#like it was pro women but in a very shallow way if that makes sense? im sure someone could put it better than me

[princekirijo]

I saw the Barbie movie today and tbh I have mixed feelings about it. It was really funny in parts I won't lie and I liked the humor but there was something so... I don't know. I think the message was nice enough but the film felt shallow?? Idk

[punkeropercyjackson]

Jason Todd takes dump by someone who's read every single issue he's ever been in and watched/played almost all his adaptions

He's afro-dominican,specifically monoracial and a third gen inmigrant on both Catherine and Willis' sides.He's strongfeatured and darkfeatured and his green eyes are a warmer/softer shade instead of the 'staring into your soul' meme

He's also jacked(fat + buff)and overly muscular Jason is unattractive while skinny pale Jason is unfitting

He's transmasc agender and partially identifies as a girl hence freely uses 'ftm' for himself and is a butch but in a goth punk way

He's also demisexual and bipan

Triple A(Austim,Adhd and Anxiety)with ptsd and also cluster b(bpd and npd)

The best love interest for him is/would've been a black Super who's Clark and Lois' adoptive kid and his childhood best friend that grew up to join The Outlaws due to their history

Og Rhato was an absolute disgrace to his character and he hates Roy fullstop and Roy should've hated him back instead of being a pussy.Kory deserves Dick and the Titan Girls forever and ever and the former dosen't even have to be romantic,she just has to be important to him and her own fufilled character too.JASON for that matter deserved to reunite with Eddie and him,Rose,Artemis,Kyle,Duke and Thad along with a bunch of other properly written characters should've been The Outlaws,including ones introduced in Rhato itself so it would an actual superhero team run

Duke should've been not only an official Robin that was adopted by Bruce a bit after Zero Year but JASON'S Robin with him being Duke's Robin too.Jason would literally rather die again than be part of 'The Batboys' without Duke and that's why it being so accepted in fanon pisses me off so much because it shows zero care for transracial adoption representation('transracial' meaning 'adopted child that's in a different race family')and how it's inherently more interesting and nuanced storytelling than every 'Bruce adopts every kid he meets' edition.Duke deserves his own special relathionships instead of having to share or settle when nobody else does or has to

He hates being sexually degraded and objectified and considers it as bad as his death being used against him because he sees it as another form of violation of his personhood.The reverse is also true so when it comes sex and even just romance,he's all about consent and if someone won't respect his they have zero chance or appeal to him

Normies do nothing for him.He's t4t,autistic4autistic and poc4poc strictly no exceptions and he dosen't actively seek out dating because he thinks platonic love and familial love are more important

The Tim beef is not only hilarious but top notch writing because for once the white boys don't give a fuck about eachother and perfer the girlies and the poc.90s Young Justice,the Robin 1993 gang and Tam is wayyyy better as a cast for Tim than Jason could ever be too

Jayrose and Jaytemis are very good ships because Rose and Artemis keep their personalities around Jason and they have belivable reasons to be attracted to eachother within dynamic and individual characters too.Jaykyle has excellent potential but people who make it horny should just admit they're racist and want Kyle to be Jason's pet moc and Jayeddie should've been what they tried to make Jayr*y as it actually works with Eddie and there's no overlap between him and Roy unless you're shallow and bad at writing

'Wonder Woman fan Jason' is rather tokenish and unathentic and also i just don't think he'd like Diana that much at any point at all tbh.His childhood superheroine idol is Starfire because it makes way more sense(and no,not because of the Dick,it's because Kory is exactly what he admires in women in general)

Alchoholic/smoker Jason are not just canon contradicted but not sexy.It's better to give him comical vices like ridicilously bad for you food and being a pro-gamer

'Robin!Jason is an altruistic,peppy optimistic softboy who's a huge nerd in both meanings of the word and lowkey loserish but also has the bite losing his parents and living as a street kid for years gave him and is a little shit' supremacy or nothing

He listens to My Chemical Romance,classic punk bands and rap the most

He's NOT like Dean Winchester,Deadpool or Danny Fenton and saying so is an insult to his character because he'd hate them if they met

He IS like Percy Jackson,Miles Morales and Ichigo Kurosaki and it needs to be said way more since it's actually accurate

Trans woman Jason is just Marceline Abadeer /pos

If he were a supernatural creature,he'd be a werewolf

Talia is the only acceptable adoptive mom for him and making jokes about ThatTM scene in Lost Days is no better than batcest but with the added layer of violent racialized misogyny.Momlia is also better if Jason's afrolatino because we need more brown/black family dynamics that're healthy and wholesome

'Shiva is Jason's biomom' is gross and offensive to Cass and y'all know damn well him thinking she could be his mom was the writers being racist weirdos,NOT Jason looking wasian.Cass and Jason being on good terms can be well-written but they would NEVER be eachother's favorites and Cass' story is a femalecentric one by design

Stephanie and him are meant to be found siblings and J*ysteph is gross because it's literally just a cishet crack ship version of Stephcass and 'tis exactly why Jason should be her brother for parallels instead of erasure.They're also just not compatible romantically or funny for the bit,it's misogynistic towards her and looks bad on him thanks dating his little brother's ex.Also make Stephanie black too you weirdos and i mean BLACK,not 'blonde blue eyes loose curly hair and badly drawn melanin'.Dead Robins Club is A+ and him and Damian already have good dynamic,no notes

Dick and him should be close since his Robin days with Dick also playing a pseudo-parental role as is the natural order for eldest siblings BUT Dick should written as themself,not an adultchild.Neither of them would ever care about Slade because they're not chronically online white gays who think being anti-kink is code for queerphobia

And him being a Jane Austen fan is him being pretentious but it's funny so it's fine

[rise-my-angel]

I just recently got into the fandom. I was just wondering why you're not fond of Dany/ the Targaryeons? Gen no hate! Just curious. The incest between Dany & Jon does ick me out a lot. Thank you.

To start: I am against things that are pro incest in this series, so literally any family who exists on the backs of purposeful incest or any incestual couples are no go icky to me instantly. That being said, heres some word vomit:

A significant amount of it comes from a cruelty which stems from their superiority complex. Because of their Valyrian heritage, they believe that it makes them superior. In a very literal sense. Targaryeans are the most behind the curtain reveal of what it means to be the blood of Old Valyria. They believe that they are special, different then others, and they are above those which are not Valyrian. They are not outcasts in the sense of a Valyrian family which practices rampant incest.

Valyrians in general were incestual for those exact reasons. They believed that they were superior over other men, and thus keeping their bloodlines pure was integral to maintaining that special blood. It had made the Targaryeans very uncaring about lives not their own, and in truth it has made them so obsessed, that they don’t even care about each other.

No one suffers the damage of their inbreeding more then Targaryean women. They are born into that family expected to make themselves into wives and mothers for their brothers and uncles. It is an expectation that brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews marry. Imagine how it must feel to be a woman married INTO the Targaryean family, and suddenly your own daughters are expected to be made into brides for your own sons. This family raises their sons to expect their sisters to belong to them. Targaryean women are little more then breeders in the eyes of their own family. Their purpose is to be there to breed more children with their own brothers and uncles simply to keep that bloodline from being diluted with other kinds of people. And it hurts them in other ways, because inbred Targaryean women have very infamous fertility issues. They have a disturbing amount of miscarriages and stillbirths, they give birth to very physically deformed children, or mentally disturbed children. And Targaryean women die on in childbirth at an alarming frequency.

This is a result of generational incest. This extremely shallow gene pool being forced to inbreed over and over and thus the genetics get even more damaged over time, leading to more fertility issues, which leads to husbands putting their wives into medical distress trying to force them to get pregnant until they give birth to more sons and daughters. It is a hellish nightmare to be born a women in the Targaryean family, and its a massive reason why no one should ever be romanticizing these incestual relationships. There is a reason ONLY the Targaryeans inbreed like this in Westeros. It is demented, damaging, and disgusting to normal people.

But they don’t care, because they see themselves as superior beings with superior blood and they do not have respect for those they rule over because they are not special like they are. When the Targaryeans are not special. Being Valyrian is not special, because most of the known world looks back at them with resentment and hatred for their destruction and cruelty. Valyria was a blight on the world and the Targaryeans are desperate to inflict this onto the people of Westeros. Who by the way, are populated with three different cultures of people, two of which came from people who fled Essos to escape the Valyrian Freehold. And the Targaryeans came and forced that same trauma onto the very descendants of people who escaped that in the first place.

They are the living relic of Old Valyria and they are once more, a blight on the world they inhabit. Their motto of fire and blood is not cool or badass. It is the symbol of their purpose. To burn and destroy.

And Dany, is the biggest living character to exemplify that. She is a true Targaryean and that is not a compliment. It is a warning. She is dangerous, and violent and has no qualms with inflicting untold amounts of brutal cruelty to subjugate those she sees as in her way. That is not something to be idealized, she is a dangerous tyrant.

She also, is a bad ruler. She was NEVER raised with any sort of education or training to rule and she thinks she is good at it beacuse she knows how to scare people into submission. But her entire arc in the Slave Cities is one big showcase of why she should not have the power she demands. She is a bad ruler, she does not respect the cultures and people she demands bend the knee to her, she burns alive all those whom she alone decides deserves it. Even her plight of slavery isn’t good. She allows slaves to sell themselves back to their masters, because she did NOTHING to establish a system to fill for the void she created by taking slavery away in a culture where it is rampant.

Yes stopping slavery is good, but it is not as easy as making them stop doing it. She doesnt understand why as soon as she leaves places like Yunkai, do they devolve back into their old ways, because she wasn’t a ruler. She is a military occupier. She does not rule, she occupies by force until she decides she wants to move on. Everywhere she has touched, she has left behind chaos and ruin beyond what they were before she showed up. She does not accept criticism because to her, its an insult towards her perceived notion of do good.

She also has, what I personally hate, an insufferable ego. She is very egotistical to the point she thinks she is the worlds main character and every slight is a personal one against her. She has such an inflated sense of importance despite how often she fails and leaves ruin in her failing wake. She enjoys cruelty, she enjoys seeing her enemies burn alive or in horrible torture, she enjoys when people fear her, she enjoys knowing she could burn cities to the ground and thats why no one steps out of line.

Now, this all actually makes her interesting. Because it is. Following the story of a growing, evil, tyrant in the making is fascinating. But as a person, I hate her. She is everything I think good people, especially in this series, stand for and fight and sacrifice against. She is everything good people in this series fight so hard to protect the innocent from, but she enjoys that she is that.

The notion in certain realms of this fandom that she has always been this person trying to do good, is a falsehood. Its buying into the very message Dany is trying to tell people, when every single thing she actually does proves otherwise. She WANTS to burn and destroy. She WANTS to make people fear her and she WANTS to torture people in the most brutal fashions possible.

Now, obviously not all Targaryeans are bad people, but many are. Beacuse their entire family raises each other to exist and propagate this dangerous, damaging, and disgusting culture they’ve brought over from a place that the rest of the world is glad are gone. As long as a Targaryean lives by the ideals of fire and blood, they are doomed to die, because the world has decided they no longer will put up with it.

As for dragons, grrm has made it very clear that dragons in this series are the fantasy equivalent of atomic weapons. So you can image I find it baffling people think the literal one for one metaphor for nukes, are supposed to ever be seen as a force for good that deserves to exist.

Anyways sorry you’re new the fandom and found my blog, cus I imagine now you are hovering your finger over the block button like “block now or wait and see what other thousand word long rants shes got in her.”

Spoiler: the answer is too many.

[shkspr]

hi. on your post where you may or may not have ended on 'moffat is either your angel or your devil' did you have maybe an elaboration on that somewhere that i could possibly hear about. i'm very much a capaldi era stan and i've never tried to defend the matt smith era even though it had delightful moments sometimes so i wonder where that puts me. i'd love to hear your perspective on moffat as a person with your political perspective. -nicole

hi ok sorry i took so long to respond to this but i dont think you know how LOADED this question is for me but i am so happy to elaborate on that for you. first a few grains of salt to flavor your understanding of the whole situation: a. im unfairly biased against moffat bc im a davies stan and a tennant stan; b. i still very much enjoy and appreciate moffat era who for many reasons; and c. i hate moffat on a personal level far more than i could ever hate his work.

the thing is that its all always gonna be a bit mixed up bc i have to say a bunch of seemingly contradictory things in a row. for instance, a few moffat episodes are some of my absolute favorites of the rtd era, AND the show went way downhill when moffat took over, AND the really good episodes he wrote during the rtd era contained the seeds of his destruction.

like i made that post about the empty child/the doctor dances and it holds true for blink and thats about it bc the girl in the fireplace and silence in the library/forest of the dead are good but not nearly on the same level, and despite the fact that i like them at least nominally, they are also great examples of everything i hate about moffat and how he approached dw as a whole.

basically. doctor who is about people. there are many things about moffats tenure as showrunner that i think are a step up from rtd era who! actual gay people, for one! but i think that can likely be attributed mostly to an evolving Society as opposed to something inherent to him and his work, seeing as rtd is literally gay, and the existence of queer characters in moffats work doesnt mean the existence of good queer characters (ill give him bill but thats it!)

i have a few Primary Grievances with moffat and how he ran dw. all of them are things that got better with capaldi, but didnt go away. they are as follows:

moffat projects his own god complex onto the doctor

rtd era who had a doctor with a god complex. you cant ever be the doctor and not have a god complex. the problem with moffats era specifically is that the god complex was constant and unrepentant and was seen as a fundamental personality trait of the doctor rather than a demon he has to fight. he has the Momence where you feel bad for him, the Momence where he shows his humility or whatever and youre reminded that he doesnt want to be the lonely god, but those are just. moments. in a story where the doctor thinks hes the main character. rtd era doctor was aware that he wasnt the main character. he had to be an authority sometimes and he had to be the loner and he had to be sad about it, but he ultimately understood that he was expendable in a narrative sense.

this is how you get lines like “were the thin fat gay married anglican marines, why would we need names as well?” from the same show that gave you the gut punch moment at the end of midnight when they realize that nobody asked the hostess for her name. and on the one hand, thats a small sticking point, but on the other hand, its just one small example of the simple disregard that moffat has for humanity.

incidentally, this is a huge part of why sherlock sucked so bad: moffats main characters are special bc theyre so much bigger and better than all the normal people, and thats his downfall as a showrunner. he thinks that his audience wants fucking sheldon cooper when what they want is people.

like, ok. think of how many fantastic rtd era eps are based in the scenario “what if the doctor wasnt there? what if he was just out of commission for a bit?” and how those eps are the heart of the show!! bc theyre about people being people!! the thing is that all of the rtd era companions would have died for the doctor but he understood and the story understood that it wasnt about him.

this is like. nine sending rose home to save her life and sacrifice his own vs clara literally metaphysically entwining her existence w the doctor. ten also sending rose with her family to save her life vs river being raised from infancy to be obsessed w the doctor and then falling in love w him. martha leaving bc she values herself enough to make that decision vs amy being treated like a piece of meat.

and this is simultaneously a great callback to when i said that moffats episodes during the rtd era sometimes had the same problems as his show running (bc girl in the fireplace reeks of this), and a great segue into the next grievance.

moffat hates women

he hates women so fucking much. g-d, does steven moffat ever hate women. holy shit, he hates women. especially normal human women who prioritize their normal human lives on an equal or higher level than the doctor. moffat hated rose bc she wasnt special by his standards. the empty child/the doctor dances is the nicest he ever treated her, and she really didnt do much in those eps beyond a fuck ton of flirting.

girl in the fireplace is another shining example of this. youve got rose (who once again has another man to keep her busy, bc moffat doesnt think shes good enough for the doctor) sidelined for no reason only to be saved by the doctor at the last second or whatever. and then youve got reinette, who is pretty and powerful and special!

its just. moffat thinks that the doctor is as shallow and selfish as he is. thats why he thinks the doctor would stay in one place with reinette and not with rose. bc moffat is shallow and sees himself in the doctor and doesnt think he should have to settle for someone boring and normal.

not to mention rose met the doctor as an adult and chose to stay with him whereas reinette is. hm. introduced to the doctor as a child and grows up obsessed with him.

does that sound familiar? it should! bc it is also true of amy and river. and all of them are treated as viable romantic pairings. bc the only women who deserve the doctor are the ones whose entire existence revolves around him. which includes clara as well.

genuinely i think that at least on some level, not even necessarily consciously, that bill was a lesbian in part bc capaldi was too old to appeal to mainstream shippers. like twelve/clara is still a thing but not as universally appealing as eleven/clara but i am just spitballing. but i think they weighed the pros and cons of appealing to the woke crowd over the het shippers and found that gay companion was more profitable. anyway the point is to segue into the next point, which is that moffat hates permanent consequences.

moffat hates permanent consequences

steven moffat does not know how to kill a character. honestly it feels like hes doing it on purpose after a certain point, like he knows he has this habit and hes trying to riff on it to meme his own shit, but it doesnt work. it isnt funny and it isnt harmless, its bad writing.

the end of the doctor dances is so poignant and so meaningful and so fucking good bc its just this once! everybody lives, just this once! and then he does p much the same thing in forest of the dead - this one i could forgive, bc i do think that preserving those peoples consciousnesses did something for the doctor as a character, it wasnt completely meaningless. but everything after that kinda was.

rory died so many times its like. get a hobby lol. amy died at least once iirc but it was all a dream or something. clara died and was erased from the doctors memory. river was in prison and also died. bill? died. all of them sugarcoated or undone or ignored by the narrative to the point of having effectively no impact on the story. the point of a major character death is that its supposed to have a point. and you could argue that a piece of art could be making a point with a pointless death, ie. to put perspective on it and remind you that bad shit just happens, but with moffat the underlying message is always “i can do whatever i want, nothing is permanent or has lasting impact ever.”

basically, with moffat, tragedy exists to be undone. and this was a really brilliant, really wonderful thing in the doctor dances specifically bc it was the doctor clearly having seen his fair share of tragedy that couldnt be helped, now looking on his One Win with pride and delight bc he doesnt get wins like this! and then moffat proceeded to give him the same win over and over and over and over. nobody is ever dead. nobody is ever unable to be saved. and if they are, really truly dead and/or gone, then thats okay bc moffat has decided that [insert mitigating factor here]*

*the mitigating factor is usually some sort of computerized database of souls.

i can hear the moffat stans falling over themselves to remind me that amy and rory definitely died, and they did - after a long and happy life together, they died of old age. i dont consider that a character death any more than any other character choosing to permanently leave the tardis.

and its not just character deaths either, its like, everything. the destruction of gallifrey? never mind lol! character development? scrapped! the same episode four times? lets give it a fifth try and hope nobody notices. bc he doesnt know how to not make the doctor either an omnipotent savior or a self-pitying failure.

it is in nature of doctor who, i believe, for the doctor to win most of the time. like, it wouldnt be a very good show if he didnt win most of the time. but it also wouldnt be a very good show if he won all of the time. my point is that moffats doctor wins too often, and when he doesnt win, it feels empty and hollow rather than genuinely humbling, and you know hes not gonna grow from it pretty much at all.

so like. again, i like all of doctor who i enjoy all of it very much. i just think that steven moffat is a bad show runner and a decent writer at times. and it is frustrating. and im not here to convince or convert anyone im just living my truth. thank you for listening.

[jakey-beefed-it]

Rather boring, rather personal musings on relating to monsters below the cut

I don’t have any of the same struggles that non-cis, non-straight, non-men have, but there’s a whole lot of music written by, for, and/or about non-cis non-straight love that *really* resonates with me. And sure, part of that is empathy- it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to contemplate a version of myself that wasn’t straight or cis, and thus putting myself in others’ position isn’t a big stretch -but I think part of it is also related to me being... and this is going to sound really offensive so please bear with me... fat and ugly.

It’s not to the same degree by a mile and then some, but there is certain othering, a view of any sexual feelings I might have as somehow *monstrous* or *grotesque* which is similar in kind if nowhere similar in magnitude to how, say, a gay man might be made to feel when confronted with heteronormative society. In a very different way, yeah, but we’re both doing masculinity ‘wrong’, if that makes sense. And the whole ‘redefine masculinity as being an incel jackass’ thing doesn’t work for me because I’m not *actually* a monster, I just *feel* like one sometimes. 

I went to an all-’boys’ (several of whom turned out to not be boys at all in later years) Catholic high school. I wasn’t Catholic then and I certainly never will be having gone there, but it was the best education in the vicinity and I figured it would give me the best odds at college. So for four years, basically the only girls I encountered were through sister schools; coming over to work on theatre productions with us. None of them was especially interested in me, and several of them were openly contemptuous, but that probably has more to do with theatre people frequently being a bit shallower than most about looks and Catholic school girls being a bit shallower than most about finances; at the time I wasn’t considered *good*-looking but I wasn’t a freak or anything. I dated a couple of people (not one of whom I met through theatre), went off to college, and had *no goddamn idea* how to talk to women. 

I figured it out within a year or so (pro tip: talk to women like you’d talk to anyone else, duh) but yeah, during that year and the one previous I went from ‘husky’ or perhaps ‘chubby’ to ‘morbidly obese’. So while the circumstances changed (no longer surrounded by a limited pool of people looking for someone handsomer and/or wealthier) to some extent, the whole ‘hm, no one has ever desired me carnally’ thing stuck around. And that doesn’t feel great, obviously. 

Compounding matters, I’m *somewhere* on the grey/demi/asexual spectrum. In that I can certainly find people *attractive* but the thought of *actually having sex* with them is more off-putting than appealing unless I’m Properly Smitten. And literally only one of the people I’ve ever been Properly Smitten with has ever felt the same way. The rest varied from embarrassed disinterest to sympathetic disinterest. 

So that’s *another* way in which I’m ‘doing masculinity wrong’, apparently- not out trying to make as many ‘conquests’ as possible, not especially even interested in *sex* beyond the right planetary alignment. I do *have* a libido (though it’s suppressed somewhat due to depression, weight, and medication) but it’s not the sort of thing that would ever lead me to make dumb decisions, if that makes sense. 

So yeah. Spent most of my life being made to feel somehow inadequate as a man for my relative lack of sexual feelings, then being made to feel disgusting and monstrous for them when they *do* come up. I’m mostly straight, I’m pretty comfortable being male, I’m not even properly *a*sexual, so I’m never going to *really* ‘get it’ with regard to being Acctually LGBTQIA+, but on some level... maybe because of empathy, maybe because of experiencing the tiniest version of that sort of social stigma, I kinda almost maybe get it sometimes.

Anyhow that’s probably why I nearly broke down crying at the age of 21 when seeing fucking *Shrek* of all things, why my favorite d&d character is a hulking slab of a tiefling with a kind heart, why I feel like Guillermo Del Toro *gets* it in the way that most people don’t. 

I’m doing lots better lately- both mentally and physically -which is probably why I have the self-reflection to *analyze* myself and my thoughts beyond ‘People don’t like me because I suck.’ So if you’re reading this and worrying about me, 1.) aww 2.) nah it’s cool, I’m just Contemplating.

Meh, I’m not entirely sure where I was going with this beyond “It’s a Sin,” by the Pet Shop Boys and “Losing my Religion” by REM are really good songs that I have no right to relate to but somehow strongly do anyway. Loads of other songs fit the same mold but those were the two that brought out this word vomit.

If you’ve read all the way to the end, woof, thanks? I’m sorry? Please keep all replies to the reply function or private message, I don’t want this thing seen by all kinds of people who don’t know me and are more inclined to take it in bad faith. As a bribe/reward for getting this far, here is a picture of my cat, Frisbee.

He’s also morbidly obese, but people don’t seem to mind that as much in cats.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

I have a silly Napoleon ask for you: if he suddenly woke up in the present day what do you think he would a)like most about it b) like least about it c)get unreasonably addicted to d)decide to do for a living

hahah I’ve answered a similar one before here and here. 

Most Like About It: A lot, I think. Central heating. Guys, he’d fucking love central heating.

In general, he’d love most technological advances. Cars, planes, trains etc. like he’d be very into that. “Bertrand we’re going to ride the TGV all day every day. Look at how fast we are going! This is genius.” 

“Bertrand WE ARE IN THE SKY. This is AMAZING. We are going from Paris to Rome in a matter of HOURS. HOURS BERTRAND. WE DON’T HAVE TO CROSS MOUNTAINS.” (sorry just assuming this is exile Napoleon who woke up in modern day.) 

Public transit in general - the metro, buses - anything that makes life more efficient for people. Dishwasher, washers/dryers, modern electricity, laptops, printers, ball point pens etc. 

I suspect he’d be a big supporter of public health care and all the advances made on vaccines and medicine in general. 100% would hate anti-vaxxers. Pro-modern glasses (he’d get himself a pair asap. Then they’d explain contacts to him and I think he’d be like “WAIT NO, I WANT THOSE.” He would not be into lasik, I suspect). 

Modern hygiene! Razors, tooth brushes, floss, moisturizer - general daily body care he’d probably be keen on. (All that stuff we take for granted.) Though maybe not all of it, he was quite traditional in certain things (his penchant for older fashion, par exemple). Maybe he’d keep the old straight razor shaving approach. But modern dentistry would be a huge improvement and I can’t see him being against it. Especially as someone who had a tooth extracted in the early 19th century. 

‘Oh they give you pain killers now? Fantastic.’ 

‘Sir, we just numb the area where we are doing the work.’ 

‘So it doesn’t impede my awareness? Amazing. Please, fix all my teeth right now.’ 

He’d also support the greater access to education that exists, especially compared to his day. Also, streaming services. He would binge so many things. ‘Bertrand we are watching every thing this very soothing sounding British naturalist made about planet earth. Holy shit look at that they’re under water! They’re at the bottom of the ocean! Bertrand look at this. if only Josephine were here. She’d be so excited.’ 

Pro-zoom/Microsoft teams/facetime etc. 100%. ‘If I had this instead of people relying on my bad handwriting ...’ 

Oh, he’d like the EU as a concept. Except he would be very disappointed that France wasn’t at the helm. I think France’s position globally would disappoint him, overall. But yeah, the broad principles espoused by the concept of the European Union would appeal to him. 

Brexit though. Lol. I think he’d enjoy watching England shoot itself in the foot. But if you asked him for his opinion, as in “do you think the UK should do this” he would answer no. They should remain. 

He would like globalization, trade agreements, things like NAFTA, CETA etc. Supporter of big government. Reduction of religion in public sphere. Though would he be pro-banning visual manifestations of faith? (i.e. Hijab etc.) I don’t know. I doubt it. Simply because he was very focused on religion in government, so if churches aren’t involved in decision making, what citizens get up to on their own is their business (so long as you don’t cause problems). But I don’t know, he might be pro-it, because he was also into assimilation and creating a broad sense of a French culture. I could see him really going either way on it. It’d probably come down to whatever he thought would garner the most public support as a political move (since a lot of his more liberal moves as a leader were tied to understanding that marginalized communities would gun hard for him if he helped them). 

He would be pro-mask wearing for COVID because he wasn’t a fucking idiot and lived in a time when pandemics were still a real going concern. 

He would also probably like how comfortable modern clothing is. I don’t think he’d like how cheap and made-to-wear-out that most brands are, but he’d like the over all philosophy. Like Napoleon would dig t-shirts. Lounge wear. The fact that jeans have some stretch in them. That sort of thing. 

-- 

Least Like: I think he’d be very wary of the internet. For many reasons. For the lack of government control (Napoleon “What is a free press? never heard of her” Bonaparte). But also, because of the misinformation problems. The side effects many of us are now bearing witness to, and experiencing the ramifications of. 

He would dislike the whole fake news nonsense. Oh this man was a master spin-doctor, very good at twisting a narrative around to suit him, but he still did have respect for and a firm belief in basic facts. Especially fake news that usurped the sound advise of scientists and doctors (i.e. COVID nonsense). 

Free press, I think he would be wary of it. Mostly from a government control perspective. Like as a day-to-day citizen, since he wouldn’t be anyone in power in this hypothetical, I think he’d value it. He would do that disassocative thing he did when he talked about things in the abstract. That cold, calculating way he would position himself in a situation and be like “Ah yes, these are the things that need to be tamped down if you want control of a populace as a monarch”. Then he had his more liberal, call-back-to-that-misspent-jacobin-youth moments where his views shifted. 

I suppose it would also depend what age this hypothetical Napoleon is. He softened a lot in retirement exile. Napoleon at the height of his power, thirty-odd years old, different man to fifty year old Napoleon. 

Would not be into women in politics. He’d be like ‘Why is there a woman in charge of Germany? Also what happened to the Habsburgs? Where’s Prussia? Silesia? What the FuCk is happening in the Balkans? I’m very confused about Europe’s current geographic layout. ...Corsica...still doing you, I see.’ 

He’d dislike Trump and his cronies. As I wrote before: “ I think Napoleon would find Trump disgusting on a personal level. Uneducated, incapable of holding a real conversation, gauche, anti-intellectual, anti-fact-based discussion, anti-science, anti-art etc. He’d also feel that Trump is disgracing the position of President and that he is unworthy of leadership. Napoleon would also find Trump physically repulsive as he could be a wee bit shallow in some of his assessments (though, very early modern to 19th century to assume your physical appearance is a manifestation of your interiority).” 

Steve Bannon’s fiddling with finances? Napoleon would find that repulsive. Mitch Mcconnell disgracing his office by fucking around with constitutional loop holes? Napoleon would think it a disgrace. 

He had a lot of respect for America’s experiment with democracy. Like, quite a lot of respect. So I think he’d be vastly disappointed in not only the person occupying the white house, but also a lot of the apathy in voting that is going around. (Yes, this coming from a [mostly] absolutest monarch, too.) But Napoleon valued and respected the notion of civic duty. If you live in a democracy, you have a duty to participate. To opt out is to shirk that duty which he would find insulting and distasteful. Because, I would argue, he was very much a believer in people doing right by their fellow citizens. 

--

Get unreasonably addicted to: MODERN BATHS. HE WOULD NEVER LEAVE THE BATHTUB. THEY CAN HAVE JETS AND EVERYTHING BERTRAND THIS IS GREAT. 

Also central heating. Saunas. Jacuzzis. He was like a wee lizard seeking warmth at all times. 

I think he’d be into driving. I don’t know if he would be good at it. Don’t let Napoleon take the wheel, guys. But if someone else was driving he’d be that person “go faster. you’re driving like my grandmother.” And gods, he’d do dumb shit like drive like a maniac around the arc de triumph six times in a row because he’s an adrenaline junkie and a risk-taker (it’s that bored ADD brain of his). The autobahn would be his dream. 

I think he’d be super into epic fantasy series. Like the big sweeping ones like Lord of the Rings. I think less so GRRM because GRRM is unrealistic and Napoleon is pedantic. Especially about politics and war. Exhibit A: consider Napoleon’s very detailed nitpicking of Virgil on his inaccurate rendition of Troy from a military perspective. Therefore, I suspect GRRM’s lack of accuracy in how society works, how war works, how politics works, all the plot holes and illogical character decisions, would drive him up the wall. Napoleon liked Homer because he could tell Homer had been to war. And you can tell Tolkien has been to war. Also LOTR hits all those notes of high-hearted emotion and big sweeping scenes that Napoleon so liked in Ossian and the Illiad etc.

All this to say, overall, as a genre, I think those big, sweeping fantasies with lots of plot, politics, intrigue, soaring battles, great heights of emotion - he’d love that. It would hit all of his buttons for what he liked in fiction. Lots of emotion, lots of action, lots of big scenes, lots of crazy shenanigans. This can also be applied to Sci-fi. I think he’d be a big nerd on that too. But the science would have to make sense. 

I think he’d be into Star Trek, particularly Picard, if only for the philosophical aspects of it. He liked those sorts of questions and hypotheticals. So I think he’d binge all of The Next Generation (among other seasons). 

--

Do for a living: Teach? God knows. This is Napoleon from 18-something who just woke up? He could be paid for consultant work for historians and film crews and the like, I guess. Just to tell them how accurate stuff is. Of course, be wary, this is Napoleon I Am A Spin Doctor Bonaparte. 

I think he could lean into writing histories - particularly the classics, early French and European history - that sort of thing, where he already has a strong background in it and it wouldn’t require him basically learning an entirely new trade. Like, will Napoleon ever fully be a natural with computers and cell phones? Probably not. Could he be like your old school Professor emeritus who still churns out papers and does 90% of it the old fashioned by-hand way? Yes. And Napoleon had a bunch of histories planned on St. Helena that he wanted to write, so I think he could do that. 

As this is literally Napoleon Bonaparte he’d get a book deal in seconds. There’d be a bidding war over it. 

--

Thank you for the ask! This was very amusing :D 

[werevulvi]

I haven't made much of any personal posts here lately, and it's mostly because I've been too busy burying my feelings to be aware of them, and too busy living my life. Don't really remember what I posted here last time, but was probably either that bisexual coming out post or a gender ramble about identifying as a trans man again. So let's take it from there.

I intend to make a youtube video on this topic as well, in which I'll go more in depth, so I'll try to keep this short...er than usual.

For most of this year, I've been back to "presenting male" (i.e. not trying to pass as female again, and instead going with my "new" default which is that I just look like a dude) and for the past few months or so I've been back to labeling myself as a trans man again.

However, I still see myself as a woman deep down. I'm just terrified of facing the consequences yet again, of being open and honest about it, without detransitioning. Because I don't want to detransition anymore. Only re-identify. And I wanna go back on testosterone again simply because I felt better on it, and its pros outweigh its cons for me personally. It even feels like I was somehow healthier on it, actually. Or at the very least, testosterone has been very kind to me.

Also, I've been thinking lately that maybe I don't actually have any sex dysphoria anymore. Because I don't wanna be male anymore, and I've come to truly like being female, after overcoming my past trauma, which caused my hatred of being female to begin with. However, I also genuinely like my transition traits, which I always have, and cling on to them firmly. My discomfort with looking clearly female on a clothed surface level seems to be more similar to how any/most masculine women feel discomfort in dresses and makeup.

It's only dysphoria in the sense that it's a persistent and consistent pattern of comfort/discomfort with my gender presentation - NOT in the sense that I actually wish I was the opposite sex. And I'm actually grateful that transitioning can't take my female nature away from me, only change what it looks like. So, the reality of what transitioning can do, is EXACTLY what I want. Transitioning is not an escape from my sex; it helps me connect better, more positively, and more strongly to how great it can actually be to be female. It's just my strongly preferred presentation and social role. I do not wish to actually be male for real. So basically, I'm just gender non-conforming in an unconventional way. I've thought that thought many times before, but never quite managed to understand what it means until now.

I'd still prefer being able to continue presenting very masculine/male, but just declaring myself as a woman instead of as a trans man. Problem is though, that doesn't work particularly well in practice. Unless I wanna explain wtf I mean by "I'm a woman" while looking like a whole ass man, to every single person I ever meet. And frankly, I don't have enough spoons for that shit. No one fucking does.

I don't mind being seen as a man by default. The only thing that's missing is that I can't help but feeling like I'm not allowed to speak my truth in its full honesty, be vulnerable and real with people about myself. Not everyone needs to know how I see myself deep down, but sometimes I just want to be able to speak freely about things relating to me being a woman when that is relevant, you know. And believe it or not, that comes up rather frequently.

But I feel like I can't do that because people are only ever interested in debating whether I'm actually a real female or a zero effort trans woman, and question my reasons for living as a man. People don't have to agree with me or validate me, but what I can't understand is what's so difficult to understand about a woman choosing to live as a man? The only difference is that I choose to do it by medical means additionally to dressing and the social roles I take on. Because we have that option now in the 21st century.

The idea that I have to put in effort to even just be believed to be female... it upset me so bad that I basically started feeling that I can't ever talk of myself as a woman again, and have to keep pretending that I'm a man at all times, only because of the way I choose to look. Despite my female nature is a permanent condition, I feel like I'm often not allowed to reclaim my womanhood unless I desecrate my body first. I was flabbergasted by the astonishing absurdity behind that. It made reach out for the trans man label once again, but unfortunately I ended up hiding behind my same old lie a second time. Because I was essentially bullied away from identifying with my own sex, because I wasn't performing womanhood "right." How far am I willing to go for the sake of authenticity...?

To clarify, I'm not speaking of wanting any "right" to have others recognise me as a woman or to call me by she/her or any of that shallow shit - I'm only speaking of my wish to call myself a woman, and the extremely disheartening backlash that comes as a result of doing so. And how much I've debated with myself whether it's even worth it then. And I guess I've realised that it is worth it. Because I'd rather hurt from the other people's shit getting thrown in my face, than hurting myself. But I have no idea how to actually handle it in practice.

I feel a lot of shame about it, admittedly. I feel like it's shameful for a woman to look like me, let alone willingly. I've seen the frowns on people's faces after telling them, and I can't help but interpret their narrow mouths and upturned noses as expression of disgust at my character. And oh fuck it hurts so much, it sends me spiraling into dark places, until I can't stand my own reflection anymore. In my panic and desperation I then turn to other labels to call myself, to hide under and -protect- suffocate myself with.

Truth is I'm incredibly ashamed of being this extremely masculine, hairy and balding, as a woman. But I like it if I just don't think of myself as a woman. And it's not because I feel bad about the way I look. On the contrary... it's because I genuinely like the way I look, but society's standards on women eat away at my confidence. Oh why does it fucking matter, it's just a label? You might be thinking. I'll tell you why it matters: I feel empowered and proud of myself, at being credited as a woman. But I feel robbed of that power and pride, when credited as a man. As though I am being over-shadowed by a lie which was put in place only for the comfort of others. Because a man did not accomplish what I did. A man did not struggle through the hell I lived. A man did not learn to love himself after a lifetime of self-hatred, against all odds, to overcome what he hid. A woman did. It does make a difference whether I speak of myself as a trans man who grew up female and is happy with his transition, but no longer hates the nature of his biology - or if I speak of myself as a woman whose traumatic female upbringing brought her through a gender transition, which she now refuses to leave behind, just like her womanhood. Because it is those two aspects combined, that truly makes her shine. And I want to shine. I hope that clears it up.

[targaryen-stronghold]

As a Jonerys fan, one of the reasons S8 was so shitty is it made Dany/Jon's relationship look very ... uneven or one sided. S7 ended very clearly with Dany and Jon, both as equally powerful allies and rulers. Then S8 basically has Daenerys doing all the work while getting shit on by the North and the Stark sisters and Jon is just ... there? He at least upholds his word to go with her and lead Northern forces to KL but that's basically it?

They had some good moments in Episode 1 but then it went down the hill from there. Even then, Dany letting Jon riding Rhaegal was complete nonsense. It was total fanservice and nothing more. Dany had a hard time training her dragons and even flying them (remember Drogon refusing to fly back to Meereen?), but Jon due to his “cock power” not only flies Rhaegal like a pro, he actually goes into battle on dragonback on his second ride. What a bunch of bullshit. Also, the waterfall scene doesn’t make any sense with Season 8 plot: so Dany is this “power-hungry tyrant” but she wouldn’t mind leave everything behind to live with Jon in the wilderness? What? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is why Season 8 failed and the narrative is utter nonsense. They needed Dany and her resources to save the North but they wanted to turn her into a villain, and these two don’t add up. You can’t have a queen honoring her word and doing her part of the bargain and then calling her a tyrant. You can’t have her tolerating the Starks openly disrespecting her in front of her subjects and calling her a tyrant. Whoever wrote or even agrees with this bullshit never pick up a History book. I’m a History major and I had some good laughs at this fandom stupidity when it comes to Medieval History. In real life, people were executed for less than talking shit to a monarch and these kings aren’t even remembered as tyrants. Remember when Grey Wind basically eat Lord Umber’s hand because he disrespected Robb? Yeah, I don’t recall anyone calling Robb a tyrant because he threatened his subjects with his direwolf to assure his leadership over them. You see: when a man does it, it’s cool and awesome but when a woman does it, it’s “madness” and tyrannical.

When we look at the overall story, Jon and Dany relationship leaves a sour taste in my mouth and doesn’t add up with what was previously established in Season 7. In Season 8, Jon never tells others that he willingly bent the knee to Dany because she proved herself worthy by being willing to sacrifice herself for her people (rescue mission beyond the Wall), nor that Dany pledged herself to the Northern cause of defeating the Night King and his army before he bent the knee. Whenever others attack Dany, his only response is “she’s my queen” or whatever: he never reveals the things she did to prove herself worthy of his allegiance and love. By vilifying Dany, Jon was basically turned into a horny buffoon in Season 8: he only wants her because she’s hot, he’s thinking with his dick - that’s basically what the narrative is saying. But we watched Season 7, we know that’s some bullshit right there. Jon and Dany both care deeply about their people and they were chosen as leaders. They were equals: a King and Queen. They also fell in love in the worst of times but their love was supposed to represent a beacon of hope in the darkness to come. And don’t even bring up the incest part when the ultimate love story of this crap was Cersei and Jaime’s. All the talk about Dany and children in Season 7 apparently didn’t mean anything. Also, Jon basically taking credit for Dany’s accomplishments (riding a dragon, facing the Night King on dragonback, etc.) and never praising her is some disgusting whole level of sexism. Dany is never praised for her role in the Battle of Winterfell: her armies were slaughtered, she rode Drogon and faced the Night King, she picked up a dragonglass sword and fought, and she lost Jorah. But her efforts are never acknowledged. Actually, when she was out there fighting and risking her life, the Lady of the House was hiding inside and talking shit about her. 

Dany has every right to be pissed at the feast when Jon is right there being congratulated for doing the same shit as she did. Varys looks at her suspiciously like she’s wrong in reacting this way (and later he tells Tyrion he worries about her state of mind). This bullshit was so obviously written by men: women everywhere know what is like to have a man taking credit for their deeds. After the feast, Jon is drunk and wants to kiss and have sex with Dany but stops himself. She just lost Jorah but he never bothers to ask how she’s doing. She asks him to keep his parentage a secret because hell would break lose. Dany is absolutely right and all her fears come true: people actually go on their way to conspire to kill her and place Jon in the throne instead. You aren’t paranoid or mentally instable if your instincts are right and people are out there to get you. And don’t even get me started about how awful this story is towards mentally ill people by representing them as “evil” and “monsters”. This so wrong and fucked up, I can’t even find the words to express my disgust. Then, Dany loses both Rhaegal and Missandei and she’s mourning them. In some repulsive fashion, they show us Dany with bags under her eyes and her hair unkempt: this was supposed to be an indicator she was mentally instable (yikes). Jon arrives at Dragonstone but does he care in comforting her? No. He shallowly says he loves her and pushes her away. But where the fuck is this love he’s talking about? When I first saw this scene, I immediately recalled this scene from “Closer” (2004):

This is Jon’s love for Dany in Season 8 in a nutshell. The narrative says Jon does love Dany. But this “love” is shallow and meaningless concerning his actions towards her: he doesn’t support her, he doesn’t stand up for her and he isn’t even there when she needs him the most. She is going through a harsh time and he gives her the side-eye when she rightfully executes Varys for treason (he was trying to kill her): apparently Jon kind of forgot he executed a child who killed him because he befriended the wildings (who, you know, murdered and eaten Olly’s family and forced him to watch). This is emotional abuse in my book. Have you ever watched “Midsommar” (2019)? Season 8 Jon is like the protagonist’s abusive boyfriend, This goes full circle when Jon murders Dany because he wants to protect himself and Arya, Sansa and Bran. But does he try to understand Dany or her motifs? No, she’s a tyrant, period. She wants to kill everyone even tho she never says this. I already talked about how OCC it was for Dany to burn down King’s Landing. She wants to break the wheel and the masters of Westeros are the feudal lords. Of course Dany is threat to every Lord in Westeros because she wants to give power to the people, the smalfolk. The people would then decide who they wanted to rule them. The Northern people might still choose a Stark to lead them… or not. That’s a treat to the Stark dominion over the North.

Either way: all of it was bullshit and offensive and these writers can go fuck themselves for even thinking this was okay.

[recentanimenews]

Bookshelf Briefs 12/1/20

Cutie and the Beast, Vol. 1 | By Yuhi Azumi| Seven Seas – This looked cute, and gave off a very My Love Story!! vibe, but I was wary of the fact that one of the leads is in his late twenties and the other is a senior in high school. That said, unlike a lot of other romance titles from Japan that adore this sort of couple, the manga makes their age difference the main conflict. He’s a famous pro wrestler, and getting involved with a girl her age, even if she is eighteen, would be career-killing. On the other hand… these two have fallen hard for each other almost at first sight, and can’t stop texting, calling, meeting up, etc. Now, how this will play out I’m not sure. Pretty sure they’ll get together, but I bet his career does take a big hit. Nice to see the manga address it, though. – Sean Gaffney

How Do We Relationship?, Vol. 1 | By Tamifull | Viz Media – “Opposites attract” is a common enough trope, but it is utilized to great effect and with notable complexity in How Do We Relationship?. The manga follows two young women in college as they begin dating each other—the somewhat shy and innocent Miwa and the much more boisterous and experienced Saeko. Navigating a new relationship is rarely easy and a romance between two women has additional sets of challenges, as Saeko in particular is very aware. While Miwa and Saeko’s deepening feelings are obviously core to the story, their relationships with friends and classmates play critical roles as well. One of the things that impressed me the most about the first volume of How Do We Relationship? was just how believable and realistic all of these different relationships were. The characterization of the leads is wonderfully nuanced, too. I’m really looking forward to reading more of the series. – Ash Brown

Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 9 | By Tomohito Oda | Viz Media – Most of this Komi volume revolves around Valentine’s Day, which as always presents the author with a conundrum: how do I make them give chocolates and be the cutest couple ever without actually making them a couple or having them confess? Rest assured, though, fans of Komi and Tadano will find endless scenes to love here. My favorite may be Tadano’s sister trying to get him to admit his feelings, then being rather annoyed when he actually comes close to doing so. Fortunately, as the title suggests, Komi is not very good at communicating, so things stay the same for now. Still, I suspect we need something to shake things up. Perhaps a new love interest could magically arrive soon? – Sean Gaffney

My Hero Academia, Vol. 25 | By Kohei Horikoshi | Viz Media – Shigaraki’s backstory is as terrifying and traumatic as you might imagine—let’s just say the hands he wears aren’t just for show. So it’s back to our heroes, who are practicing how to do hero interviews (Midoriya’s goes as badly as you’d expect) and also preparing for the next round of internships. Oh yes, and celebrating Christmas, which is adorable and also has Eri Santa. As for internships, Nighteye is dead and his agency is too busy to take him in, and Best Jeanist is missing, so Bakugou’s in limbo as well. Todoroki suggests an obvious idea: all three of them could intern with the best dad ever. All of this is clearly setting up a huge battle in the upcoming books, but it’s fun to see. – Sean Gaffney

Ossan Idol!, Vol. 1 | By Ichika Kino and Mochiko Mochida | TOKYOPOP – Adapted from a light novel, Ossan Idol! is the story of Miroku Osaki, a virginal, pure of heart, and unemployed 36-year-old who has spent the last decade as a shut-in. He’s always been overweight, but once he discovers a love of dance, he starts training at a gym with Yoichi Kisaragi, who was once overweight himself. Soon, Miroku is buff, handsome, and charming and the karaoke video he accidentally uploads to the internet becomes a viral sensation. The volume concludes with a famous producer declaring he’ll turn Miroku into an idol, and not just him but Yoichi (41) and dancer pal Shiju (40), too. All in all, this is a pleasing bit of fluff that I don’t have a lot to say about either positively or negatively. I will probably check out volume two, at least, to see where the story goes. – Michelle Smith

Sadako at the End of the World | By Koma Natsumi and Koji Suzuki | Yen Press – The premise of this one-volume manga—What if the girl from The Ring ended up in a post-apocalyptic world?—made me wonder if it would be horror or melancholic like Girls’ Last Tour. It’s pretty much both. Sadako, particularly once the artist gives her a tablet to communicate with, is not as scary here, and the girls she’s with are an innocent delight. But as they meet the few remaining people in this world along the way, there’s a definite sense she’s also going back and doing what she does best to each of them. The ending tries for sort of a fourth-wall-breaking thing but I think it was simply there as the author wasn’t sure how to end it after the cast was gone. A good read overall, though. – Sean Gaffney

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle, Vol. 13 | By Kagiji Kumanomata | Viz Media After reading my brief of the last volume, I feel a need to eat my words. The combination of this new volume and the currently running anime have made me realize: yes, there is real character development here. Syalis at the start of the series was a gag character who would murder at the drop of a hat. Here, while she’s still extremely flaky, she’s doing her best to unite humans and demons, even if this means completing all the Demon Lord’s paperwork—in ONE DAY. Even better, when the Cleric waffles on about his feelings for her and the reason he ran away from the castle, Syalis points out something: who she likes is her own decision. Our Sleepy Princess is all grown up! – Sean Gaffney

Sweat and Soap, Vol. 4 | By Kintetsu Yamada | Kodansha Comics – There’s a chapter of sex here, in case you were looking for that, but for the most part this series would rather deal with the sweet tensions of a young couple in love trying to negotiate how to do that and still be attentive to the other partner’s needs. Their couple-ness is now generally known to the office, though we have not quite told the parents yet—I suspect that will be next book. More importantly, they are talking about moving in together, something that requires charts and sticky notes, because these two are organized and also adorable. And they are also still very much desiring each other as well—the sex here is hot. One of the best romance mangas to come out in 2020. – Sean Gaffney

What the Font?! – A Manga Guide to Western Typeface | By Kuniichi Ashiya| Seven Seas – This is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. A young woman is told to layout a presentation, but has never done this before. While studying Western fonts, she falls asleep… and meets personifications of many of them, both Serif and Sans. Each font has a personality, they talk about themselves and their history, and then we move on. If you’re expecting Hetalia antics, look elsewhere—there’s no plot to speak of, and the fonts are not the most riveting characters. If you do want to learn about the differences between Western typefaces, though, this is a good enough guide for you, though I suspect it works even better in Japanese. – Sean Gaffney

Whisper Me a Love Song, Vol. 1 | By Eku Takeshima | Kodansha Comics – The cover of this volume is quite striking, and it led me to believe that this would be somehow different from your standard “high school girls in love” story. Unfortunately, it really isn’t. Yori Asanagi is a talented singer who fills in with the light music club band for a performance at the entrance ceremony Himari Kino is attending. Himari promptly informs Yori she’s fallen for her at first sight and Yori believes she means it romantically (instead of merely as a fan), and instantly falls in love herself. Characterizations here are shallow, particularly for Yori’s would-be bandmates, and there’s just not much going on that’s especially interesting. The one exception is that Himari’s enthusiastic appreciation for Yori’s singing is seemingly helping her to overcome some confidence issues. I’ll give this one more volume, I think, to see how it develops. – Michelle Smith

You Are My Princess | By Hiroto Kujirada | Futekiya (digital only) – Itsumi Tachibana is a scary-looking guy who secretly loves kitties. He’s surprised when the princely student council president, Seima Takajo, confesses romantic feelings for him, and suspects he’s being made fun of. After spending more time with Takajo, however, and realizing he’s the only one Takajo allows himself to be unguarded around, Itsumi’s feelings change. Plot-wise, You Are My Princess isn’t terribly unique. The guys get together, they have sex in the final chapter, the end. What makes it special, though, is Kujirada-sensei’s clean and expressive artwork, the nonverbal storytelling, and the little moments in which Takajo drops the facade and reveals real vulnerability. And also kitties. In the end, I enjoyed this cute story and look forward to more by this creator! – Michelle Smith

By: Ash Brown

[mautadite]

april book round up

20 books this month, which i didn’t see coming. i had more free time than expected, even with working from home and *makes vague hand gestures*. i still have a scribd membership so almost all these books came from there. also i’m putting some thought into reviewing on netgalley, so a couple from there as well.

american fairy tale - adriana herrera ⭐️⭐️⭐️ contemporary m/m romance in herrera’s dreamers series that follows immigrants and children of immigrants. this second book was fun, a kind of fairy tale romance as the title suggests. a rich guy/poor guy situation which isn’t usually my cup of tea, and the domineering, throw-money-at-every-situation personality of the rich guy got on my nerves, and i wasn’t totally sold on the way the conflict was resolved? but i enjoyed it. herrera’s books just have this down to earth vibe that i love.

unfit to print - k.j. charles ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ historical m/m romance. vikram, a young lawyer doing a lot of pro-bono work in the indian community in london, lost touch with his childhood friend gil years and years ago, is pretty sure he’s dead. so imagine his surprise when he comes across him in an unlikely occupation in an unlikely place. this was a charming, touching novella, really interesting historically, with a lot of cool titbits about porn in the 19th century. very sweet romance-wise.

american love story - adriana herrera ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ another dreamers novel, this one about a black professor and political activist and a white ADA who had a fling a while back and are now living in the same town. and same apartment building. lol. it did get into real world politics, which i know some people don’t like, but i honestly thought it well done? there were some great bits in this, good insight, one really harrowing moment, and just really great chemistry and character moments.

wanted, a gentleman - k.j. charles ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ more historical m/m romance from k.j. charles, which i always like, but this one i REALLY liked. which surprised me, because it’s a novella, and with novellas you never spend enough time with characters to really know them and their story and get attached? but that’s exactly what happened here. a well-to-do ex-slave and a poor gazette owner team up to untangle a young love affair. i seriously loved this, the characters are so good together. T__T

far from the world we know - harper bliss ⭐️⭐️ contemporary f/f romance about a young widow with a traumatic past who moves to a tiny new town to take care of her ailing aunt, and slowly falls into a relationship with the owner of the local newspaper. the premise was good, but this honestly felt like every single harper bliss book i’ve ever read, except it had nothing to recommend it. ask me why these characters even like each other. i can’t answer! 

the hound of justice - claire o'dell ⭐️⭐️ the second book in a series that re-imagines the sherlock holmes universe, except as near-future scifi set during a civil war, and both holmes and watson are black lesbians. i LOVED the first book (with a few caveats) and i’ve been looking forward to this one for so long... but it was disappointing. in terms of the writing, in terms of the direction the characters took, in terms of the plot... i have to wonder if i read the first one with rose-tinted glasses. :/ won’t be continuing this series.

the vintner's luck - elizabeth knox ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ *CLUTCHES MY CHEST WITH BOTH HANDS* in my goodreads review i said i didn’t know how to talk about this novel, and i still don’t. but i ADORED IT. so completely. in early 19th century france, the young son of a winegrower climbs a hill on his father’s property, and there, meets an angel. this is the story of them falling in love, but also about family and friendship, love and death. it’s written SO beautifully, and i’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

the family fang - kevin wilson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ OOOF. i went into this knowing that several friends loved it so i knew i probably was gonna too and i DID. it’s about two siblings whose parents have been obsessed (since before the birth of their children, and until the present day where they’re both grown) with the idea of creating perfect art, and how the kids survive that. i actually didn’t enjoy reading many parts of this, but only because it was so well written, if that makes sense? like, it took me right in there with some of the shitty emotions and just made me feel. OOOF.

mrs. martin's incomparable adventure - courtney milan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ a VERY sweet and charming historical f/f romance between a wealthy 74-yo widow and the cute young 69 (nice) yo landlady who comes to ask for her help. and then they have an adventure! i read it at a great time, because i was beginning to feel really bummed out about how people are trivialising and discounting the lives of older people in this crisis, and there was a really great message of like... life not being over until you SAY it’s over, living like you have 20 more years left. i loved it a lot.

his convenient husband - robin covington ⭐️⭐️ m/m contemporary fake marriage story, about a russian ballet dancer and the widowed american football player he marries to get citizenship. and then they fall in love for realsies. i love fake marriage as a trope, it can be so cute but this was very meh. if a book is gonna handle racism/homophobia in such a shallow way... i’d honestly prefer if the book just pretended those things don’t exist lol. :/ it’s also very very rushed and not well plotted at all. alas.

once ghosted, twice shy - alyssa cole ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ alyssa cole is like my good luck charm, because starting here, i read a bunch of lesbian romance novels that i really liked. this one is part of a series about reluctant royals, and follows the dapper assistant to a prince as she falls for a girl who seemingly ghosts her, and then meets her again months later. it’s a novella, and sort of relies on the fact that you would have met one of the characters in a previous book (which i did read). but i really really liked it, thought it was super cute, and the mcs had great chemistry. it was almost insta-love, which i really don’t like... but i still like this book so much. also best cover?? BEST COVER. 

who'd have thought - g. benson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ now THIS is fake marriage done right!!! f/f contemporary romance about a struggling nurse who comes across an ad offering a chunk of money in exchange for one year of marriage... and the person on the offering end turns out to be the cold, stuck-up but brilliant doctor at the hospital where she works. this was the perfect slow burn, with great character writing, really good set-up, very believable arc as they slowly fall in love. it got me so emotional at times. definitely gonna make sure i read more from this author.

three reasons to say yes - jaime clevenger ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ f/f contemporary about two women who strike up a romance while on vacation in hawaii; one an overworked professional, one a doctor-mom of twin girls. another winner for me. just an extremely cute, very genuine butch/femme romance. it’s funny because i definitely nitpicked on a lot of things in this book, but i only remember the parts of if that made me so fond.

we set the dark on fire - tehlor kay meija ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ f/f YA fantasy in a world deeply divided by class. in the upper echelons of society, girls are trained either to become one of the two wives of upper class men; the primera and the segunda. the story follows a girl who has faked her social class becoming the primera of a very powerful man, getting involved with revolutionaries, and developing a surprising relationship with her husband’s segunda. really interesting world-building, some lovely writing, a really heart-felt core. i had my nitpicks with the plot but i still super enjoyed it, really want to read the second part.

a tale of two mommies  - vanita oelschlager ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ netgalley book. a cute children’s story about a kid with two moms. <3

crier's war - nina varela ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ more f/f fantasy YA, this one with the added benefit of being about something that i ADORE reading about in fiction: artificial life. in this fantasy world, automae were created, perfected, became aware of their place in society, fought a war for their autonomy... and won. the story opens up 50 years later, in a society ruled by robots, where humans are subjugated. it follows the current robot ruler’s created daughter and a young human rebel whose one goal is to kill said daughter. i loved this SO much, the enemies to lovers trope was peeeerfect. i wish the writing was tighter, and some plot elements could have used cleaning up, but i enjoyed this so much. the ROMANCE especially was... gah! <3 the second book comes out soon, but i want it like, now.

second dad summer - benjamin klas ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ another netgalley book. a fun and charming primary/middle school story about a kid spending the summer with his father, and his father’s new boyfriend, who he doesn’t quite get along with. over the summer he makes new friends, nurtures some plants, learns some lessons. i thought this was well-written, touching, and does a pretty good job of telling kids about queer stuff. 

tempting fate - sloane kennedy ⭐️⭐️ contemporary m/m novella (short story honestly) about two ranch hands realising their feelings for one another. it was fine, i read it because i was in the mood for a quick HEA and i got that, but it was also kinda flat and there were several kinda irksome things about it. i reeeeeally don’t like overly possessive characters, lol.

all the reasons i need - jaime clevenger ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ more contemporary f/f romance, this one about long time friends who have been in love for ages, slowly coming to a place where they can finally admit their feelings and try to embark upon a relationship. again, while on vacation! this was a lot more sombre than the previous clevenger book, as it deals with past abuse and eating disorders. but i also found the writing to be better in general, and the relationship between the two women was just... so great. the writing definitely isn’t pulitzer prize-winning or anything, but there are so few good butch/femme books out there, i ate this up, and will def. be reading more from this author.

interpreter of maladies - jhumpa lahiri ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ speaking of pulitzer prize-winning authors... i’ve had this author and this book specifically at the back of my mind since secondary school; one of my literature teachers really loved it and would bring it up all the time. i really enjoyed it! it’s a collection of stories about the indian diaspora in america, as well as life on the subcontinent. i really like her writing (very simple, very precise, but very evocative) and there were a few really striking stories.

and that’s it for april. look at me, actually writing this entry on time, lol. for may i’m just gonna... keep reading whatever catches my eye on scribd i guess. i remember vaguely saying that by this time of the year i would have moved on to reading the books on my physical bookshelf that i haven’t gotten to yet but... i go where the wind takes me etc. currently reading silver moon, about women who turn into werewolves once they hit menopause? absolutely metal.

[sketching-shark]

Why The Alien Queen Is The Best Space Villain Ever

While James Cameron’s Aliens is a classic of the sci-fi/horror genre, I do feel a small plot summary is warranted in order to make my case of why the Alien Queen far outshines any sci-fi villain before or since. 

So we begin the story with the discovery of Ellen Ripley, former flight officer of the Nostromo, a space ship that she blew up in her first movie to prevent a dangerous extraterrestrial carnivore/parasite called a xenomorph from getting anywhere close to Earth. Discovered 57 years after the fact (she put herself in stasis on an escape pod), Ripley is almost immediately thrust into corporate and emotional hell by double-whammy of both discovering her daughter had died while she was in stasis and having her flight officer license revoked by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who she used to work for. This is, of course, in addition to the trauma that she sustained at the maw of the xenomorph from the first film, and now besides being thrust into a situation where she has to scramble for a job she’s massively overqualified for and that pays dust, she has constant nightmares. So basically, Ripley has had her entire life ripped apart and ruined by the actions of the Weyland-Utani corporation and the xenomorphs, and all this in addition to her learning that the planet where her deceased crew first discovered the xenomorph is now home to a terraforming colony of 158 people. Yet soon after Ripley’s rough reintroduction to the living world, the colony goes completely quiet, with xenomorph-related activity being indicated as a possible cause. And guess who’s called in to help with that mess? But even with her xenomorph-related trauma and absolute distrust of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Ripley agrees to go with a bunch of space marines to investigate with the understanding that they’re going to destroy the beasties and not even attempt to study them. 

Anyway, Ripley and a gaggle of space marines head down to the terraforming colony, and discover sure signs that there has been a xenomorph attack. Besides that, all the colonists have disappeared. They also discover a single survivor, a traumatized little girl nicknamed Newt. And THEN they discover that all the colonists were brought into a nuclear-powered atmosphere processing station by the xenomorphs, where they were subsequently forced to play tonsil-hokey with the first step of a xenomorph’s life process, a  facehugger, which infects its host with a parasite called a chestburster (the name is quite literal), which then turns into an all-grown-up xenomorph. Terrifying process, and just as painful as it sounds! and And just when you’ve discovered THAT bit of info, the xenomorphs go on full attack, making quick work of quite a few of the marines. And THEN it’s discovered that this all came about because one of Weyland-Yutani’s sleazy money-makers, a prick named Carter Burke, directed a couple of colonists to the spot Ripley said the xenomorph eggs encountered in the first movie were, and all because he wanted to profit from the xenomorphs’ potential use as biological weapons. Why did he do this? Because the desire for obscene amounts of possible cash makes you both evil and stupid.  

So the space marines and Ripley and Newt fight and struggle on, losing more and more members. The xenomorphs are RELENTLESS, neither taking nor giving quarter, completely determined, like a pack of overgrown ants, to end their foes/prey no matter what. Eventually, Newt herself gets snatched by one of the xenomorphs, and after arming herself with a flame thrower/machine gun combo literally held together with duct tape, Ripley goes to the rescue! And then, once Ripley has FINALLY found Newt, managing to save her just in time from a facehugger, you have The Reveal of our main nemesis:

And there she is. The source of all the horror (well, her and the Weyland-Yutani corporation), the one whose monstrous progeny have been hunting our heroes and threatening them with an extremely painful demise, and who, at this point in the film, have successfully merked almost everyone.

And how could you not love her/be terrified of her? I mean, just look at her! It’s rare to see a lady monster in fiction that actually looks like a monster (instead of a human woman with a tail and blue skin or smthn), but it’s even rarer, even now, to find one that is this vicious on every level. The movie has spent its runtime building up to this, and boy does it deliver. So here she finally is, living her best life, laying all those eggs, getting all those humans (the men, the women, the children...) infected with her chestbursters--and the movie does NOT censor how painful a death that is--and best of all, besides looking cool as all get-out, she’s not making a SINGLE excuse for all the death and destruction that she’s caused. As the android Ash said in Alien (the film before the one that features our queen), the xenomorph species of which our queen is a member are “unclouded....by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.” But having none herself, the Alien Queen expects none from her foes. The Alien Queen is presented as nothing but what she is, i.e. a voracious monster who wiped out an entire colony of human beings and condemned them all to a horrifying death. Not only does she not feel sorry for this in the least, not only does she make a grand effort to catch and destroy a human child in the climax, not only does she rip one of the characters in half in an incredibly graphic scene, not only does she try her damndest to kill Ripley in what can only be considered one of the most iconic sci-fi fights out there, but she does this all without a shred of remorse or a smidgen of painfully hollow pleading for her foes to understand where she’s coming from. 

None of this “wah we wah I feel slightly conflicted about being incredibly evil so now you should feel sorry for me even though I’m literally complicit in multi-planetary genocide”! 

None of that “A bloo bloo bloo Lisa I’m being torn apart by the fact that I destroyed half of all life in the universe (plants and animals included!) because I refuse to acknowledge that the reasons for environmental destruction might be more complicated than “population too big!’”   

Time after time after time, we see villains like the two twerps above act like somehow they’re soooooo complex and tragic for committing all the atrocities that they do, and in between murdering way more people than the Alien Queen ever did, they spend way too much of their time blaming everyone and everything around them for the pain and suffering that is a direct result of their own actions. So these dweebs do have higher body counts than our Queen. But does that make them better villains? NO. I’m fully aware that I can’t speak for everyone, but personally I’d have a LOT more respect for them if they could just pull their heads out of their asses, acknowledge all the harm they’ve done, and either stop doing it and make reparations (don’t think that’s very possible after that level of destruction, tho!) or continue with their villainous ways in full understanding and acknowledgement of what they’re doing, no excuses, no attempts to justify the unjustifiable, just like the Alien Queen. Some might say that this is only because the Alien Queen, being a space parasite, doesn’t have the cognitive capacity to argue that she’s some sort of twagic figure for all of her murdering. 

But you know what? GOOD. I’d rather have a space parasite that knows what it’s about then some jerk flipping through mental hoops like a pro gymnast in an attempt to find some shallow reason for why he’s not completely reprehensible. 

And THAT, in my opinion, is why the Alien Queen is the best sci-fi villain ever. So to wrap it all up, the moral of this shitpost is: If you’re going to be a violently destructive space monster driven by nothing but your sense of superiority and selfish desires, at least have the decency to not pretend otherwise.  

[queerchoicesblog]

may you please share your thoughts? as a fanfic writer from the lgbt community. do you feel uncomfortable when straight women and men write f/f and m/m content? do you think they fetishize our community by writing such fics or they are just talented writers with broader scope in writing? do you think they should continue doing so if other lgbt people are uneasy with it? why or why not?

Sorry Nonny, I’m so late but college stuff 😩

This is gonna be a very long message so I’ll put part of it behind the cut so if you’re not interested you can avoid it! I start from your second question, if you don’t mind.

Do you think they fetishise our community by writing such fics or they are just talented writers with broader scope in writing?

(Before answering this question I would like to understand what you define as “fetishise” because lately it’s been thrown all over the place. So I’ll use the meaning I give to the term to answer you)

Yes and no cause I cannot tell if you’re making specific references here or not, but generally speaking, no.

Here’s why:

Writing characters of specific ethnicities like poc, or sexuality doesn’t necessarily and unmistakably mean fetishising them. They becomes a fetish if you write them as fetish, shallow characters defined only by the color of their skin or their sexuality, for instance. A stereotype merely functional to the plot or to other characters or whose function is to please a category of people. Sometimes it happens, but it’s not a golden rule: I’d be very careful with sharp judgment (right-wrong, nothing in between: either it’s okay or an abomination) especially with issues like that.

I’ll leave a few examples:

I’m a weak gay and one of my fave LGBTQ+ fiction is San Junipero, a dystopic but lesbian romance from the series Black Mirror. Now, that episode, kinda cliched theoretically (a closeted shy girl falling for the flamboyant sexy lesbian in the bar)  it was written by hetero writers. Yet to me it’s probably the sweetest and deepest gay romance portrayed on a screen. Same goes for the wonderful lesbian love story between Cosima and Delphine in Orphan Black. Similarly, Love, Simon, one of the most appreciated LGBTQ+ movie recently, was written by a cisgender heterosexual woman.

I strongly believe that writing (and literature in general) offers a unique opportunity: to put yourself into another person’s shoes, to see the world with another person’s eyes. A good writer should empathise with their characters to meet their POV. LGBTQ+ people are not different from each other, right? Obviously, there are some specificity revolving around being gay/bi/trans/ace that can’t be fully understand by non gay/bi/trans/ace people. So what I suggest to straight people writing f/f and m/m is talk to LGBTQ+ people, research before writing it and don’t make being gay/bi etc entirely define your character, even it’s a huge part of their identity and how the world interacts to them. Make them human: I mean, I hope you wouldn’t define a person only by their sexual preferences even in real life! Otherwise I feel you should reconsider your choice of writing them. But why straighties shouldn’t add LGBTQ+ characters to their stories? Unless they give them poor writing, representation is important and no one should feel dissuaded from representing people.

What I mean to say is: I don’t think there is any reason why non-LGBTQ+ writers should never write LGBTQ+ characters, but the writer should consider whether or not they can do it well/respectfully.

Before  judging a fic solely from the gender and sexual orientation of the author (warning: judging by gender and sexual orientation is exactly what homophobic and sexist people do so be very careful!), read the fic. Cover the name of the author if needed and read it: does it make you uncomfortable? Does it feel good to read? Your call

Do you feel uncomfortable when straight women and men write f/f and m/m content?

I do feel uncomfortable only when writers treat gay characters poorly, like giving them bad writing or making them basically unaccessible (cough cough PB not calling you all hetero but I’m talking to you), or writing them totally out of character or killing them off for no reason or making look like their sexual identity is all that matters about them: girls kiss girls, boys make out with boys, girls have sex with other girls, but hey, we’re just like non LGBTQ+ people! We also have feelings, fall in love, blush , we’re not predatory or a characters of some stereotypical forbidden/dirty fantasy. We’re humans, we’re not necessarily saints, we have flaws and pros like you do so please, give your gay characters the same attention and depth you use for hetero characters. 

It’s not a matter of sexuality, it’s a matter of sensitivity, if you wish.

Do you think the should continue doing so if other lgbt people are uneasy with it? Why or why not?

As I said before, it’s probably not safe to generalise. Let’s put it this way: if works fiction are openly and explicitly racist, homophobic, sexist and so on, I feel that authors should be let known of their audience negative feedback and consider quitting writing offensive contents. As for the ‘fetishising issue’ you asked, my take is that at times it’s personal? I mean I saw people calling fetishising material something I and others members of this community didn’t perceived that way and vice versa, I perceived 'broadly accepted’ lgbt content as fetishing. Not to mention that there is another issue here: minors use this site too and some of the materials here (ns*w, for instance) are not safe for them. Should people stop writing smut because of that? Debeatable. 

Writers have the responsibility to mark it, signal it in the tags and maybe add a disclaimer to your post so that people can scroll down or avoid it. That’s my point: if there’s something you don’t feel comfortable with or make you uneasy for a whole set of reasons, stop reading it. You have the right to choose and a pretty useful, unfollow and block buttons and you’re free to use them in those cases! No one is forced to experience something that cause them discomfort when it can be easily avoidable. Hope it makes sense!

[scarrow]

“When I was pregnant with my first daughter, she would kick responsively, and then she would take naps. It seemed logical. This baby never stopped moving, but she never did anything responsive, either. The movements were so random…

“Because of that worry, at 35 weeks, my midwife sent me for a “peace of mind” ultrasound...

“I know [the nurse] said the words “Dandy-Walker,” which I know now is a brain syndrome that has varying degrees of severity. I remember asking, “Are babies with this ever normal?” and she said that sometimes they were. She told me they couldn’t know the severity of the situation until after I had an MRI. That’s how they would determine if my baby would be OK or if she would be “incompatible with life.” Those are the words they used. Incompatible with life…

“Waiting was awful. I imagined every possibility: What would it be like to have the miracle baby who was OK and exceeded all expectations? What if she died at birth? What if she lived only a couple of years? What does it mean to get a DNR (a do-not-resuscitate order), for an infant? Hospitals are legally protected from trying to save a baby and not legally protected from letting a baby die…

“The neurologist, who told us that our baby had Dandy-Walker malformation, [said it was] the most severe presentation of the syndrome. It basically meant there were holes in her brain. She also had agenesis of the corpus callosum, which meant the bridge between the two hemispheres of her brain didn’t grow. So we had two malformations, each of which had a wide range of outcomes, but, combined, had a horrible prognosis. The doctor said, “We expect your baby to have moderate to severe mental retardation; she’s going to have moderate to severe physical disability; she is probably never going to walk or talk; she will possibly never be able to lift her head; she is going to have seizures all of the time.” At first, I was thinking, “This doesn’t make sense, she’s always moving,” and then he mentioned seizures, and I understood…

“In that moment, I had to shift my thinking. I was hoping for special ed, and had been focusing on questions like: How much should you save to know your special-needs daughter will be OK after you die? I was thinking about long-term care and mild to moderate disability. Instead, I had to think about a baby who was probably not going to live very long, and the longer she lived, the more pain she would be in. That realization – that I was more scared of her living than of her dying — is what made the choice for me…

“The doctor asked if we had any questions, and I said, ‘What does a baby like this do? Does she just sleep all day?’ The doctor looked so uncomfortable. He said, ‘Babies like this one are not generally comfortable enough to sleep.’ 

“[at the abortion] After the injection, he asked how I was feeling, and I just said,  “I feel so sad. I’m going to miss her…

“Then on the fourth day, they induced my labor. I got Pitocin, and it was actually a very natural birth. It was quite healing for me. I couldn’t do anything for this baby — I couldn’t fix her brain or make her well, but I could deliver her from my body. I chose to view her, so they cleaned her up and brought her in and she looked a lot like my older daughter. She was beautiful and she was whole. I got her footprints and had her cremated and they sent us her ashes in the mail a few days later. We wanted to name her after a flower, so we called her Rose.”

A few things strike me about all these late-term abortion stories. When the potential parents learned their child would have a disability, they weren’t angry. They may have been sad, but they started planning and researching how to give a disabled child a good life. The only people who chose late-term abortions are those who believe there is no good life possible: that the baby’s suffering will only increase more and more until an early death. 

But, again, here’s a sampling of the comments this story received… they were vastly negative. 

“Pro-Life Comments”

Those medical problems aren’t that bad.

“Apparently medical necessity doesn't matter anymore. It's just a matter of if it feels right to abort or not. This is an appalling story. That baby had unique, unrepeatable DNA and this was her one chance at life. Now she's been erased.”

“Very sad story for many reasons! Of course, I can't help but wonder what the child's life might have been like had mom had the will to allow him/her to be born. Perhaps the child would have overcome many of the disabilities and had a reasonable life, or perhaps the medical problems would have been so severe, the child would have died. But, did mom had the right to decide whether the child lives or dies? I still don't think so.”

“This article has not swayed my opinion on late term abortions in any way. Everything about the story from the way the doctors informed the patient to the concerns of the parent were fairly biased and selfish. Even with the severe malformation, the child could have lived a very fulfilling life. My brother has lived a full life (he's now in his 40's) with a similar condition. Sure, he's never going to be a neurosurgeon or complete college, but he has held down a job for the last 25 year, owns a home and even got married to someone with a similar condition. He does require some home care, which the family provides, but it was far from a burden.”

The parents wanted a “perfect” baby

“She murdered a baby because it wasn't perfect? She murdered Rose. MURDERER ! ! !”

“Sorry but I don't agree with this mother's decision. She got pregnant and when she found out that it was not perfect, she had this poor little baby euthanized. that was so selfish of her. If this baby was not viable, her little heart would have stopped on its own… Many children have medical problems & live well with support of family who LOVE then UNCONDITIONALLY. I'm sure some one with a huge heart would have loved to adopt and love Baby Rose. These parents stole that opportunity of that life option away. And who said she died peacefully. I'm sure it was a quiet and very painful death. Shame on these parents. They never gave Rose the chance at life, all because she wasn't perfect.” 

“This is heartless and she is trying to make it sound like she's not selfish. She is sending her [older] daughter the message that if your aren't perfect, healthy, you don't deserve to live. This is sort of sick. Probably a shallow pretentious woman and husband who can't be bothered with ‘less than.’”

You should count on a miracle/God/Nature instead:

“I was told at 6 months [pregnant] that my daughter would be very sick and disabled. That she would never walk, and most likely would die after 3 weeks and if she lived, she would never be able to take care of herself…. Sometimes you have to trust yourself that you can handle it, and trust GOD that is will all work out. I did not trust these doctors and I am so HAPPY I didn’t, or I wouldn’t have my beautiful daughter.” [I’m happy for you too! But miracles don’t happen every time.]

“Don't even TRY to normalize this. Being a nurse in my younger years, I saw babies born that would not have a chance These mothers knew that, and carried to term, delivered, and held their precious babies until they passed. Don't even try to act like this 8 month termination is anything but murdering the poor baby. Let NATURE take its course. Barbarians.” [Author was certain she wouldn’t be allowed to hold her dying baby; that the hospital would work hard to extend her painful life.]

Murder

“You murdered your baby just in time to celebrate your birthday... selfish.”

“Just pretty much another Mother destroying a new life! The value of life does not stop and start on an liberal ideological timeline!”

“What in the name of everything good and holy is wrong with these sick SOB's? They actually believe they can chop up an infant child as "their" body. These people are monsters of the worst kind in human history, Hitler, Stalin, Pal Pat had nothing on these despicable women and those that butcher children. Get an education, look at what you are doing before you comment or do anything. How does anyone make it OK to butcher a baby with no pain killer, NOTHING!” [reminder that in this case, the fetus was given a single shot and died peacefully, then was delivered whole vaginally.]

[pinelife3]

Mindhunter: No Magic

I’ve been reading the book Mindhunter. You might have seen the Netflix/David Fincher TV show (or read the book?) - it’s based on the life of FBI agent John Douglas, the guy who pioneered criminal profiling, especially of serial killers, in the 70s, 80s and 90s. An interesting element of Mindhunter is how many cases Douglas worked on where the police consulted a medium. I kid you not! In tough, high-profile cases where the local police needed a breakthrough, they would sometimes call a psychic to ask for confirmation on their leads, hoping that the medium could magically intuit something about the case that the cops had missed (where does the killer live, what does he look like, what’s his line of work, etc.). It doesn’t sound like Douglas himself ever called a medium, or put much faith in their psychic intuition, but he does mention that they were around and contributing to cases he worked on. It seems like in the early days of profiling, people had a similar opinion of Douglas’ work: that it was superstitious, unscientific, unreliable - this even extended to his testimony and analysis as an FBI expert sometimes being inadmissible in court:

Though I’d already been qualified as a crime-scene analysis expert in several states, the defense referred to me as a “voodoo man” for the way I came up with my interpretations, and the judge ultimately ruled that I wouldn’t testify.

In “Killing Types”, a post on this blog from January 2016, I compared two accounts of how the criminal psychological profile of the Butcher Baker was developed. One account was from Wikipedia, and the other was Douglas, who personally developed the profile:

The serial killer in question was Robert Hansen AKA the Butcher Baker (everything I’m gonna write about him is via Wikipedia. You should just read their article if you want a more detailed account as I’m just summarising here). He was a very shy, skinny young boy with acne and a stutter. He was horribly bullied and the cute girls in school didn’t like him. Wikipedia doesn’t have a citation for this, but apparently: because he was “shunned by the attractive girls in school, he grew up hating them and nursing fantasies of cruel revenge.” As he grew up, Hansen became an adept hunter. Like many serial killers, Hansen was also a thief and an arsonist. From 1971 to 1983 he murdered at least 17 women ranging in ages from 16 to 41.

Hansen’s typical move was to abduct women (usually sex workers) and take them to his cabin near Anchorage, Alaska. There he would rape them and then set them loose so he could hunt them in the woods. Of his confessed murders, many of the bodies have not been found.

By 1982, three bodies had been found in shallow graves in the woods and the Alaska state troopers called in the FBI to assist in putting together a criminal profile. According to Wikipedia, FBI agents put together a profile for a person with the following characteristics:

Experienced hunter

Low self-esteem

History of being rejected by women

Would keep ‘souvenirs’ from his murders

A stutter

...[Douglas] devotes a chapter to Hansen, and the way he describes what happened is actually kind of different from Wikipedia’s version of events. Wikipedia makes it sound like the FBI turned up and pulled the profile out of thin air just based on looking at the crimes, whereas Douglas says that when he and his boys rolled into Anchorage, Hansen was already a suspect. So what they were doing was comparing what they knew about Hansen to what they knew about the crimes and seeing how things matched up and if he was a likely suspect. So the profile they put together did include the bullet points above and, yes, some of that would have been speculation (such as the self-esteem problems, the history of rejection, and the souvenir keeping), but the rest (such as saying he had a stutter) were based on the fact that they knew Hansen and it was completely fucking obvious he had a stutter and acne scarring. Anyway, Douglas describes his profile and process as follows:

“[Hansen] was short and slight, heavily pockmarked, and spoke with a severe stutter. I surmised he had had severe skin problems as a teenager and, between that and the speech impediment, was probably teased or shunned by his peers, particularly girls. So his self-esteem would have been low… And, psychologically speaking, abusing prostitutes is a pretty standard way of getting back at women in general.

“I also made much of the fact that Hansen was known as a proficient hunter… I don’t mean to imply that most hunters are inadequate types, but in my experience, if you have an inadequate type to being with, one of the ways he might try to compensate is by hunting or playing around with guns or knives… I was betting that Hansen’s speech problem disappeared when he felt most dominant and in control.”

So I think we can call that another case closed: it is not possible for an FBI profiler, no matter how gifted, to look at a crime scene or a string of murders and miraculously determine that the killer has a speech impediment.

As you saw above, my read of the passage from Mindhunter was that Hansen was a top suspect, that Douglas made some additional speculations about Hansen, but essentially just endorsed the guy the local cops already suspected. So specific details in the profile that seem like magical inferences weren’t as magical as Wikipedia made them seem. In January 2016 I hadn’t read Mindhunter, but I looked up what I thought was the relevant section on Google Books and that was the basis for the above section of my blog post. (If you’ve never tried to read things online for free, you may not be aware of this, but Google Books provides previews of lots of books, but you have to buy the book to read the whole thing - so back in 2016, I just looked at the pages of Mindhunter that Google had made available for free.)

Now I’m finally reading Mindhunter in full, my take on the process of profiling has changed: I do believe that Douglas and co. could have inferred that the killer had a stutter or bad skin without knowing Hansen (a man with a stutter and bad skin) was the top suspect. Indeed, Douglas tells a number of stories where he and his team correctly made similar inferences - for example, in the profile they wrote up on the Trailside Killer (not covered by Wikipedia but chronicled elsewhere). On the process of developing the profile of Hansen, Douglas writes:

We didn’t profile Hansen or devise a strategy to identify and catch him according to our usual procedure. In September 1983, by the time my unit was called in, Alaska state troopers had already identified Hansen as a murder suspect. But they weren’t sure of the extent of his crimes, or whether such an unlikely individual, a family man and pillar of the community, was capable of the terrible things of which he was being accused...

Even though the police had a suspect before I heard about him, I wanted to make sure my judgement wouldn’t be clouded by the investigative work already done. So before I let them give me the specifics of their man during our first phone conference, I said, “First tell me about the crimes and let me tell you about the guy.” 

They described the unsolved murders and the details of the young woman’s story. I described a scenario and an individual that they said sounded very much like their suspect, down to the stuttering...

In a sense, this was the opposite of what we normally do in that we were working from a known subject, trying to determine whether his background, personality and behaviour fit a set of crimes.

Is he a wizard? How’d he do that? How could Douglas know from the description of the crimes that Robert Hansen had a stutter? 

The truth is common, ordinary, sensible: he had seen, heard about and worked on cases like this many times and had developed an impression of the kind of person who is capable of hunting women like animals in the woods. He’d spoken to serial killers in prison about their crimes, observed them up close, understood their motivations (control, domination, power, punishment, lust, rage). He’s a walking database of crimes and correlations, which allows him to mentally compile the information he’s received, query it against similar cases and then make what seem like totally uncanny inferences. In terms of demystifying something that seemed arcane and inexplicable, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book as satisfying and steady as Mindhunter. This guy isn’t magical - he’s just fucking sick at his job. He knows his shit. He’s a towering obelisk of professional competence. 

That’s not to say they got everything right. For example, Douglas and his unit saw a big difference in lust killers who raped their victims vs. killers who masturbated at the scene. If a killer doesn’t rape his victim but masturbates over her, Douglas and co. would infer that the killer lacks confidence, that he’s inexperienced with women, he’s single, anti-social, probably has a shitty job or no job at all, and because of that he likely lives at home or with a relative, he feels he lacks control, etc. This type of analysis was often correct, but did sometimes lead them down the wrong path (which Douglas acknowledges in the updated foreword for the 2017 reprint of Mindhunter). Since the publication of Mindhunter in the 90s, a number of prominent non-rape lust killers have been caught and it turns out they were married with kids, they were upstanding members of their community, they were homeowners who worked decent jobs, and they seemed normal around women in social settings (see: the BTK Strangler). They simply weren’t the conspicuous, twitching deviants Douglas and his unit imagined.

Mindhunter feels like a book from a different time. Douglas is vociferously pro-death penalty. He’s more sympathetic and vengeful when the victim was a cute lil blondie than a street worn whore. He is interested in the psychology of killers, but is unmoved by their troubled backgrounds: Douglas acknowledges that practically every serial killer he studied had abusive parents, never felt loved or safe, were victims themselves in many ways - but he’s pretty indifferent towards that angle. This perspective would probably get more play in a book on criminals written today - modern writers might be interested in a holistic view of criminality and suffering as cyclical. Douglas does say the number one thing we could do to prevent the development of serial killers and psychos is love our children more and have more resources available to intervene when kids seemed to be headed down the path of darkness... but, look at Douglas’ description of a guy they were looking for in Illinois:

Like so many of these guys, this one is a real loser with a poor self-image. He may come across as confident, but deep-down, he is extremely inadequate.

The UNSUB is a real loser! 

One of the key sources of information for Douglas is the killer’s signature. A signature differs from a modus operandi (MO) in that the MO is how the crime is carried out (e.g. killer surveils house for weeks in advance, cuts phone line during the night, breaks in via a window, uses the victim’s tights as a ligature, etc.) while the signature is what the killer does to get off: posing the body, keeping trophies, torturing the victim, taking photographs. Douglas says a killer’s MO may change over time based on failed crimes, stressors, changes to police work, etc. but a signature will remain steady. For example, when Bundy was at his most desperate after escaping from prison (for the second time!), he went on a poorly planned spree. By now, Bundy knew it was all over. The police knew who he was, what he’d done, and were searching for him - it was a matter of time until he was recaptured. The electric chair was waiting. Bundy’s MO had developed with experience and he was typically an organised killer who used a kit, props, and had the skill to lure his victims, but when he knew the net was closing in, he became disorganised - his MO changed. Instead of approaching a pretty girl on the street, luring her to his car and then taking his time to torture/kill her, he broke into a sorority house in the middle of the night and attacked the residents in their own rooms in vicious, quick attacks. Interestingly, this methodology was similar to his original technique when he was younger and less experienced. When he was under pressure, he regressed. Via Wikipedia: 

Bundy's modus operandi evolved in organization and sophistication over time, as is typical of serial murderers, according to FBI experts. Early on, it consisted of forcible late-night entry followed by a violent attack with a blunt weapon on a sleeping victim. Some victims were sexually assaulted with inert objects; all except Healy were left as they lay, unconscious or dead. As his methodology evolved Bundy became progressively more organized in his choice of victims and crime scenes. He would employ various ruses designed to lure his victim to the vicinity of his vehicle where he had pre-positioned a weapon, usually a crowbar. In many cases he wore a plaster cast on one leg or a sling on one arm, and sometimes hobbled on crutches, then requested assistance in carrying something to his vehicle. Bundy was regarded as handsome and charismatic by many of his victims, traits he exploited to win their confidence.

For Douglas, an MO is not a reliable way of tying crimes together - because an MO can change. But a signature (which is often at the crux of why the crime was committed) will remain relatively static and is a good clue that two crimes carried out in different ways may be related. The MO may tell you some practical details about the killer (he owns or has access to a car, he’s a local who’s familiar with the back roads, he was known the victim because he was able to gain access to the home without a struggle, etc.) but the signature is driven by behaviour - and that’s what reveals the pits inside a person. 

What’s been revelatory for me in Mindhunter is how there is a real, meaningful link between private behaviour and the surface-level details a person. We like to think that our interiority is private and inscrutable to others, that we’re boxed canyon mysteries with rich inner lives and motivations that are inconceivable to the people around us, that our true selves transcend superficial things like how we look or where we work - but Douglas can tell whether a guy will get a haircut after he’s killed someone. He knows if the killer was drunk at the time of the crime. He can tell if they were in the military or not - and if they were, whether they had a dishonourable discharge. How old the killer is. His race. Whether he’ll want to talk to people about the crime. The chances of him owning a German Shepherd. Whether he finished high school. If he keeps a journal. Whether he’s ever been married - and if it was a happy marriage. Most of these are visible details of ourselves that we display to the world, and feel safe displaying because they don’t give too much away: you don’t think people can accurately read anything serious or private about you based on something like how old your car is or whether you watch the nightly news. But all these insignificant details do reveal something. Maybe it is kind of magical.

[curateddevelopment]

Relationship Advice For Sale $0.00

I get a lot of relationship questions from friends. Though i’ve been told i give great advice, i’ll never admit to it. To admit to it would be to discredit my own advice. You see, i always remind everyone that no one can tell you what is right for you but you. Why is that? Well thats easy. Its because what you need in your life as a whole is different from what you need in your life at the moment. 

Everyone handles things differently and everyone else responds to things that those people handle... differently. We’re all different. My advice to you may not be the same advice i would take myself. The only thing i try to do is to get people to understand themselves. To get to that point when things start to make sense. Maybe thats exhausting all energy trying to get through to someone they care about or leave them. The point is, you wont do either of those things if someone just told you, you have to do things YOUR way to prove to yourself whether something is attainable to you specifically or not. 

For example, lets say there is this hot guy named Matt. So this guy Matt is super hot right, but he’s kind if a dick to the bartender on your date. Now, i can tell you right now, he’s a douche and you should walk away but would you do it? I mean, we’re talking about Matt here. He’s an Ex-Marine with a killer body, a jawline that could cut a sheet of paper and a smile that could charm a nun into a life on the road. Who knows what he’s seen overseas, right? Who knows what he’s been through? Why would i know anything about him to tell you he’s no good when you’re the one sitting there with him. Right there, you’ve just justified this dude to yourself when others may not have. Its all about what matters to you. Whats important to you in your significant other. Does he have to be a nice guy? Does he have to be cute? If you cant have both, which are you more likely to compromise for? and are you being honest with yourself. 

Its ok to be shallow sometimes, especially if its important to you. You cant deny your needs and wants. You have to be honest with yourself and stick to whats important to you. Its the best way to figure yourself out. Now lets say you and Matt are now on like 3 weeks of dating and he tells you he wants to be serious. Now again, to me 3 weeks isn't enough time to make a commitment to someone but again, this is your life. I’m just here to help you navigate it. Should you say yes to the hot marine or should you pass on the aggressive jerk? If you just got out of a relationship with a dude who honestly acts more like a bitch, cant do shit around the house, and has to call his Dad when he gets a flat tire... 1000000% DATE THE MARINE. He will show you worlds you’ve never seen. You’ll learn about yourself and maybe you’ll soften him up. 

Now lets take it 2 years forward. You’ve been together for a while now and things are just falling short. He doesn't express his feeling to you, he doesn't show much affection. He seems distant. He doesn't give you the attention that the new guy at work is giving you but you still cant let go of 2 years of your life. How do you expect me to help you when you’ve already answered your own question. You cant let go of that 2 years so make a decision. Are you going to dig into why he is the way he is and see if you can break through some ground or accept his for who he is and see if this is something you can live with. There is no other option. Fight me on this, i dare you. Just don’t let the new guy at work sway that attempt. your focus needs to be on him. It needs to be on how you can reach 100% understanding of what the rest of your life with him will be. You cant figure that out with outside distractions. 

You know whats been the more annoying part for me? Seeing the guys these women stress over settle happily and watching these women assume this speaks to their worth. SO WHAT if he settles for backyard betty, let her have him! What are you going to do, fight for him? He’s not even fighting for himself. Does this mean he thinks you’re not good enough? If it does, are you assuming this one man is able to judge your worth to the rest of the world? Maybe Betty sucks dick better than a shop vac and THATS why he settled, since (lets say) you don’t like giving blow jobs. Does this mean you should just suck his dick even though you hate it??? NO! While removing my very pro-BJ’s opinion on the matter, this is about YOU. This isn’t about her or what she can do. This isnt about him and what he wants. This is about you! What do YOU want? Do you want a guy who NEEDS his dick sucked like Sasha Grey?! Is this something you’re going to be able to “put up with” in the long term? Because let me tell you, Love is not forever. 

The key is to find someone you like, not just as a slice of man cake ready to be devoured but as a friend. Can you tell him things you dont tell other people. Can you smell is natural after a long day musk left on his clothes? Can you listen to him chew or slurp soup and not strangle him? Are his breathing sounds something you can fall asleep to? 

Once being in-Love runs out, will there be love left? You wont look at him the same, but will you still look at him fondly? After having his kids, can you co-parent peacefully? If so, i say take that chance. Life is about taking risks sometimes, so long as you’re doing it safely. Do what feels right, because after-all, no one can tell you what is right for you but you.

-S

ASK

[writerly-ramblings]

Thoughts on “The Penderwicks at Last”

All right, there’s been enough interest from the (so sadly tiny) group of Penderwicks readers on here, so here are my semi-coherent thoughts on the last book, At Last, because, as previously stated, I have Thoughts. Spoilers ahead for all the entire series.

I’m going to start by saying that I am not the intended audience for these books: I’m in my twenties. That being said, I’ve waited over a decade for The Penderwicks At Last, and I reread the entire series to prepare. I read the last one in a few hours, and ugly cried through the second half.

Fair warning: my parenthetical comments waged a territorial battle and won.

PROS:

Everyone gets a happy ending. I think, over time, I’ll feel less conflicted about At Last because, in the end, everyone is happy, and does it matter how they got there?

Skye, particularly, is so much happier. The events of the fourth book clearly had an impact, and Lydia has grown up with a much less fearful, hurting, angry, or traumatized Skye.

Batty’s memories of Arundel being mostly patched together from stories her family has told felt incredibly realistic to me, and I enjoyed watching her rediscover the estate.

Ben is great, and I’ve always loved the Penderwick children’s dedication to their chosen obsessions/careers, so I’m glad he’s got that. I also loved when he told Jeffrey he’d marry him, but not if he was broke. (The humor in these books!)

Rafael is still around. We don’t see him, but we know he’s still friends with Ben. Other Penderwick friends have fallen off the map between different books (Anna, Keiko, Molly, Mercedes), and it was good to see someone stick around.

I liked Wesley. He felt like a red-herring (I can’t be the only one who was desperately hoping Batty was going to decide she wanted to be with him after all), but he was a delightful character. He’s kind to Lydia and Alice, makes himself helpful around the house/with wedding prep, loves Hitch, and respects Batty’s boundaries. He’s a good person. And the mobiles!

Cagney’s family is adorable. And Skye teasing Rosalind about her childhood crush on Cagney is a dead-on sister thing to do.

Mr. Penderwick and Iantha are still very much in love, and still very much adorable and loving parents.

“Jeffrey, no one wants to marry you!” (Okay, this is was a laugh-or-you’ll-cry moment, but I did laugh!)

Also in the bittersweet category would be Mrs. Tifton’s talk with Jane in the carriage-house. We won’t talk about the fact that I really, really wanted Mrs. Tifton to be right. What we will talk about is Jane rage-sewing, being a good older sister, holding it together, and refusing to sully her honor (I love that Jane has maintained her bizarre approach to honor that includes even hypotheticals). Thinking about it, this scene mirrors the one with Skye and Mrs. Tifton in the first book (with Lydia standing in for Batty here), and I like that touch.

CONS:

A lot of the issues I had with At Last are really my own problems, not shortcomings in the book. One instance of that is how I felt about Lydia as a narrator. The first four books mature in tone as they go along, due to the seriousness of the issues facing the characters, making them compelling reading for someone older than the intended audience. I liked Lydia, but she felt much less mature than her sisters at similar ages, and wasn’t facing comparable difficulties. And she wasn’t nearly so interested, or involved, in her sisters’ lives as I would have liked. (Which is understandable, given the age gap, but frustrating as a reader who cares mainly about Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty.)

Technology is weirdly handled? I’ve always liked the timeless quality of the previous books, and all the texting and general cell phone use threw me. (And, really, how many eleven-year-olds have access to cell phones and use them exclusively to text their brothers?)

Jane gave me a kind of dispirited, hollow feeling. She’s twenty-five and still hasn’t sat down and written a full novel. She has two abandoned books and one in the planning stages. I don’t mean I wanted her to be published, but it felt very flighty, especially for someone who’s been serious about writing since she was younger than ten. (I kind of wanted more of Jane in general, actually. How was college? How is she managing to keep a waitressing job she’s terrible at, and why wouldn’t she work in, I don’t know, a bookstore or library instead?)

This leads into my next, larger but vaguer upset: Everyone’s happy, but I was still dissatisfied. I know that most of the time life isn’t glamorous, but aside from Skye, the other sisters don’t seem to have done much? Rosalind has taken fifteen years to marry Tommy, Jane hasn’t finished even a draft of a novel, and it seems like Batty’s going to graduate college and start a music school in western MA (which is fine, but also, where are her years touring in Europe and her own career in music?). I don’t know. I think I just wanted to believe, for 256 pages, that adult life could be more exciting and adventurous, and live up to childhood expectations.

Honestly, I like Lydia, but she’s not why I wanted to read At Last. This goes back to me not being the target audience, but it’s the older four I care about, and I felt like frustratingly little was said about them. And I’ve read interviews with Jeanne Birdsall, where she talks about this book being the point she was writing toward, and I’m just having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that, if this was the endgame, middle-grade novels were the best format for the story. (Am I biased here? Definitely. Did I love these books as a child and teenager? Without a doubt. Would I, right now, prefer to have read a literary fiction novel where the older sisters’ adult lives were given as much weight as their childhoods? I’d be all over that. Again, I acknowledge this as my own bias, not a shortcoming with the book.)

SKYE:

(Because, let’s be honest, this is where I fell apart.)

I’m so, so happy Skye is working on her doctorate. As someone else who didn’t want to date at seventeen because I wanted to “soak up the universe,” I appreciate the fact that she’s out there, doing just that. But it also made me so sad. Because her family loves her, so they put her on speaker phone during important family meetings, and they miss her when she’s gone, and Lydia doesn’t know her, as a person, the way her other sisters and Ben (sort of) do. And this is very much tied to my own life, as I look at likely moving to a different country, leaving behind parents I love and a whole host of younger siblings.

So I’m glad she has the life she spent her whole childhood wanting, but I also wish we’d gotten to see more of how she grew, and healed, and changed post-In Spring. Because the Skye we see in At Last isn’t the Skye from the other books, and that’s good, it means she’s less hurt (and also almost ten years older), but it also means I didn’t feel like I knew much about her anymore.

I have almost no thoughts on Dušek and agree with the opinion other people have voiced that he seemed to be there mostly to squash all doubt about Jeffrey. He seemed sweet, but I didn’t know, or care about, him. (And I think the lack of Skye contributed to this: I didn’t know her, so I didn’t feel invested in him.)

THAT ROMANCE:

I feel like noting that I’ve read Little Women more times than I can count, and I willfully ignored not only that, but also the blatant Penderwick-universe foreshadowing (like Batty saying Jeffrey could marry her, after he saves her from the bull all the way back in the first book). Because Birdsall did deviate from Little Women in other, large ways, for example: none of the sisters die. Did I suspect Jeffrey would end up with Batty? Yes. Did I fervently hope that he’d actually end up with Skye? Also yes. Does it make me seem incredibly shallow that this is what occupied a great deal of my brain for twelve years? Probably.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m a sucker for childhood friends who fall in love and get married (Anne and Gilbert, Meg and Calvin, Ella and Char, Miri and Peder, don’t get me started on FMA … I’ll cop to having a problem), but also that I’ve never been bothered by Laurie and Amy. They make sense together, and Jo’s opposition to Laurie is based on legitimate concerns that just don’t exist for Skye and Jeffrey, thanks both to the fact that they live in the twenty-first century, and that Jeffrey doesn’t have Laurie’s hot-headed argumentative steak, stubbornness, or laziness.

And it’s not necessarily that I think Batty and Jeffrey wouldn’t be good together (other than the fact that, unlike Skye, Batty did, at least while younger, consider him not an “honorary Penderwick” but an “honorary brother”), but we never get an explanation for how Jeffrey feels about Skye now, or how/when he got over her (because, when you think about it, that must have been a Process. According to Jane, circa In Spring, Jeffrey’s been in some form of adoration/love with Skye since a few weeks before he turned eleven, and at least until he was eighteen, which is seven years. He’s twenty-five in At Last, which means, in the span of time the series covers, he’s spent just as much time in love with Skye as not. And seven years is a long time - more than a quarter of his life. And that’s a conservative estimate, since the last we hear of this is that he and Skye fight about this at his graduation, but that likely wasn’t the exact moment he fell out of love with her. And the jump from Skye to Batty is more difficult to swallow, given all of this, than Jeffrey going on to marry a non-Penderwick. Though, to Jeffrey’s credit, it’s heavily implied he’s going to marry Batty, but this is conveyed strictly through Jane; he’s not out there himself, desperately trying to win nineteen-year-old Batty’s affection in order to replace her sister).

Mostly, while reading, I felt misled, because if there was creeping Batty/Jeffrey foreshadowing, the Skye/Jeffrey foreshadowing was burst-into-your-music-room-and-tell-you-off strong. Jeffrey asks Skye if she ever thinks about them getting married all the way back in the third book. And Skye never shows similar inclinations toward romance, but the whole plot of In Spring makes it seem like this is due to being traumatized by the circumstances of her mother’s death. She isn’t interested in romance as a teenager, but she does love Jeffrey as a friend, and since the purpose of the events of In Spring is to make her less terrified of relationships, and because it’s Jeffrey she originally opens up to about this, there’s a lot, thematically, implied here. (I feel like the argument at Jeffrey’s graduation is maybe meant to show that she’s never going to be interested, but given both that she states that she wants to prioritize college over romance, and that the fight happens off-stage and is only summarized, this isn’t really clear.)

I do feel like this is where Little Women has the advantage: Jo doesn’t love Laurie, and she also has practical reasons why marriage wouldn’t work for them. We never see that from Skye. We see her afraid of love, and fighting with external factors, but we never actually see her not loving Jeffrey for reasons that are related to him.

So I think my main issue here is that their relationship felt very unresolved. Are they even still good friends? And why was it necessary for Jeffrey to fall in love with her in the first place? The fraught conversation in In Spring could just as easily have been Jeffrey or Jane pressing Skye about why she wouldn’t date Pearson.

(Skye and Jeffrey are previously so earnest, and At Last feels like the death of a friendship. Not in a final, we’ll-never-speak-again way, but in a quieter way that makes me think they haven’t really been close since Skye left for college, and that just makes me sad. Where are my “Friends forever” as sworn by the Penderwick Family Honor? Because, yes, yes, everyone grows up, but I didn’t want them to grow apart.)

IN CONCLUSION:

Has anyone actually made it this far down? Was a dissertation called for? Am I a little obsessive/ridiculous/insane?

What might not have come across, but what I do strongly feel, is that At Last is a good read. Lydia’s likable, the return to Arundel is well done, there are a lot of sweet, funny scenes. And none of my criticism really is to do with the material. My disappointment stems almost completely from my own expectations. Will I go on to reread the first four books and then pretend I’ve misplaced the fifth (while imagining it’s told from Rosalind, Skye, Jane, and Batty’s perspectives; and, possibly, that it has a different ending)? Who knows. Maybe, once I’ve sat with the fifth book for a bit longer I’ll like it more. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe those twelve years when I speculated about what would happen in At Last, that decade that the characters kept me company, matters more than whether or not I liked the end.