#we live in a capitalist hellscape anyway at least let us have this one fun capitalist movie okay

[potter-inthe-tardis]

Not to say something so capitalist as a socialist, but I kind of don't care if the Barbie movie is actually some big ploy to sell more barbies, its been so much fun to see people excited about something that is at its core is made for girls enjoyment, for a traditionally feminine interest to be celebrated not ridiculed. Also at least its propaganda to buy dolls not like military propaganda or something

[cynicalrecoverysociety]

Journal Post

I'm trying to get back into my normal this week. Starting today. I've been in a bit of a slump for like at least 6 weeks now and my uncle dying/partner's birthday gave me an opportunity to really let myself go. I'm not mad at myself or disappointed, but I think it's time to be honest at least. It's okay when tragedy knocks you down but this was more than that. I had been struggling with my mental health a bit and while I figured out some stuff I really stopped talking care of my body and spirit. And I know for a fact that taking care of myself in the other ways helps my mental health. But I was just so exhausted by the battle in my head I completely gave up on everything else.

Again, I don't regret this decision. It was what I needed at the time. But it is time to analyze the situation and make a plan to get back the habits that kept me in a better place. I'm . . . not really looking forward to it but this past week of true decadence has really taught me that that doesn't solve any problems. I am glad I took time off work but all the soda and candy and whatnot I used all week did nothing but give me a tummy ache. It wasn't even that good. I ate out constantly, drank fun drinks, but turns out that once you start deconstructing your emotional eating it is no longer effective at controlling your emotions. Weird. Unfortunate sometimes. But probably for the best.

Anyway. My body feels like garbage and my mind feels off somehow. There aren't words associated with anything I'm feeling really. Just a general kind of funk. Like I'm easily angered by covidiots and similar, reality is in general depressing. I really can't tell how much of this I can work through and how much I have to sit with forever because of how society fundamentally works and I have no ability to change it or opt out. And deciphering how much depression and anxiety I am required to have because of the amount I have to participate in society is a depressing concept in itself. Is it healthy to embrace that we live in a boring dystopia and learn to adapt? Or is it healthy to be positive about the trajectory of society and hope for the best? Does is even make a difference if all I can do in either situation is vote? I can't tell anymore. Optimism and a positive mental attitude are important, but so is accepting the reality of things out of your control. Perhaps it's a balance. Perhaps we do currently live in a capitalist hellscape that is destroying everyone and everything from the inside out and also maintain that it doesn't always have to be like this. I'm quite tired of trying to figure everything out.

I am tired. Bone tired. I know that if I give up this fight now I will not be walking away, just giving it to future me. A future me that will not be any better equipped to handle it. Rest is not making me less tired. Giving up did not make me less tired. I think the only way out is through. But I'm just tired.

I don't feel okay. I might not for a while. But at the very least I have to get some of my habits back and see if it helps. If all the "you are worthy of rest" philosophy isn't working maybe the "work hard even if you cry a lot" one will work.

Okay. Goals. I want to go whole hog. But let's just start small this week.

Fasting, 6 days a week. Start using Zero again at least for now to track.

No eating out. I was doing great at this, ordered in a lot since the death, but getting this back on track isn't that hard

Go to work every day. If I'm legit sick that's fine but try not to take any more mental health days because they actually just make me really anxious and guilty 99% of the time. Better to feel like shit on the clock anyway.

Track water and get at least 3 bottles a day. If I get the gumption to track meals a well all the better.

I'm stopping there. I really want to add more like doing yoga or something but I'm adding those to next week. As a bonus point, if I can manage to go for a walk and do some spiritual stuff, that's great. If I can just manage this, I'm doing better than I was. It's a start.

[comradecowplant]

WELL it was an easy read and I finished the book already. I gotta do a classic Dani Vents About a Story post that will include significant spoilers, so be careful if you are reading/want to read The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargraves. I’m about to bitch about it a lot, but overall it was an interesting book that I’d still (mostly) recommend if you have an interest in historical fiction surrounding the Norwegian witch trials.

Most of it was really good, although a few theme threads and character arcs completely fell apart in the final act. I knew it was going to be dark-- again, 17th century witch trial shit-- but the actual “murder my favorite characters” bit thankfully didn’t begin until pretty late in the story, which lets the focus remain more on the lives of the women vs their horrific deaths. The author does a (mostly) great job at creating interesting characters you fall in love with, and succeeded immensely at bringing the landscape and village of Vardo to life.

BUT 

IN THE LAST LITERAL FOUR PAGES, THE NARRATIVE TOOK ALL THE MEANING THAT THE PROTAGANISTS HAD CREATED OUT OF THEIR HARDSHIPS AND THREW IT OVER A CLIFF (LITERALLY! & EACH USE OF THIS WORD HERE HAS BEEN THE PROPER USE. although i guess a fictional event cannot be truly ‘literal’ BUT WHATEVER I AM NOT GETTING LOST IN THE WEEDS WITH PEDANTICS). I am so fucking mad, and it serves as a reminder to why I typically don’t read/watch many period pieces these days, unless it is a period setting in a fantasy/sci fi world. So many people think that in order to bE rEaLiStIc when writing about periods in history, you simply MUST be as grimdark as possible, especially with conclusions, but I find that perspective boring and uncreative as hell. Bitch it’s already fiction! it’s already lies! you are god in the universe you write, have some courage and don’t concede to established tropes that center on garish suffering to define the experiences of historically (& contemporaneously) marginalized people! At least in a medieval-set fantasy story, you get the vibes of the historical setting, but also your friends can swoop by on a dragon and rescue the innocent pants-wearing fisherwoman who is about to be burned alive by the racist woman-hating church.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a story with a messy & unhappy ending. I even love an occasional grimdark story! But as I get older, I see & feel more the evils which inspired these historical events and how they still burden our world today, and I do not enjoy spending my free time reading/watching movies that are centered on suffering for suffering’s sake-- if I want a story about senseless violence & the underdogs who never win, I will just turn on the fucking news. SO, for me, the dark stories I do enjoy cannot just be traumaporn in a difference shell, the darkness has. to. make. sense. You can’t spend 300 pages on a woman overcoming her grief of losing her brother/father/fiancé/half her village & learning how to be a #StrongIndependantWoman, then have her just kill herself on the last page. It just isn’t narratively good, it just isn’t! And to be clear, the author could have gone WAYYYYYYYY darker in many places throughout the book & did not even come close to going full grimdark. I think overall she greatly succeeded at balancing hope & hopelessness. It was done so well in fact that I was lulled into a false sense of security that maybe just maybe there might be a way out for our ladies, a conclusion that didn’t end with the kind of complete misery that historic fiction tends to skew towards. But there is this overwhelming sense in the final few pages that, probably due to the aforementioned loyalty to perceived “historical accuracy”, she hadn’t included enough suffering (even though there is PLENTY of tragedy to go around by that point) & she didn’t know how to finish the story. So when in doubt, kill 👏 those 👏 gays 👏 (although we don’t know the fate of the other woman, who has entire chapters given from her perspective, but Meren just says bye & we never hear about Ursa again 😤)

Which brings us to, yeah, it did have gay shit like I thought, and up until the garbage of the last four pages, it was a very touching romance. But it too concluded in a way that is only satisfying if you squint, and adds to the inconsistencies that I mentioned above. I’ve never in my life said this before, and it makes me ill to even type this, but, *sob* it probably would have been a better story if the two women had remained platonic friends and no touch-a the booba. I know a lot of people think I’m One of Those cringe queers who will read/watch absolute garbage just if there is a queer person (which tbf I definitely also do sometimes, & it’s actually very valid of me, thank u very much), but if that were true I would have finished that awful Warming Trend book that I blogged about like 2 years go, or read any of the hundreds of stupid “subtext” trash that folks like to recommend, or ship Supercorp (no offense to anyone who ships them, I get it, Katie McGrath is hot, but come on, there is a perfectly good lesbian already on the show), or watched Glee. No, I do actually have some standards--  Are they super high, as a love-starved reader/viewer who uses romantic fiction as a primary means of escapism/coping with my shitty life? No, lmao. But as a writer, and as a queermo, nothing grinds my gears more than a badly executed lgbtq+ storyline.

Anyway, I just finished the book an hour ago so my crankiness & disappointment is raw and thus I am all over the place with this rant. I hope I’m not coming off as being too hard on the author, because despite it’s flaws, I am very glad to have serendipitously found The Mercies, and I look forward to checking out KMH’s other works. It’s been a long time since I’ve dug into a book and read it in just a few sittings like I did this, repeating “just one more chapter” for hours until it’s suddenly 3 am, and despite the fuckery to my sleep schedule it contributes to, the feeling is good-- it brings me back to simpler times when I actually was able to experience an ease from the constant uneasiness I always carry in my chest. Idk, moral of the story is that reading is fun, & when I get stuck in my Bad Turns & don’t read for months, it becomes easy to forget how much solace can come from a mid-quality but seductive (not in a horny way. but sometimes also in a horny way, lol) novel. Like, most of my reading these days is miserable 20th century theory or other academic/non-fiction writing related to our depressing capitalist hellscape & impending climate disaster, and The Mercies helped me remember that my roots lie in fiction. It also has me inspired to revisit a couple of historical fictions projects I have laying around, aND MAKE A WOMAN-EMPOWERMENT, ANTI-RACIST, QUEER AS HELL PERIOD FICTION PEICE THAT DOES NOT END IN COMPLETE GARBAGE! And in the meantime, I shall be revisiting the works of Sarah Waters, the only bad bitch I know of who writes queer historical fiction without relinquishing her characters solely to the suffering they experience ✌ 

If anyone has read this far and has any books/authors to recommend (wlw focused preferably, historical fiction or any genre as long as the story itself doesn’t rely on the tropes I touched on, recently published also preferably bc I have a long list of older books/authors but i don’t keep up with new releases like I should, & a lot of the ones I know are white & cis so PLEASE send reccs for more diverse stories/authors if you have them)