#she told me the other day ''i like the shouty songs'' and honestly?

[deadmomjokes]

Yesterday I was flipping radio stations while waiting at a red light when I hear a deeply offended gasp from the back seat.

"No, don't switch it!! Turn it up!"

I do, in fact, turn it up, only to learn via the radio display that it's a song by Rage Against the Machine. (Note: I know exactly no songs by Rage Against the Machine, they're just not my cup of tea.) And my child-- my four year old child who, by her own choice that day, was wearing a fluffy pink flower skirt and sparkly cowboy boots-- takes in the screamy, guitar-smashy chaos, gives the most contented sigh of approval, and says,

"Awwww yeah, I LIKE this one!"

And starts head banging in her car seat.

[thebibliomancer]

Tides of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 12

Tides of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because one day to stop the Sifa evacuation lets gooooooo!

Last times on book: Amri and co are on a quest to unite all the Gelfling clans against the Skeksis and have hit an immediate snag. Maudra Ethri of the Sifa has decided instead that the Sifa will ditch Skeksis lands and sail to a new world guided by Captain skekSa, multi-talented voluntary exile from the Castle. Amri tries to stab skekSa which doesn’t go as planned and now he feels like a dumb idiot fool. The Sifa are planning to leave by the next sunset so Team Naia only has one day to change Maudra Ethri’s mind.

Chapter 12

Team Naia attempts to change Maudra Ethri’s mind

While the day outside awakened, soon the cabin was quiet with the gentle sounds of sleep. When he heard snoring, Amri quietly pushed the quilt away, sighing. His body was exhausted but his mind refused to rest. So while the others slept, he silently crept out onto the deck.

Dang Amri, you didn’t sleep at all?

He looks out at the ships bobbing in the bay and thinking about how this is a sight he never could have hoped to see and that back in the Caves of Grot he’d have given anything for these experiences. And now he’s just feeling an intense homesickness.

He ponders how he could just hop off the boat and be home in, like, two days.

Naia comes out and asks if he wants to talk about what happened.

“I don’t know what there is to say.”

Naia nudged him with her elbow. “Just start talking. Words will come... If you want to, that is.”

He had plenty of feelings but he balked at saying them out loud. He tried to come up with something lighthearted to say, but instead of the usually endless-seeming well of quips, all he found was an empty pit of embarrassment and weariness.

=(

It was a kind of characteristic of him to play things off with a joke earlier in the book. Class clown Amri, sad clown Amri.

Naia tells Amri that nobody got hurt so maybe don’t beat himself up too much. And that she was terrified the first time she faced a Skeksis so she admires Amri’s guts to just try to shank one.

Amri says its lucky he attacked the one Skeksis who was willing to forgive.

“She could have...”

“But she didn’t.”

Which I think is the important thing here.

Amri confesses to Naia that he just feels useless. He can’t do anything that the rest of the group takes for granted like... seeing! And walking in shoes! Everything, basically, that he hadn’t wanted Naia to know. How much he was struggling and how lost he feels.

“I just want to be good at something, you know? You’re so strong. Fierce Naia. And Kylan, the song teller with the magic firca. Tavra, soldier daughter of the All-Maudra.”

Maybe Amri’s thing is being a hype-man? Because those are good descriptions of his friends.

“The things I’m good at don’t matter up here... I’m probably going to end up being Amri the Forgotten. Like the rest of my clan.”

Naia caught her breath in her throat. “Oh, Amri...”

She didn’t try to untangle his fists, didn’t tell him not to be sad. Didn’t scold him or tell him he was wrong for feeling the way he felt. She just rested her hand on this, and at the moment it was all he needed. She was with him. Straightforward and truthful, and still sitting beside him despite what he’d told her and what they were up against.

The loneliness clenching his heart loosened.

Aww, frens.

Sometimes you just need permission to feel what you’re feeling out in the open.

And this is honestly a good group to feel overwhelmed and useless in. Every single other POV character has felt the same. And we have to read into Tavra’s feelings because she’s super buttoned up but she’s a spider who can’t do a lot of what she used to do. I think everybody here gets what Amri’s feeling, to one extent or another.

With those feelings out in the opening, Amri pivots over to being frustrated about the Sifa situation. The Sifauation. Although that sounds more like Sifa infatuation. Hmm.

Naia says that she’s disappointed too but its not up to one person to figure this out. The whole point is for Gelfling to come together; to trust and rely on each other.

And then she tells him that they’ll DEFINITELY get through these interesting times because she promised to take him to the Sog to see the Great Smerth and introduce him to Gurjin and the rest of her family. If the real world thinks it can make a liar out of her, it has another thing coming.

Amri wonders if Gurjin got home to the Sog safely but Naia is sure he did because of a sort of twin-bond where right as she’s waking up, when she’s between conscious and unconscious, she feels as if she’s at home in the Sog and knows thats Gurjin.

Twins is special.

Annnnnnd thennnnnn Ethri’s ship the Omerya sets sail.

Followed by the rest of the Sifa ships.

Its not even sunset yet! There’s three suns and they’re rising, not setting! Ethri!

Naia and Amri run to wake everyone up and Onica also sets sail, hoping to catch up to the Omerya before it hits open ocean where its many more sails will make it impossible for Onica’s small ship to catch up.

Hey, does Onica’s boat have a name? It just keeps getting called Onica’s boat.

Onica’s ship the Onica’s Boat pulls alongside the Omerya where Naia’s shouty voice outlouds the waves to reach Ethri.

“If you’re here to try and convince me again, save yourself the effort!” she shouted. “But if you’re here to apologize and come with us, you best hurry up. That little ship won’t make it across the Silver Sea, even with skekSa’s help!”

Apparently a bunch of Sifa had to abandon their smaller boats to consolidate on board the bigger ones.

Even with that I don’t know if all the Sifa will make it. There’s a big difference between ships that hug the coasts and ships designed to cross the ocean.

Onica jumps from Onica’s Boat to the Omerya in a pretty sweet jump and throws a line from the bigger ship to Kylan.

The entirety of Team Naia crosses over to the Omerya to give Ethri a talking at.

“Ethri!” Onica cried. “You must stop this. You must heed the signs. If you have any faith left in me, as a Far-Dreamer -- as your friend!”

“Faith has nothing to do with this, Onica,” Ethri said. “A storm brews in the Skarith Land. That is the sign I’m heeding. The pink petals with their song. The rumors of the Skeksis at the castle, feeding off the Gelfling. I can’t be reckless anymore, not with the lives of my clan at stake. I will do what must be done, winds and tides be damned.”

That would be a heroic determination speech in many other contexts. And if the action were less ‘abandon the other clans.’

And even though Ethri is saying this with determination, Amri and Onica see the doubt in her. Onica begs her to be the Ethri who Onica knows Ethri to be.

“You and Tae trusted me once,” Ethri said. “And you alone paid a terrible price.”

“In exchange for a wonderful gift, worth the price I paid. One I am greatful for every day.”

The Far-Dreamer’s soft reply was like the ocean, passionate and eternal. Even Amri felt swept up in it, and he was but a silent witness to her truth. Onica took Ethri’s shoulders in her hands, and this time the maudra did not protest.

Frens?

So. Hey. There’s some Tragic Backstory between these three Sifa and I know, in the middle of a heart-felt confrontation, is not the time to explain it in detail to anyone not in the loop, but hey, I wanna know.

Onica tells Ethri that they can’t know the future, only heed the signs that Thra gives them. And asks when the last time Ethri looked into the prophecy fires of the Omerya’s hearth.

Its been mentioned a few times that it looks like there hasn’t been a fire lit there in a while.

Tae jumps in and also suggests that Ethri light the hearth of Omerya to read the signs.

All the Sifa on the deck, recognizing a moment for crowd action if they’ve ever seen one, all step forward and join hands.

“And if the flames say we flee?” [Ethri] whispered.

Onica approached the fire and held out her hand, beckoning.

“Then we will heed the sign,” she said. And we will heed it together.”

Wow, what a short book. Well, time to start Flames of the Dark- oh, different flames I guess.

The Sifa parted around Maudra Ethri as she walked to the hearth fire. Onica waited for her, hands open and palms filling with sunlight. Ethri took the Far-Dreamer’s hands and sighed, as if she’d come home after a long journey.

“Then join with me, my beloved Sifa,” Ethri said. “And you, who carry out Aughra’s task. Let us see what the future brings.”

=]

[moandkatelive]

I know everyone is thrilled to bits about the way Campwolfe/Berena has resolved itself now that Catherine is on sabbatical gone.

Under the cut are my thoughts. Warning. Not as thrilled to bits. But perhaps something to ponder nonetheless

We all have different reactions to the things that come across our screens and our dashes and everyone has differing viewpoints on what constitutes good representation.  I suppose I’ll speak to what is important to me as there are some things troubling and niggling at me about how all this came to be resolved.

Anyone who has followed my blog I’m sure I’ll lose more followers for this it’s ok I can take it obscurity has always been kinda my jam knows that I have been critical of the presentment of the back half of the Berena storyline since Kiev:

-variation of the lesbian death trope

- desexualization of both Bernie and Serena (because of grief)

-almost the entirety of their entire post-Kiev relationship playing out off-screen (tell don’t show)

-the pathologizing of Sererna’s grief and the fact that Holby turned her into a histronic, shouty, abusive ‘crazy lady’ 

-Serena’s isolationism  -the inability of anyone really able to aid her or really make an effort to come to her aid (Including Bernie) 

-turning Serena into basically a drunk.

I haven’t watched this show in awhile - and I won’t watch the episode from yesterday (some of that because the Diassac story is too triggering for me and I have to own that and take care of myself) but I did watch the bathroom scene where Bernie shouts “i love you” at Serena and where sober Serena answers her concern with yet more bile and I did watch the roof scene where Serena doesn’t fling herself off the roof and Bernie and Serena finally have a conversation.

Serena didn’t throw herself off the roof. Lesbian death trope averted.  Yay.  I guess.

But it seems as though for so many this last scene somehow completely negates all that went before it in this rollercoaster of watching Serena Campbell fall apart these last two months.  I find that curious.  I find it somewhat sad and it worries me how the representation was, in the end, presented.  Especially the alcoholism.

Serena and shiraz.  

And I guess that’s the rub for me.  Perhaps it’s just me but it is very distressing to me that in a world where so many queer young people (and young adults and middle aged people) start drinking early, drink to excess to ease their fears, or to fit in, to deal with internalized homophobia, hell to drive away the pain in their lives that a character that is presented as ‘excellent lesbian representation’ (Holby’s words not mine) finally has an honest and forgiving conversation with a young doctor she has spent the last month abusing- only when she’s drunk.  A character who provides “excellent representation” is almost exclusively combative and verbally abusive to her ‘partner’ and I use that term loosely for most of their interactions and when they finally have a much needed heart to heart it’s only when Serena’s loaded.  That’s canon. She was drunk.  

Am I happy they had the conversation?  Sure.  I guess. I would have loved to see Serena and Bernie finally have a heart to heart when Serena wasn’t doing it through a shit-ton of shiraz.  Hell - I’d have loved it if they hadn’t had Serena drunk on the roof in the middle of shift in order to give us the “she needs a sabbatical line” but that’s entirely another post for another day. I’m saddened by this.  I’m so tired. I’m tired of having the lesbian, bi, queer women that are reflected back at me on my screen shoved down this path.  If they’re not dying or ‘straightening out’ they’re becoming hysterical, unable to cope, desexualized or that old tired one - alcoholic.

Whether Serena is a full blown alcoholic or not I suppose is up for debate but it’s certainly true that she threw slurred praise at Jasmine (as if that would make up for all the abuse she threw at her in the last month) and she settled in for a rooftop chat about the future of her relationship with Bernie - fairly large topic - while sloshed.  

I just wish the bar had been set a bit higher.  Is this what we want to emulate I suppose, in the end, is also the question?

Are we happy with hearing Bernie yell “I love you at Serena” - her I love you’s essentially throw-away lines in a larger argument.  Tossed out with such ease that either a) Bernie is a completely different character than the Bernie that went to Kiev or b) that so much has happened between Bernie and Serena off-screen that it would be commonplace for Bernie to drop that phrase.  And for Serena to crush it like that.  Yes, love means you hang with someone - but at what point do you walk away from someone who speaks to you abusively - and save yourself?

No one will convince me that it’s admirable to be the BMAM tough one month after month being pushed away and abused and stand and say ‘pile abuse on me I’m tough I can take it.”  At some point this is not admirable. It’s just enabling the other to continue to hurt you.  I want more for Bernie. I want better for Bernie, for us as wlw, for representation of us AS wlw.

I would have hoped for a ‘sober’ conversation.  Yes I get it’s a soap, it’s high drama, yada yada yada - I’m not naive and I know the drill. And not absolutely EVERYTHING on television is an exact copy of how our own lives should play out.

But isn’t the point of watching it and falling for it is that we really ARE looking for a glimpse of ourselves in these characters?  I mean isn’t that what Catherine Russell has been so passionately telling the chat shows - that people relate to Serena as a gay woman, relate to Berena?  If so then we HAVE to at least look at the fact that part of what we’re relating to is HOW we’re being represented.

I wish she hadn’t been drunk.  I wish that their ‘separation’ and they’re definitely separated for now had been less ambiguous.  I wish that Serena could have told Bernie how she felt about her under different circumstances.  I wish that I could look to this couple and see myself, or something I wanted to emulate in my own life - god forbid emulate if something tragic happened in my own life.

But I got nothing.  It’s not there. 

This is MY opinion.  I get there are those of you who love it, love every single thing about it, see the romance in it and I’m absolutely NOT here to tell you how to feel or to say you shouldn’t have any old reaction that you want to Serena’s swan song.  This is simply how “I” reacted to it.  For me it was disheartening and I think in the end did a great disservice to a couple who started off so wonderfully and thrilling and beautifully nuanced and mature.  I think this story in many ways betrayed the heart of who Serena Campbell actually is/was.  

I have no idea if Serena will be back.  That remains to be seen.  I do hope if she does come back that perhaps we can find a glimpse of the old Serena.  The sassy, Harvard MBA, part-time CEO, compassionate, thoughtful, witty Serena with the skills to self-reflect and to fight for herself and others.  Not this shouty, histrionic, walled-off, self-absorbed, boozy, crazy lady that somehow grief and TPTB have made her out to be sitting on the roof getting shittered.  Because I honestly think she’s better than that.