#Black Southern Women

[xtruss]

Why Parents Still Try to Ban ‘The Color Purple’ in Schools

Four decades after it was released, Alice Walker’s enduring classic remains at the forefront of the battle over what is available on library shelves.

— By Erin Blakemore | August 22, 2023

Alice Walker reads from her Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novel, The Color Purple. Since it was first published in 1982, the critically acclaimed book has been targeted by movements pushing to censor the book's subject matter. Photograph By Johnny Crawford, Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP

When Alice Walker’s The Color Purple hit bookshelves in 1982, it blew away critics, became a nationwide bestseller, and endeared itself to readers who found pain and inspiration in its pages.

But in the years since its publication, the acclaimed novel has become famous for another reason: It’s one of the most challenged books in the nation, withstanding criticisms aimed at its depictions of race and sex, its portrayal of abuse and agony, and even its spelling and style.

Here’s how The Color Purple became one of the nation’s most banned books—and why it continues igniting controversy to this day.

“A Spiritual Experience”

Walker, who grew up in Jim Crow-era Georgia, described writing the book as a “spiritual experience” inspired by the strength and grit of the Black Southern women she made her heroines. The epistolary epic follows 40 years in the lives of its main characters Celie, Shug, and Nettie, who survive incest, domestic abuse, and racism in the early twentieth century—all while carving out joy, independence, and dignity along the way.

When it was released in 1982, the book immediately caught the attention of both the critics and the reading public, who praised the book for its portrayals of both the brutality and sorrow of racism and sexual violence and its celebration of Black women.

It was critically acclaimed, winning both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for 1983, and inspired a popular 1985 film directed by Stephen Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.

Banning ‘Purple’

But something else accompanied the novel as its renown grew: controversy. Though educators recognized the book’s potential as a teaching tool, some parents and community members objected to its presence in school curriculums and libraries.

The first major attempt to ban the book occurred in 1984, when a parent petitioned against its use in an Oakland, California classroom. In a 1985 essay, Walker recalled reading frequent updates on “how the banning was coming along” and watching the book’s sales skyrocket.

“I felt I had written the book as a gift to the people. All of them,” Walker wrote. “If they wanted it, let them fight to keep it, as I had to fight to deliver it.”

Fight they did. Though the Oakland schools ultimately decided not to remove the book from classrooms, the book has consistently been challenged nationwide since its publication, repeatedly making it on the American Library Association’s list of most frequently challenged books.

Why Parents Challenge the Book

Attempts to ban The Color Purple usually contest Walker’s use of slang and profanity, the book’s portrayal of brutal Black men, a same-sex encounter between the two main characters, and its depiction of sexual violence in its first pages.

“One can eat from a cafeteria or a dumpster…but one would hope those placed in charge of our children would have exercised better oversight,” wrote one parent in a characteristic 2013 challenge in Brunswick County, North Carolina. (The book has survived multiple attempted bans in the Brunswick County school district.)

But the same pages that provoke ire in some have inspired others.

Oprah Winfrey, who endured sexual abuse as a child, later recalled reading the first page of The Color Purple “and thinking ‘Oh God, I’m not alone.’” After Winfrey co-starred in the first movie adaptation of the film, she began talking about her own experiences on her talk show.

TV historians now credit the self-disclosures inspired by Walker’s book with helping Winfrey develop her winning confessional interview format.

Modern Attempts to Ban the Novel

Efforts to ban The Color Purple have continued during a recent wave of attempted book bans.

In 2022, the American Library Association documented over 1,200 attempts to ban or restrict library materials—double the number of challenges from the previous year—and most of which attempted to remove multiple titles from shelves.

Among them was The Color Purple, which was removed from library shelves in Florida’s Indian County School District at the request of a parent group that objected to 156 of the books on school shelves, claiming the books contain everything from pornography to critical race theory. Though the district’s school board declined to ban The Color Purple, it did remove five of the other books on the list and approve a permission slip allowing parents to restrict their child’s use of school library books.

With news of an upcoming movie adaptation of the acclaimed musical based on the book, The Color Purple is poised to regain the national spotlight. Only time will tell if the movie will spark more challenges—but for now, the legacy of a book one 1982 reviewer called “indelibly affecting” is secure.

To date, the book has sold over 5 million copies—a number sure to rise as a new generation meets its heroines.

[gaykarstaagforever]

I've never liked James Bond movies, other than like two of the Pierce Brosnan ones, and only now because of nostalgia. They're boring when chases aren't happening and too long and his gadgets are unjustifiably impossible and the villains are idiots with stupid schemes, and no one ever just shoots the bastard, leaving him to constantly get out of situations by deus ex machina or blind luck. I don't know what people want from these movies, what makes the "good" ones good or the "bad" ones bad, or why anyone is invested in any of this.

That said, I just watched what is, to me now, the one genuinely good Bond movie: 1973's Live and Let Die.

Bond fights a technologically-advanced drug-dealing voodoo pimp / Caribbean island dictaror, whose evil plan involves giving away a billion dollars of heroin for free. And this plan also involves him somehow successfully killing like 4 secret agents, plus, oh yeah, voodoo and tarot magicks are probably actually real?

This feels like white people mistakenly deciding they know enough about Black people in 1973 to make a movie about their world, and it is exactly as problematic and insane as you'd expect. And I loved every minute of it.

Such gleeful stupidity, done with such a straight face, is a beauty to behold. There is also a 10 minute sequence that is just Smokey and the Bandit, complete with a fat racist idiot Southern sheriff and incompetant Louisiana state police, who get their cars completely destroyed in slapstick comedy wrecks where people crash off ramps into bogs but no one ever gets hurt.

...Except this came out 5 years before Smokey and the Bandit, and maybe the same weekend as the similar White Lightning, so I have no idea who was stealing what from whom. I guess 1973 was just the year to start making fun of Southern law enforcement with funny car accidents.

I'm not complaining. I love this crap. It's just such a specific thing for multiple creatives to seize on at exactly the same moment. I suppose art, like voodoo, is endlessly mysterious.

I got the impression this movie is a critical pariah and was a flop, but neither is true. It made tons of money, and while people in general didn't and don't like Roger Moore as Bond, it seems most people enjoyed the frenetic weirdness going on here.

This was Moore replacing Connery, who set the iconic 1960s Bond bar. Like, hostility to anything new and different was inevitable. I don't feel strongly about Connery's Bond either way, because a lot of those movies are impossibly slow and his charm doesn't redeem them. So I like Moore here. He seems like he's still figuring out how to do the character his way, but that is also inevitable. But he's drool and wry and unflappable, and any lack of charm is fine, considering the movie is far more about jumping from one ridiculous situation to another at a break-neck pace. Bond is really just along for the kooky ride, and Moore manages that.

I love the cars and the costumes. This is peak early 70s, so everything is big and bright primary colors, from the cars to the collars and neckties, to the platform shoes and afro wigs. All the suits have vests. VESTS! The villain dresses his henchmen in bright bluejeans with scarlet polo shirts tucked in. They look like Target associates went rogue. It's beautiful.

Any more analysis of the plot than I've already offered is pointless, because this is a Bond movie. So even at peak wannabe-Blaxploitation goofiness, he's still boldly walking into obvious traps, inappropriately trying to trick certainly-evil women into sleeping with him, and solving every problem with a gimmick watch and desperate flailing that somehow knocks people out.

I don't know why anyone bothers setting elaborate traps for him. Just send a guy to pick him up. He'll know exactly that you've done that and get in the car anyway. That happens twice in this movie! And the same guy is driving!

The watch in this one has an industrial-strength magnet in it, and also the face spins and acts like a tiny buzzsaw. And, fine. That's the right kind of stupid. But how the hell does all that work on tiny watch batteries? I can't forget about that, which is why Bond movies aren't for me. And it makes Bond look bad, because anyone with that watch could probably do exactly what he does. ...Except probably the thing where he uses the magnet to undo the zipper on a woman's dress. That's very specifically a Bond thing, the cheeky predator.

But he's not the only incompetent gadabout, here. Most of the story takes place in the US, and he's working with the CIA. And they are AT LEAST as bad at everything as he is. But they don't have magic watches, so I guess that's why they keep getting stabbed, and poisoned by voodoo snakes, and have to call him in, to do whatever the hell this is:

Jane Seymour is also here. She is a possibly biracial? tarot witch who has virgin powers, and is owned by the Black villain. She gets manhandled and molested all the time, especially by Bond, and his deflowering of her is a major plot point.

As I said before, there are some problematic things going on here.

But the whole affair is so earnestly cheesy and high-energy that it's hard to find fault. They were going for schlock, and they schlocked it. James gets cornered by a hundred people doing a deadly swamp voodoo ritual that involves human sacrifice and a magic robot, and after some of them charge him with machetes, he responds by blindly firing into the crowd and murdering a bunch of them. This culminates with him getting captured by the villain for like the third time, and the guy acts like all this was just part of his plan.

Then Bond wrestles with him a little near a shark tank, but kills him with a Looney Tunes device. 1960s Batman showed more restraint than this. The Austin Powers movies barely referenced this one, because it is already a parody of spy movies. It is a thing of messy, stupid brilliance.

If you don't like Bond movies, this is the Bond movie for you. Everyone can get a laugh out of this, even if they're only laughing at it.

(Also the theme is the best Bond theme ever, but everyone already knows that. It opens the movie with naked women dancing around flaming skulls. That alone probably makes it the best Bond movie.)

[ausetkmt]

From my understanding and research, it appears that the Portuguese/Brazilian slave holders possessed this strange propensity to mask their enslaved population.

 One can just imagine the agony of wearing an iron bridle in the subtropic heat, day in and day out.  The utter misery and torment of enslavement coupled with an unbearable  torture devise like the "dirt eating mask" must have yielded untold suffering for those wearing these vile devices.

 Add on to that the burdensome iron slave collar with prongs for extra torture, along with enslavement in perpetuity and the hopeless tyranny of enslavement seems too extreme to wrap your mind around.--Ron Edwards, US Slave Blog

Escrava Anastacia

So, on with the story from Matt Branson:  "I had lived in Rio De Janero for a few years. One day while out down town, I came across a little head of a black girl wearing an iron mask. I had already collected quite a few strange looking statues and thought she would fit in just fine with the rest of them. She pecked my curiosity and I wanted to know more about her."

The story I discovered concerning this new, small statue, was about a child named Anastacia. A black female slave brought from the west coast of Africa to Brazil. Her mother had been forcibly taken by her white owner for his physical pleasures. A child was conceived, the first black child to be born with blue eyes. The cruelty and guilt of this plantation owner drove him to have the baby sent far away, concealing from his wife his indiscretion as well as his violence.

"A man I had met in Rio first told me the tale of Anastacia and of the church in which her image is honored. The truth is that little remains to prove her existence. Two accounts exist, the one above and the following narrative, both of which explain my interest in this amazing woman. My experiences in life, and particularly in Brazil, leads me to believe she truly was a real person. " -MATTHEW BRANSON The Story of Anastacia - The Slave Girl

Based on oral tradition and translated from a Brazilian website Worshipped in Brazil as a saint and heroine, Anastacia is considered one of the most important woman in black history within the culture of Rio de Janeiro. "Her story still has the power to move us to awe and compassion and for that reason alone, I want to make her real to those that don't know about her."

Anastacia's birth is linked to the tale of Delminda. Some say Delminda was from the Bantu tribe (originating in about 2,000 B.C.E. in southern Nigeria and Cameroon), a daughter of the royal family of Galanga brought to Brazil in 1740 with a cargo of 112 slaves. One version of the story is as follows. Delminda was extremely pretty. She was sold in the harbour by Antonio Rodrigues Velho.

She had been raped by a white man and was sold pregnant to Joaquina Pompeu. Delminda gave birth that same year on the 5th March to the blue eyed Anastacia. She was the first black girl with blue eyes in Brazil. It is at this point the two stories seem to merge. Whether or not she was separated from her mother or remained with Delminda, all seem to agree on what comes next. As she grew up Anasatcia became the obsession of the owner's son, Joaquin Antonio.

Very beautiful, It is said that all the white women around were jealous of her, so encouraged Joaquin to make her wear the slave mask. As a punishment for repeatedly refusing his advances, he raped her and condemned her to wear the iron mask for the rest of her life, only removing it once a day to eat. She lived for some years before the toxicity of the metal from the mask became poisonous.

Some accounts claim she was performing miracles toward the end of her life. It became gossip amongst the poor that she could heal because she had found it in her heart to forgive the torture she had suffered, and that she even healed her owner's son of some disease. At that moment she became a saint for many of the poor.

Some continue today petitioning Rome, to have her canonized as St. Anastacia of Rio. There is a statue and a place of worship in Vas Lobo, where pilgrims flock to worship her. She has more than twenty-eight million followers, though I was surprised to find that most of the Brazilian's I have met have never heard of her.

She is exclusive to the poor of Rio and the descendants of slaves. Some link her image with a number of paintings by Etienne Victor Arago (b. 1755 d. 1855), a French watercolourist who traveled in Brazil sometime between 1817-1820. His known works portrayed gold mining slaves who were also forced to wear iron masks, so as not to hide or swallow gold nuggets while they were digging.

She died in Rio after years of agony, her remains were housed in the Church of Rosario, in downtown Rio, but disappeared after a fire. Anastacia became a religious myth, performing miracles, even until today. Many people continue to pray to her when they are sick. Then they are healed.

Punishment for slaves. Painting of African person with neck shackled and mouth muzzled. Jacques Etienne Arago. Castigo de Escravos, 1839. English: Punishiment for slaves. Português: Castigo de Escravo. Museu Afro Brasil (São Paulo).

Her history was miraculously recovered in 1968, when an exhibition to celebrate 90 years of the abolition of slavery was held in the Church of Rosario. In the back of the church was found a portrait of her by Arago. "As you can see, there are a few different accounts of her existence, of Anastacia, the slave girl. She would have been forgotten entirely if it hadn't been for a portrait by Arago.

Mystery is part of her story as it is part of the life of this French painter who sailed the seas between Australia and South America. There are conflicting tales as to whether or not Arago is buried in Paris or in Rio itself.

Human Rights are for all of us and slavery is not a condition for humanity. I continuously lived in Brazil from 1985 to 1992. Around 1987, a television news broadcast in Rio said authorities had found a farmer in the middle of nowhere in rural Brazil, who operated his farm with all his workers in chains. He repeatedly advertised jobs through the press in Sao Paulo and when anyone arrived to work, he made a slave of them, one-hundred and ten years after the abolition of slavery.

How can we be so unconscious as to not know about these things? How can we be apathetic to the conditions of others? I would like to put Anastacia into the history books, in Brazil and everywhere else. She represents the suffering of people that have been forgotten and are still being ignored today.

[lboogie1906]

Elisabeth Williams-Omilami (born February 18, 1951) is a human rights activist and actress.

Born in Atlanta, she is the daughter of activist Hosea Williams and Georgia State Representative Juanita T. Williams. Her young life was spent with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. She created the People’s Survival Theatre, producing a season of five shows per year. In New York, she worked as an arts administrator and executive assistant. She directed and acted as much as she could, supporting her family as her husband’s career grew. She returned to Atlanta. She continued to perform on stage and in film and television. She graduated from Hampton University with a BA in Theatre.

She is a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority. A Georgia State Senate Resolution in recognition of her community service, Atlanta Business League 100 Women of Influence, For Sisters Only, Women In Film Humanitarian Award, Secretary of State of Georgia Outstanding Citizen, State of Georgia Goodwill Ambassador, YWCA Women of Achievement Academy, Burger King Urban Everyday Heroes, Kraft Community Service; Southern Christian Leadership Conference Women Drum Major for Justice, T. D. Jakes Phenomenal Woman, Daughters of Isis Community Service Award, the Emory University M.L.K. Community Service Award and The National Conference of Black Mayors Fannie Lou Hamer Unsung Heroine Award.

She is a playwright who has written several plays, one of which is There Is A River In My Soul. She is a past member of both the Georgia Council For The Arts and the Fulton County Arts Council and is a passionate advocate for the arts to be instituted as a permanent part of society. She is an actress and has performed at the Alliance Theatre in A Christmas Carol and early 2002 in Left Hand Singing at the Jewish Theatre of The South. She can be seen in Boycott, In the Heat of the Night, and the award-winning I’ll Fly Away. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #zetaphibeta

[brookston]

Holidays 12.21

Holidays

Armed Forces Day (Philippines)

Chaos Day

Chester Greenwood Day (Inventor of Earmuffs; Maine)

Crossword Puzzle Day

Don’t Be a Scrooge Day

Doubting Thomas Day (Original Date] (a.k.a. ... 

Begging Day

Doleing Day

Going A-Corning

Going A-Gooding

Gooding Day

Hollering Day

Mumping Day

Thomasing

End of the World Day

Forefather's Day (New England)

Global Orgasm for Peace Day

Humbug Day

International Dalek Remembrance Day

Look on the Bright Side Day

National Forge Day

National Heroes and Heroines Day (Anguilla)

National Maine Day

Phileas Fogg Wins A Wager Day

Ribbon Candy Day

São Tomé Day (São Tomé Day and Príncipe)

Solstice [1st Day of Winter in Northern Hemisphere] (a.k.a. ... 

Alban Arthuan (a..k.a. Yule Celtic, Pagan) [8 of 8 Festivals of the Natural Year]

Alban Arthuan (Druid Solstice Festival)

Anne and Samantha Day

Blue Christmas (Western Christian)

Bruma (Ancient Rome)

Celebrate Short Fiction Day

Daylight Appreciation Day

Dōngzhì Festival (a.k.a. Extreme of Winter; China, East Asia) [on winter solstice]

Don’t Make Your Bed Day

Festival of Isis (Ancient Egypt, celebrating Isis finding Osiris & resurrecting him)

Festival of Odin, Ing, and Erda (Asatru)

Finally Summer Day/Finally Winter Day

Flashlight Day

Hump Day (Tasmania)

Jul (a.k.a. Jol)

Litha (Wiccan/Pagan; southern hemisphere)

National Haiku Poetry Day

National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day

National Short Girl Appreciation Day

National Short Story Day

Sanghamitta (Theravada Buddhism)

Soyala New Year Festival (Hopi and Zuni Native Americans)

Sol Invictus (Undefeated Sun; Ancient Rome)

Wild Hunt peak (Norse)

Yalda (Iran; Persian/Zoroastrian)

Yule (Wiccan/Pagan; Northern Hemisphere)

Yuletide

World Peace Day

Yuletide Lad #10 arrives (Gluggagaegir or Peeper; Iceland)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Kiwi Fruit Day (California)

National Armagnac Day

National Coquito Day

National French Fried Shrimp Day

National Hamburger Day

National Kiwi Fruit Day

Ribbon Candy Day

3rd Wednesday in December

Museum Selfie Day [3rd Wednesday]

Independence Days

Kingdom of Nepal. (Declared; 1768)

Feast Days

Berthollet (Positivist; Saint)

Divalia (a.k.a. Angeronalia; Old Roman festival to Angerona or Voluptia, goddess of joy, pleasure, & secrecy)

Edburge (Christian; Saint)

Feast of Isis the Black Cow (Ancient Egypt)

Feelings of Gnawing Guilt Minute (04:00-04:01; Church of the SubGenius)

Fred (Muppetism)

Haloa (Attic festival honoring Demeter, Dionysus & Poseidon)

Hanukkah Day #3 (Judaism) [thru Dec. 26th]

O Oriens (Christian; Saint)

Pancha Ganapati begins (until 25th; Hindu festival celebrating Lord Ganesha, Saiva Siddhanta Church)

Peter Canisius (Christian; Saint)

Pongal of the Cows (Hindu)

Poseide of Aegina (Festival to Poseidon; Ancient Greece)

Saturnalia and Solstice Day (Pastafarian)

Thomas the Apostle (Anglicanism)

Tammuz (Ancient Babylonian Yule Ritual)

Ziemassvetki (Ancient Latvia; birth of Dievs)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Unfortunate Day (Pagan) [57 of 57]

Umu Limnu (Evil Day; Babylonian Calendar; 59 of 60)

Premieres

Aquaman (Film; 2018)

A Beautiful Mind (Film; 2001)

Bumblebee (Film; 2018)

A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen (Play; 1879)

The Electric Horseman (Film; 1979)

The Graduate (Film; 1967)

Kindergarten Cop (Film; 1990)

Little Women (Film; 1994)

National Treasure: book of Secrets (Film; 2007)

Sing (Animated Film; 2016)

The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Andersen (Fairy Tale; 1844)

Snow White and the Sven Dwarfs (Animated Disney Film; 1937)

Spamalot (Musical Play; 2004)

Sweeney Todd (Film; 2007)

Then There Was X, by DMX (Album; 1999)

This Is 40 (Film; 2012)

Walk Hard: The dewey Cox Story (Film; 2007)

Today’s Name Days

Hagar, Peter (Austria)

Mihej, Petar (Croatia)

Natálie (Czech Republic)

Thomas (Denmark)

Tom, Tommi, Toom, Toomas (Estonia)

Tomi, Tommi, Tuomas, Tuomo (Finland)

Pierre (France)

Hagar, Ingmar, Ingo (Germany)

Julia, Themistokles, Themistoklis (Greece)

Tamás (Hungary)

Pietro (Italy)

Saulcerīte, Toms (Latvia)

Girenė, Honoratas, Norgaudas, Tomas (Lithuania)

Tom, Tomas (Norway)

Balbin, Festus, Honorat, Tomasz, Tomisław (Poland)

Iuliana, Temistocle (Romania)

Bohdan (Slovakia)

Pedro (Spain)

Tomas (Sweden)

Eva, Eve, Julianne, Julianna (Ukraine)

Estella, Estelle, Ester, Esther, Star, Stella, Van, Vance, Vanesa, Vanessa, Vanna (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 355 of 2022; 10 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of week 51 of 2022

Celtic Tree Calendar: Ruis (Elder) [Day 26 of 28]

Chinese: Month 11 (Dōngyuè), Day 28 (Wu-Shen)

Chinese Year of the: Tiger (until January 22, 2023)

Hebrew: 27 Kislev 5783

Islamic: 27 Jumada I 1444

J Cal: 25 Zima; Threesday [25 of 30]

Julian: 8 December 2022

Moon: 4%: Waning Crescent

Positivist: 19 Bichat (12th Month) [Berthollet]

Runic Half Month: Jara (Year) [Day 12 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 1 of 90)

Zodiac: Sagittarius (Day 29 of 30)

Calendar Changes

Winter [Season 1 of 4]

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 12.21

Holidays

Armed Forces Day (Philippines)

Chaos Day

Chester Greenwood Day (Inventor of Earmuffs; Maine)

Crossword Puzzle Day

Don’t Be a Scrooge Day

Doubting Thomas Day (Original Date] (a.k.a. ... 

Begging Day

Doleing Day

Going A-Corning

Going A-Gooding

Gooding Day

Hollering Day

Mumping Day

Thomasing

End of the World Day

Forefather's Day (New England)

Global Orgasm for Peace Day

Humbug Day

International Dalek Remembrance Day

Look on the Bright Side Day

National Forge Day

National Heroes and Heroines Day (Anguilla)

National Maine Day

Phileas Fogg Wins A Wager Day

Ribbon Candy Day

São Tomé Day (São Tomé Day and Príncipe)

Solstice [1st Day of Winter in Northern Hemisphere] (a.k.a. ... 

Alban Arthuan (a..k.a. Yule Celtic, Pagan) [8 of 8 Festivals of the Natural Year]

Alban Arthuan (Druid Solstice Festival)

Anne and Samantha Day

Blue Christmas (Western Christian)

Bruma (Ancient Rome)

Celebrate Short Fiction Day

Daylight Appreciation Day

Dōngzhì Festival (a.k.a. Extreme of Winter; China, East Asia) [on winter solstice]

Don’t Make Your Bed Day

Festival of Isis (Ancient Egypt, celebrating Isis finding Osiris & resurrecting him)

Festival of Odin, Ing, and Erda (Asatru)

Finally Summer Day/Finally Winter Day

Flashlight Day

Hump Day (Tasmania)

Jul (a.k.a. Jol)

Litha (Wiccan/Pagan; southern hemisphere)

National Haiku Poetry Day

National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day

National Short Girl Appreciation Day

National Short Story Day

Sanghamitta (Theravada Buddhism)

Soyala New Year Festival (Hopi and Zuni Native Americans)

Sol Invictus (Undefeated Sun; Ancient Rome)

Wild Hunt peak (Norse)

Yalda (Iran; Persian/Zoroastrian)

Yule (Wiccan/Pagan; Northern Hemisphere)

Yuletide

World Peace Day

Yuletide Lad #10 arrives (Gluggagaegir or Peeper; Iceland)

Food & Drink Celebrations

Kiwi Fruit Day (California)

National Armagnac Day

National Coquito Day

National French Fried Shrimp Day

National Hamburger Day

National Kiwi Fruit Day

Ribbon Candy Day

3rd Wednesday in December

Museum Selfie Day [3rd Wednesday]

Independence Days

Kingdom of Nepal. (Declared; 1768)

Feast Days

Berthollet (Positivist; Saint)

Divalia (a.k.a. Angeronalia; Old Roman festival to Angerona or Voluptia, goddess of joy, pleasure, & secrecy)

Edburge (Christian; Saint)

Feast of Isis the Black Cow (Ancient Egypt)

Feelings of Gnawing Guilt Minute (04:00-04:01; Church of the SubGenius)

Fred (Muppetism)

Haloa (Attic festival honoring Demeter, Dionysus & Poseidon)

Hanukkah Day #3 (Judaism) [thru Dec. 26th]

O Oriens (Christian; Saint)

Pancha Ganapati begins (until 25th; Hindu festival celebrating Lord Ganesha, Saiva Siddhanta Church)

Peter Canisius (Christian; Saint)

Pongal of the Cows (Hindu)

Poseide of Aegina (Festival to Poseidon; Ancient Greece)

Saturnalia and Solstice Day (Pastafarian)

Thomas the Apostle (Anglicanism)

Tammuz (Ancient Babylonian Yule Ritual)

Ziemassvetki (Ancient Latvia; birth of Dievs)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Unfortunate Day (Pagan) [57 of 57]

Umu Limnu (Evil Day; Babylonian Calendar; 59 of 60)

Premieres

Aquaman (Film; 2018)

A Beautiful Mind (Film; 2001)

Bumblebee (Film; 2018)

A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen (Play; 1879)

The Electric Horseman (Film; 1979)

The Graduate (Film; 1967)

Kindergarten Cop (Film; 1990)

Little Women (Film; 1994)

National Treasure: book of Secrets (Film; 2007)

Sing (Animated Film; 2016)

The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Andersen (Fairy Tale; 1844)

Snow White and the Sven Dwarfs (Animated Disney Film; 1937)

Spamalot (Musical Play; 2004)

Sweeney Todd (Film; 2007)

Then There Was X, by DMX (Album; 1999)

This Is 40 (Film; 2012)

Walk Hard: The dewey Cox Story (Film; 2007)

Today’s Name Days

Hagar, Peter (Austria)

Mihej, Petar (Croatia)

Natálie (Czech Republic)

Thomas (Denmark)

Tom, Tommi, Toom, Toomas (Estonia)

Tomi, Tommi, Tuomas, Tuomo (Finland)

Pierre (France)

Hagar, Ingmar, Ingo (Germany)

Julia, Themistokles, Themistoklis (Greece)

Tamás (Hungary)

Pietro (Italy)

Saulcerīte, Toms (Latvia)

Girenė, Honoratas, Norgaudas, Tomas (Lithuania)

Tom, Tomas (Norway)

Balbin, Festus, Honorat, Tomasz, Tomisław (Poland)

Iuliana, Temistocle (Romania)

Bohdan (Slovakia)

Pedro (Spain)

Tomas (Sweden)

Eva, Eve, Julianne, Julianna (Ukraine)

Estella, Estelle, Ester, Esther, Star, Stella, Van, Vance, Vanesa, Vanessa, Vanna (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 355 of 2022; 10 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of week 51 of 2022

Celtic Tree Calendar: Ruis (Elder) [Day 26 of 28]

Chinese: Month 11 (Dōngyuè), Day 28 (Wu-Shen)

Chinese Year of the: Tiger (until January 22, 2023)

Hebrew: 27 Kislev 5783

Islamic: 27 Jumada I 1444

J Cal: 25 Zima; Threesday [25 of 30]

Julian: 8 December 2022

Moon: 4%: Waning Crescent

Positivist: 19 Bichat (12th Month) [Berthollet]

Runic Half Month: Jara (Year) [Day 12 of 15]

Season: Winter (Day 1 of 90)

Zodiac: Sagittarius (Day 29 of 30)

Calendar Changes

Winter [Season 1 of 4]

[voluptuarian]

“Medieval” Media on TV checklist

It’s in the UK. They can name it whatever they want, but it’s supposed to be the UK. (And not anywhere specific either-- is it Cornwall, Yorkshire, Aberdeen? None of the above, and also all.) So of course, it was filmed in Hungary, Croatia, and 2 French castles. Also it’s always winter because in medieval-fantasy-old-times-England it was always winter, always cold and gray, and always muddy, because of Christianity. Or something.

Paganism stand-in religion that is free-love-feminism-horned-god-bambi-rainbow-divine-feminine-oh-goddess!-silver-ravenwolf-glitter-farts and gives you magic powers and probably Disney Princess animal-handling skills. Clergy are female except for the only relevant character who is male and also probably Merlin, wear woad and Ren faire face paint, and are free of dogma or structure despite somehow having once governed. Now pushed into the shadows by “new” Christianity stand-in that hunts followers of the “old” religion as heretics.

Grimdark and repressive Christianity stand-in that rules with a patriarchal iron first and has made everyone miserable. Inexplicably Protestantism-based and Evangelical-inspired. Despite claiming to be medieval, no mention of Mary, Saints, feast days, pilgrimage, mystery plays, music, rosaries or medals, icons or relics, or probably even confession-- if you get lucky somebody might mention a Nail of the Cross or have communion. None of the clergy really believe unless they’re zealots, or sympathetic-and-tragically-misguided (and probably self-hating lesbians or something), everyone else is there out of ambition. Unlike the “old” religion, this one has zero divine or magical power and if it appears to have, that will actually come from demons-- who are real, although “new” God isn’t. Exists just to police sex and personal expression, self-flagellate, and guilt trip characters vaguely about “sin” without providing any discussion of what level sin it is or how many Hail Mary’s must be said to expatiate it.

Witch hunting mania which combines Renaissance Inquisition with independent early modern Puritan witch finding-- somehow is both Church-sponsored and widespread. Goes after women who are too sexy and independent, women who can read, anyone who believes in birth control, and the protagonist’s mother. Also followers of “old” religion who are usually secretly the above. Anyone caught will be burned at the stake, because hanging isn’t flashy enough.

Corsets as outerwear. Because bodices and corsets are the same thing. And everyone wore their underwear over their clothes. Victorian tightlacing de rigeur to combat wandering wombs and female mobility. If a female character wears armor, it too, is probably a corset. The enlightened heroine finally abandons hers with a feminine gasp of relief-- and no lingering health issues from years of tightlacing-- and her titties stay up anyway because of the Wonderbra she has on underneath.

Priests look like Martin Luther or the Ku Klux Klan. Nuns-- if they exist-- are only there to get killed, possessed, or dominated by male clergy (and possibly squeeze in an ill-fated lesbian romance before doing any of the former). No one has ever heard of an abbess and if you bring the subject up they’ll burn you at the stake.

If there are any Romans, they are exclusively played by Irish or German actors, with crisp Shakespearean accents. If there’s a German, they’re Dutch or Russian. If the “English” characters are actually English, they must be Southerners doing a basic British accent; if not they’re played by Americans doing no accent at all.

Chrome plate armor was all the rage in 500 AD

Despite witnessing the magic of “the old religion” firsthand, and being born and raised in the “new” one, the protagonist is an atheist, and even if he should meet god in person will steadfastly refuse to believe in Him. Because he’s just too cool and enlightened for that.

The plague is ever present, and has no name, since no one needs to define which plague, because there has only ever been the one. Other than starvation or being killed by the Baddie’s henchmen or the Church, it’s the only way anyone has ever died (except for pregnant women, who all die in childbirth.) Symptoms include fever, coughing, concealer appearing inexplicably on the lips, and then a few dramatic final words.

Nobody brushes their teeth because it’s Olde Tymes (incorrect) and nobody takes baths because it’s Satanic (also incorrect) yet every character with the exception of somebody only credited as “Ancient One-Eyed Old Coot” is clean, has shiny hair, no BO, and mouthfuls of big white teeth. Also perfume was never invented in this world, and the only beverage is water, mostly drunk from the hands at random streams, which are never mucked up or disease-carrying.

All the peasants dress in throw blankets and the remnants of Water World’s costuming department in a color range going from “Black Death” to “Dun”, accessorized with warts and fresh mud. The nobles meanwhile, drowning in money and with trade access to China dress like they were sent to The Wall, with the exception of “sexy slut” character who wears magenta crushed velvet off-the-shoulder gowns, and the only gay guy in the movie, who has slashed sleeves in 1350 and is one gold chain away from a rap career.

During interviews the cast will all say how they “wouldn’t have survived in medieval times” with all the mud and disease and sexual repression and they would have probably been “burned at the stake” for reading or swearing. The women fulfill their contractual obligation to complain about their corsets, yet another reason they would have died in “medieval times”. Somebody mentions the plague.

The harvest will be burned a dozen times, all the livestock will be slaughtered, the populace will end up homeless and starving, (which will of course, only concern the protagonist, who must dutifully share a crust of plain bread with some toothless vagrant) but once The Baddie is slain peace will return to the land and the infrastructure will magically rebuild itself, miraculously re-planting fields and restocking larders. Also it’s Spring now.

[female-malice]

Breathe, but not too heavy. Look, but do not appear guilty. Speak, but never answer back. These are the constant reminders of being Black In America. After playing three games in the hot southern heat, all the Delaware State women’s lacrosse team wanted to do was make it back to Delaware with ease. However, things went left when they got pulled over by Police in Georgia.

On April 20 at 10:31am, Tim Jones, black bus driver, was stopped by Police in Georgia. The officers claimed it was a traffic violation because buses are not permitted to drive in the left lane. The cops came on the bus to inform the students that they would be checking their luggage for any possible narcotics, such as marijuana, heroin, methane, and ketamine.

[veronicamarsconfessions]

TV remakes and reboots have seen a steady increase over the last few years. It’s gotten to the point that, long before their predecessors have had a chance to collect dust, a reboot is announced. The CW staples such as Roswell and Charmed have all been resurrected, with modern twists. The return of Veronica Mars, however, posed a different challenge.

As an eight-episode revival on Hulu, the former UPN series brought back its original cast as a continuation of not just the series, but the 2014 movie of the same name. With the writers seemingly committed to the mystery rather than their own characters driving the story, the final minutes of the season finale became a prime example of lazy writing. If nothing else, Season 4 of Veronica Mars failed its protagonist, and its antiquated ideas about relationships and race, and Logan’s shocking last-minute death, proved that being brought back from TV cancellation was a disservice.

When it premiered in 2004, Veronica Mars was hailed as trailblazing. It had a female protagonist who was capable, resourceful, and was given space to develop on her own terms (as much as a teenager could, anyway). Like so many shows, Veronica Mars wasn’t perfect, despite being lauded and securing a loyal fanbase. While it explored the class divide in Neptune, a town in southern California where the middle class was touted as being nonexistent, the series struggled to abstain from racial stereotypes, with Wallace (Percy Daggs III) as the Black best friend who never got any focus, and Weevil (Francis Capra) as the Latino gang member whose storyline lacked nuance.

Even when it got things right, the series had a lot to learn about writing women and minority characters, though it was admittedly a product of its time. The problems that plagued its original run desperately needed an update, but even with the revival set in 2019, it was 2004 all over again.

Sarcastic, sharp, determined, and often evasive of revisiting and sorting through her own trauma, Veronica (Kristen Bell) stood out like a sore thumb in Neptune. While she rubbed many people the wrong way, she was also a pillar of strength in an increasingly corrupt town, but as a show goes on, characters must evolve or else risk being fossilized in time.

Veronica Mars’ fourth season committed that exact crime when it came to Veronica’s development and her relationship with Logan (Jason Dohring). Five years after the movie, she was in the same place we left her: back in Neptune, closed off, clinging unhealthily to the past. She still had trust issues, which pushed her new friend Nicole (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) away, and she kept a safe distance from acknowledging her emotions.

When Logan suggests she go to therapy or brings up her unwillingness to move forward in their relationship, Veronica tells Logan she preferred his angry, bottled-up self to the person he is now.

His anger was something familiar to her, a facet of himself she relished in. Rather than acknowledging all of the progress he’d made to move past his demons, Veronica wanted him to remain in the past with her, unwilling to consider therapy for herself, and unable to get past everything that had happened to her. In fact, Logan, the character fans loved to hate back in Season 1, was the one who had arguably shown the most maturity and character growth in the revival.

He was seeing a therapist, had a stable job, wanted to marry Veronica, and his fist didn’t meet the wall every chance he got. When compared to every other character, his progress was startling in its authenticity and added to why his death was so frustrating.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Veronica. Revisiting characters at different stages in their lives is always a treat, but no one wants to watch a show where the protagonist is the same person later in life as she was in Season 1. Season 4 of Veronica Mars ultimately stymied Veronica’s growth, choosing to recycle trauma rather than work to organically develop her into a fully realized character at a new stage in her life.

Logan’s death in the Season 4 finale gave Veronica fresh pain to contend with, without allowing her space to overcome her past agony. It was lazy writing, and skipping a whole year ahead in the last minutes of the finale left the exploration of her grief on the sidelines and offscreen, a cheap shot to eliminate the chances of falling into old patterns. Choosing to focus on the noir mystery instead of the characters’ personal relationships was detrimental to what made Veronica Mars a show fans cared about to begin with.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, series creator Rob Thomas insinuated that he had to kill Logan for Veronica to move forward. “There is something romantic about that solitary P.I. figure out in the world and, also, I think there’s a reason that shows tend to end when they get their romantic leads together.” However, the death played out as nothing more than shock value, rather than an emotionally impactful moment.

The idea that Veronica must always be isolated and unhappy to continue doing her job is antiquated and bleak. It exemplifies regressive ideas regarding a woman’s choice between her career and personal growth and happiness. This is a stark contrast to shows such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Superstore, and Jane the Virgin, all of which have done much better by their female characters and also highlight how couples getting together don’t doom a show.

It ultimately speaks to Thomas’ lack of creativity with regards to developing Veronica as a person and allowing her relationship with Logan to support her growth. Instead, Thomas subscribes to old-school thinking about romantic relationships and how they lose their impact after a couple finally gets together, when, in fact, it’s the exact opposite.

There’s so much storytelling to mine from a relationship. Logan was clearly making strides to be a better person and was persuading Veronica to do the same. With his death, that has all been thrown away and even its aftermath skipped over, sending Veronica right back to square one. Thomas’ interest is in romanticizing a woman’s pain rather than taking a beat to explore it, happy for his female protagonist to be frozen in time as opposed to allowing her enough agency to endure her present.

With the revival, the series had an opportunity to provide an updated take on a beloved heroine, and it failed. If anything, the revival proved that some shows should be left in the past rather than tarnish their relative goodwill. If Thomas isn’t willing to develop the series past its bad habits, to take Veronica to the next well-deserved stage in her life, then it has no place in the present.

[christinaroseandrews]

Blessed—or cursed, depending on how you look at it—With an eidetic memory, Elle Burns is one of the union’s most secret weapons. A spy embedded in a southern senators household as a slave. Keeping her head down, she’s able to pass on secret messages to Washington to help aid the union in the Civil War. But all of this changes when she meets one Malcolm McCall. A Pinkerton detective, Malcolm is on a mission. Already a veteran of several successful espionage missions he’s heard word of something big is going down and he’s on the hunt for what. Unfortunately he never expected his contact in Richmond to be the utterly bewitching Elle. As a white man posing as a Confederate soldier, It would be dangerous for him to act upon his attraction. But he’s somehow can’t seem to stop himself. Cans to manage to track down the mystery in Richmond while keeping their emotions in check? Or will they end up falling in love?

What a fun historical romance! There’s all of the action and adventure of some of the best romantic suspense in this with all of the heartbreaking and aww-inducing moments of a great romance. The story centers around two spies for the union, one black and one white. One female and one male. And how working together with their series of contacts they’re able to uncover a fairly major threat to the union. I don’t want to give that threat away, but if you’re a fan of history, it’s pretty easy to figure out where the plot is going and it’s quite fun to go there. When I figured out my jaw dropped and i went “oooooohhhhh” and rubbed my hands in glee.

I really liked Elle as a main character. I liked that she had her roots in a real life spy who was also an enslaved women with a eidetic memory. Seeing her taking the reins and using the Southerners and white people’s preconceptions against them was cool. I was here for it. I like to relationships with the other enslaved people in the household as well as that with Malcolm. I liked that the story never forgot the huge gulf in opportunity and respect that stood between them. I found Malcolm a fun hero. He was alpha without being annoying. He knew his strengths and he played into them. his backstory mirrored Elle’s in an odd way -- he’s Scottish and one of the refugees from the Highland Clearances. It wasn’t fully the same--it can’t be--but it gave the characters a place to communicate and understand each other from. I liked that his skills wasn’t in his arm but in his voice. That he used his words to get what he wanted. He was charismatic and a skilled liar which served him well until all of a sudden it really really didn’t. He was a good foil for Elle and together they made a good team.

I also liked how Southerners were portrayed that they weren’t just a melodramatic villain twirling their mustaches. They were complex characters with wants and layers, and even though they were truly on the side of inhumanity they weren’t themselves portrayed as a monolith. There were Southerners who fit the strereotypes and others who really did not. I also liked that one of the most horrific characters in the novel was a white woman aka the stereotypical southern belle. She was Scarlett O’Hara as she really would have been if she hadn’t been the designated heroine of Gone with the Wind—Spoiled, horrible, deceitful.

You know, like the actual Scarlett... but not glamorized.

Frankly this book needs to be turned into a movie or Netflix needs to be developing this into a new series. I would watch the heck out of it.

Trigger warnings because this books does need them include: Racism, racist language, discussion of rape, attempted rape, slavery and all of it’s trauma, so yeah.  Make sure you are in a good place before reading this.

But if you’re looking for something to read this Juneteenth, consider this book by a Black author that actually has great historical basis (and cites its sources--I stan a romance that cites its sources) about the Civil War and the fight for African American Emancipation, then you’ll want to read this.

Five Stars

If this is your jam, you can get it here.

If you like these kind of honest reviews, please consider supporting us here!

[xmanicpanicx]

Mammoth List of Feminist/Girl Power Books (200 + Books)

Lists of Real, Amazing Women Throughout History

Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World by Ann Shen

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Pénélope Bagieu, Montana Kane (Translator)

Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath

Tough Mothers: Amazing Stories of History’s Mightiest Matriarchs by Jason Porath

Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky

Bygone Badass Broads: 52 Forgotten Women Who Changed the World by Mackenzi Lee

Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History by Sam Maggs

The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont

Rad Women Worldwide: Artists and Athletes, Pirates and Punks, and Other Revolutionaries Who Shaped History by Kate Schatz

Warrior Women: 3000 Years of Courage and Heroism by Robin Cross & Rosalind Miles

Women Who Dared: 52 Stories of Fearless Daredevils, Adventurers, and Rebels by Linda Skeers & Livi Gosling 

100 Nasty Women of History by Hannah Jewell

The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser

Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World by Jane Yolen

The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience by Hillary Rodham Clinton & Chelsea Clinton 

Fight Like a Girl: 50 Feminists Who Changed the World by Laura Barcella

Samurai Women 1184–1877 by Stephen Turnbull

A Black Woman Did That by Malaika Adero

Tales from Behind the Window by Edanur Kuntman

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights by Mikki Kendall

Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700-1100 by Max Dashu

Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency by Bea Koch

Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History by Blair Imani

Individual and Group Portraits of Real, Amazing Women Throughout History

Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment by Deborah Kops

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life by Jane Sherron De Hart

The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott

I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb

Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox

Native Country of the Heart: A Memoir by Cherríe L. Moraga

The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants: The Female Gang That Terrorised London by Brian McDonald

Women Against the Raj: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment by Joyce Chapman Lebra

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus

The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt

The Women of WWII (Non-Fiction)

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue by Kathryn J. Atwood

Skyward: The Story of Female Pilots in WWII by Sally Deng

The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II by Katherine Sharp Landdeck

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear (Translation), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translation)

Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation by Anne Sebba

To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African-American Wacs Stationed Overseas During World War II by Brenda L. Moore

Standing Up Against Hate: How Black Women in the Army Helped Change the Course of WWII by Mary Cronk Farrell

Sisters and Spies: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne by Susan Ottaway

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell

The White Mouse by Nancy Wake

Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy

Tomorrow to be Brave: A Memoir of the Only Woman Ever to Serve in the French Foreign Legion by Susan Travers & Wendy Holden

Pure Grit: How WWII Nurses in the Pacific Survived Combat and Prison Camp by Mary Cronk Farrell

Sisterhood of Spies by Elizabeth P. McIntosh

Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu

Women in the Holocaust by Dalia Ofer

The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos by Judy Batalion

Night Witches: The Untold Story of Soviet Women in Combat by Bruce Myles

The Soviet Night Witches: Brave Women Bomber Pilots of World War II by Pamela Jain Dell

A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II by Elizabeth Wein

A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II by Anne Noggle

Avenging Angels: The Young Women of the Soviet Union's WWII Sniper Corps by Lyuba Vinogradova

The Women of WWII (Fiction)

Among the Red Stars by Gwen C. Katz

Night Witches by Kathryn Lasky

Night Witches by Mirren Hogan

Night Witch by S.J. McCormack

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

Daughters of the Night Sky by Aimie K. Runyan

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff

Code Name Verity series by Elizabeth Wein

Front Lines trilogy by Michael Grant

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

All-Girl Teams (Fiction)

The Seafire trilogy by Natalie C. Parker

Elysium Girls by Kate Pentecost

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis

The Effigies trilogy by Sarah Raughley

Guardians of the Dawn series by S. Jae-Jones

Wolf-Light by Yaba Badoe

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson

Burned and Buried by Nino Cipri

This Is What It Feels Like by Rebecca Barrow

The Wild Ones: A Broken Anthem for a Girl Nation by Nafiza Azad

We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Tigers, Not Daughters by Samantha Mabry

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Bad Girls Never Say Die by Jennifer Mathieu

The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti

Kamikaze Girls by Novala Takemoto, Akemi Wegmüller (Translator)

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry

The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke

Sisters in Sanity by Gayle Forman

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

The Lost Girls by Sonia Hartl

Hell's Belles series by Sarah MacLean

Jackdaws by Ken Follett

The Farmerettes by Gisela Tobien Sherman

A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions by Sheena Boekweg

Feminist Retellings

Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly

Poisoned by Jennifer Donnelly

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea by Axie Oh

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

Doomed by Laura Pohl

The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

Seven Endless Forests by April Genevieve Tucholke

The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton

A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston

Kate Crackernuts by Katharine M. Briggs

Legendborn series by Tracy Deonn

One for All by Lillie Lainoff

Feminist Dystopian and Horror Fiction

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker

Women and Girls in Comedy 

Crying Laughing by Lance Rubin

Stand Up, Yumi Chung by Jessica Kim

This Will Be Funny Someday by Katie Henry

Unscripted by Nicole Kronzer

Pretty Funny for a Girl by Rebecca Elliot

Bossypants by Tina Fey

We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy by Yael Kohen

The Girl in the Show: Three Generations of Comedy, Culture, and Feminism by Anna Fields

Trans Women

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock

Nemesis series by April Daniels

American Transgirl by Faith DaBrooke

Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace

A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett

Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom

Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt

George by Alex Gino

The Witch Boy series by Molly Ostertag

Uncomfortable Labels: My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman by Laura Kate Dale

She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan

An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color by Ellyn Peña

Wandering Son by Takako Shimura

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Feminist Poetry

Women Are Some Kind of Magic trilogy by Amanda Lovelace

Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty by Nikita Gill

Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill

Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters by Nikita Gill

The Girl and the Goddess by Nikita Gill

A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland by DaMaris B. Hill

Feminist Philosophy and Facts

The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner

The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy by Gerda Lerner

Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism by Bushra Rehman

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World by Kelly Jensen

The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard

White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind by Koa Beck

Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates

I Have the Right To by Chessy Prout & Jenn Abelson

Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World by Kumari Jayawardena

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea Ritchie

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins

But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, Barbara Smith Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe L. Moraga, Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDinn

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

Power Shift: The Longest Revolution by Sally Armstrong

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Had It Coming: What's Fair in the Age of #MeToo? by Robyn Doolittle

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement by Jody Kantor & Megan Twohey

#Notyourprincess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy

Girl Rising: Changing the World One Girl at a Time by Tanya Lee Stone

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power by Sady Doyle

Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement by Robin Morgan (Editor)

Girls Make Media by Mary Celeste Kearney

Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop, and Rap by Evelyn McDonnell (Editor)

You Play the Girl: And Other Vexing Stories That Tell Women Who They Are by Carina Chocano

Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl: A Memoir by Jeannie Vanasco

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor), Hollis Robbins (Editor)

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World by Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics by Dionne Brand

Other General Girl Power/Feminist Awesomeness

The Edge of Anything by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

Kat and Meg Conquer the World by Anna Priemaza

Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg

The Female of the Species by Mandy McGinnis

Pulp by Robin Talley

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

That Summer by Sarah Dessen

Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen

Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti

The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

American Girls by Alison Umminger

Don't Think Twice by Ruth Pennebaker

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women by Alice Walker

You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories by Alice Walker

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

Sula by Toni Morrison

Rose Sees Red by Cecil Castellucci

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Rules for Being a Girl by Candace Bushnell & Katie Cotugno

None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Everything Must Go by Jenny Fran Davis

The House on Olive Street by Robyn Carr

Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

Lady Luck's Map of Vegas by Barbara Samuel 

Fan the Fame by Anna Priemaza

Puddin' by Julie Murphy

A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti

Gravity Brings Me Down by Natale Ghent

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

The Summer of Impossibilities by Rachael Allen

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall by Katie Alender

Don't Tell a Soul by Kirsten Miller

After the Ink Dries by Cassie Gustafson Girl, Unframed by Deb Caletti

We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire by Joy McCullough 

Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee

Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters

Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone

The Prettiest by Brigit Young

Don't Judge Me by Lisa Schroeder

The Roommate by Rosie Danan

Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince

Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present by Lillian Faderman

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister

Paper Girls comic series by Brian K. Vaughan

Heavy Vinyl comic series by Carly Usdin

Please feel free to reblog with more!

[bestworstcase]

for months i’ve been dwelling on the, like, foundational differences between canon cassandra and bitter snow cassandra and meaning to write a. write-up of those differences and basically:

appearance

- canon cass is a bog standard slender but curvaceous woman with disney sameface and wavy hair and that is not how we roll in this household 

- one day i am going to do a proper design sheet for bitter snow cassandra but in the meantime this gets the gist across. cheekbones, strong jaw, squarish face, bigger more defined nose with a bump, thicker eyebrows, curls. plus, stocky and muscular. i imagine her being like 5′7″ she’s pretty short. 

- it is just emotionally important to me that all of you know bitter snow cassandra is not a skinny waif

- also she is trans

- disney heroine syndrome aside it’s clear that the intention is for canon cass to bear a strong resemblance to gothel, but - there being no biological relationship between bitter snow cass and gothel - i don’t imagine there being a significant similarity in her appearance and calanthe’s. obv they’re both strong-faced women with dark curly hair but that’s the extent of it. 

cutting here for length

parentage/family

- this is the obvious category lol 

- canon cassandra is gothel’s biological daughter, father unknown. she was an only child, and if she had other living biological relatives then we did not get to meet them.

- gothel abandoned her and she was thereafter raised by the captain of the guard, unaware of her heritage.

- bitter snow cassandra is the daughter of sholar and morana hároham, who were farmers of no particular renown in the remote saporian village of socona. she has/had two aunts—sholar’s older sister sirin hároham, and her partner maíne dathámar—who had two children, tathēdora (tath) and cornaīn, both older than cassandra.

- cassandra also has a number of living relatives in artois: her maternal grandparents perun and sibéal ghealach, their other children ronan and acanth, and their families. the ghealach side of the family is estranged from the hároham side and has been for two decades.

- several months after rapunzel’s birth, sholar and morana were implicated as ringleaders in the socona poisonings—an (alleged) terroristic attack on the royal court of corona involving tainted crops, which killed six and sickened dozens more, queen arianna included. they, and seven other farmers from the area, were arrested and swiftly hanged for treason.

- sir peter morgenstern, then a sergeant, was among the guards sent to arrest the hárohams and found cassandra in their home. he brought her back to herzingen with him, put her in an orphanage there, and then adopted her himself three years later once things settled down.

- except there was no treason or conspiracy. the socona “poisonings” were in actuality the result of a magical blight that burned through southern corona from artois to alcorsīa, killing hundreds and leaving its survivors disabled; the farmers of socona were a politically convenient scapegoat, nothing more. 

- maíne died in the first wave of blight-sickness. tath also became ill but survived for another fourteen years before succumbing to a secondary infection. cornaīn was killed almost four years after that by soldiers aboard a coronan prison barge. besides cassandra, sirin is the only surviving member of the hároham family. 

- cassandra is informed of the coronan version of the story when she is ten years old, and learns the truth from sirin shortly before her twenty-third birthday. 

trauma!

...which brings us to this section. 

canon cass

- suffered early childhood neglect and emotional abuse in gothel’s care. witnessed her mother’s abandonment at the age of four. this early trauma was exacerbated by the captain, and she suppressed the memories of her life with gothel. 

- her sense of self worth is tied to service and what she is able to do for other people; this was inculcated in her by gothel through parentification and neglect, and inadvertently reinforced by the captain’s militaristic and emotionally distant approach to parenting. he taught her to “earn her keep,” and seems to have used the credible threat of forced imprisonment in a convent to encourage good behavior. 

- that lack of self worth is further exacerbated by her station as a servant. cassandra’s closest—and perhaps only—friend is the princess she is duty-bound to serve, and this relationship becomes more and more toxic for her as time goes on and rapunzel repeatedly and consistently transgresses her boundaries. she has no viable support network and by the end of s2, she is completely alienated from her friend group and vulnerable to zhan tiri’s abuse. 

- learning about gothel is the final straw that pushes her over the edge, leading her to take the moonstone herself and lash out and rapunzel and corona in a blind rage with encouragement from zhan tiri. 

bitter snow cass

- sholar and morana were loving parents, and as a child cassandra was doted upon by her aunts, cousins [tath being 5 years older, and cornaīn 3], and the tight-knit socona community in general. around 4 she started to become insistent on being a girl, and was both allowed and encouraged to live as one. 

- the blight began approximately one and a half months before cassandra’s fifth birthday. maíne became sick and died very suddenly, and both tath and morana became severely ill almost as fast. the arrests began in tárosh, just weeks before cassandra would turn five. the trauma of all this and her abrupt removal from her home was all intensely traumatic for her, and compounded by her negligible grasp of the coronan language at the time. 

- in the orphanage in herzingen cassandra was mostly neglected and left to her own devices, but punished harshly for speaking saporian or asking for her parents. she began to suppress her memories of socona and her fluency in saporian was badly degraded. she continued to live as a girl but began to grasp that the particulars of her girlhood were not acceptable in herzingen and went to great lengths to avoid being identified as trans.

- shortly after her adoption, she met feldspar willipeg, who took her under his wing and helped her relearn and retain the saporian language as well as reintroducing her—lightly and delicately—to certain aspects of saporian culture. he remained an important anchor to her saporian heritage and friend/mentor throughout her life. 

- being a saporian child growing up in herzingen was traumatic in and of itself. much of her sense of self-worth is wrapped up in the idea of being coronan, and her various failures to measure up in this regard. she is riddled with self-disgust and self-hatred after years of active, subtle and not-so-subtle coercion to reject her saporian heritage. as a child and young adult she feels a tremendous pressure to demonstrate loyalty and service to the kingdom of corona in order to ‘prove’ that she is not like her parents. these internal feelings often manifests as compulsive acts of self-sacrifice or self-sabotage. 

- after she learns the truth of her parent’s innocence, her sense of identity and self-worth come unmoored altogether and she begins to oscillate wildly between defiant pride and vicious self-loathing. she is able to find community and solace with other saporians—moira caine and the crew of the zampermin—but her self-hatred and doubts continue to fester, and she struggles with feeling alienated from both her saporian heritage and her coronan upbringing.

key behavioral differences

- both canon cassandra and bitter snow cassandra are defined by their inability to articulate what they truly want. however, the sheer depth and breadth of the injustices bitter snow cassandra faces do mean that she is able to describe broad long-term goals or desires in a way that canon cassandra is not: she supports saporia’s side in the emergent civil war, and she wants redress for what was done to her family. where canon cassandra agonizes over shapelessly vague notions of “destiny” and “proving herself,” bitter snow cassandra wrestles with more concrete questions—how does she reconcile her friendship with rapunzel and her newfound separatist sympathies? what role will she play in corona’s civil war once the black rock problem is dealt with? who does she want to be? is [insert problem that is absolutely not her fault] secretly her fault?—and this gives her a certain sense of direction even when she is floundering and unable to come up with any answers. 

- bitter snow cassandra seeks to separate herself from rapunzel and embraces the support of other friends long before canon cassandra’s friendship with rapunzel even begins to truly sour. there are several reasons for this; the situation in herzingen becomes untenable for her after she learns the truth and her loyalties change, and the simple fact that she has somewhere else to go enables her to leave. but also, rapunzel’s difficulty accepting her shifted allegiance and saporian heritage in general accelerate the crumbling of their relationship. at the same time, however, because bitter snow cassandra has both left rapunzel’s service and found a solid support network of her own, she is actually much better equipped than canon cassandra to assert her boundaries with rapunzel and attempt to repair their friendship.  

[writingwithcolor]

Completely non-serious question, but is there anything we can do for you guys in these trying times? Moral support, funny asks? I guys do a lot, and I want to do something for y'all in return

You’re too kind! I will accept 

all updates about how everyone’s writing is going 

Book recommendations (diverse)

and/or your best tiger king memes!! 

Colette

Your Book Recommendations 

The Second Mango (Mangoverse Series) by Shira Glassman

A Blade so Black by L.L. McKinney 

Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan 

Sorcerer to the Crown (Sorcerer Royal Series) by Zen Cho

The City of Brass(The Daevabad Trilogy) by S.A. Chakraborty

Daughters Of Nri by Reni K. Amayo

Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus 

 A Bride's Story, Vol. 1 by Kaoru Mori (Manga)

Links go to goodreads. Don’t forget your local bookstores when shopping! Also, some libraries are open for pick-up or have ebook databases.

Commentary re: the books

adhdkirabraginsky

i was about to rec the mangoverse until i remembered that shira is, in fact, a mod on this very blog.

Colette: she is, and she’s awesome!

anicalewis

You might have already read it, but A BLADE SO BLACK is great! Smart and funny #ownvoices YA retelling of Alice in Wonderland with a Black heroine and a strong Buffy vibe.

theories-fans-andwombats

Book recommendation: Girls of Paper and Fire. I finished book one, soon to start book 2. It’s a phenomenal book with a POC main cast (the majority of the characters are coded to be Eastern Asian, with some Southern Asian influence as well) as well as LGBT characters and great fantasy elements. I will say, it deals with some darker subjects like sexual assault and classism, but it’s done well!

@basada-en-la-esperanza

Have you read Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho? It’s a book for those of us who wanted to read Jonathan Strange but couldn’t spend 500 pages caring about exclusively Cis White Men. And the companion/sequel, The True Queen, has a scene with the inner thoughts of a Muslim girl, while her well-meaning white Englishwoman host tries to serve her guest pork, that made me feel so seen! (I’m not Muslim, but I’m Jewish.) They’re both wonderful books, I highly recommend them! (Also The Golem and the Jinni is my favorite Jewish book I’ve read in forever.)

@hacash

for book recs, i CANNOT recommend the Daevabad trilogy (City of Brass, Kingdom of Copper, and a third book hopefully imminent) enough. It’s a fabulous fantasy series set in an alternative 18th century Middle East - as a white reader who’s read probably every iteration of the European mythology stories, it was so fun to find a really well-written, in-depth world centred around Middle Eastern and Islamic folklore!

@akcipitrokuloI would recommend Daughters Of Nri by Reni K. Amayo… but I read it after it was recommended here, so just a thank you for introducing me to awesome book which I also bought for my SIL.

@profoundlygaywriterI started Stars and the Blackness Between Them earlier in the school year but never finished it because I was so swamped. What I did get through was pretty good, so maybe give that one a look

@wisteriaprincess 

It is not a book, but a manga I would like to recommend, the name is Otoyomegatari (A Bride’s story) and is about the stories of different women from Central Asia. I know it is not a book, but it is the first time I saw positive representation of Muslim people (I’m not Muslim, though, so I can’t really say, but I read a post from a Muslim person and he was very happy and saw it through positive eyes).

[parentsnevertoldus]

Public Enemy No. 1

"On this day, 27 October 1970, the administration of president Richard Nixon passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, as part of their 'war on drugs.' A Nixon adviser, John Ehrlichman, later admitted 'The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.'”

Origins of Policing

Slave patrols were some of the south’s first forms of policing. They were civilians tasked with preventing slave revolts and returning runaway slaves using harsh physical punishments. By law, almost all white men had to serve in these patrols for up to one year of service. These groups were designed to enforce slave codes by giving the white population that didn’t “own” slaves policing power and the duty to police Black people. This was insurance that the landless white men who didn’t own slaves would serve rich plantation owners instead of going against them. During the Reconstruction period after the civil war, local sheriffs functioned exactly like the earlier slave patrols. They enforced the segregation and suppression of free Black folks in the name of maintaining “public order” (aka White Supremacy).

During the political wildfire that was the late 1800s, police captains and sergeants were hand-picked by local political party leaders who used their money and social influence to harass political opponents. Those party leaders who ran taverns instead of gangs would pay off officers to allow illegal gambling and sex work. During Prohibition when alcohol was made illegal, president hoover (a nazi) created a commission to investigate just how ineffective law enforcement was across the nation. That was when the movement to make policing a “respectable” profession began. This created a more unified sense of white power which used the stigma of criminality to justify discrimination.

A shift in the 1930s toward professionalism for the police profession included the development of record systems and experimentation with the science of criminal behavior. Police science combined crime statistics with sociological research about the natural tendency of Black people to commit criminal acts. Academic research came out that backed up the idea that Black people are a race of criminals. Black people became Public Enemy #1 in the north and the south.

Black southerners fled north as the Ku Klux Klan began using lynchings to attempt to control bold or ambitious Black folks. Lynchings were public rituals for the whole white community with boys participating as young as 10 years old. Local vendors sold tickets and food and drinks, white people proudly took pictures, white people traded postcards that featured the brutalized victims, white people shot at the bodies for sport. These postcard momentos were so popular that businesses advertised on the back, and sons sent them to their mothers with love. Even the Nazis published and distributed these photos. Whatever remained of the victims’ bodies were cut up and handed out as souvenirs. The police force acted (and continues to act) as an extension of white fear and anger.

Politics of "Respectability"

Policing has evolved from policy to practice. Under White Supremacy culture, we police each other, we police our communities, and we police ourselves. One of these forms of policing is “respectability,” the unspoken code used to judge the worthiness of a marginalized group based on how “respectable” they are according to White Supremacy standards.

In order to prove similarities between the dominant group and one’s own, more privileged folks often distance themselves from those deemed “less respectable.” This can look like slut-shaming between women, or the “Model Minority Myth” that positions Asian immigrants as exceptions from the effects of racism because of perceived “similarity of the values, norms, and practices” between them and white american culture [1].

Instead of challenging white supremacist ideals, we may fall into the Respectability trap and reinforce amongst ourselves the idea that we must earn the right to be treated fairly. We all know, as members of an oppressed group, that our individual personalities don’t matter as much as how we represent the group at large. Thus, we face pressure to be this model representative every day in order to be considered deserving of rights and safety.

The always-changing rules of respectability are used by the hegemonic culture to control and justify the harm towards oppressed groups. Because these standards are moving goalposts, they are intentionally unattainable. Then, the lack of respectability is used as an excuse to cause harm.

Kill the cop in your head!

You are worthy of respect and love regardless of if you're "Respectable" or not.

Source

1. https://www.studioatao.org/post/understanding-respectability-politics

[popculty]

52 Films by Women: 2020 Edition

Another annual challenge complete!

Last year, I focused on diversifying my list. This year I kept that intention but focused on watching more non-American films and films from the 20th century. Specifically, I sought out Agnès Varda’s entire filmography, after her death in 2019. (I was not disappointed - What a filmmaking legend we lost.) 

I also kept a film log for the first time and have included some of my thoughts on several films from that log. I made a point of including reviews both positive and negative, because I think it’s important to acknowledge the variability and breadth of the canon, so as not to put every film directed by a woman on a pedestal. (Although movies directed by women must clear a much higher bar to be greenlit, meaning generally higher quality...But that’s an essay for another day :)

* = directed by a woman of color

bold = fave

1. The Rhythm Section (2020) dir. Reed Morano - Not as good as it could have been, given Morano’s proven skill behind the camera, but also not nearly as bad as the critics made it out to be. And unbelievably refreshing to see a female revenge story not driven by sexual assault or the loss of a husband/child.

2. Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda - If you ever wanted to take a real-time tour of Paris circa 1960, this is the film for you.

3. Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig - Still my favorite Little Women adaptation. I will re-watch it every year and cry.

4. Varda by Agnès (2019) dir. Agnès Varda & Didier Rouget

5. Booksmart (2019) dir. Olivia Wilde - An instant classic high school comedy romp that subverts all the gross tropes of its 1980s predecessors.

6. Girls of the Sun (2018) dir. Eva Husson

7. Blue My Mind (2017) dir. Lisa Brühlmann

8. Portrait of a Lady On Fire (2019) dir. Céline Sciamma - Believe the hype. This film is a master thesis on the female gaze, and also just really effing gorgeous.

9. Belle Epine (2010) dir. Rebecca Zlotowski

10. Vamps (2012) dir. Amy Heckerling - With Krysten Ritter and Alicia Silverstone as modern-day vampires, I was so ready for this movie. But it feels like a bad stage play or a sit-com that’s missing a laugh-track. Bummer.

11. *Birds of Prey (2020) dir. Cathy Yan - Where has this movie been all our lives?? Skip the next onslaught of Snyder-verse grim-darkery and give me two more of these STAT! 

12. She’s Missing (2019) dir. Alexandra McGuinness

13. The Mustang (2019) dir. Laure de Clermont-Tonnere - Trigger warning for the “protagonist” repeatedly punching a horse in the chest. I noped right out of there.

14. Monster (2003) dir. Patty Jenkins – I first watched this movie when I was probably too young and haven’t revisited it since. The rape scene traumatized me as a kid, but as an adult I appreciate how that trauma is not the center of the movie, or even of Aileen’s life. Everyone still talks about how Charlize “went ugly” for this role, but the biggest transformation here isn’t aesthetic, it’s physical – the way Theron replicates Wuernos’ mannerisms, way of speaking, and physicality. That’s why she won the Oscar. I also love that Jenkins calls the film “Monster” (which everyone labels Aileen), but then actually uses it to tell the story of how she fell in love with a woman when she was at her lowest, and that saved her. That’s kind of beautiful, and I’m glad I re-watched it so that I could see the story in that light, instead of the general memory I had of it being a good, feel-bad movie. It’s so much more than that.

15. Water Lilies (2007) dir. Céline Sciamma – Sciamma’s screenwriting and directorial debut, the first in her trilogy on youth, is as painfully beautiful as its sequels (Tomboy and Girlhood). It’s also one of the rare films that explores the overlap of queerness and girl friendships.

16. The Trouble with Angels (1966) dir. Ida Lupino – Movies about shenanigan-based female friendships are such rare delights. Rosalind Russel is divine as Mother Superior, and Hayley Mills as “scathingly brilliant” as the pranks she plays on her. Ida Lupino’s skill as an editor only enhances her directing, providing some truly iconic visual gags to complement dialogue snappy enough for Gilmore Girls. 

17. Vagabond (1985) dir. Agnès Varda – Shot with a haunting realism, this film has no qualms about its heroine’s inevitable, unceremonious death, which it opens with, matter-of-factly, before retracing her final (literal) steps to the road-side ditch she ends up in. (I’m partly convinced said heroine was the inspiration for Sarah Manning in Orphan Black.)

18. One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (1977) dir. Agnès Varda – Probably my favorite classic Varda, this film feels incredibly personal. It’s essentially a love story about two best friends with very different lives. For an indie made in the ‘70s, the diversity, scope, and themes of the film are impressive. Even if the second half a drags a bit, the first half is absolute perfection, engaging the viewer immediately, and clipping along, sprinkling in some great original songs that were way progressive for their time (about abortion, female bodily autonomy, etc) and could still be considered “bangers” today.

19. Emma (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde

20. Black Panthers (1969) dir. Agnès Varda

21. Into the Forest (2016) dir. Patricia Rozema - When the world was ending (i.e. the pandemic hit) this was the first movie I turned to - a quiet, meditative story of two sisters (Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood) surviving off the land after a sudden global blackout. Four years later, it’s still one of my favorite book-to-screen adaptations. I fondly remember speaking with director Patricia Rozema at the 2016 Chicago Critics Film Festival after a screening, her love for the source material and desire to “get it right” so apparent. I assured her then, and reaffirm now, that she really did.

22. City of Trees (2019) dir. Alexandra Swarens

23. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) dir. Eliza Hittmann - To call this a harrowing and deeply personal journey of a sixteen-year-old who must cross state lines to get an abortion would be accurate, but incomplete. It is a story so much bigger than that, about the myriad ways women’s bodies and boundaries are constantly violated.

24. Paradise Hills (2019) dir. Alice Waddington

25. *Eve’s Bayou (1996) dir. Kasi Lemmons – I’ve been meaning to watch Kasi Lemmons’ directorial debut for many years now, and I’m so glad I finally have, because it fully deserves its icon status, beyond being one of the first major films directed by a black woman. Baby Jurnee Smollett's talent was immediately recognizable, and she has reminded us of it in Birds of Prey and Lovecraft Country this year. If merit was genuinely a factor for Oscar contenders, she would have taken home gold at eleven years old. Beasts of the Southern Wild has been one of my all-time favorites, but now I realize that most of my appreciation for that movie actually goes to Lemmons for blazing the trail with her story of a young black girl from the bayou first. It’s also a surprisingly dark story about memory and abuse and familial relationships that cross lines - really gutsy and surprising themes, especially for the ‘90s.

26. Blow the Man Down (2019) dir. Bridget Savage Cole & Danielle Krudy - Come and get your sea shanty fix!

27. Touchy Feely (2013) dir. Lynn Shelton - R.I.P. :(

28. Hannah Gadsby: Douglas (2020) dir. Madeleine Parry - If you thought Gadsby couldn’t follow up 2018′s sensational Nanette with a comedy special just as sharp and hilarious, you would have been sorely mistaken.

29. Girlhood (2013) dir. Céline Sciamma

30. Breathe (2014) dir. Mélanie Laurent

31. *A Dry White Season (1989) dir. Euzhan Palcy

32. Laggies (2014) dir. Lynn Shelton

33. *The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood – Everything I’ve ever wanted in an action movie: Immortal gays, Charlize Theron wielding a labrys (battle axe), kinetic fight choreography I haven’t seen since the last Bond movie…Watched it twice, then devoured the comics it was adapted from, and I gotta say: in the hands of black women, it eclipses the source material. Cannot wait for the just-announced sequel.

34. Morvern Callar (2002) dir. Lynn Ramsay

35. Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

36. *Radioactive (2019) dir. Marjane Satrapi – The story is obviously well worth telling and the narrative structure – weaving in the future consequences of Curie’s discoveries – is clever, but a bit awkwardly executed and overly manipulative. There are glimpses of real brilliance throughout, but it feels as if the director’s vision was not fully realized, to my great disappointment. Nonetheless, I appreciated seeing Marie Curie's story being told by a female director and embodied by the always wonderful Rosamund Pike.

37. *The Half of It (2020) dir. Alice Wu - I feel like a real scrooge for saying this, but this movie did nothing for me. Nothing about it felt fresh, authentic or relatable. A real disappointment from the filmmaker behind the wlw classic Saving Face.

38. Mouthpiece (2018) dir. Patricia Rozema - I am absolutely floored. One of those films that makes you fall in love with the art form all over again. Patricia Rozema continues to prove herself one of the most creatively ambitious and insightful directors of our time, with this melancholic meditation on maternal grief and a woman’s duality.

39. Summerland (2020) dir. Jessica Swale - The rare period wlw love story that is not a) all-white or b) tragedy porn. Just lovely.

40. *The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) dir. Dee Rees – As rumored, a mess. Even by the end, I still couldn’t tell you who any of the characters are. Dee, we know you’re so much better than this! (see: Mudbound, Pariah)

41. *Cuties (2020) dir. Maïmouna Doucouré – I watched this film to 1) support a black woman director who has been getting death threats for her work and 2) see what all the fuss is about. While I do think there were possibly some directorial choices that could have saved quite a bit of the pearl-clutching, overall, I didn’t find it overly-exploitative or gross, as many (who obviously haven’t actually watched the film) have labeled it. It certainly does give me pause, though, and makes me wonder whether children can ever be put in front of a camera without it exploiting or causing harm to them in some way. It also makes one consider the blurry line between being a critique versus being an example. File this one under complicated, for sure.

42. A Call to Spy (2019) Lydia Dean Pilcher – An incredible true story of female spies during WWII that perfectly satisfied my itch for British period drama/spy thriller and taught me so much herstory I didn’t know.

43. Kajillionaire (2020) dir. Miranda July - I was lucky enough to attend the (virtual) premiere of this film, followed by an insightful cast/director Q&A, which only made me appreciate it more. July's offbeat dark comedy about a family of con artists is queerer and more heartfelt than it has any right to be, and a needed reprieve in a year of almost entirely white wlw stories. The family's shenanigans are the hook, but it's the budding relationship between Old Dolio (an almost unrecognizable Evan Rachel Wood) and aspiring grifter Melanie (the luminous Gina Rodriguez) that is the heart of the story.

44. Misbehaviour (2020) dir. Philippa Lowthorpe – Again, teaching me herstory I didn’t know, about how the Women’s Liberation Movement stormed the 1970 Miss World Pageant. Keira Knightley and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s characters have a conversation in a bathroom at the end of the film that perfectly eviscerates well-meaning yet ignorant white feminism, without ever pitting women against each other - a feat I didn’t think was possible. I also didn’t think it was possible to critique the male gaze without showing it (*ahem Cuties, Bombshell, etc*), but this again, invents a way to do it. Bless women directors.

45. *All In: The Fight for Democracy (2020) dir. Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes – 2020’s 13th. Thank god for Stacey Abrams, that is all.

46. *The 40-Year-Old Version (2020) dir. Radha Blank – This scene right here? I felt that in my soul. This whole film is so good and funny and heartfelt and relatable to any artist trying to walk that tightrope of “making it” while not selling their soul to make it. My only initial semi-note was that it’s a little long, but after hearing Radha Blank talk about how she fought for the two-hour run-time as a way of reclaiming space for older black women, I take it back. She’s right: Let black women take up space. Let her movie be as long as she wants it to be. GOOD FOR HER.

47. Happiest Season (2020) dir. Clea Duvall - Hoooo boy. What was marketed as the first lesbian Christmas rom-com is actually a horror movie for anyone who’s ever had to come out. Throw in casual racism and a toxic relationship treated as otp, and it’s YIKES on so many levels. Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy, and an autistic-coded Jane are the only (underused) highlights.

48. *Monkey Beach (2020) dir. Loretta Todd

49. *Little Chief (2020) dir. Erica Tremblay – A short film part of the 2020 Red Nation Film Festival, it’s a perfect eleven minutes that I wish had gone on longer, if only to bask in Lily Gladstone in a leading role.

50. First Cow (2019) dir. Kelly Reichardt – I know Kelly Reichardt’s style, so I’ll admit-- even as I was preparing for an excellent film, I was also reaching for my phone, planning on only half paying attention during all the inevitable 30-second shots of grass blowing in the wind. (And yes, there are plenty of those.) But twenty minutes in, my phone was set aside and forgotten, as I am getting sucked into this beautiful story about two frontiersman trying to live their best domestic life.There is only one word to describe this film and that is: PURE. I’ve never seen such a tender platonic relationship between men on screen before, and it’s not lost on me that it took a woman to show us that tenderness. Reichardt gives us two men brought together by fate, and kept together by a shared dream and the simple pleasure of not being alone in such a hard world; two men who spend their days cooking, trapping, baking, and dreaming of a better life; two men who don’t say much, but feel everything for each other. The world would be a much better place if men showed us this kind of vulnerability and friendship toward each other. Oh, and it’s also a brutal take-down of capitalism and the myth of the American Dream!

51. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) dir. Patty Jenkins - My most-anticipated film for the past two years was...well, a mixed bag, to say the least. Too many thoughts on it for a blog post, so stay tuned for the upcoming podcast ep where we go all in ;)

52. *Selah and the Spades (2019) dir. Tayarisha Poe

I hope this gives you some ideas to kick off your new year with a resolution to support more female directors!

What were your favorite women-directed movies of last year? Let me know in the tags, comments, or asks!

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 11: The Rush]

Chapter summary: Queen and Y/N attend a party and experiment with hallucinogens.

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language, drugs, partying, injuries, sexual references, angst, some baby stuff.

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii​ @loveandbeloved29​ @killer-queen-xo​ @maggieroseevans​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @queenlover05​ @someforeigntragedy​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​ @joemazzmatazz​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye​ @namelesslosers​ @inthegardensofourminds​ @deacyblues​ @youngpastafanmug​ @sleepretreat​ @hardyshoe​ @bramblesforbreakfast​ @sevenseasofcats​ @tensecondvacation​ @queen-crue​ @jennyggggrrr​ @madeinheavxn​ @whatgoeson-itslate​ @brianssixpence​ @simonedk​ @herewegoagainniall​ @stardust-killer-queen​

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! :)

“You’re trying to make us late, aren’t you?”

Roger looms in the doorway of the hotel bathroom, arms crossed, a baiting ghost of a smile on his lips. His eyes—blue like a summer sky, like blooming delphiniums, like veins beneath skin—trace you from your black heels to your dangling diamond earrings, feasting, craving.

You smile back at him as you rearrange your hair for the fourth time. “The later we are, the drunker everyone else will be and the less agonizing small talk I’ll be forced to make with random music industry people.”

“I can assure you, they’re already drunk.”

“I don’t want to get there before the boys.” Freddie and Brian had left the hotel earlier to pregame in the bars of the French Quarter, and John is...actually, you don’t know where John is at the moment, which is unusual.

Roger chuckles, lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag as he gazes at you. “Come on, baby. You’re not getting any more stunning. It’s not possible. And you don’t want Deaks to be the first one to get there, do you? Can you imagine? He’ll end up telling his life story to the golden retriever or locking himself in a closet or something. We can’t abandon him.”

“No, of course not.” You give your reflection one final appraising glance. It’s not bad: sleek black dress, black Prada bag with a thin diamond-studded shoulder strap, smokey eyes, spritzes of Chanel No. 5. It’s pretty freaking great, actually.

Roger nods to your purse. “You got your kit, Nurse Nightingale?”

“Naturally. You think I trust eccentric and impaired musicians not to do gymnastics down a staircase or punch out misbehaving fellow guests? Oh no. Not a chance. I come well prepared.”

“Good.” Reflexively, unconsciously, he shakes his right arm a few times, stretches the hand, winces. It hurts him all the time, and you know that even if he’ll never say it. He drinks more or less constantly when Queen is on tour, and pops pills on top of that. You can’t ask him to stop; he can’t play without the booze and pills, and he can’t live without the band. He wouldn’t even want to try.

“Roger, is it—”

“I’m fine.” His eyes are on you again, everywhere, soaking up every curve and crevice like rain seeping through parched earth. Dusty ashes trickle from his cigarette onto the white tile floor.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he says, meditative in a way that is quiet and still and very unlike Roger. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “How much I love you.”

~~~~~~~~~~

New Orleans is cool and humid and the streetlights shine beneath the constellations of the night sky: Auriga, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor, Orion, Perseus. The salt-tinged dampness in the air sticks to your bare forearms, your ankles, your collarbones, your cheeks; the chaotic ocean wind rolls in off the Gulf of Mexico. It’s February 14th of 1977, Valentine’s Day, a day you’ve always thought of as a sort of anniversary for you and Roger; not the day you told him yes, but the day you surrendered to the eventuality, the day you agreed to fall in love with the world he promised you.

Is surrender the right word? you wonder, because part of you doesn’t like it, part of you flinches like you’ve been hit. Yes, it is. Whether I like it or not.

You’ve never spoken of anniversaries to Roger. He’s never asked.

The mansion, a Southern-style manor with columns and fountains in the front yard, is raucous with music and trimmed with twinkling white lights; there are dozens of people—men in suits, women in gowns, strippers, drag queens, mistresses, wives, acrobats, magicians, drug dealers—mingling on the wrap-around porch, sipping drinks, shouting at each other over the music, snatching appetizers off platters that waiters balance on their shoulders as they weave from one end of the house to the other. You and Roger swim through the crowd towards Brian’s mass of dark curls and Freddie’s brash laughter that carries through the night air like smoke signals.

Some man in a lavender suit—a producer or manager or record company executive—is talking to Freddie and Brian with a cigar smoldering between his fingers. “...And it’s extraordinary, really, this new album, everyone’s talking about what a success the tour has been so far. What’s it called again?”

“A Day At The Races,” Brian offers matter-of-factly, as if he’s in a business meeting.

“Ah, that’s it!”

“What’s so interesting,” Bri continues, “is that this time around the audience has started really getting into it, singing along to almost every song, sometimes we can’t even hear ourselves! And at first we were a bit annoyed by it—”

Freddie adds: “We were thinking, ‘shut up, bitches, you paid to hear us sing!’”

“—But then we realized that we should be appreciating that enthusiasm, that maybe we could even figure out a way to harness that energy and write songs with the audience’s participation in mind.”

“Fascinating!” Lavender Suit Guy replies.

“Good evening, everyone!” Roger announces as he sails into the middle of the conversation. “Hey man, how are you? Enjoying yourself? Have you met Y/N? Yes, she’s a Yankee just like you, from Boston originally, and she can cure hangovers like nobody’s business so she’s incredibly handy to have around. Have you heard the new Eagles record yet? Jesus christ, it’s bloody brilliant...”

As they chatter, you scan the pulsing throng of strangers for John. After a moment—as Freddie is recounting the band’s escapades in Miami last week—he appears wearing a black leather jacket and hair that barely covers his ears.

“Deaky!” Fred gasps.

“John!” you squeal in delight, and he grins enormously as he wraps you in a hug. He smells like cigarettes and Manhattans and that verdant, ancient mystery of the American South.

“Hi,” he says sheepishly.

“Your hair...?!” You reach up to run your hands through it, to flip his bangs one way and then the other, to tug gently on the ends. “I’m in shock. Good shock, but definitely shock.”

“Yeah, some American girl told me once that I had good bone structure and should chop my hair off someday so people could appreciate it.”

“Hmm, who could that be?” Roger teases, turning to you.

“I believe I described the aforementioned bone structure as fantastic, not good, but close enough.” You can’t stop staring at John. You blink a few times, waiting for it to sink in. Instead, something feels unnerving in a way you can’t pin down: new, different, anomalous, inviting.

“You’ve all gone shorter, haven’t you?” Lavender Suit Guy remarks. “Well...except Brian, of course.”

“He had much shorter hair once, if you can believe it,” Freddie says. “Back in the very early days. Before John joined us. Bri would straighten it too, it was horrid, the poor man looked like a Lhasa Apso.”

“You have a new baby at home, don’t you?” Lavender Suit Guy asks John.

“I do, yes, my second. A wonderful little girl named Anna.”

“Congratulations! And Brian, you’ve got one on the way as well?”

Brian smiles proudly. “Two, actually.” Chrissie has curbed her comments concerning Veronica’s dreadfully banal, domestic, decidedly unposh existence now that Chris is bedridden with morning sickness and carrying twins. ‘I feel like the fucking Hindenburg,’ she’d told you over the phone. ‘If the Hindenburg had sore tits and smelled like vomit.’

“We’re drowning in babies,” Roger quips in a tone you can’t quite read. Annoyance? Curiosity? Disapproval? Envy?

“Well, since the wives are away and you’re free to play...” Lavender Suit Guy flags down a waiter holding a small tray of sugar cubes. “Ever dropped acid? There’s blow floating around somewhere too, if that’s more your scene.”

Brian smirks uneasily and stirs his Vesper. You look to John. John looks to Roger.

Freddie laughs and lifts a sugar cube daintily off the tray with his thumb and index finger. “Marvelous, darling! Will it make me hallucinate all my wildest dreams? Will an imaginary cheerleading squad of Farrah Fawcetts suck my cock all night?”

Lavender Suit Guy chuckles. “I make no guarantees.”

“Nothing in life ever does. Isn’t that tragic?” Freddie pops the sugar cube into his mouth and grins. “Beam me up, Scotty.”

Roger asks you: “You want to? It could be an adventure.”

LSD wasn’t exactly the adventure you’d had in mind when you agreed to follow Queen across the globe all those years ago in Boston; still, an adventure is an adventure. And if I don’t keep things interesting, he’ll find someone who will.

Oh, that’s not a thought you knew you had.

And I would like to return it to that repressed, dimly-lit, cobwebbed corner of my subconscious where I’d buried it, thank you very much.

“Is it safe?” John asks Lavender Suit Guy.

“Do you think I’d give you something that wasn’t safe? It’s perfectly safe. It can’t kill you. It’s not heroin. Worst case scenario you get a bad trip. And I’ve never gotten a bad trip from this stuff.”

You conjure up a smile for Roger. “Let’s do it.”

“Excellent,” he says, his face lighting up; and you realize that that’s what he’d wanted. He picks up a sugar cube, lays it on his tongue, and then slips it between your lips as he kisses you. Freddie whistles and claps. The cube dissolves with a pleasant, innocent, nostalgic sweetness. Then Roger turns to John. “You in, Deaks?”

John hesitates, then nods. “Alright.”

Roger passes John a sugar cube (with his hand this time), picks up one for himself, and toasts them like champagne glasses. “Cheers!” The sugar cubes disappear behind their teeth.

Freddie stares at Brian. Brian gnaws his lip and stares back. Freddie wiggles his eyebrows impishly. Finally, Bri sighs, exasperated. “Fine, okay, what the hell, I’ll do it.”

“I’m so proud!” Freddie cries, pressing his palm to his heart. “I am a proud mama.” Brian grimaces as Fred stuffs a sugar cube into his mouth.

“How long does it take to work?” you ask Lavender Suit Guy, feeling no different at all.

“It varies. Not too long, usually.” He whirls, spies someone else he recognizes, waves, and rushes off to greet whoever it is and presumably offer them illegal drugs.

After fifteen disappointingly uneventful minutes of trailing behind the band as they chat with various rich and famous party guests you don’t recognize, you depart to find a restroom.

“Don’t be gone long,” Rog calls after you. John watches with a Manhattan in his right hand. “I don’t want you to be alone if things get...you know...weird.”

“Sure thing.”

You find a small restroom just off the downstairs hallway of the mansion. The clock above the doorframe reads 9:47 p.m. You duck inside, muttering about your first acid experience being a total dud, about defective LSD and Valentine’s Days spent with strangers. As you scrub your hands with rose-scented soap, you glance up to check your makeup in the mirror. Your face isn’t there. Instead, Dominique Beyrand stares back at you.

You gasp, and Dom does too, in that delicate and prodigiously feminine way that she has. You peer penetratingly into the mirror as you gingerly tap your fingertips against your face, which is Dominique’s face now: her olive skin, her high pump cheeks, her large dark eyes like a doe’s, her pink lips. You experiment with a smile, and then a frown; you even emote the same way she does, with a charming candidness, with a rare sort of grace.

Why am I thinking about Dominique?

You’d seen her a few times since Queen’s Hyde Park concert, following Richard Branson around at industry parties and dodging mindless gossip and tedious networking, the same as you. She always greeted Freddie warmly and mostly ignored Roger. He always asked her a few questions anyway, questions you thought he already knew the answers to.

I guess the acid wasn’t a dud after all.

You titter uncertainly. You knot your fingers through your hair—Dominique’s hair—which is thick and glossy and onyx. Her eyes gaze unflinchingly back at you. They blink when you blink.

I have to find Roger, you think suddenly. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know who he’s with.

You spin, wrench open the restroom door, and stagger out into the hallway, your hands pressed against the floral wallpaper to steady yourself. The yellowed, antebellum walls breathe as you do, subtly, sighing as they exhale cool air into the soft clammy skin of your palms. The boards of the hardwood floor clang like piano keys when you step on them. You check the clock hanging above the bathroom door. It reads: 11:09 p.m.

“Uh oh.”

I have to find Roger.

You creep through the hallway as other guests pass you—some zooming by, others moving in slow motion as if they’re treading water, none apparently noticing the breathing walls or musical floor—peeking into each room to see if Roger is there. He’s not in the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, the parlor. Instead there are strangers in all of these places, laughing in each other’s arms, drinking, dancing, touching each other beneath suits and skirts and dresses, smoking cigarettes and blunts, rolling up hundred-dollar bills to snort white powder off silver trays like mirrors.

I have to find Roger. I have to find Roger. I have to find Roger.

In the backyard of the mansion is a cobblestone patio, a garden, a swimming pool which must be freezing but nevertheless has several naked guests thrashing around splashing each other in it, and a bubbling hot tub. You recognize one of the two people in the cloud of mist with their arms resting above the roiling water on the concrete rim. They’re giggling and pointing up at the stars, telling the stories of the constellations, their faces flushed and glistening with steam.

“Hi, Brian!” you cry, relieved.

He turns, sees you, summons a smile; but it’s not a true smile. It’s cagey, it’s dissatisfied, it’s nervous somehow. “Ah, there you are, love.” The girl sitting next to him in the sweltering water is very much his type and entirely unlike Chrissie: tall, slim, blonde, curly-haired. She has a tattoo of a lush, pristine peach on one tanned shoulder blade.

“Have you seen Roger?”

Brian’s brow furrows. “He didn’t find you?”

“Evidently, he did not.”

“Huh. Well, I’m sure he’s around.” Brian waits for you to leave. The blonde girl shoots you a polite but anxious smile. Peaches, you think hazily. Peaches from New Orleans. Just like the girl he told me about when I first arrived in London. Just like the girl in Now I’m Here.

“Bri, come inside with me.”

“I’m fine here,” he replies curtly.

“Bri, please. It’s late. It’s cold. We’re so far from home. There could be sharks.”

Peaches gawps at me, confounded. “Don’t be ridiculous,” Brian snorts. “Sharks can only live in cool water. Everybody knows that. We’re perfectly safe. Stay out of the pool though.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.”

“Good luck locating Roger.” That’s your cue to go.

“Come with me. I’m freaked out. The floor sounds like Somebody To Love.”

“That’s nothing. The bubbles in here play Beatles songs when they pop.”

“Brian...”

“Y/N,” he says harshly, darkly. “Go find Roger.” What he means is: Y/N, get lost.

What about your wife? you almost shriek at him. What about your children? What about those vows that you made three days before Christmas in 1975, the specter of global fame beckoning from the doorway of the Anglican church that Chrissie grew up attending, Roger’s arm tight around my waist and sprigs of holly in my hair?

But Brian already knows about all that, and he doesn’t care.

I have to find Roger.

You leave Brian and Peaches and slip back into the mansion. You search each room as the floorboards shift and chime beneath your feet; now they’re playing the intro to Seven Seas Of Rhye. You realize that you’ve lost your heels somewhere along the way. You aren’t terribly concerned; you have more pressing matters to attend to.

Behind the fourth door you open is a library with books and menacing portraits lining the walls. Everything inside is blue and wibbly and palpably sad. Freddie is slumped on the floor next to a grand piano, his hair in his face, each hand clutching a full champagne flute.

“Darling,” he slurs, thrusting a glass towards you. Fizzy champagne lurches over the edge and trickles down the side of the glass. “Come join me!”

“Is it the LSD or is the room actually that color? I feel like I’m trapped in Picasso’s Blue Period.”

“Do you? It’s all black and white to me. But blue fits. Welcome to my melancholy room.”

“Your melancholy blues,” you pitch with a grin.

Freddie chuckles. “Drink this champagne before I’m forced to pour it down your throat.”

You take the flute and sit on the floor beside him. “Have you seen Roger?”

“I have not.”

“Oh.”

“Darling,” Freddie asks drowsily. “Do you think one goes to hell for being gay?”

“I don’t think you’d go to hell for anything, Fred. You’re too good a person.”

“Ahhhh,” he sighs, dreamily, peacefully. “You are a delight, my dear. Truly. I adore having you around. I do hope you stay with us, even when Roger makes you want to kill yourself.”

“How would he do that, Fred?” you ask softly.

Freddie doesn’t answer. Instead, he lifts your hair away from your face, tucks it behind your ear, smiles patiently at you. “I tried to warn you, you know. We all did. I know you thought we were all being insufferable pricks. But we did it out of love.”

“John never tried to warn me.”

Freddie smirks. “Well. He’s got his own demons, doesn’t he?”

You aren’t sure what Freddie means. You down the champagne and climb unsteadily to your feet. “I have to go find Roger now.”

“Of course you do.” Freddie’s umber eyes flick to the ceiling. “Good god, there are birds up there. That is not sanitary. Leave the door open when you go so they can fly away, would you dear?”

“Okay. I’ll love you no matter who you are, Freddie. We all will. You don’t need to worry about that.”

“Thank you, darling.”

“Will you come with me? Will you help me? I’m worried about Roger.”

“You should be more worried about you.” Freddie waves goodbye. “I have to stay. I’m writing songs.”

“You don’t have a paper and pen, Fred. Do you need them?”

He grins and pokes his temple with a black fingernail. “It’s all up here.”

“Okay. See you around.”

“Au revoir,” Freddie replies, and closes his eyes as he leans back against a breathing wall.

You step out into the hallway and journey towards the main staircase. Someone has put on the new Eagles record; Hotel California rocks deafeningly through the mansion. The air quivers with slow, ghostly notes strummed on an acoustic guitar. The floorboards have abandoned their piano keys and now jolt with each drumbeat. The house has taken on a shadowy, violet hue.

“There she stood in the doorway

I heard the mission bell

And I was thinking to myself

This could be heaven or this could be hell...”

You clutch the banister as you ascend, studying each guest that passes you for a familiar face. There are none. They’re all blushing and glassy-eyed and cackling as they paw at each other, ignoring you, not seeing you at all. Emerald snakes dart between their rushing feet, forked tongues tasting the lust and impending amnesia in the air. What happens in the darkness tonight will be forgotten tomorrow. It has to be. All the world’s rules and obligations depend upon it.

“Her mind is Tiffany-twisted

She got the Mercedes Benz

She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys

That she calls friends

How they dance in the courtyard

Sweet summer sweat

Some dance to remember

Some dance to forget...”

You catch your reflection in the night-draped window halfway up the staircase. You’re you again, not Dominique. Part of you is comforted by that; part of you feels more alone than ever. You stare at yourself, beautiful, extravagant, dusted with jewels and luck. You have everything. You have nothing. You continue up the staircase.

“Mirrors on the ceiling

The pink champagne on ice

And she said, ‘We are all just prisoners here of our own device’

And in the master's chambers

They gathered for the feast

They stab it with their steely knives

But they just can't kill the beast...”

A woman in a shimmering scarlet dress is sitting on the top step and taking a drag off a cigarette excruciatingly slowly. She exhales, the smoke curling out of her red lips like tentacles, her pale eyes tracking you.

“Last thing I remember

I was running for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

‘Relax,’ said the night man

‘We are programmed to receive

You can check out any time you like

But you can never leave.’”

You summit the staircase and peer down the hallway to your right. At the end of it is a vast, broken picture window. Cold night wind pours in through the jagged hole in the glass; you can see stars outside. A man is lying on the floor next to the window. You know him.

“John!” you shout, and sprint to his side.

“Hi.” He’s cradling his right arm to his chest. His knuckles are shredded and drenched in crimson blood. Incandescent shards of glass protrude from his hand and glint under the lights. There’s a heavy, coppery, sick-sweet scent in the air.

“John, honey, why would you attack an innocent window...?”

“It wasn’t so innocent. You should have heard what the bastard said to me.”

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up—”

“Stop,” he hisses when you try to touch him.

“John—”

“No!” he screams, pushing your hands away. “Stop it, just leave me, just fucking leave me!”

You step back, cross your arms over your chest, raise your eyebrows impatiently. “You want to tell me who you’re really so mad at?”

He frowns down at the rug, which is streaked with his blood. “Me, I guess.”

“Well you can be mad at yourself at the hospital.”

“No, no hospital,” he insists.

“Your hand is positively mangled. Your playing hand. You need to get it cleaned out.”

“You can fix it. No one else.”

“Since I’m tripping on acid, I probably shouldn’t be the one to fish glass shards out of your skin.”

“You can fix it,” he repeats, confidently now.

“Fine. Have it your way.” You help John to his feet, lead him downstairs, and sit him down at the kitchen table. You open your purse, unpack your supplies and position them in a neat row, shake out your hands to get them limber, give John a glass of water. “Are you going to have to write whoever owns this place a check for the window?”

“No one knows I’m the one who did it. No one even knows who I am.”

“I know who you are, John. Here comes the lidocaine.” You land a series of injections into the flesh surrounding his wrist, his knuckles, the back of his hand. You pause each time you get distracted by the murmurings of the table, which apparently speaks German. Okay table, this is important, kindly shut the hell up. Danke.

“Ow,” John says lethargically.

“And so what if these people don’t know who you are? Who the fuck needs them? You don’t need anyone who doesn’t know you’re the backbone of this band. Who made the Deaky Amp? Who wrote You’re My Best Friend? Who stays focused and calmly waits for the others to stop bludgeoning each other on a nearly daily basis? John fucking Deacon, that’s who.”

“Yeah. Alright,” John agrees, smiling. “Who needs them.”

“You’re gonna get your moment in the sun, don’t you worry.” You pick up your tweezers and begin plucking slivers of glass out of John’s bloody hand, plinking each into a white ceramic bowl. “Everyone is going to know you one day. You’re gonna spread your wings and write a ton of hits and unforgettable basslines and show the world what a genius you are.”

“Sounds thrilling. I’ll see what I can do.” He gazes down at his hand. “It doesn’t hurt at all now, that’s incredible.”

“That’s the magic of modern medicine.” You drop another shard of glass into the bowl. “How’s your first-ever LSD experience going so far?”

“Aside from the window business, quite well. Better now that you showed up.”

“Sorry. I spent an hour being confused by my own reflection and then tried to find Roger. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

“I have not.”

After a while you set your tweezers down on the table and inspect John’s hand closely. “Does this look glass-free to you? My eyes aren’t super trustworthy at the moment. I just saw a fish swim by outside.”

“It looks perfect, in my layperson’s opinion.”

“Okay. Let’s wash and sanitize, then we’ll wrap...”

John follows you placidly to the sink, lets you scrub and towel off his hand, returns to the table so you can bandage it with gauze. It’s quieter in the house now, the guests slowly dispersing, the music turned down and something mellow by the Stones; Gimme Shelter, you think.

“What made you so angry?” you ask him. “You know. Angry enough to assault a window.”

For a long time, John doesn’t answer. He looks up at the ceiling, his gentle greyish eyes chasing something you can’t see; birds, maybe, like Freddie. Maybe he’s looking for the sun. Maybe he’s looking for himself. Finally, he says, very quietly: “I’m just so fucking tired of lying all the time.”

“You never have to lie to me, John.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I do.”

Then you hear a laugh, an untamed one, a familiar one. You turn to John. “Was that just me or...?”

“I heard it too.”

You both leap from the table and hurry after the sound. You burst outside onto the cobblestone patio. Roger is doing backstroke laps in the pool, howling up at the moon. There’s no sign of Brian or Peaches.

“Roger!” you yell.

“Hey, baby! I’m winning! I’m in the Olympics! I made the team! Do you see me winning?”

“You’re totally winning. Please come out before you get pneumonia or attacked by a shark.”

“Shark...?” John inquires.

“I’ve discovered something amazing,” Roger declares, still swimming. He flails his right arm in the air for you to see; the serrated mark that mars the underside appears to be slithering, a snake made of scar tissue and interrupted plans. “When you’re on drugs, nothing hurts!”

“Baby, please come out now.”

Roger obliges, hauling himself up the ladder and out of the pool. He’s still in his black suit; it’s ruined and clings to him and is dripping buckets of chlorine-smelling water. John yanks a towel off a chair and tosses it to Roger, who drapes it over his shoulders like a cape.

“Jesus christ, where have you been?!” you demand. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

Roger grins toothily. “A sheer one?”

Despite yourself, you smile back. “Oh yeah. A sheer heart attack. Real cardiac.”

“I had the best idea. Baby, you gotta hear my great idea. It’s so great.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”

He lunges to wrap you in a cold, sopping hug. “Everyone’s having babies, right?”

“Uh, well, not everyone...”

“We should have a baby.”

John’s eyes go wide. You swallow noisily. “Roger, love, I don’t think right now is the ideal time to make a decision like that.”

“Why...? Oh. Right.”

“Yeah.”

“If I still feel this way in forty-eight hours, can we have a baby?”

“Roger, I...” You glance to John for help. He raises his hands in surrender, one bare, one clumsily bandaged. You’re on your own, kid, that look says. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. That’s a lot of responsibility. I’d have to stay home with them. I wouldn’t be the tour nurse anymore.” I would never know where you were, who you were with.

“I’ll fly you out to visit all the time. I’ll have to. I can’t do this without you.” His eyes—blue like frigid pool water, like bruises, like dreams—are euphoric, effervescent.

I can’t say no to him, you realize, and it sends a biting shudder up the rungs of your spine. I didn’t just fall in love. I took a fucking nosedive.  

Oh, this SO did not go according to plan.

You remember when you first met Queen, how independent and fearless and guarded you had been, how forcefully you had resolved not to put your happiness in a pair of wild, reckless hands like Roger’s.

What happened to that girl? How do I get her back?

And there’s something else, too: a thought you barely recognize as your own. A child would make us permanent.

John is watching you, edgy, apprehensive; but he doesn’t say anything.

“Okay,” you tell Roger. “We can try. If you still feel this way in forty-eight hours.”

“And I will.” Roger’s teeth skate up your neck and he whispers, his breath hot against the goosebumps rising on your skin: “Let me know when you’re late.”