#and now we've seen how her mum is and that adds even more layers to it

[girlitfeelsgood]

"I feel safe with you"

[bipedalembarrassment]

This entire Mays mum forcing inspections of the Turners etc plotline is so fucking stupid and annoying

A) We've been through it before, its boring twice, get a new plotline. I know period dramas love to put the Good and Perfect (TM) family through various trials of victimhood (see The Bates in Downton Abbey lol) but at least keep it interesting and don't recycle plotlines over and over (see The Bates in Downton Abbey)

B) It doesn't even make sense like sorry historically even white children were adopted out and handed around to whoever would take them with barely a check in from any governing body (quite famously the WW2 evacuations which saw children STILL displaced as late as 1948).

Brittain and other Western countries are infamous for their horrendous treatment and handling of BIPOC children, including rampant child theft through "adoption" and white supremacist assimilation programs (Eg. Canadian residential schools, Australian stolen generation) where western churches & organisations (most often the Catholic ones) had SO MUCH agency and power over these children that they could literally kill, abuse, torture and mistreat THOUSANDS of them without an eye being batted. This included also essentially being able to SELL and give them away to white families, who often exploited and abused them because assimilation with a white family was seen as a bettering of their situation for them. MANY of these issues and their legacies are still impacting BIPOC folks in these countries to this day.

My point being in this overwhelming historical context of BIPOC children being mistreated horribly by western entities I'm supposed to suspend disbelief enough so as to imagine that a single* Chinese woman who was (or is, its unspecified) a heroin user would have this much agency over an adoption/fostering arrangement of her child and that all these white child welfare workers would side with her over a white, upper middle class nuclear family of a Dr (extremely respected profession in those days, even more so than today) and his nurse/ex nun wife who both have close ties to local religious organisations.

Like sorry its just completely and utterly ahistorical . Even if the storyline weren't boring and over done it's just annoying to watch as someone whose always appreciated CTMs historical accuracy, particularly regarding bigotry and inequalities of the time.

* Its also made even worse to me by the fact that as far as I'm aware (haven't watched the show for some time and only just picked back up on S13) Mays mother is single. Which like, the show has spent thirteen seasons at this point repeatedly and accurately showing us how little agency single mothers of the time had. Including how callous and violent child "protection" and adoption systems were (& still are in many places) at the time towards them.

Like sorry you're showing me single white women having their babies forcibly taken from them by governing agencies with no recourse (& often punitive consequences) if they attempt to even contact them, let alone get them back, purely because they are unmarried , in one episode and in the next episode you're trying to convince me that these same systems and agencies give a single shred of a fuck about how Mays unmarried, heroin using, mother feels about her life with the respected white upper middle class family that adopted her.

Also I'm confused about the entire "adoption" process of May. I had thought that she couldn't be in "foster" long term and that all the original fuss with her foot and that had meant she'd finally been officially adopted by the Turners but it seems not?

Which adds just another layer of disbelief for me because the likelihood that the adoption wouldn't be completed by now is so slim and like even if it were still a fostering situation in that era you would fully expect that Mays mother would have been forced or coerced into signing a document she likely couldn't even read (if they'd even bothered with the facade of legal consent), May would have been taken by the religious order and her mother would have never seen or been allowed to hear about her again.

Idk if its a later seasons thing or if I just didn't notice it my first watch of the show but I'm definitely noticing a running theme in the show of like "bad" or "unkind" characters often being people who in reality would be extremely disenfranchised. Like obvs Mays mother is a glaring example but I've mostly noticed this regarding class, like the lower class women/men are often the antagonists.

I was rewatching an earlier season the other day too and there was literally a storyline where an upper middle class woman left the clinic before her appointment because some lower class scum woman bullied her and then she died of eclampsia later on.

Ridiculous.

Anyway sorry to the CTM fandom, thats my angry "A period drama is being ahistorical" rant for the day.

[foxounderscorecube]

Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson

3¼ ⭐

I have a lot of thoughts on this book, but first, my overall opinion on the book is that it's alright. The cute little homage to Good Omens in the character of Annie Device and the repurpose of government acronyms for the secret magic stuff (as in the titular HMRC) are fun, and it seems like Dawson generally had a good time coming up with ways to add a secret magical layer to the real world. I thought the pacing was decent and the style is easy to read - although, having read Cruel Summer and Say Her Name since, I do think Dawson's style suits YA a lot better. At times, it feels a bit juvenile. There's a sequel for this coming out soon, though, so there's nothing to say that she won't be able to improve upon that for the next instalment!

Now, here's the thing, right. I feel like, broadly, there are two contexts which this book can be viewed in. The first is as vent art. Despite the digestible style, this book was, at times, really fucking difficult to read because it made me angry - which is not at all a fault! The premise of this book is to reflect all the weirdness we've had politically that has led to an increase in anti-trans sentiment. It does this pretty accurately, with Helena's doubts about Theo snowballing into single-issue obsession clearly echoing stories of big names like Rowling and Linehan. It's not the most complex metaphor, but it certainly works. Helena receiving the death penalty because she put absolutely everything, including the lives of those she held dear, at risk out of her pure hatred seems to act both as catharsis and as a caution: our main characters don't agree with the harshness of the sentence even if it is in law, and express worry that she will be seen as a martyr to the group of believers she's gathered and even radicalise others.

The second is as a bit of a cry for help; an attempt to let people know what's going on before our noses. In my experience as a non-binary person who's very online and generally tries to keep up with politics to at least some extent, a lot of cis people living their day-to-day lives have, at best, the vaguest idea that some anti-trans laws are being passed in some places. Most people don't really care about trans people - and not as in, "oh, they hate us", but as in, they just have no particular reason to think about them. A lot of people - again, this is all just in my experience - are in the camp of not really "getting" it, but they don't see trans people as a problem because, you know, they're just people living their lives. Which makes sense, really. Trans and non-binary people are affected by it more so we're going to pay more attention.

Where this becomes a problem is when you try to explain some of the shit the weird little anti-trans and TERF bubbles spout to somebody who isn't affected by it or aware of it. It sounds totally ridiculous! A few years ago, I remember trying to talk to my mum about it, and she just could not comprehend why people would bother dedicating their time to hating on trans people, and so was convinced it couldn't be a real problem. The fantasy aspect to this book, I worry, could take the bite out of the point that, I must stress, it makes pretty well to a reader who knows the political context. Like I said, the parallels of Helena's character arc with (previously) well-liked and well-respected people who went waaaay down the transphobia rabbithole are pretty clear, but if you read this as someone who doesn't know much about that (or, let's be fair, how radicalisation can affect people in general), her spiral could seem improbable, I would expect. Dawson also seems to have a little bit of a habit of making her bad guys do real villain monologues, which doesn't help things in this particular example.

I mean, these are just my thoughts on it. The characters are fun; the magical action scenes are a little more sparse than I'd like, but they're enjoyable; and seeing Theo gain confidence in herself as a witch is so heartwarming - she's a great expression of trans joy, and I hope she gets more focus in the sequel because she acts mostly as a plot device in this book.

One other thing I will say as a criticism, though - it seemed a shame to me that the little POC-centred coven run by Leonie gets so little screentime (so to speak). We see enough of it, and hear enough of its reason for being, that it feels like we're left hanging! Aside from it being a little prod at the fact that the UK government is pretty bad at remembering that our population includes non-white people, and being a very obvious indication of Leonie's frustrations with even her own childhood friends' tendency to be white-centric in how they operate, it doesn't add much. There's a bit of an irony to that there, actually, isn't there?

There's a lot of potential with this setting, but I don't think it quite meets it. It is very much worth the read, though - with its digestible style and intrigue, there's a lot to like about it and it was a fairly quick read. I'll definitely be reading the sequel, which I hope will do well to improve upon this!