, too?
Archivist: Oh, totally. Stick-Elf's a super chill dude. Gave me some awesome pipeweed when I was maybe 12, and tee-bee-aitch I think I'm still a little buzzed from it.
Guard 1: What'd I tell ya, fuckin' dope pipeweed!
Archivist: Also he's really old.
Guard 1: Old as balls.
Librarian: Yeah, so Éodan and Jenniforomir were telling me.
Archivist: My grandpa used to tell me stories - he said one time he saw Stick Elf enter a smoke-ring contest.
Guard 1: Ooh, I'll bet he kicked fuckin' ass.
Archivist: Apparently the guy made an entire warship out of smoke and it flew around shooting down the other rings.
Librarian: And how much of this "fuckin' dope" pipeweed had your grandfather had by this point?
Guard 1: No no, that's totally plausible. Dude's got weird elf powers and shit for sure.
Archivist: He brought fireworks for the king's birthday one year, too.
Guard 1: Oh fuck, I forgot about those! Fuckin' incredible fireworks! Dragons and knights and glowy trees and shit! I was fuckin' 6 years old or something, they totally blew my mind. Hey Éodan, did you see that shit?
Guard 2: No, I think that's before I lived in Gondor.
Guard 1: Wait, you're not from here?
Guard 2: Oh, no, I grew up in Rohan. We moved here when I was, like, thirteen because my uncle Éojeff said he could get my dad a sweet job. And also that there were houses that didn't smell like horseshit.
Guard 1: Oh shit, are you related to Éojeff and Éosteve who run that æbleskiver stand on Norndîl St?
Guard 2: Yeah, they're my uncles!
Guard 1: Shit, they cook a fuckin' great æbleskiver!
Librarian: Ok, hold up a sec, "Stick Elf" can't possibly be his real name.
Guard 1: Why not?
Librarian: What? You think his parents named him in the hopes that he would carry around a fucking tree when he got older?
Guard 2: Maybe they gave him the tree when he was born!
Archivist: I don't think a baby could carry that stick.
Guard 1: You ever seen a baby hanging onto something? They're hella strong.
Archivist: It's not a strength thing, their hands are tiny. That staff is enormous!
Guard 1: My halberd's bigger 'n I am, I can hold it just fine.
Archivist: You're not a baby.
Librarian: Also why would elf parents name their kid "stick ELF"?! Presumably they know that their kid's going to be an elf!
Archivist: Is he actually an elf? I didn't think they grew beards.
Guard 1: How'd he get old as balls if he's not an elf?
Guard 2: His ears aren't that pointy. Maybe he's just a really old guy? Like, a Numémoriam or something?
Guard 1: Did you just say "Numémoriam"?
Guard 2: Nûnenorman? Munimõrbitan? Y'know, those guys like the king that can get super old.
Guard 1: You mean the fuckin' Númenóreans?
Guard 2: Yeah, the Númenóreums.
Archivist: Even the Númenóreans don't live THAT long.
Guard 1: Plus he carries that fuckin' stick around.
Guard 2: Wait, what does the stick have to do with it?
Guard 1: That's an elf thing. Y'know, trees and shit? Very elfy.
Librarian: Ok, look, but his parents naming him "Stick Elf" would be weird whether or not he's an elf. In fact, it's even weirder if he's not - what human names their kid "elf"?
Archivist: Huh. Yeah, you're right, he probably does have another name.
Guard 2: Yeah, I guess so.
Librarian: He's been coming here for decades and nobody's ever asked his real name?
Archivist: I dunno what to tell you, he's Stick Elf. Even his library card just says 'Stick Elf'.
Guard 1: Fuck yeah, the Stick Elf!
Guard 2: Maybe we could, like, ask him his name sometime?
Guard 1: Hey, look, Elrond's over there. He's old as balls too, maybe he knows?
Guard 2: Oh, we shouldn't interru-
Guard 1: HEY ELROND, YOU'RE OLD AS BALLS, RIGHT? WHAT'S THAT OLD ELF WITH THE STICK'S NAME?
Elrond (coming over): Do you mean an old man cloaked all in grey and blue, leaning on a rough-cut staff, who came to the great library this day?
Guard 1: Yeah, the Stick-Elf!
Guard 2: (Sorry to bother you, sir...)
Librarian: He's got to have a real name besides 'the Stick Elf', right?
Elrond: Indeed, for no elf is he. You speak of the wizard Olórin, wisest of the Maiar, older even than Eä itself. Many are his names in many countries: Tharkûn among the Dwarves; Incánus to the south; Mithrandir he is called among my people, the Grey Pilgrim.
Librarian: Oh.
Elrond: And here in the North he is called Stick-Elf.
Librarian: Oh.
Guard 1: Fuck yeah!
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It's 2024. I have been participating in fandom for 40 years. This is a ramble commemorating some history I've experienced along the way.
In 1984, I attended my first convention, and made a beeline for the one long row of covered tables in the Dealer's Room that was, according to the whispered lore of my friends, 'the one'. "um", I said, very suavely and coherently, except for how it was totally the opposite of those things, "I'm here for the... for the, uh. For-"
"Come around here," the man behind the table said with exhausted ennui, so I went around, and he lifted up the table skirt next to him and pointed to rows and rows of boxes underneath the line of tables. "It's all under here."
It was all under there. Along with about five older ladies with glasses, graying hair, cardigans. Flipping through slash zines and chatting in whispered voices like old friends (which of course they were). I noticed one of them had the good sense to be wearing kneepads. I was still too young and ablebodied to need kneepads when crawling on a carpeted floor, but I immediately found her preparedness skills to be both impressive and hot. "You're new," one of the ladies whispered to me--a bit warily, which made sense. "Are you sure you're in the right place?"
In the faint light (the kneepads lady had also come prepared with a flashlight, additional practicality hotness points for her) I grabbed a comb-bound book with a heavy line art piece on the cover, featuring a musclebound Captain Kirk getting righteously and enthusiastically plowed by a stern-yet-ebullient Spock. "This," I said, pointing helpfully at the cover, like I was trying to make myself understood in a language I had only the vaguest knowledge of. "I'm here for this."
Outside at the convention, most of the attendees were wearing large homemade circular pins that shrieked 'K/S is BS!!!'1. But underneath the table, we reveled in the forbidden.
***
In 1985, I fell very hard for Starsky & Hutch fandom. Which was simply referred to at the time as 'the other fandom', because there were only two. We were upstarts. Many fannish elders predicted that it was just a phase.
***
The 'circulating library' was a massive stack of barely-legible pages that smelled strongly of mimeograph ink. When you were on the list, you would write stories while you waited for your turn, and when the big box was mailed to you, you would read everything (new finds, old favorites), add your own sloppily-typed or hastily-mimeographed stories, and then mail the whole thing to the next person. For me, at the time, it was an extremely expensive indulgence--but my favorite one.
***
By 1990, slash fandom had grown enough that I no longer knew everyone in it, which was both thrilling and a bit daunting. A young woman at a convention waited for me after a panel I was part of (I think it was 'writing impactful smut' or something like that), and said she had a question she didn't want to ask in a group setting. I'd heard that before. I said that's fine, go ahead and ask; and she came out with: "Why do you have to be gay?"
I blinked. "Is... that a problem?"
She looked annoyed. "Yes, because your stories are on all the recommendation lists and in all the top zines, but if you're gay and I read something you wrote and I get hot from it that makes me gay, and I'm not gay."
"Wow." I grinned, I couldn't help it. It probably made me look very predatory-dyke-about-to-score-a-toaster. Whatever, it was enough to make her back away from me fast.
When I thought about it later that night, I wondered what it would be like not to be the only queer person in slash fandom.
***
By 1997, slash started appearing on the internet. Many fannish elders claimed it was the death knell of slash fandom, or dismissed it as 'just a phase'.
***
Anyway, I wrote all this for myself as a commemoration of sorts, but if you took the time to read it--thank you. Love you, fandom. I always will.
1 In those days, m/m fandom was known as 'slash', which grew from the fannish shorthand where 'K&S' meant a story of Kirk and Spock having adventures or tribulations or what have you, and 'K/S' meant a story of Kirk and Spock getting it on (Kirk divided by Spock or Spock into Kirk--it was mathy fannish humor and I was into it then and I still am now). Slash was decidedly unpopular in the fannish world in 1984, and there was a concerted effort to force slash authors, artists, and fans out of 'mainstream' fannish public life. Hence, under the table.
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