#and she is so beyond small human ideas and roles even if she deigned to think of them

[tinygameroom]

Have we even talked about the trans implications of being a god of change...

Editing to add my tags and context

When I say 'incidental' at the beginning I'm saying it feels incidental and artificial and then go on to partially deconstruct the idea that it actually is incidental and give examples of why it's not. This is not a full analysis which is why the concept is not explored with the clarity and structure that that would imply, but I'm not actually calling gender irrelevant to the game because it's clearly an ongoing part of the text. I didn't intend this to get reblogged at all much less with responses to my tags, so any issues you have with my rambles are due to lack of clarity and finished thought, due to them being rambles, not a correct understanding of my actual point.

Anyway I think there's tons of interesting analysis to be done about how the game approaches gender, and I don't have the energy or interest to actually analyze about it right now which is why I was more just spitballing about it. What's most interesting to me tho is that contradiction where the Princess being perceived as a woman seemingly has nothing to do with anything, yet is ever present as a commentary on agency and perception, and how people who have experienced misogyny will connect with that. I am also fascinated by the Genderlessness/Genderfulness of the Shifting Mound as an entity of change, how she appears so very feminine but her entire philosophy rejects the idea of simple classification, etc.

As a transmasc nonbinary person the ideas of being perceived as female/feminine (and therefore feeble, innocent, alien, small, stupid, etc etc) and the idea of having a feminine role that doesn't quite or always fit me assumed by others despite that are ideas that resonate a lot. I have lots of thoughts and they're unorganized!

[cartoonfangirl1218]

Tête-à-tête in a Jail Cell

She had nothing.

Well she had nothing before but now she had nothing and no one.

At that thought, Carla’s mind unwillingly flashbacked to that awful moment a few months ago where her dear Papa was turned to stone by her mother.

A multitude of emotions rose up in her chest, pressing against her. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt hot and numb all at once.

The only person who ever truly loved her unconditionally and cared about her above all else was gone.

He was frozen with the same shocked, distressed face and looking at it through the dungeon windows made Carla wish she was frozen too.

She’d rather have been turned to stone too than deal with this misery and loneliness. Spending every day thinking of how she had failed her father, how truly awful her mother was, and how it all went wrong. Had her mother always been this selfish and uncaring to her? How could she have not seen her mother’s true nature before? She felt guilty that she hadn't gone to help her father sooner. That she had been so swayed by her imagination of her wonderful, amazing, talented mother that she didn’t see that her mom had no intention of sharing the power just like that witch Shuriki.

Carla trusted very few people in her life. Truthfully, she didn’t even trust a few people. She only trusted two people. Her parents. She had felt she was able to not be so tough because… they were her parents. If there was anyone with whom she could be vulnerable and admit her secret fears and dreams it would be her parents. Not that she could hide them, they knew her better than anyone. Well she had hoped they would know her better than anyone. Her mother did not fulfill the maternal role in her imagination one bit. After 7 years, she hadn’t bothered to get her know again or ask what she had done without her.

Though she never said it outloud or in so many words, but while she wanted to be respected, she didn’t think power was a have-all end-all. She also wanted to have her family together, a happy little unit. Maybe it was stupid and cliche and super happy, but she secretly wanted that for most of her life. It was so much better than the hatred and the fighting and the insults that she heard her parents fling back and forth with each other.

Carla wanted to punch the wall and she did just that. The feeling of the cement scraping against her knuckles felt cathartic for a moment. It was white hot rage mixed with a physical pain she could concentrate on before cradling her bruised red hand to her chest. She rocked back and forth, feeling her anger fade and the sadness overtake her once more.

She hated this! She had meant what she said to the crown princess that she would do anything to bring her father back, but nothing had happened yet. She had been in this cell for two months now at least with her tamborita confiscated and she didn’t know what to do. She understood that Elena might be a little vindictive with her after she attempted to kill her and take over her kingdom, maybe she was trying to humiliate her or something.

If that was what she was trying to do then enough was enough! She hated being trapped and helpless with only her thoughts for company. All these stupid emotional thoughts….

Maybe Elena wasn’t going to help her to all. Maybe she was just going to leave her in this dungeon, and her father a statue and was happily singing around the palace not that they weren’t able to cause havoc.

Carla fiercely glared at a dark corner of her cell, holding back the wave of tears that she felt but would not allow to fall.

“Delgado.” a deep, male voice jolted Carla out of her thoughts and she reluctantly look up, her glare back in place. She wasn’t going to let anyone see her cry.

She looked at the Captain of the Guard straight in the eyes and rolled her eyes when he stoically slid her lunch trap through the bars. At least this was a sign that Elena hadn’t forgotten she was still here. She got three meals a day like a clock work.

It was like this every day. He gave her lunch and watched her until she finished and then left to take the tray away.

It was a unique sort of acquaintanceship if Carla could call it that, she wouldn’t say they were close to friends in any sense but they were more than just guard and prisoner.

At first they didn’t speak at all, exchanging a few grunts at most. She knew that Gabe was a law abiding good little boy who wouldn’t break the rules for anything and as such, he didn’t trust her being that she threatened his friends and kingdom.

While she had to admit, she found him a teeny tiny little bit attractive, really it tiny bit. The image of his broad chest only crossed her mind three times at most. But his steadfast loyalty to the rules was enough for Carla to dislike him as well. She never cared for brownnosers or most types of authority and she especially didn’t care for how he looked down at her for wanting more than what she had been born with. She was ambitious and seized what she wanted. It was probably more than he ever done with his life of never getting in trouble.

But at some point around the second week Gabe actually deigned to talk to her, asking if she felt cold. She replied yes and he fetched some blankets for her. Apparently, watching her eat in silence unnerved him or something because he ever since he kept up small conversations.

Carla had tried not to engage at first. But Gabe was hard to ignore. He would make little comments like how Navidad was his favorite season or he had come in with a brush of dirt on his cheek from olaball practice or simply noticing the smell of freshly baked bread on him, it all humanized him. She saw glimpses of who he was beyond his guard uniform and she could tell he was active in his day to day life and close to his family. He was such a all-Avaloran boy next door. He was so normal.

And worse, those thoughts of attractiveness had been returning more than three times a day. Not just his broad chest but also his surprisingly sweet brown eyes. If Carla could tell he was one of the good guys by one trait, it would be his eyes.

Not that it mattered that she thought he was attractive. It would never happen. He was a wannabe hero and she was a criminal that he had put in jail. He was just being damn compassionate as his hero code told him to be, he didn’t truly care.

So they had something. Not a friendship but…. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Need something for that?” He nodded toward her hand as she spooned some of the rice soup into her mouth. All this isolated thinking made her hungry.

“No. I don’t need your help.” Carla snapped a bit defensively. Though Gabe had been revealing tidbits of his life, she had not done the same. Her misery was her business and after she had found out about her mother’s true nature, she was wary of sharing herself to strangers.  

Gabe didn’t take offense at her tone. He didn’t take offense of much that she said to him or even when she ignored him. It was like that as long as she was beyond bars, he could act as amiable as he wanted because she was a non threat. That idea boiled her blood.

She had threatened his kingdom! She was a fierce malvago! How dare he forget that so quickly just because she was in jail. She was someone not be messed with. She was…

Carla sighed and slumped against the wall, admitting in her mind what she didn’t want to say out loud. No she wasn’t a threat. She was a tired, lonely girl with no family, friends or home.

She had nothing.

The spoon she had been holding rattled to the floor causing Carla to sit up straight again and try to play the part of the powerful malvago she tried to be.

Carla looked up to gauge Gabe’s reaction, whether he was pitying her but he was gone.

That was strange. He didn’t leave before she finished her lunch, it was some sort of security risk or something.

Maybe he was just being cocky, leaving her alone to do whatever stuff he considered more important because she was such a non threat.

It was stupid but Gabe leaving her alone was just another strike in the hellhole that was her life at the moment. Everyone left her, everyone! Even the people she didn’t care about.

Carla kicked at the wall, throwing the few blankets she had in her cell around in her blind rage and the tears that she held back came flowing free. Tears of frustration and sadness and repressed emotion for her life that had no answers or clear future.

“Argh!” Carla threw her spoon at the window, but of course, the little spoon made no den in the iron bars that kept her prisoner infuriating her even more.

She turned and threw her bowl of hot soup at the cell door, early hitting a surprised Captain of the Guard in the face.

He ducked just in time, quickly slamming the doors shut behind him so it was just him and her in the small, dishelved dungeon cell.

If Gabe saw the tears streaking down her cheeks, he didn’t react which just made Carla feel nervous as Gabe started to approch her. Him being so up close made her realize just how much taller he was. At least a foot at least. He looked at her with a strange face, like he was trying to gaze at her in a comforting way but that he was also uneasy as if he was approching a dangerous animal.

Carla was very aware of the small space, and just the presence of another person made the room feel smaller, and just a bit warmer as he neared her personal space.

He stepped forward and she made a step backward, unsure of what this whole situation was coming to. She felt nervous and also anticipatory. Rationally, she knew he wasn’t going to hurt her, he was a good guy, but years of instincts still put her on high alert for the potential of a sneak attack.

With quick reflexes, Gabe’s arm reached and just as quickly Carla attempt to turn her body into a ball, shield her weak points but all she managed was to turn her back on him.

She stood facing the wall, gripping her eyes tightly for what was to come, whatever it was. But all she felt was Gabe gently tugging her arm, gripping her injured hand.

Carla uneasily turned around to see Gabe pull out a salve from his back pocket and start applying it. The cold cream contrasted with his warm hands that made her skin raise with goosebumps but also reminded her.

It reminded her of years before when she was only seven and she had gotten in her first scrabble with some other street kids. She had managed to beat them off and even picked the pocket of the gang’s leader, but she also came back with her fair share of scratches and scrapes. Her father had put bandaids and rubbed oitment on her, assuring her the pain she felt at the moment would fade away with time, she still looked pretty to him, and more tha that, she was proud of her fighting spirit. He was proud of her. Just like he was proud of her months ago when she tried to rescue him.

Her tears slipped down her cheeks at the memories and she let out a traitorous sob that she couldn’t choke down. The sound echoing in the quiet dungeon.

Gabe didn’t say a word, he just continued rubbing the calming balm on her hand and Carla used her other hand to muffle her cries that echoed the turbulent feelings she was experiencing.

The moment felt like forever to Carla, each cry in front of Gabe was humiliating but she couldn’t stop. All the emotions she had been trying to repress couldn’t be contained.

Suddenly Carla was pressed against his broad chest, his muscles enveloping her in a comforting hug that was made a bit uncomfortable by the fact that his buttons were pressed against her cheek. But she didn’t move, she didn’t want to move from this warm hug, this feeling of affection. She felt warm, she felt safe, she felt loved for this moment at least and she treasured that feeling.

The hug ended and Gabe stepped away, leaving Carla to be hit again with the cold draft that was ever present in the dungeon and with the reality she had just done. She broke in front of one of her sworn enemies. Not that Gabe was an enemy anymore. Not if he could help her with saving her father. And she was certainly willing to work with anyone against Zopilote and stop her powerhungry mother.

It just.. She wasn’t used to sharing her emotions like this and to a practical stranger. Carla looked down at the ground unable to look Gabe in the face lest he see the red blush that she felt burning her cheeks or hear the heart pounding in her ears.

She only looked up when she hear the clink of keys locking the cell doors and did not hear the familar rythm of Gabe’s leather guard boots walking away.

He was staring at her, a serious yet soft expression on his face, “I promise. We’re going to change your father back.”

Carla couldn’t help the excited tone that creeped into her voice nor her eagerness at that too-good-to-be-true sentence, “Really?!”

“I’ll talk to the crown princess this afternoon.” Gabe gave a curt nod that was lessened by the sheepish smile that followed. He placed his hand on his heart, resuming his stoic guard face, “You have my word.”

Carla practically flew to the cell gates and grasped the back of his collar before he could leave. Gabe turned, a blush staining his face just like the one she had moments ago. Carla would have been embarassed by her lack of control but this… this was too much.

Ignoring all what she had learned and been taught over the years, she consciously allowed herself to smile at him with all the genuine hope she was feeling at the thought that her father may soon be unstoned.

She gripped his hands, meaningfully whispering, “Thank you. Thank you so much.” 

He had no idea how much this meant to her. How he was doing more than just be forgiving to an enemy, he was giving her her Papa back! Once he returned they could set forth on a new life together, one without constantly being on the road or hiding themselves. Just her and him being a happy pair together without their crimes...or the guard haunting them.

Gabe squeezed her hands too, sending a surprising jolt of electricity to tingle up her spine but she ignored as her mind sang “Papa! Papa! I’m going to help unstone you!”

[brigdh]

Book Blogging

A Tyranny of Queens by Foz Meadows. The sequel to the portal fantasy I read last month. Most of the plot here is fallout from the climax of that book: Saffron has returned back to Earth from the fantasy world of Kena, but can she re-adjust to a 'normal' life? And if not, what choices will she make? Yena's adopted sister died in the final battle, but can Yena reclaim religious rights for her sister's funeral and learn more about her mysterious heritage? The evil king has been overthrown, but escaped – where is he and what caused his actions? What's up with the mysterious magic artifact he left behind in the castle? Sadly, I didn't like this book nearly as much as its predecessor. The biggest problem is simply a shift in the use of characters; whereas the first book divided its pages fairly evenly among a vast cast, A Tyranny of Queens is hugely dominated by Saffron and Yena. And I'm sorry to say it, but they're the most boring characters in this series. Both are an example of the 'normal teen girl dealing with events outside her experience' archetype, which is a fine enough archetype as far as it goes, but not one that's particularly exciting unless you give her some sort of distinctive personality trait, anything other than 'determined', 'hard-working', 'smart'. Buffy wanted to date boys and wear cute clothes; Katniss wanted to be left alone and was unexpectedly ruthless; Saffron wants... ? The characters who did grab my attention in An Accident of Stars are pushed mostly off-screen here. Yasha, the grumpy, staff-wielding elderly matriarch who was revealed late in the first book to be an exiled queen, gets something like ten lines of dialogue in this entire book. Viya, the young, spoiled but trying hard to improve noblewoman who is named co-ruler of Kena at the end of the first book, and thus should be navigating the delicate balance of maintaining equality of power while still learning to handle so much responsibility, gets literally two scenes out of three hundred pages. And so on through a whole list of really cool characters. Instead we get multiple chapters of Saffron arguing with her guidance counselor, then her parents, then her social worker over whether she should apologize to one of her high school teachers over a minor incident caused by a bully. Exciting fantasy! My second problem with the book, unfortunately, is much more fundamental. The plot revolves around discovering that the evil king wasn't really evil after all, but was brainwashed. I'm sure this is an attempt to do an interesting redemption arc, or to look at how even the worst-seeming villains have their reasons, but it didn't work for me at all. It felt like a cop-out to remove blame from the king by passing it on to a historic figure from centuries ago (who never gets an explanation for his evil actions, so Meadows hasn't really complicated the role of villains so much as pushed the question a few steps outside the main narrative). None of the many people who died in the wars he started or were tortured in his pursuit of knowledge get a voice in this second book, so I kept feeling as though the suffering he caused was conveniently being swept under the rug to get readers to feel sorry for him. In addition, for a book that tries so hard to be progressive, ending with 'it's not the king's fault! He was manipulated by a foreign woman who made him fall in love with her!' is, uh... not a great look. All in all, a disappointing book. But there was enough good about the series that I'll give the author another chance. The Written World: How Literature Shaped Civilization by Martin Puchner. A nonfiction book that makes its way through human history via the medium of literature. Each of sixteen chapters focuses on a particular classic and shows how it both influenced and was influenced by contemporary events, from Homer's Odyssey giving Alexander the Great a hero to model himself after to The Communist Manifesto inspiring revolutions across the world. A subthread is the development of the technologies of literature itself – the inventions of the alphabet, paper, the printing press, ebooks, etc. It's a pretty neat idea for a book! Unfortunately the execution is terrible. I started off being annoyed that Puchner never seems quite clear on what he means by the term 'literature'. He implies it only includes written works (in the Introduction he says, "It was only when storytelling intersected with writing that literature was born."), and yet many of the pieces he choses to focus on were primarily composed orally (The Odyssey and the Iliad, The Epic of Sunjata, the Popul Vuh, probably the Epic of Gilgamesh, certainly at least parts of One Thousand and One Nights). And yet there's never any discussion of what it means to go from an oral mode to a written one, a topic I was eagerly awaiting to see analyzed. It's just... never addressed beyond a passing mention here and there. Okay, fine, I thought to myself, Puchner means 'literature' as in 'stories'. But that doesn't work either, since once again many of his choices don't tell any sort of narrative (Saint Paul's letters, Martin Luther's theses, Benjamin Franklin's 'Poor Richard's Almanac', Confucius's Analects, Mao's 'Little Red Book'). So what does Puchner mean by literature, the central organizing principle of his whole book? God alone knows. My irritation with the book deepened when I got to Chapter Four, where Puchner claims credit for inventing the concept of the Axial Age: "It was only in the course of trying to understand the story of literature that I noticed a striking pattern in the teaching of the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus. Living within a span of a few hundred years but without knowing of one another, these teachers revolutionized the world of ideas. Many of today’s philosophical and religious schools—Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy, and Christianity—were shaped by these charismatic teachers. It was almost as if in the five centuries before the Common Era, the world was waiting to be instructed, eager to learn new ways of thinking and being. But why? And what explained the emergence of these teachers?" Sure, dude, sure. You came up with this vastly original idea all on your own. (To be fair, if one choses to read through the endnotes, Puchner does cite Karl Jaspers, though he still insists his own version is ~so different~.) He then proceeds to get basic information about the Buddha completely wrong. For example: Some form of writing may have existed in India during the Buddha’s time (the so-called Indus Valley script may not have been a full writing system and remains undeciphered). This sentence. I can't even. I almost stopped reading the book right here, it's so incredibly incorrect. It's like saying, "Thomas Jefferson may have been literate, but since we find no Latin engravings in his house, we can't be sure." Let me lay out the problems. The Buddha lived around 500BCE; the last known well-accepted use of the Indus script was in 1900BCE. That's a gap of nearly two millennia. The Indus script was used on the western edge of South Asia, in Pakistan and the Indian states of Gujarat and Haryana; the Buddha lived on the eastern edge, in Nepal. At minimum, they're 500 miles apart. There is no chance in hell the Indus script was remotely relevant to writing about the Buddha. And in fact, we don't need to guess at the script of the Buddha's time and place. It's called Brahmi and it's quite well attested – though Puchner doesn't once mention it. He does include a photo of an Indus seal, because why not waste more space on utterly irrelevant information. Let's quickly go through the problems on the rest of this single page: What mattered above all were the age-old hymns and stories of the Vedas, which were transmitted orally by specially appointed Brahmans for whom remembering the Vedas was an obligation and a privilege. Though the Vedas do have an important oral history, they were certainly written down by the time of the Buddha, and possibly as early as 1000BCE. The oldest Indian epic, the Ramayana, was also orally composed and only later written down, much like Homeric epics. The Mahabharata is generally considered to be the older of the two epics. Despite my disillusionment at this point, I continued on with the book. And to be fair, I noticed many fewer mistakes! Though possibly because I know much less about Renaissance Germany or Soviet Russia than I do about Indian history. I did hit several problems again in the chapter on the Popul Vuh, the Mayan epic. To begin with, the chapter opens with a long dramatic scene recreating the Spanish conquistadores' capture of Atahualpa, the Incan emperor. Incan. Who lived in Peru, in South America. The Classic Mayan culture was based in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize – North America and a bit of Central America. This time Puchner is literally on the wrong continent. Once he finally makes his way up to the Mayan homeland, he focuses his narration on Diego de Landa, a Spanish priest who did indeed write an important ethnography of the Mayans of the 1500s. The Classic Mayan Era was over by 950CE, introducing a discrepancy Puchner does not deign to acknowledge. Even aside from that small problem, Puchner describes Landa's writings multiple times as "an account [...] that has remained the primary source of information on Maya culture." This entirely ignores not only the Popul Vuh itself; but the multiple other Mayan codices that survived Spanish colonialism; the many Mayan writings carved on their pyramids, palaces, and stele, and painted on their pottery; their murals of war, sport, and history; the enormous archaeological record of their cities, technology, and diet; and, oh yeah, the fact that Mayan people are still around today. Oh, my bad – Puchner does remember the Mayans still exist. Here's what he has to say about them: "My journey began in the Lacandon jungle. A bus dropped me at the border of the Maya territory, where a beat-up truck picked me up at the side of the road. The village of several dozen huts was located in a clearing in the jungle. Everyone but me was dressed in what looked like long white nightgowns. Men and women both wore their black hair shoulder length (I thought of the shipwrecked sailor who had gone native), and most of them walked around barefoot, sometimes donning rubber boots." That's it. That's literally the only mention of the modern Mayan people. (Puchner's in the area to learn about the Zapatista uprising, to which he devotes the rest of the chapter.) I'm so glad he spent ages detailing that and de Landa's biography instead of devoting any space at all to the contemporary persistence of Mayan beliefs, language, or rituals. When I first read its blurb, I looked forward to the rest of The Written World. Unfortunately it's the closest I've come to hurling a book at the wall in a long, long time. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.

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