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#but this shit was gay enough to negate that bias
fiveht · 5 months
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hi Five, Merry Christmas! I'm on holiday from work and I'm going to spend the weekend rereading Disarm and Head over feet as a Christmas treat for myself. I know you've been having a tough time and I totally understand wanting to retreat from fandom when people are being shit, so I hope you're well and I hope you're having a lovely holiday.
Hi!
I keep meaning to drop in and say something; I've gotten a lot of really sweet messages and I would flood timelines if I tried to respond to all of them, but I want to say thank you to all of you, truly. I'm so, so glad my silly little story made you guys happy. This verse was lovingly extracted from the ailing brain cell that Bestie and I share, and we are absolutely tickled that it struck a chord with so many people.
I work in healthcare and a lot of my co-workers have children (and I do not), so I'm taking a ton of overtime right now so they can have time off with their families. That makes it hard to stay up on fandom participation. I'm not absent because people are being assholes -- with one or two very notable exceptions, everyone has been amazing -- I'm just overworked and tired.
To answer some questions, I would love to write more for the Adore series. I've already written a few snippets for what would be a third instalment, so it's definitely not out of the question. My motivation and creative drive are very fickle things, so I can never make promises, but it's possible. I do know that I can't write and be fandom-social at the same time, so I wouldn't be around these parts much if I were to work on another story.
Things the sequel might contain: a return to Sirius' POV, more Rieka, more James, more of Sirius' backstory, a step into a slightly more defined D/s relationship for daddy and baby (some of which is new ground for Remus, too). None of these are guaranteed (nor is the existence of the fic at all), but they are elements I would like to write and/or have a very tenuous foundation for in the form of rough notes and half-written scene intros. So we'll see what the new year brings. 😊
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to every last one of you, and thank you for making this year so incredibly lovely for me. ❤️
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toaster-trash · 3 months
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idk about you but I love getting my opinions on one of the titans of English literature from a barely post-pubescent 20-something child on tumblr, a website famous for having users with great reading comprehension, critical thinking and no impulse whatsoever to fall into purity culture nonsense at the drop of a hat. I also love the English courts of law, and anti-sodomy laws, and I immediately and uncritically trust them when they accuse a gay man of being a pedophile. There is nothing wrong, childish or immature about this and I don't need to grow up
PURITY CULTURE??? PURITY CULTURE?????? Oh my bad folks I didn’t realise grooming 16 year old boys as a 30-something year old man was just rebelling against purity culture. And for your information, I’ve done plenty of research into anti-sodomy laws at the time of Wilde’s trials, and I’ve also read multiple sources of shorthand translations of the proceedings of the trials themselves, and anyone with two brain cells could tell that the way Wilde spoke wasn’t the way an innocent man would speak, and the evidence compiled against him was overwhelming, regardless of any bias the court may have had. True, the bias in question is fair to bring up and discuss, but it doesn’t negate his extremely likely guilt. It’s extremely unlikely that the man was innocent, from the evidence itself to Wilde’s tone during his “defence”.
Some sources:
The Trial of Oscar Wilde: From the Shorthand Reports (1906)
“In 1895, the playwright and wit Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was prosecuted for 'acts of gross indecency' with other men. Parts of his trial were covered in newspapers of the day, but because of British censorship laws, this fuller account was not published in English until 1906.”
–The British Library official website (bl.uk)
famous-trials.com, compiled by Professor Douglas O’Linder from UMKC School of Law, mostly aligning with the shorthand translations of the testimonies from the prior source referenced yet with a few details not included in the 1906 publication to my knowledge.
https://www.famous-trials.com/wilde/327-home
Of course, everything has drawbacks, everything has a grain of salt, not everything is fullproof, there’s room for argument everywhere and of course the two sources I linked there aren’t fully enough for a big picture, and context of the time, surrounding impact, further accounts etc should all be looked into — however, in weighing up the evidence and legitimacy of sources and conflating information on all sides, personally I’m ridiculously extremely confident that Wilde was guilty, and I think the fact that this isn’t really widespread historical information is ridiculous.
You’re right, you shouldn’t take things you see on Tumblr as full proof undisputed fact. You’re right, Tumblr is a hellhole a lot of the time for misinformation and bad literary comprehension and analysis. But that doesn’t mean anything you see anywhere is objectively wrong, and you should do a small molecule of proper research and critical thinking from seeing those posts before spouting bullshit.
And for your information, I’m both queer and Irish myself and shockingly the fact that one of the major idealised queer figures for my country is a rich 19th-century-Narcissus pedophile creep, and nobody says jack shit about it, makes me pretty fucking pissed! Surprisingly!
“Purity culture” catch yourself on lad what in the fresh fuck are you on about. I’m in the age range for the wee boys Wilde fucked, surprisingly if I heard one of my friends was meeting with and having sex with some rich fuck old enough to be their da I’d be pretty fucking concerned I’d be calling cps bro 💀🙏
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citrineghost · 3 years
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100 Humans on Netflix
So there’s this neat Netflix Original show called 100 Humans. I immediately got interested in it because they take this group of various humans from different backgrounds, age groups, and so on, and they use them to conduct experiments to get answers to interesting questions.
So, right away I had concerns about this show because
If you know anything about data and statistical research, you know 100 people is a very small sample size and does not breed accurate results
However, I’m very curious and wanted to see what they came up with anyway. I watched all 8 episodes and, honestly, I enjoyed watching it for the most part. However, I have a LOT of issues with the show and how it was conducted and I want to list them out here.
If you’re interested in watching 100 Humans or have already watched it, please consider the following before taking any of the show’s data as fact.
100 people is a very small sample size. This is because, the more people you have, the more weight each increment in your percentages has. With 100 people, each person represents 1 entire percent. That’s a lot. That means even a few people giving incorrect answers, having off-days, or giving ridiculous results (such as you can see in the spiders georg meme), can sway the entire result of an experiment into unreasonable territory. This is why most scientific studies attempt to get data from many hundreds or even thousands of people. The bigger the sample size, the more accurate it is to the entirety of the world.
I’ll put the rest under the cut because it gets long
The 3 hosts, who I’ll refer to as the scientists (regardless of if they actually are, because I’m not sure and don’t feel like googling it) repeatedly make false statements. For example, in one episode, they told their humans to “raise your hand if you believe you’re less bigoted than the average person here,” to which 94 people raised their hands. One of the scientists then made the statement, “If that were true, it would mean only 6% of Americans are bigoted.” This statement is entirely false. The only way to actually determine a true meaning to that would be to determine at what percentage of bigotry you are considered a real bigot. You also must consider that believing you’re more bigoted than other people in a small group, who you already have an impression of, is not necessarily indicative of how you feel you measure up to America as a whole. Anyway, I could go on and on. The only way to accurately summarize the results of that question would be to say that 44% of the humans had an inflated sense of righteousness or something of the sort.
The 3 scientists, both in person and in narration, for the sake of entertainment (if that’s what you call it) continually made “jokes” that poked fun at different groups, implied men are shit, etc. Maybe that’s fun for some people, but the kind of jokes they were making to amp up the hilarity of their host personas was genuinely just uncomfortable and made me feel even more like they couldn’t be trusted to go about unbiased research.
The scientists continually drew conclusions where the results should have been labeled inconclusive
The scientists made blanket statements about certain groups based on 1 element of research that would not stand up to further evaluation. For example, when explaining that ~93% (i think it was about that number) of Americans have access to clean, drinkable, tap water and yet some large number of single use bottled waters are sold every year, one scientist said it was because people believe bottled water is safer and cleaner than tap water. I am going to do my next survey on this to see if my own perception is flawed, but I simply don’t believe that all of the people who buy bottled water do so because they think its cleaner than “tap” (as if all tap is the same.) I know there have been studies about people drinking unlabeled bottled water and tap water and not being able to tell the difference, but this neglects to account for the fact that different houses pipes can affect the taste of the tap water running through them, people can use disposable bottles of water for certain activities or events too far away from tap for people to refill their reusable bottles easily, and so so so much more. Anyway, it just really bothers me to see “scientists” making these kinds of generalizations when they’re the ones whose results we’re supposed to trust.
The show was incredibly cisnormative. There was an entire episode based on comparing men and women that made me extremely uncomfortable with its division of people by men and women. There was the implication that all men have penises and all women have vaginas. There were implications that reproduction is a necessity in picking a partner. It was just a shitshow. There was one comment by one subject who asked, when being told to separate by men and women, “What if I’m transgender?” Obviously I can’t say for sure, but this person didn’t appear to be transgender and the sort of tone it was asked in makes me think it was literally something they asked him to say in order to get inclusivity points with the viewers and to “prove” that they’re not transphobic by having them divide up, because they said to go to the side you identify with. This whole thing is a) harmful to nb folks who would not have had a side to go to and b) completely negating the fact that the way we were socialized can have an effect on our social responses. That means that for a social experiment, a trans person could sway the results of one side due to their upbringing and the pressures society put on them before/if they don’t pass. This is all assuming they had any trans people there, which is potentially debatable.  I also take issue with this entire fucking episode because just, the amount of toxicity in proving one sex is better than the others is really gross and actually counterproductive to everything feminist and progressive. Not to mention, them implying that they’re trying to support trans people only to reinforce the notion that a trans man is inherently lesser for being a man when even prior to hatching, he would have also been force fed propaganda and societal pressure implying he’s less than for supposedly being a woman is really gross and makes me angry. The point of what I’m saying is that it’s actually not woke to hate men as a way of bringing women up because there are men who are minorities who are being hurt by the rise of aggression being directed at them for their gender. Anyway enough about that.
The tests drew false conclusions because they did not account for how minorities adapt to a world that’s not made for them. This is specifically directed at the episode where subjects were asked to match up 6 people into couples. There were 3 women and 3 men and the humans were asked to put them together into pairs. they could ask the people 1 question each but then had to match them up with only that information. The truth is, the people brought in were 3 real life couples already, which the humans didn’t know until after they matched them. The couples were m/f, m/m, and f/f. I think that’s great, but the problem is, literally none of the humans asked any of them their sexuality as their question and most people didn’t even consider they could match up same-sex people. One girl even thought that they had told her to make m/f pairings, even though they didn’t.  The scientists concluded from the experiment that the humans have a societal bias toward people, and assume they’re all straight, even if they, themselves, are not straight. I personally believe that was the wrong conclusion to draw. You could see some of the queer humans were shocked that they hadn’t considered some of the pairings might be gay. But, I don’t think it’s because they believe everyone they meet is straight, I believe this says more about what they expected from the scientists themselves. If someone is in a minority and they go to do something organized, like a set of experiments, they are going to be judging the quality and setup of the experiments by those designing them. I feel that the lack of consideration that the couples might be gay has a lot more to do with queer people having adapted to a world where queers are rarely involved or included in equal volume to the cishets. The queer humans taking part in the experiment and failing to guess gay couples shows that they have adapted to a world where they are excluded rather than a belief that every random person that they meet is straight. My point is further supported by an expert they had on the show who explained that, statistically, it was entirely likely that they were all straight and that even queers will account for being minorities by going with what’s most likely. The truth is, we are surrounded by a whole lot of straight people. It makes sense to assume only 6 people are all straight and that, if any aren’t, they may be bi.
The scientists frequently broke an already small sample size into even smaller groups. The group was very frequently broken in half, in thirds, or into sets of 10 people. These sample sizes tell us almost nothing actually conclusive. 
The experiments/tests frequently were affected by peoples abilities, unrelated to what was being tested. For example, one test that was broken down into 6 people and 6 control people competing at jenga was meant to show whether needing to pee helps or hurts your focus. first of all, sample sizes of 6 are a fucking joke. Second, this completely ignores these 6 people’s actual ability to play Jenga. If someone sucks at jenga with or without needing to pee, them losing Jenga when they need to pee says exactly fuck all about whether needing to pee affected their focus. They should have tested people’s Jenga skills beforehand, counted the amount of moves they made before the tower fell, and then did it again after hours of not peeing to compare their results. This test made no logical sense at all.
The scientists ignored the social effect of subjects knowing each other as well as duration of events during their last experiment. They were testing to see if people with last names near the end of the alphabet get a shittier deal because they go last in everything where things are done by name order. They tested this by doing a fake awards ceremony where they gave out some 30 awards to people, gauging the applause to see whether the people at the end got less hype and therefore felt worse about themselves than those in the beginning who got the fresh enthusiasm of the audience. the results showed that the applause remained fairly consistent throughout the awards. The issues with this test are numerous, but here are the three I take most issue with. 1) the people here all got to know each other very well over the week it took to make the show. People who know each other and have become friends are much more likely to cheer for each other with enthusiasm, regardless of how long it’s been. On the other hand, polite applause from a crowd at, say, a graduation, where you are applauding people you don’t know, WILL start off more raucous and grow very quiet except for individual families near the end. 2) the duration of the test was a half hour, which is not very long at all and doesn’t say much to test the limits of enthusiasm. Try testing the audience at a graduation with a couple hundred graduates that also involves the time it takes to walk all the way up to a stage a hundred feet away, accept a diploma, and then wait for the next person. These kinds of events take hours and nobody keeps up their enthusiasm that long unless they’re rooting for someone in particular. 3) this study tested only one of many many ways name order affects a person. Cheering and applause is only one factor. It does not take into account people having their resumes looked at in alphabetical order and therefore people at the beginning of the alphabet being picked before anyone ever looks at a W name’s resume. It doesn’t take into account a small child’s show and tell day being at the very end of the school year, after 6 other people have brought in the same thing they planned to. No one cares about their really cool trinket because they’ve seen a bunch like it already. This test doesn’t take into account how many end-of-the-alphabet people just get straight up told, “we ran out of time. maybe next time,” when next time doesn’t really exist. I feel genuinely bad for the girl who suggested this experiment because the scientists straight up said something akin to, “lmao her theory was bs ig /shrug” even though it was their own shitty research abilities that led to their results.
They did one experiment intending to see how many people have what it takes to be a “hero.” The request for this test was made by someone curious about the effect of adrenaline and if it really works how some people say. The scientists thought it an adequate method to determine an answer by testing their reflexes with a weird crying baby sound and then dropping a doll from above while they were distracted with answering questions. The scientists looked up before the doll dropped to indicate a direction of attention. While this does give some answers about peoples intuition, reflexes, and ability to use context clues, its entirely an unusual situation, makes no sense in reality, fails to take adrenaline into consideration literally at all, and has a lot more to do with chance. The person dropping the doll literally couldn’t even drop it in the same place from person to person. Some got it dropped into their lap and others almost out of arm’s reach. This, like a few of the other mentioned experiments, was during the last episode, which felt lazy and thrown together last minute, with very little scientific basis to any of the results. The last episode was weak and disappointing overall. 
One of the big issues I have with this show is actually their repeated use of the same group. They said at the end that they had done over 40 tests. Part of doing studies is getting varied samples of people in order to get more widespread results. Using the same 100 or less people (already a tiny sample) repeatedly is a terrible research method. You’re no longer studying humans at large. You’re studying these specific humans. You can’t take the same group with the same set of inadequacies, the same set of skills, and the same set of biases and then study them extensively and in many different ways like this. Your results are inherently skewed toward these specific people and their abilities. I expected them to at least get a new group each episode - every 5 or so studies - but no. They keep the same group all week, which makes the entire season. This is inexcusable in research imo.
The next issue is contestant familiarity. The humans all getting to know each other is great, socially, but it also destroys the legitimacy of many of the studies that involve working together or comparing yourselves and your beliefs
Many tests had issues with subject dependency. One study, meant to compare age groups and their ability to work together to complete the task of putting together a piece of ready to assemble furniture had each group with members they relied on entirely. A few people built the furniture while one person sat across the room, looking at instructions with their back to the others. They had to relay the instructions through a walkie talkie to another contestant and that other contestant had to relay it to the people they’re watching build the chair. You cannot study a group’s ability to build something with instructions by the ability of one single person to communicate. You’re testing that individual and the rest of them on two completely different capabilities. One person fails at being able to communicate and everyone else becomes unable to build the furniture. Even if everyone else in the group is more effective than all the other groups at building ready to assemble furniture, they might end up falling in last because of their shitty communicator who is literally not able to convey simple instructions. (yes, this actually happened in the test)
One test judged the subjects at their speed of getting ready, to see if men or women are faster at getting ready. While most elements of this test were just fine, the part I took issue with was that they did this test without regard to social convention. They told the subjects they were going on a field trip and to get ready by a certain time. Then, they gave them many things to get distracted by, like refreshments to pack with them, a menu to preorder lunch from, and so on.  The part that upsets me about this test is that they ignored social convention entirely, to the point that subjects were judged based on their conventional actions and expectations more than their actual speed at getting ready. The buses promptly shut their doors and left at the time they were supposed to but there was no final call to get on the buses. In general, when a group is to be taken somewhere by bus, there will be an announcement to load up and leave. You could clearly see many of the subjects were ready to go and were just standing around talking while they waited for fellow subjects to finish getting ready. I have no doubt that, if given a final call, most of them would have loaded up within a couple minutes. However, they were relying on the social convention of announcing departure and were therefore, left behind entirely (for a nonexistent field trip). These people who were left behind were counted as being late and not making the time cutoff. If one were to look at the social element of this situation, if everyone there believed there would be a warning before departure, the fact that 24 to 14 women to men were loaded onto the buses at departure doesn’t necessarily indicate the women were faster to get ready. It seems to me that it’s more likely to indicate anxiety at being late and a belief that they need not impede on anything lest they be reprimanded or have social consequences for taking too long - something women are frequently bullied for. There’s also the chance that many who boarded without final call are more introverted or antisocial. Plus, we can’t forget to include the people who have anxiety about seating. If someone is overweight, has joint pain, or has social anxiety, they will be more likely to board early to get a seat they feel comfortable in. If they had counted up all of the people socializing and waiting on the sidewalks nearby, they may have found that there were more men who were ready to board up at a moment’s notice. I’m not saying I think men are faster to get ready, I’m just saying that we can’t know based on who boarded without a final call. If people believe they will have a last minute chance to board, a large number of them will take the last few minutes to socialize with their new friends until they’re told they have to board. Therefore, this test cannot be considered conclusive without counting and including the people who were ready and not boarded as a third subset.
Honestly, I could go on and on about how sensationalist and unscientific this show is, but I just don’t have 6 more hours to contribute to digging up every single flaw with it. There’s A Lot.
My point is, if you feel like watching this show, which I don’t necessarily discourage inherently, I just beg you to go into it with a critical eye. Enjoy the fun of it and the social aspects, but please don’t rely on the information provided and please don’t spread it as fact, because it’s not.
It’s entertainment, not science.
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Gormless Ch. 9 -  Maccon’s into violence, hypocrisy, raceplay, but worst of all progressive politics.
A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.
I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!
The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.
For the last book check out the brainless tag.
If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?
This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.
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Last time on Gormless:
There’s some mysterious force that’s turning the Vampires and werewolves into humans. Alexia is in charge of figuring out that deal, and she is doing a bad job at it.  They are at her husband’s old pack castle about it.  Are they hiding something?????
Chapter 9 – Maccon’s into violence, hypocrisy, raceplay, but worst of all progressive politics.
So off to dinner we go!  They talk about what a FRIGHTFUL sight it was that Alexia didn’t style and unfrizz her hair before going down to dinner with such dramatic terms that make me wanna gag. But I went from that to barfing myself inside out when I read the following line about Alexia’s frizzy hair:
“Lord Maccon adored it.  He thought she looked like some exotic gypsy and wondered if she might be amendable to donning gold earrings and dancing topless about their room in a loose red skirt…”
GOD DAMN AUTHOR!  We went from some poor choices but plausible deniability to straight up…
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Like a lot of my racism complaints are subjective and nit-picky I will give you that.  But the author done goofed good and fucking proper with that line jesus fucking Christ.
GY*SIES IS A SLUR, AND ROMANI WOMEN ARE NOT ~EXOTIC~ SEXUAL OBJECTS! GOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK YOURSELF!
I could fume about that fucking egregious shit the rest of the day but let’s try to distract myself with the parts of this story that aren’t openly racist.
At dinner, LeFoux is talking to some nerd about nerd shit.  Ivy is trying to talk about fish to some dude even though both of them don’t know anything about fish.  There’s a bit of drama when Lady Kingair (aka Sidheag) allows Maccon to sit in the Alpha seat, which TO BE FAIR is kinda bullshit, but the drama dissipates with a harmless distraction.  There is a brief interaction between Alexia and Maccon on the subject of the Tunstell/Ivy drama.  Maccon says they’re a bad match and Alexia agrees DESPITE THE FACT SHE LEGIT TRIED TO HOOK UP THE TWO AT THE END OF THE LAST BOOK BUT THAT’S FINE! Maccon ends the conversation about this slipshod ship-fest by sighing out a perplexed…
“Women”
Maccon you’re literally agreeing with a woman right now!  Boy howdy am I getting increasingly sick of how Maccon uses that word. If a male partner of mine used that word (woman) the way Maccon uses it (as this bullshit signifier that #yesallwomen are so hard to understand and difficult to deal with) I would uppercut him in the fucking taint.
CAN YOU BE ANGRY ABOUT THE ACTUAL CONTENT OF THE STORY FAPS INSTEAD OF THESE THROW-AWAY LINES THAT YOU’RE OVERANALYZING!
BLATANT RACISM AND SEXISM AREN’T THROW-AWAY LINES, BUT YOU BET YOUR ASS I CAN BE MAD AT MORE STUFF! I AM ALWAYS HUNKERING TO ANGRY IT UP!
There’s a point where they call Alexia curse-breaker multiple times (cause she’s a soulless that can negate the powers of the supernatural.)  Ivy and Felicity have no idea what that means and don’t know Alexia is a soulless but nobody bothers to inform them.  I don’t know if this is going to be a conflict at some point or not.
Alexia then has to ~make a fuss~ by asking them about the humanization problem. They act like she is breaking some taboo, but honestly I don’t understand why.  They’re having a problem; it’s her and Maccon’s job to solve the problem, so they should ask about it so they can solve it right? Also these Scottish folks seem much more down to earth and don’t subscribe to the stuffy social mores of British society. So it’s dumb that they act as if Alexia is rudely asking why cousin Larry has two weeping pussies where his ears should be, while jabbing at them with a pencil, and making sexist jokes about it.
But she doesn’t ask questions that are going to be useful until a few pages into this conversation which means just in time for the author to avoid it with a distraction.  I have a feeling the author is going to do the same thing in this book that she did last book.  Started with a mystery, dances around it for the vast majority of the book without adding much to it, and just ¾ the way in the book SUDDENLY SHIT HITS THE FAN ALL AT ONCE AND IT’S REAL DUMB!
So it’s now after dinner and the men and women are separated to chit-chat. Alexia starts quizzing Lady Kingair. Lady Kingair says she wishes she could be a full blooded werewolf.  The only werewolf within a zillion miles who is powerful enough to turn someone into a werewolf is Lord Maccon, cause of course it is.    But Maccon doesn’t want to try to turn her because she’s his last heir and women very rarely survive the transformation.  
Which like, there’s no reason so far why the werewolf club has to be vast majority male.  No ALL MEN orgies, and no SINCE YOU’RE THE ONLY GIRL WE’VE SEEN IN 80 YEARS ALL OUR ERECTIONS POINT TO YOU FEMALE PROTAG!  Perhaps there is some plot point later on.  But honestly? I suspect it comes down to the bias that simply werewolfism is considered a male phenomenon. You can read all sorts of analyses of this but basically it comes down to that men are supposed to have a violent, animalistic nature that they try to suppress.  But women aren’t supposed to be angry, powerful, uncontrollable, or like worst of all HAIRY!  So I don’t want them even as no-name background characters yuck!
Also, oddly enough, last book they said that werewolves sought out actors, and arty types cause they seemed more likely to survive the transformation. Creativity is tied to ~extra soul~ or whatever.  So I want to know why all these werewolves are dim-witted, gruff, military philistines instead of sweet, sensitive, arty twinks, smooching each other?  Is it cause her type is gruff meathead and like an idiot she outright contradicted her own story for no particular reason?
SEEMS SO! GOD I WANT A CASTLE FULL OF HAIRY BESTIAL WOMEN AND/OR CUTE SENSITIVE TWINKS! IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK FOR?
Nothing else really comes out of the conversation with Lady Sidhaeg Kingair and thankfully we’re saved from that conversation by the sounds of the men folk fighting.
Maccon is fighting with the current beta.  Maccon wins, cause of course he does.  They both grumble bitterly at each other for BETRAYAL and nothing is revealed. Like I am glad there was action, but this was so limp and tepid.  It could have easily been dramatic and they should have revealed something, especially considering they dump the whole story at the end of this chapter.
So Alexia takes him upstairs for fade to black SEX, cause of course she does. Like I won’t kink-shame much, but getting all hot that your husband beat up another dude who is clearly weaker than him for no real reason is bogus yo. A thousand kink-shames upon you.
Afterwards Maccon FINALLY fucking explains something.  He says the reason why he left the Kingair pack is because everybody in the pack was planning to kill the queen of England and didn’t tell him about it.  They’re Scottish and Supernaturals and APPARENTLY the crown hates both of those things.  She appoints Scottish and Supernatural people to the highest places on her court and we have not seen any oppression but just trust us okay.  They kept it from Maccon, because Maccon is a ~progressive~ and thought killing the queen would be a bad idea.  He believes this because the Queen is giving Supernaturals more rights and that if they kill her that it would make Supernaturals look real bad and innocent Supernaturals would be targeted.
That’s a reasonable fear, and honestly since we’re supposed to be on Maccon’s side she doesn’t really try to explain the other side.  Like was it supposed to be a military Coup so that werewolves would be in charge of Britain, since the military is made up of werewolves? Cause that’s honestly pretty fucking interesting.  I know the author says there are a lot more humans than werewolves…but I don’t know why they would fear much of a backlash if they all have superpowers, lots of the money, and are the ENTIRE military.  The fucking Spartans quelled every slave uprising even though slaves vastly outnumbered their military cause their military was trained as hell. Those masc 4 macs thug bros weren’t even able to turn their faces into dog faces.
Also Maccon’s feelings were really hurt when they were going to kill the queen with poison.
“Poison is for bitches amirite?” Maccon laughs misogynistically.  Alexia chuckled in kind and sprinkled something in Maccon’s 5th glass of Scotch.  As he dies in agony Alexia licks her fingertips in triumph. Oops they still had poison on them and she dies.  LeFoux travels to reality and she has the good sex with me. The End!
Okay that exchange didn’t happen, I just wish it did.
So anyway due to the ~betrayal~ Maccon left his pack and it really fucked his pack a big one because nobody was powerful enough to turn other people into werewolves so their pack couldn’t grow and outsiders were disinterested in serving them.  (BTW humans who serve werewolf packs in exchange for being turned into werewolves are called Clavigers in this book.) But this was their punishment for betraying him.  Not punishment for the high treason of attempting to murder a queen and thus throwing the entire country into violent chaos which could have resulted in millions of deaths. The focus for the punishment is highlighted as Maccon’s feelings were hurt.
I have a million questions about this situation but I can forgive the author for not going into more detail. This is a fluff story and doesn’t need to be bogged down with politics.  I can’t help but be  frustrated because the author doesn’t give anything of substance, so when something mildly interesting happens I want to latch onto it but it’s just plywood stuck to a cliff with bubblegum, it ain’t gonna hold my weight.
Thus I plummet back into the pit of frivolousness, hoping futilely there maybe something enjoyable I can grab in order to save my sanity from this stack of bullshit.
PS – I’m way into the fact that the thing they did reveal is not relevant to the actual conflict at the center of this book.
LOVE THAT!
PPS – The fight should have had the Beta forcefully removed from the fight. That he thrashes against another werewolf about how ineffectual Maccon is.  That he has all sorts of strength, power, and money but he’s just a complacent lapdog.  Since he has been dubbed ‘one of the good ones’ he’ll let the less fortunate ones of his race rot while he nibbles pheasant in his castle.  Maccon fires back how hypocritical it is to say you want what’s best for werewolves/Scottish folks while picking fights and putting the less fortunate on the line.  That he’s proving to the kingdom that werewolves are valuable by being a good example and working within the power structure to help his own kind. Afterwards Maccon goes back to his room physically and emotionally exhausted, and cuddles with his wife while he explains the backstory. He cries over his guilt of hurting his pack, and wonders if what he is doing is the right thing.
Problem with that is it doesn’t make the conflict easy to understand and cut and dry.  It also makes Maccon emotionally vulnerable…which like I’M INTO but seems as if it’s not the author or this set of reader’s fetish.
Say something nice Faps:
After pulling teeth for a book and a half we learn something about Maccon.  And it’s actually potentially interesting.
Ivy’s back and forth about her lack of knowledge about fish was genuinely cute and funny.
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