#have her confront others' definition of womanhood without going for 'here she is in a dress and naked still a girl despite the sword' the

[scorchedhearth]

a lot of things could be fixed by making casca a butch. the rest of the issues could be fixed by making her a protagonist before a girl

#look. u can have her struggle with feminity all u want without going for the boring and frankly stupid 'im a girl but i dont wear dresses' #casca pressured to perform feminity as its seen within the society and struggling with her morals (following rules) and her desires #(how good it feels to deviate and indulge in masculinity. indulge in what she wants). even as a knight suffering misogyny #have her confront others' definition of womanhood without going for 'here she is in a dress and naked still a girl despite the sword' the #the way butches do by merely existing happy in their masculinity. casca proudly claiming the title of woman and sister and confronting #anyone who treats her as less for it without doing a 'im as good as the boys' but simply 'i am good because i am me' #casca allowed to show off and truly stand out?? god. #there's so many ways to make her struggles as a woman a knight and a person living around griffith's aura interesting in a way that doesn't #dehuminize her and treat her as a tool #like. guts is treated as a tool within the story but he's an active protagonist. casca is treated as a tool within and by the storty itself #it sucks :/

[searchingforproofsthatimwrong]

THE JAMMIEDODGER VIDEO ABOUT JK ROWLING (as recommended by a very polite anon)

so I go point by point after the cut but in short: they should read more feminist theory, they are lying, they are not as coherent as they think they are but they make some points, notably about the rapid onset gender disphoria that’ll need to check in more depth later on.Most of their sources were unfortunatly either on points I already knew or already agreed with.  Also that woman ( the “cis” one not Jammy), should really stop thinking being born a woman is somehow a privilege.

So the video starts by saying three things I agree with :

1)      Biological sex is definitely real

2)      Women’s right and girls’ right need to be protected

3)      JK Rowling is entitled to like support and write whatever she wants

 So far so good. Except it then goes on to say that TRA agree with that. Now maybe most do but at least some don’t. Don’t lie to me, Jammie Dodger.  

They then go on to misrepresent what our problem with “cis” is. Are they going to spend that entire video about trans people at destination of the non educated on that subject without ONCE defining what a trans person is? They are aren’t they ?

“TRANSPEOPLE AGREE THAT BIOLOGICAL SEX EXISTS!!” 

see earlier but given the number of people who are saying “sex is a social construct” and “sex is a spectrum” and “a neovagina is just like a vagina”, you may at least put a “most” in your statement here. Anyway this is not the problem we have, we wouldn’t even discuss this if it weren’t for the brain dead morons who argue with us about it.

“my biological sex -the one I was assigned at birth- was female” 

is Jammie here telling me he knows biology exists but his sex WAS female ? It still IS female. You’re a female. Moreover you cannot say I know biology exists and I was assigned a sex. The entire “assigned sex” is a refutal of biology by implying doctors choose a sex for you. This is stupid.

Strawman. They are saying radfems have no argument against “gender identity is a real thing”. The lies. Gender identity is not a real thing it’s just gender stereotypes and gender is a tool of oppression for women, it’s sexist garbage. I also notice they don’t define gender identity, this is starting to be a pattern, this video is aimed to normies but the only thing they defined so far is terf.

They did 5 fucking minutes on “transpeople know that biological sex exists” I am already exhausted.

Oh my bad they defined “gender identity” as “the gender you know you are”. THANKS A BUNCH THIS IS SO HELPFUL . Define gender please I beg of you.  

“They know they are a man but their bodies don’t match” 

okay so you agree that man and woman are words that depends on your body right? Since it can “match”, they are not gender then ? Nevermind he then says that man is their gender identity. This is not making sense.

Ooooooh the floating head analogy never heard that one before, this is a stupid one because gendies also argue that their gender is innate (unless Jammie here specifically says he doesn’t think that I’ll act as if he agrees with that statement) so the good question would be if you were born as a floating head and never even had a body would you still be a woman? And my answer here as well as plenty of people I suspect is “men and women don’t make sense if we’re born as floating heads what are you on about?”

“transwomen needs women’s right too” 

I know you think that is self evident but I’ll ask what exactly are the women’s right transwomen need. Abortion? Affordable periods product ? The right to have places free of male? oh wait. They are male so they can never have that can they ?

“so feminism also needs to believe in gender identity”

 because if we don’t our feminism is only for females and we exclude males. Notice how they didn’t continue their logic by saying how THIS feminism excludes transmen and nonbinary? Because it does, but guess who actually need the women’s right of abortion for exemple?

“transmen don’t need women’s rights” 

I FUCKING CANNOT YOU STILL NEED IT WTF ARE YOU ON ABOUT. OK I need them to define women’s right asap

“well JK Rowling said she supports trans rights”

 funny how you can understand how those words are not a proof that she in fact does but you still started your video by “we support women’s rights !!!”

“adding [to Harry Potter] content that was LGBT+ friendly” 

she added things that were gay friendly. I don’t remember her adding trans characters.

“transphobic” = saying men can’t become women. Whoah. The hatred.

“the lack of belief [in gender identity] is what she wants protected”

 yes and ? Atheism, the lack of belief in a god, is protected. Gender identity existence only proof is some people saying it does exists, it is not a scientific reality in any way shape or form.

“His biological sex was previously female” 

BUT WE KNOW WHAT BIOLOGICAL SEX IS WE SWEAR; Damn they spend 7 minutes on “transpeople know biological sex exists” and then keep acting like they fucking don’t.

After that they point blank say that gender identity is more important than sex, having someone who passes as an exemple. What about transpeople who don’t pass? How much you bet this will never be discussed in this video.

Anyway they follow that with that : 

Which is true but defining what a woman is does affect women actually (I know weird right)  so it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion here.

“When a large group of transpeople are telling you something is wrong please listen to them”

 please afford women the same courtesy. We are a large group of women saying males are not the fucking authority on what womanhood is but we are told to shut up. Listen.

“we cannot take the behavior of the minority [online abuse] and group it onto the majority” 

I agree with that statement but the majority still didn’t condemn the abuse. Honestly the people in this video did -just before saying HOWEVER but hey – but it is pretty rare to see TRA actually confronting the people who abused JK Rowling online, they cheered them on more than anything.

It is very telling how they spend more time in this video saying people collecting screenshots of the abuse JK Rowling suffered were “not cool” than the TRA giving them a bad name by actually abusing JK Rowling. They even say Jammy was also insulted online so TERF and TRA are as bad as each other right ?? Being called delusional or idiot is not the same as death threats sorry Jammy. (I doubt the “freak” one was from a terf tbh but even then, this is not even comparable) I mean didn’t you get at least one person saying they were going to kill you ? Because I did, and I have ,like, 200 followers. I find very weird that the woman here said “I received sexual assaults threats and this is as a cis woman!” as if women weren’t the primary target of sexual assaults threats. Yeah it’s the misogyny. What’s new.  You really should stop thinking you are somehow priviledged even when you are being sexually threatened ffs. What gender ideology does to a mf.

 “neither of these sides are innocent” 

oh come on, you cannot possibly means that the men who gave you sexual threats were terfs, this is ridiculous, you are just trying to excuse and diminish what people did to JK as per fucking usual.

 “persistent low level harassment” 

it hasn’t stayed low level tho. Stop trying to say you and JK are receiving the same abuse it’s embarrassing.

JK Rowling’s essay having real life effects on policies for exemple has an element of thruth ,even tho we disagree on wether or not this can be a good thing but your are deluding yourself if you think people assaulting transpeople are the sort of people whose views are in any way influenced by feminists. This is laughable. Also please stop with the guilt tripping, we are not responsible of the mental health of transpeople, we are not their therapists, sorry.

I love how they implied that the guy who forced GNC kids to behave as their assigned gender would somehow give a letter of thanks to a feminist. This is implying “terfs” want the same things as this maniac which is just a straight up lie, terfs absolutely adore GNC people and are mostly GNC themselves.

“What rights of women are actually being eroded by the inclusion of transwomen ?” I am glad you asked !! Well apart from the freedom of speech since “terfs” are losing their jobs and being deplatformed because of this, we have the inherent dangers of replacing sex by gender in what the law protects : https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/firing-mom-because-shes-breastfeeding-sex-discrimination this is a link to a story about a woman who was said being fired for breastfeeding was not sex discrimination because men can lactate. Do you see the problem ? Moreover there is quotas for women in politics etc….Women fought for their quotas and now males can have them, who do you think an employer would prefer someone who probably will be pregnant at one point or someone who never will ? and let’s not forget the right for women to have women only places :Women in prison are raped by the trans identified males in it .

“I cannot think of a single right that is removed from me”

 good for you maybe you should have actually researched radfems talking point before doing this video ? Your ignorance is not a good argument.  

“transwomen can use the women changing room because they are women” 

you keep saying that but apart from “they feel like women” you didn’t explain how they are women. This is the basis of this entire video and you never explained.  Also allowing any person who say they are women into the women’s changing room does not only allow transwomen does it ? It also allows lying freaks.

“You can protect cis women’s rights and transrights simulteanously” HOWWWWWWWWWWW, please tell me how to keep female only spaces (women’s right) while saying TWAW (transrights apparently according to them).

“transwomen can be the victims and cis women can do the voyeurism” 

true but did you forget we actually live in the real world and in that one males are much more likely to be sexually harassing people than women ? It is a brazen form of lying to tell women that since theoretically other women can also be creeps they don’t have to worry about males. Get a grip. Live in the real world for a change.

“It doesn’t reference transwomen but men pretending to be women” 

apart from “they feel it” you still haven’t told us what the difference is. You are aware nothing from an outside perspective distinguishes the two right ??

“there is no evidence of men pretending to be trans to enter female only spaces” and how would you know they are pretending ? This is the same problem again and again, if you define transwomen as men who feel like women then there is absolutely no way of verifying someone really is trans. And that’s a lie anyway since we do actually have proof of that happening?? There was that video making the room on radblr a while ago of a clear male pissing in the women’s bathroom saying (lying) that he was trans.

Yeah actually radical feminists would accept transmen in their bathrooms, but it’s not an easy question with an easy answer to know how to check they really are transmen. Although notice how they are again only talking about transpeople that passes ? I would feel safer with Jammy in my toilets than Hannah Mouncey for exemple :

  That is so obvioulsy a man in a dress.

“ If a transman with a beard and penis and balls can go into a women’s toilet and that is deemed okay because of his biological sex what is to stop a cis man from doing the same”

 I am sorry but are you saying a transwoman cannot have a beard and penis and balls ?????????? This is incredibly transphobic of you, you said that gender identity Is just feeling like a gender, how exactly does that mean transwomen cannot have beard ? If you want to know, radfem are arguing for a third toilet for transpeople, that’s our solution. What is yours ?

 Ok the next part is racist I’ll skip that thanks

On accusation of TERFery intimidating people and organizations “we haven’t seen these” again, your ignorance is not an argument, I am posting these on Tumblr where cryptoterfs arer numerous. Why do you think that is ?

Are they seriously saying Nike and addidas “accepted” transpeople because they “realized it was the right thing to do” ?????? Those companies employs slaves IN WHAT WORLD DO YOU LIVE IN??

“trying to make transpeople look crazy” 

the clownfish things were said online by real transpeople. We don’t need to invent thing to make transpeople look crazy, if there is  large enough group some people belonging in that group will say stupid shit .

“We support these rights”

 when speaking about women victims of abuse. This is a lie, the Vancouver rape shelter relief is often targeted by transactivists, recently a gofundme for it was cancelled because of transactivists, they are quite litteraly stealing money from raped women. This is not a small, inconsequential part of transactivism. 

“The trans-inclusionist views expand the meaning of women to include transwomen”

 It doesn’t expend shit actually since it excludes transmen and non-binary. If anything it reduces it.

They go on to say that transwomen deserves protection as women because of their murder rate. It doesn’t explain how being seen as women will help them here and anyway it’s a bold lie considering their murder rate is actually quite low. They also fail to consider how depriving transmen and nonbinaries of those same women’s right might be a problem.

Again they make the distinction between transwomen and men pretending to be transwomen without a way to identify which is which. This is starting to get repetitive and tedious. The problem is not that all transwomen are predators is that there is no way to see a difference until the predators acts, until a woman gets hurt, so accepting transwomen is accepting predators and saying transwomen feelings are more important that the women being hurt because of this. I disagree. The tiny tiny percentage of transpeople doing bad things is actually the same percentage as men doing bad things. If your argument could be used to say women only spaces shouldn’t exist at all because not all men are dangerous maybe you should reconsider your argument because I will not reconsider women’s right to have female only spaces.

“If you push transwomen out of female only spaces you push transmen in”

 Yes. I don’t even see where the problem is here.  Now why don’t we analyse the fact that if you push transwomen into female only spaces you push transmen out of them ? I don’t think transmen belongs in men’s prisons, do you ?

“Transpeople don’t dispute biology and don’t impact how female only diseases are treated” 

eat shit. They do impact this, every woman trying to say “female biology” get shit thrown at her faster than you can blink, stop lying to me Jammy. Do you think I would get called a bleeder, a fetus carrier, a motherfucking birthing body if transactivism wasn’t trying to erase sex ? Don’t you think the sentence “men can have periods” is not eroding biology ? Fuck off

Back to JK, Jammy is saying her disabling comment on her blog was not conductive to a conversation, I have to salute the straight face he says it with because do you really think a nice educated conversation would have taken place on JK Rowling’s essay ? They flooded her children’s book tag with porn for fuck sake.

“Thre is no explosion in young women who wishes to transition” sources ? Because it does seem to be true :https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsm.12817

“the detransitionners rate is actually really low” hard to know but most people who transitioned did it not so long ago since transgender is a recent trend, we will have to wait and see to have a more robust number. But maybe they are right on that one, this is not going to be the one argument that changes my views unfortunately. 

“Does that mean we should stop people from getting plastic surgery then ?” 

lol you don’t know the radfem stance on plastic surgery do you ?

“There is more significant transphobia than homophobia” 

sources ? Because transition is used as converstion therapy in Iran so it is at least untrue in one country. 

“If transmen transition to escape womanhood why is there transwomen ?” 

You really didn’t research this did you ? the radfem answer is that transwomen are either gay men who have gender disphoria OR AGP (autogynephiles) read this if you want to learn more about it: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-elephant-in-the-room

“why would people who have male privileges choose to give that up” 

you are assuming they lose their male privileges but I will need sources on that because most transwomen do not pass and are treated more as special men than as women.

“We have already shown you that transphobia is far more rife and damaging than homophobia” 

did I miss that part ? When ? You just said that ? Without backing it up ?

“anti trans narratives constantly contradict itself” 

No we do not, we are feminist so we OF COURSE we analyse men and women differently, this is an issue of gender which radical feminism posit as an hierarchy, trying to explain transwomen and transmen with the same arguments is doomed to fail because they were not equal in their relation to gender to begin with. Do you think black people trying to pass as white do it for the same reasons white people try to have more black features ? Of course not.

“What am I a lesbian or a homophobe ?”

 You are both, you are a lesbian in denial with a deep case of internalized misogyny and homophobia. You know yo can be both sexist and a woman right ? Well it’s the same here.

I heard “Simone de Beauvoir” and I knew they were going to be really fucking stupid with that “One is not born a woman but rather becomes a woman” quote and THERE IT IS! Please read the book. She is not saying male can become women if they try hard enough, she is saying basically the same thing JK Rowling’s quote said which is that “womanhood” as it is forced on women is alien and not natural and the point is that we should not accept it, it’s a feminist quote on femininity and I am so sick of men using it to say that they are women.

Transactivists acting as if sex recognition patterns don’t exists is exhausting so I won’t comment on “nobody checks if you have XX chromosomes before passing you over for a promotion” other than to say : passing over for promotions happens a lot when women are pregnant and after giving birth stop acting as if misogyny is unrelated to our reproduction capacities it is fucking insulting.

“transwomen will support [fights against tampon tax and FGM] too” 

FGM was a bad choice here considering transactivists tried to stop a bill against FGM .  I will need sources here actually since I never seen a transwoman fighting for women’s right in my life.

Ok I let a lot passes here because I’m tired but we are 48:40 in the video and fuck you “intersectional feminism” is not about males. It was for black women. It is not reductionist to say women are people with a vagina, this is just a definition, and one that applies to 50% of the population at that, there is litteraly no definition of woman that includes more people than that.

Imagine thinking “women are people with vagina” is reductionist but not calling women “vulva owners”. Please , I am begging for coherence.

“transwomen who experience greater abuse than cisgender women will ever experience” . 

This is revolting. I don’t have any other words. I am glad this is the end of the video because I would have stopped immediately if this was at the start. What abuse transwomen can experience than ciswomen cannot ? Because I would have thought forced pregnancy was horrific but maybe this doesn’t compare to being misgendered?

“most people are comfortable with transwomen going into women’s bathrooms” https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39147/bsa34_moral_issues_final.pdf

It says 13% of women are at least uncomfortable with sharing bathroom with transwomen, why are we ignoring their wishes? Because 0.1% of the population wants to ?  Whatever, the really interesting thing in this study is that for this question they defined “transwomen” as someone who has gone through all the steps to become a woman aka someone with surgery. I find extremely misleading that this is used for bathroom bills which defines transwomen as male identifying as women. Do you think the numbers would be the same if they specified the transwoman in question still has a penis ? Which is the case for most transwomen btw?

#anon #jammiedodgers #transgender #op is a terf #this took wayyy to long don't read this

[finishinglinepress]

FLP POETRY BOOK OF THE DAY: My Body Is Not an Apology by Megha Sood

TO ORDER GO TO: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/my-body-is-not-an-apology-by-megha-sood/

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RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY

Megha Sood is a Pushcart-nominated Poet, Editor, and Blogger based in New Jersey, USA. She is a Poetry Editor at MookyChick(UK), Life and Legends (USA), and Literary Partner in the project “Life in Quarantine” with Stanford University, USA. Works widely featured in journals, Poetry Society of New York, Kissing Dynamite, and many more. Author of Chapbook ( “My Body is Not an Apology”, FinishingLine press, 2021) and Full Length (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, FlowerSongPress,2021).Recipient of Poet Fellowship 2021, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, National Level Winner Spring Mahogany Lit Prize 2020, and Three-Time State-level winner of NJ Poetry Contest.Blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/.Tweets at @meghasood16

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR My Body Is Not an Apology by Megha Sood

My Body is Not An Apology is a testimony of female rebellion and a journey of self-discovery in a most wanted and unwanted way. The poems roar to voice the pain of silent torture, cruelty, and agony of a woman’s heart to reclaim her dignity not only as a female but also as an individual. This book is a fierce approach to life in poetry, and the poet dissects the ironies of women’s existence with razor-sharp language, intellect, and courage like Simone de Beauvoir. In the poet’s own words, it is a triumphant proclamation and an unfettered declaration.

–Kalpna Singh-Chitnis (Poet, Writer, and Filmmaker)

Sometimes with acerbic irony, sometimes with wise comeuppance, but never with hopeless resignation no matter how bleak the refracted rays of reality, Megha’s stanzas find their way through the blind alleys of patriarchy and misogyny looking it unblinking in the eye. The vulnerability of her perception is also her strength, as each stanza duals with difficult truths using the female body and the form of poetry as weapons of grit and gumption. This little book is a fist of fury and unveiling.

–Rochelle Potkar, Author of Paper Asylum & Bombay Hangovers

These poems recognize the body as the ‘eye of the storm’ in the turbulent churning of our age. The guttural cry of the feminine forges these poems with a primal rawness cast in images as varied as radishes, pickles, broken book spines, and armchairs. Megha Sood joins her unapologetic voice with urgency to erase any error of ambiguity, ‘You don’t own shit’. These poems will ‘sit like a welt’ on the tongue of the world.

–Usha Akella, Poet & Founder, Matwaala, South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival

A unique feminist exploration through the written word, investigating the body and the world society overlays atop women, Megha Sood does justice uncovering, discovering, and discarding herself to find an inexorably beautiful woman within. Sood’s My Body Is Not an Apology chisels away at the construct our society imposes on women, revealing an exemplar poet of the highest caliber.

–Joshua Corwin, author of Becoming Vulnerable

Megha Sood’s “My Body is Not an Apology” is a powerful debut with poetry that contains multitudes. These poems are fierce and unapologetic as they explore the toxic culture around gender-based discrimination and reproductive rights. Sood crafts with cutting precision as we read about personal experience and the influence of these issues in the wider world. Far from a desperate cry of the disenfranchised, these poems raise a fist and demand to be heard from a position of strength. Woven in and around every poem is the question that asks: what would life be like if we could change this? This book is a clarion call to eradicating gender-based injustice. It is also a book full of hope and empowerment.

–Juliette van der Molen, Poet, Writer,Feminist

My Body is Not an Apology by Megha Sood is a woman’s journey through gender-based discrimination. It is a cry and a plea as Sood questions, “How can you live a life like a broken spine of a book?” In her poems, we see a parallel to Sylvia Plath, and her words bring alive the voices of the Bronte Sisters, Emily Dickinson, and Phyllis Wheatley. At the same time, we see similarities to Sarojini Naidu’s rage and certitude when Sood says, “But I never give up …as I learned from the footsteps of warriors.” Sood’s My Body is Not An Apology is a whimper, a roar, an awakening in the feminist world.

–Meenakshi Mohan, Ed.D., Professor, writer, painter, critic

Megha Sood’s poems show a vulnerability that is welded to resilience in remarkably ingenious ways because poetry occupies the interstice between the felt and the unspoken.

Don’t let the aroma leave the pickle jar

Keep the lid tight

my granny used to say–

Some things are better left unspoken. (Even My Grief Should Be Productive)

Here’s the wisdom of an entire civilization. Sometimes it comes pickled in a jar. Call it Indian or South Asian, or what you will. It teaches you how to hold one’s own, anywhere.

–Lakshmi Kannan, Poet, Novelist, Short story writer, and Translator.

Megha Sood’s chapbook, My Body Is Not An Apology is exactly what the title says. The human body is not an apology for anyone. It’s not meant to make us feel ashamed simply for being born as we are, for existing, for belonging to any race, religion, gender, age, or any diversity markers that exist in our world. Our body is also not space where anyone can reside with abuse, disdain, or evil. Our body is a temple where our soul lives protected and safe. Megha through her deeply sensitive and poignant poems urges readers to ponder, deliberate, and act upon ensuring that our body is not an apology. Megha’s poems are fierce and tender at the same time. They are like raging storms or quiet whispers; both compel us to listen, look and consider. Megha delves into a plethora of issues that plague the human mind and in consequence the body. She questions and pulls the reader back again and again to her poems leaving behind a memory of heightened awareness. Very few writers can do as such. This collection of twenty-five poems will surely leave a mark upon your heart. Among the contemporary diaspora writers, Megha Sood is one to definitely read!

–Anita Nahal, poet, professor, flash fictionist & children’s writer. Find her works at: https://anitanahal.wixsite.com/anitanahal

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

The gripping, riveting poems of Megha Sood’s chapbook ‘My Body Is Not An Apology’ carries the inherent legacy of the truths that our exemplary literary predecessors Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Nikki Giovani, Alice Walker, Kamala Das, and others, embodying unabashed feminism, upheld in their poetic creations.

When the poet utters her angst and her rhetoric reflects a discourse, built around the quintessential strength of a woman, these lines are born from her pen: “My body is not an apology/ it’s a roar: a declaration/ an unapologetic/ unabashed/ straight truth in your face/ a war cry:/ a deafening scream from the silence.” These lines hit the nail at just the right place, confronting the age-old power dynamics of a patriarchal social structure. As a strong woman of color, as a sensitive poet, her verses in the collection are like smoking cinders of the thinking feminine voice, empowering and liberating the feminine psyche. In the growth of her poetic voice, she has successfully absorbed the little nuances of her Indian roots and her grandmother’s legacy of truth (reflected in the poem ‘Even My Grief Should Be Productive), at the same time, having the deep insight of a woman acknowledging that her ‘body goes from a shade darker than yesterday’, as she gives birth to her ‘own revolution’. In the collection, the body and being of the poet as a woman reaches its zenith of celebration as she categorically unfolds the themes of the feminine identity, body politics, repression of womanhood, and also, the rampant rhetorics of violence ingrained in our postmodern society. Her voice is both subtle and empowering, essential and redeeming, hence the chapbook will indeed be an asset in the ever-evolving arena of feminist writing and art.

–Lopa Banerjee, Critically acclaimed author, poet, translator, editor from Texas, USA

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[bscully]

I see a lot of people praise caska for being an amazing female character but I kinda feel like she’s written like a bad joke about women (looses battle because period, too emotional, told her role is to comfort guts, etc...) she doesn’t get much time to really shine as a fighter either bc she’s constantly being saved of course I love her and will always defend her but do u think she’s actually written well as a girl? I feel like I’d be lying if I praised her for it

Hello and thanks for the ask!

No offense but I mean…

Let’s put it into perspective. There is a reason why Casca during the Golden Age was written the way she was, and I don’t think it’s necessarily bad writing. Some (questionable) views about women were expressed that way, but I’d like to think that’s more because of the time the Golden Age was written in, rather than because of malicious intent.

During the Black Swordsman Arc we were shown how Guts handled those who were weak: He absolutely detested them.

During the Golden Age we were shown how he dealt with other’s weakness (Casca’s) and also *why* he hated the weak during his Black Swordsman Arc days: During the Eclipse, the Hawks all died because they were weak, and Casca was violated and lost her mind because she could not defend herself either. (The irony of this is that both of these things all happened because of his best efforts to save Griffith, boyo was too distracted)

Black Swordsman Arc

Guts generally was very contempt towards those he considered weak, and also especially towards other men, e.g. Vargas whom he just let die. Another time someone weaker than him died, it was the priests’ daughter, who was slaughtered by evil spirits. He also felt remorse killing her possessed body, even then and also vomits later on (he always vomits when he hurts a child or girl, see Adonis, see killing the fire children in the lost children chapters). In the page below, bottom panel, you can see white sprinkles which I believe are tears.

He then goes on to say how he cannot bother to crush ants below his feet when he walks. That was his way of dealing with the sadness, getting someone who is weaker than him killed because of him. His love-hate relationship to weaker people was also shown to us by his interactions with Theresia: in some way, he did save her here from falling off the ruins. But she had to hold onto a sharp blade so she wouldn’t fall.

Guts was hurting someone who he would love to protect, and he also hated himself for it. He made Theresia go down the very same path like he did because revenge is the only way to give her something to hold onto after losing everything.

It reminded of his own suffering, losing the Hawks and Casca. At least, this is the conclusion I made when I read the Golden Age and then look back to the Black Swordsman arc.

Golden Age

When Casca was later introduced during the Golden age, IMO Kentaro Miura wanted to show us how Guts usually treated people. As it turns out, Guts does want to protect and make sure people are safe. He also listens to them trying his best to meet their expectations. In other words, he was not always an asshole. In regards to other people’s weaknesses, his treatment of Casca was still rough in the beginning, but at the very least imo, well-intentioned.

Now you can critique Miura for his display of Casca’s womanhood. I am personally not particularly bothered by it, especially if this situation is a set up for romance in the first place. Of course the protagonist is going to take note of another character’s feminity if the author plans to hook them up. Guts was confronted with Casca’s female problems (periods) and what we were shown is that Guts, while he may have had his preconceptions about women too, still is understanding of their struggles AND their weakness.

Like… he first gets upset at Casca, but then acknowledges that she doesn’t have it easy, dealing with her own problems and emotions at times (Casca is a VERY emotional personality, too, but usually she has more self-control than this).

If anything, this bit right here displays Guts’ willingness to change his mind, his capacity to understand others and also help them in the process. Empathy, compassion, y’know? Something he lacked during the Black Swordsman Arc (this here happens right before Vargas is being beheaded):

That being said, I don’t think Miura actually thought that women being emotional is a negative thing when he wrote this, but he may have been affected by negative (cultural?) bias.

In the face of that weakness, Guts tries to help Casca out where he can and be supportive of her, e.g. by protecting her from Adon and his men - the 100 Man slayer scene was basically Guts protecting Casca’s womanhood from thirsty mercenaries, while she COULD NOT defend herself as effective because of her state (and he does that DESPITE of Casca throwing a knife at him earlier). This theme also repeats during the Eclipse, however, here he could do nothing but watch in his own helplessness.

Also let it be said that Miura’s potrayal of Casca’s period isn’t too far off, because periods CAN knock you the fuck out like that. My last one was absolutely devastating and I wouldn’t have survived without taking pain meds. So can periods affect your capacity to fight? Yes, they definitely can. You also gotta consider that Miura is male, and males *usually* do not know the effects of periods in detail unless they confronted themselves with it; also consider the Golden Age was written in the 90s, so that topic wasn’t prevalent for men at all.

Contrast & Comparison as writing tool

Miura also set up a nice contrast by adding in a particularly sexist character: of course I’m talking about Adon.

Adon calls Guts a fool for protecting someone at the cost of his own well-being, and the way he talks it’s like saving multiple women and exploit them is normal and acceptable.

But: Guts is literally taking multiple arrow shots for Casca and does not ask for anything in return. (It’s also interesting to note that through Adon’s mockery Casca realizes what Guts is doing for her) Now, you could argue that Guts is still a sexist asshole, however, at least in comparison to Adon, Guts still appears like the good guy  You can critique the ideas about women, how their prejudices and problems they struggle with are depicted, yes, and imo it is valid critique, too. But creating comparisons by showing how differently the characters act or think in the same scene is still an effective way of story-telling.

What Miura later did with other female characters, like Farnese or Schierke, was to “mature up” his writing. His tools however, stayed the same.

More examples comes to mind:

Guts leaving the Hawks

When Guts leaves the hawks, Griffith, Guts, Casca and Judeau all hold monologues, depicting how differently they think. While Casca and Rickert view  the Hawks as family, Judeau still considers them a mercenary band, and Griffith treats his subordinate Guts like a possession and has no inhibition to kill him if it meant he would either not leave or not join another faction and potentially become his enemy. I wrote about this in more detail here on my website

Conviction Arc Farnese

The contrasting happens again when Miura makes Guts meet Farnese for the first time. He was captured by the Holy Iron Chain Knights.

Farnese treated Guts pretty badly: she whipped him out in a desperate attempt to assure dominance, then threw him outside into the cold so he would eventually freeze to death.

When Guts takes HER hostage, they switch roles. Surely, he is being rough to her, but at the same time, is saving her multiple times, e.g. from falling to death or evil spirits.

This is the same writing tool used, just filled with different ideas. Miura’s writing itself hasn’t changed.

Casca is not powerless

Also Casca indeed is capable of defending herself. She is NOT always being saved. Even when being pursued after escaping from the 100 Man Slayer Scene, she gave the pursuing mercenaries a hard time, e.g. ramming a branch into one of the merc’s eyes. In that scene, it didn’t look like Casca was losing, she just got herself out of a dangerous situation and leaps to grab her sword! Only THEN we see how a volley of arrows interrupts the fight.  Does this look like a Casca to you that is about to lose? It doesn’t to me. She could have easily defeated the other two pursuers all by herself.

Casca, NOT GUTS, later defeated Adon all by herself and she was at a disadvantage too (think the poison dart).

Even during the Eclipse she dealt the final blow to take down the apostle that killed Judeau. She is not being depicted as powerless at all. She always seems at a disadvantage, struggling against all odds, and *still* is victorious. Guts acknowledges the strength it takes for her to do what she does, and that’s why Guts is helping her as much as he can.

Now you could STILL say “omg but that’s still sexist”, but eh. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging someone else’s struggle, celebrating them for pulling through despite of all the obstacles, and also willing to help out, but I’ll keep that politics stuff for another post. Stuff like this can go wrong yes, but in either case and as far as I am concerned, Guts is not trying to be patronizing or strip her off her independence in any way.

However, Casca’s strength does have limits and her full strength was not shown to us either, but I’d like to think that’s mostly because she is more a side-character and didn’t have much chance to shine during the Golden Age. I really really hope that will change with future chapters.

TL;DR Just because an author expresses outdated ideas or ideas you disagree with, does not mean it’s bad writing.

#berserk #casca #guts #golden age #ask #analysis #Anonymous

[truethingsiwishicouldsay]

What is your opinion on trans people? Like, the trans people who have transitioned and such?

OK, well, here are my thoughts, which are pretty nuanced so this gets long. I have bolded the main points to help break up the textwall.

First, the surgery thing. Whether or not a trans person has had gender reassignment surgery does not change my basic perception of them as a human being. They do not “qualify into womanhood or manhood” by getting surgery. They are not more or less valid as people because they treat their dysphoria with surgery or treat it in some other way. That’s an individual choice that should between them, their doctors and their loved ones. 

It may change their bodies to inspire people at large to treat them according to their gender identities, which in turn helps their dysphoria. But I honestly feel like the FIRST goal of all people who are considering surgery that drastic shouldn’t be surgery to get others to accept your womanhood or manhood so you can accept yourself. It should be radical self-acceptance. You cannot afford to define yourself by others’ perception of you. There are just too many shitty people in the world.

If you can get to the place where you can truly say, “other people’s issues with me don’t define me” and have a basic foundation of self-respect to stand on, you’re in a better headspace to contemplate things like whole-body surgery, or deal with the side effects of a lifelong hormone regimen.

Now for the rest of my thoughts.

Unless they’ve done something awful, like Yaniv, I don’t come for individual trans people. Anyone who does that is a huge asshole and an actual transphobe. If I have a problem with a trans person it is 100% with something they did or with their politics, not their transness.

I am highly critical of modern transactivism and the way it eats away at the rights and boundaries of others, tries to politicize sexual entitlement, fucks with the definition of words, seems to specifically target cis women with demands, boundary violations and antagonism, is homophobic in its demands for sexual “access” to same-sex-attracted people, and encourages behavior such as nailing dead rats to rape recovery center doors, threatening people, and in my sister’s and my case, beating them.

Yeah, I got my ribs cracked by a trans woman tree times my size on the RUMOR that my sister was a TERF. A rumor spread vindictively by a drunk because she wouldn’t cheat on THE AWESOMEST WIFE IN THE UNIVERSE with her. I fucking HATE the TERF patrol. They silence and harm women. But that doesn’t give me the right to hate trans people.

Trans people are human beings who should be able to live their lives without abuse. That includes everything from idiots marching into their journals and bullying them and their partners on up to the Hell trans POC face in places like Brazil. 

There is a difference between biologically-based sex and socially defined gender. “Trans women are women” doesn’t mean trans women are biologically female. Otherwise they would not be trans. 

You can’t deny biological reality to cater to your dysphoria without putting yourself at risk healthwise, and without ending up at odds with pretty much everyone. I will call my trans brothers “dude” and laugh at their dropped-my-packer-in-the-bathroom stories and acknowledge their gender as male, but I’m still going to feel like I should say something if they’re having PCOS symptoms or something and won’t go to a doctor because dysphoria. Your body may not fit your soul, but it doesn’t deserve neglect.

Because gender is socially defined and often toxic, it’s up for grabs. Defy it, redefine it, jump gender boxes, set up new ones, whatever--do you. 

Just don’t scream at people with no experience of it who don’t quite get it at first. I have no fucking idea what gender box you’re sitting in if you give no outward signs at all, so don’t yell at my scramblebrained self for not being psychic. 

I try not to misgender people because I don’t like hurting people who aren’t even part of the conversation. That does not mean I don’t believe there’s no difference between the life experiences of transgender people and (what’s most commonly called) cis people. Of course there is.

Sex criminals who reinvent themselves as trans women to try and get into female prisons are absolutely fucking suspect. 

If you want to change your body to match your sense of gender, that’s your business--so long as you pay real attention to the medical implications. I hear about trans guys hurting themselves with binders and my response is 100% like “Ow, oo honey, please be careful” and 0% like “look at this crazy person blahblahblah here’s some transphobia”

Puberty blockers and transing kids horrify me, in part because I know a kid going through it and he’s already suffering massive side effects. He’s. Nine.

I get pissed off when historical female heroes get transed. Let us have our heroes. Don’t try to redefine every brave, gender-defying woman as a man.

I am wary of self-ident because of the ways it is being abused. 

Dysphoria sounds like absolute Hell. Personally I’m not sure surgery and such is the answer, but it’s not something I have ever dealt with. I certainly don’t think people should be pressured into surgery and hormones as “the answer” or “the only answer”.

Cotton ceiling activists are fighting for the sexual coercion of women and are loathsome. Nobody owes anybody sex, and thinking otherwise is a sign of toxic male socialization, full stop.

Many of the problems such as bathroom bills could be more easily addressed through physical innovation rather than political arguing. What we need is better design of public lavatories to provide everyone with both truly private and accessible public space. This would include everything from protecting from predators and privacy-invaders, to making sure everyone can pee without having a damn sex/gender debate at the door.

Biological males do not belong on girls’ high school or college sports teams, or in women’s competitive sports. Growing up male gave them physical advantages whether they acknowledge it or not. Also if a man in his fifties is on a high school or college women’s sports team because he “feels like a teenage girl” and you don’t think that’s suspect...

Girlhood and sexism are experienced by cis women and non-passing trans men. Boyhood and male privilege are experienced by cis men and non-passing trans women. People treat you according to the sex they perceive you to be, not the gender you perceive yourself to be. How people perceive and treat you determines your socialization and experience of sexism and privilege, not how you identify.

Screaming transphobia because a conversation about biological female health “doesn’t include trans women” is simply irrational. If you don’t have the plumbing or deal with the issues, the conversation doesn’t apply to you. Derailing conversations about female biology to nitpick about the words used is also a silencing tactic.  On the other hand, I will gladly bitch about periods with trans guys and acknowledge that when it happens they’re probably wrestling with an additional burden of heavily triggered dysphoria.

Female erasure is real. The tendency of transactivists to demand that words like “front hole” and “uterus holders” be used on us to spare their feelings COMPLETELY IGNORES WHAT BEING REFERRED TO LIKE THAT DOES TO US. Half the human population should not face dehumanizing language and treatment so that a small percentage of the population can feel a little better.

Feminists have also noticed that 99.9% of the time, it’s women who are expected to give ground, change our language, and change our behavior to accommodate. Men don’t face the same expectations. They are not confronted online, their organizations are not attacked, their buildings are not defaced. Transactivists have a huge sexism problem.

It is absolutely possible to be of the female gender and yet rampantly, blatantly and deeply discriminate against members of the female sex. Any wariness I have of trans women largely stems from negative experiences of trans female sexism and assault against trans men and cis women. 

Sexism, sexual entitlement, out of control tantrum-throwing, taking pleasure in threats and use of violence, demanding to be at the center of every movement you are in (whether transgender or feminist, for example), and the demand that biologically female people cater to you are all signs of toxic male socialization. I used to rather arrogantly say that trans women should jettison these as part of their transition, but the truth is that every human being should. But it’s still causing problems.

TLDR: it really depends on the specific trans issue and how it intersects with Feminism, social pressures, self-image, and scientific fact. Transactivism has huge problems, but trans people are human beings who deserve basic consideration and respect regardless.

#transgender #Anonymous

[lilquill]

i take it you read circe!! did you like it?

I did read Circe!! And my gosh, I’m in LOVE with everything about it!! The language is stunning, the portrayal of emotions is done incredibly well, the themes are complex, and I couldn’t put the book down! I spent several nights in a row reading until 2 A.M.! All in all it was a captivating, exquisite story.

There will be spoilers below the read more cut, just so all those who haven’t read it yet can go in with a fresh perspective if they wish!

The first thing that really hits you is the prose. It’s BEAUTIFUL! The tone of it is very much like a myth or fairy tale, ethereal and full of stunning descriptions and metaphors, which fits perfectly with the story it’s telling.

Circe’s own powers are strong in transformation, and the way that her narration uses incredible metaphors reflects that quite well: looking at something and seeing something else as it.

I loved the aesthetic of the book. The vivid imagery really sucks you in! Picturing a young girl in the dark halls of Helios, a young woman desperately wringing our herbs over the sleeping body of her beloved to make him a god, a weary yet defiant mother holding her baby and casting a spell to spite the Olympians, a woman walking into the sea to confront a massive god as old as the planet to ask for his tail and risking eternal torture, a daughter finally standing up to the sun god himself to demand her freedom as he almost scorched her….I could go on! The writing was so evocative, and I had chills at so many points!

I also loved the structure of the story itself, and its circular narrative that contrasted itself. How it starts with a cruel family where she felt out of place and alone, and how it ends with her having found her family, bound by love and compassion. How it starts with her trying to turn her beloved into a god so he can be with her with pharmaka, and how it ends with her using that same herb to become mortal so she can live with those she loves. How it starts with her turning Scylla into a monster, and how it ends with her killing Scylla so she no longer kills mortals. How it starts with Helios burning her as she stands firm that she has harnessed an herb’s powers, to how it ends with her standing her ground against that same burning father with her own magic from those herbs as a defense. I could go on and on, but I loved how Circe grew and how she inverted the beginnings of her narrative.

The way that Circe’s tale spanned so many different stories in Greek mythology was done incredibly well and highlighted her experiences with love and loss and pain and her perspective on the world around her.

I also deeply loved Miller’s portrayal of Greek mythology as it is commonly known. The stories of great battles and grand feats have the glamor stripped back to reveal their ugliness and callousness, all with a switch of perspective. From the perspective of a woman relegated to the sidelines in these epic stories, a woman who has been watching all this happen for millennia, these stories change.

I’ve talked about how the senseless violence in a lot of western stories, both older and now, bothers me (maybe not on my blog, but definitely to a lot of my friends). Therefore, I really loved how Circe was genuinely upset by these things and sought to fix them.

There was so much tension, and the stakes were incredibly high, but Circe does not succumb to the usual fantasy protagonist’s “war is evil but it is necessary and this whole series is about war and the conflict of war, the protagonist throws up on the battlefield and then becomes a great warrior and/or commander and then it’s all good” type deal. She was not tangled in a “war” or “battle” in the literal sense, other than the conflict between Olympians and Titans in which she became a pawn. This is what I mean about tension without unnecessary violence!! So many books are just the literary equivalent of a first-person shooter, and this is certainly the case with a lot of portrayals of Greek mythology as well, especially because of the heavy influence of ancient Greece on the West today. Circe’s story is mired in violence, but the moments with no violence at all are some of the most breathtakingly intense and dramatic.

Circe’s kindness and love, though often fierce and burning and messy, and her aching loneliness, are such a stark contrast to the gods––and even some of the mortals like Odysseus––who care nothing for lives or genuine emotion. She truly loves people, and in the end it is the way that her relationships always end as she outlives them that motivates her to give up being a god. I really enjoyed this aspect of the story! The way Miller portrays love and relationships is something I truly want to see more of.

And, speaking of kindness and love and relationships, I LOVED Miller’s portrayal of motherhood. I enjoyed that it was a subversion of the ideal of pristine, perfect, pure, gentle white housewives while still maintaining a deeply loving mother-son relationship. Many seminal feminist stories by cis white women demonize motherhood, framing it as a cage for women. Then this experience becomes universalized to all women. The problem is that, for instance, in the case of women of color, having children and a loving family is what is often denied to us. The world forces the kids of mothers of color to grow up faster and tears their families apart.

Circe is a mother in this story. She struggles with raising her child, but she loves her son fiercely and deeply, to the point where she risks eternal torment just to protect him. The gods want to take her child away, and she endures great pain and works incredibly hard to keep him. It is how the world treats mothers of color.

Look at the struggles Black women go through during pregnancy, with inadequate care at their hospitals and little research on the issues and conditions they go through, and high rates of maternal death. (I strongly encourage that you look at the ProPublica/NPR collaboration series Lost Mothers for more on this!) Look at how Latine families are being torn apart at the border, and mothers are losing their kids as those children are given to white families. Look at how the families of indigenous peoples are torn apart as kids are taken from their mothers and forced into assimilation programs. Look at the forced sterilization of mothers of color, and how eugenics treats the bodies of women of color.

Circe’s story, though written by a white woman, was deeply resonant with these things, which is something I adored about the book.

And, of course, here’s the commentary on womanhood, and how women have their agency stripped from them. Reading Circe’s story was cathartic at points. The story of a girl abused, silenced by fear, constantly put down, growing and honing her powers to the point where she can challenge those with immeasurable power. The experiences of various women woven into the story, from Perse to Pasiphae to Medea to the nymphs sent to Aiaia to Penelope. There’s so much to say tere, but Miller has already said it in her book.

I really really really deeply enjoyed this book!! Thank you for sending me this ask, anon, and I wish you well!! This reply was a lot longer than I expected, but there is truly so much to experience in this piece of literature and I’m definitely going to reread it soon!

Also, to everyone reading this, please feel free to send me your own takes on this book, and to @ me in your perspectives/reviews/etc.!! Much love to you all!!

#this was so much longer than expected and i STILL ahave so many thoughts omg!! #circe #madeline miller #greek mythology #misogyny #racialized misogyny #sexism #motherhood #book recs #sakshi speaks #hmmmm.... #i'll also tag it: #sakshi reviews #just in case this becomes a more recurring thing!! #save #answered #ask #anon #anonymous

[obsessive-fics]

Title: my fire was fate with you

Summary: Dani is less than thrilled when her band gets a gig opening for Fiona Lester, someone she considers to be the opposite of everything she stands for. But after being on tour forces them together, Dani realizes she might have misjudged Fiona, and an unlikely friendship blooms

Rating: T

Word Count: 7.2k

A/N: A huge thank you to my beta @maybeformepersonally for making this fic the best it could ever be. Written for homesickghosts for the @phandomficfests secret santa fic exchange (Title from Honey by Kehlani)

[Read on Ao3]

“Who’s the best manager in the world?”

Dani looked up to her manager, Jade, practically floating into the studio where she was recording with her band, the Violent Femmes. They were taking a break after a twenty minute argument about whether their new song needed a thirty second instrumental break. Dani thought the song sounded better without it but her guitarist, Dodie, was insistent, and Sam, their drummer, refused to pick sides.

“Are you gonna tell us the good news, or do you need to be flattered first?” Dani asked, from her spot, hanging upside down on the couch.

“Flattery, please,” Jade requested with a grin, propping herself on the arm of the couch.

“Jade, you are the best manager in the world, we would be singing on the streets for change if you hadn’t found it in your heart to take us under your wing, and we thank the universe every day that we have you.”

“That’ll do. I just got you guys a gig opening for Atomic Kittens,” Jade announced, and Dani nearly fell on the floor.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“They literally have the number one song in the country right now. Do you know how much exposure this could get you?” Jade asked in that way that meant, I know the answer to this question, you don’t, and we’re doing this whether you want to or not.

“This could ruin our reputation! All they sing are girly songs about boys and makeup, or whatever it is straight girls sing about,” Dani said, shifting so she was sitting upright. Atomic Kittens weren’t exactly the best role models for their listeners, who were mostly teenagers. All their music did was enforce the stereotype that girls should base their worth on whether they were being considered attractive by boys, instead of just being able to exist as they were.

It was all this faux sense of empowerment, like it was somehow feminist because they were choosing to do things that made them more appealing. But all it did was isolate girls and gender nonconforming people who didn’t fit into that extremely narrow, extremely heteronormative view of what it meant to be a woman. And teach the girls that did fit into it that they couldn’t be anything more than that. Dani hated all of it, and the last thing she wanted to do was attach their name to people who promoted stuff like that.  

“People have to know who you are for you to have a reputation.”

“Hey!”

“Look, we’ve been over this. The first step in making a change is getting your name out there. You’ll make a much bigger impact once you broaden your audience, and opening for a best selling artist is the way to do that,” Jade told her, and Dani hated it when she was right. It was possible that the audience at an Atomic Kittens show really needed to hear the things she had to say, about loving yourself for you, and not trying to fit into that narrow definition of womanhood. And hopefully doing this would mean expanding their audience, which was the best way to get their message out there. Finally, Dani sighed.

“I’m still not happy about this.”

“Either way, I’ve already agreed, so you’re gonna have to put on your big girl pants and deal with it,” Jade said, and Dani knew there was no fighting this.

And that was how Dani found herself standing face to face with Fiona Lester, one of the biggest pop stars in the world right now. There was no denying Fiona was gorgeous, with her long, straight jet black hair framing her big blue eyes. But Dani had a very strict policy against falling for straight girls, and especially straight girls that made asinine bubblegum pop.

“We’re so excited to work with you! Diane played us some of your stuff and we loved it,” Fiona said excitedly, holding out her hand.

“Hm,” Dani replied dismissively, looking past her. “So when do we get started?”

Admittedly, she was being unnecessarily mean, but she wasn’t going to be yet another person in Fiona’s life falling all over her. Even if she was tall, and beautiful, and exactly the kind of person Dani would’ve fallen for before she learned better.

“Well, we have a week of rehearsal at the Roundhouse, and then we fly to New York for the first show,” Diane, Atomic Kittens’ manager explained.

“Sounds good to everyone?” Jade asked, and they all responded affirmatively. Dani couldn’t believe Jade and Diane were already such a united front. She knew she was being a brat, but honestly; they’d built a whole reputation on being unapologetically queer and underground, and now they were associating themselves with a band like Atomic Kittens, who were the very opposite of everything they stood for. It was all so colossally fucked up.

“Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” Fiona asked a few minutes later, pulling Dani aside while everyone settled in to talk setlists and venues. Dani rolled her eyes, but went willingly.

“Yes?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall.

“Did I do something to you?” Fiona asked, and she looked so confused and hurt, Dani genuinely considered backing down for a second. There was something about someone that pretty looking that sad that always got her. But not this time. She couldn’t back down, not now. Fiona had to know where she stood.

“Look, I know you’re used to everyone around you worshipping the ground you walk on, but that’s not me. I don’t like you, or your music, and I’m not going to pretend I do just to make you feel better,” Dani said coolly, and she didn’t miss the flash of hurt that crossed Fiona’s face, before she steeled her expression into something much more closed off.

“Do you practice being that bitchy or does it just come naturally?” she asked icily.

“It’s a talent,” Dani replied with a sarcastic smile.

“Great. Well, can you at least try to be civil? Like it or not, we’re in each other’s lives now. You don’t have to like me, but you do have to respect me.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

With that Fiona stormed off, and the adrenaline from their confrontation wore off, leaving Dani with nothing but guilt. It wasn’t like her at all to be that catty, but Fiona had walked in with her perfect hair and makeup, and her perfect smile, and she’d just… snapped. Was there really any reason to be like that right off the bat? Well, either way, it’s not like she could start being nice now. Fiona had made it very clear that her disdain was mutual, and that was just fine with her.

Dani spent the rest of the week actively avoiding Fiona. She’d come out, rehearse, and then hide in her dressing room until she was sure Fiona was gone.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little ridiculous?” Dodie asked. They were on their twenty minute break and they were spending it how they always spent their free time—eating snacks they’d taken from craft services, and playing video games.

“I’m protesting,” Dani said, using her blue shell to get ahead.

“Hey! And you’re not protesting, you’re throwing a fit because of your own preconceived notions. You don’t even know Fiona,” Dodie pointed out, not looking away from the screen.

“Whose side are you on here?” Dani asked, instead of acknowledging that maybe Dodie had a bit of a point.

“Dani, you’re my best friend. Which means I’m always on your side. It also means I can tell you when you’re being an idiot,” Dodie replied, pulling into first place and then giving Dani one of her ‘I’m right and you know it’ looks.

“A double betrayal. That hurts,” Dani said, dramatically draping herself over Dodie’s lap, and hugging her controller to her chest.

“Just think about it, okay? It couldn’t hurt to be a little nicer. We’re all gonna be in pretty close quarters for the next few months, and it would make it so much easier on me if you didn’t spend the entire time being a brat,” Dodie said, reaching down to push Dani’s curls out of her face.

“Hey, don’t touch the hair!” Dani replied, swatting Dodie’s hand away.

“Not until you promise to play nice,” Dodie singsonged, continuing to ruin the perfect, ruffled look Dani had spent all morning on.

“Fine, fine, I’ll play nice,” Dani conceded, and Dodie grinned smugly.

“Thought so.”

Sleeping on a tour bus was torture. Once she was asleep, Dani was dead to the world, but it was getting there that was the hard part. She just stayed up in her bunk, worrying about all the things that could go wrong. Eventually, she got tired of being alone with her thoughts and climbed down out of bed to go grab a water bottle. She was carefully manoeuvring herself into the main part of the bus when she noticed someone was already sitting out there.  

“Jade?” she asked, turning her attention towards the couch.

“Sorry to disappoint, but no,” Fiona answered, looking over at her, and Dani could tell she’d been crying. Immediately, she wanted to turn around and pretend she hadn’t seen her, but girl tears were kind of her kryptonite.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, walking over.

“What, so you can have more ammo to make fun of me with?” Fiona asked, crossing her arms, and looking down.

“I’m genuinely asking. I would never kick someone while they were down. Besides, my therapist is always going on about how unhealthy it is to bottle this kind of stuff up,” Dani replied, and Fiona sighed, putting her head in her hands.

“I miss home, and my family, and I’m motion sick on top of it all.”

“Well, I can’t help with the first thing, but I do know a good cure for motion sickness. Come on,” Dani said holding her hand out.

“Really?” Fiona asked, looking up skeptically.

“Me being nice is gonna expire eventually, better take advantage,” Dani reiterated, and, still looking apprehensive, Fiona took her hand.

“Hey, Bill, can we sit up here with you?” Dani asked, once they reached the front of the bus where the driver's seat was.

“Of course. It’s a good view,” Bill replied. Dani had spent more than a few nights sitting up at the front of the bus with Bill instead of sleeping. Listening to him talk about his home and how much he loved his wife and kids always took her mind off of whatever was keeping her up.

Dani sat down on the floor of the bus next to the driver's seat, and patted the space next to her.

“Just keep looking straight ahead, I promise it’ll help,” she told Fiona, who after hesitating, sat down.

“Thanks.”

“For what?” Dani asked, looking over at her.

“Being nice to me,” Fiona said, shrugging.

“Yeah, well don’t get used to it,” Dani replied, looking away. It was unreal, how even when the only light coming in was from harsh streetlights, Fiona was still gorgeous. She had her hair pulled up in a messy bun, instead of having it down the way she usually did, and Dani really wished she could stop herself from stealing glances at her.

“Why are you up, anyway?” Fiona asked, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“Oh, you know, anxiety induced insomnia,” Dani replied shrugging.

“Oh… Sorry,” Fiona said in the way people always do when they’re not used to hearing people talk that openly about their mental health.

“It’s fine, I’m fine. Really,” Dani assured her, shrugging. It wasn’t anything new, and it wasn’t anything she couldn’t get through.

“She’s been up here the last three nights in a row. Maybe you can get her to talk,” Bill broke in, and Dani had nearly forgotten he was there.

“Wait, seriously?” Fiona asked, looking over at her.

“Hey, we’re not here to talk about me. Are you feeling better?” Dani asked, and Bill laughed.

“She’s really good at deflecting, don’t fall for it.”

“I won’t,” Fiona replied, laughing too.

“I feel like I’m being ganged up on here,” Dani said, crossing her arms, but she couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Well, I know we’re not exactly best friends, but how about a truce? Whenever something is really wrong with one of us, we’ll put that aside and talk about it,” Fiona offered, and Dani found herself completely taken aback by how kind and generous that was of her.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. We’ll call a truce,” she agreed after a while, and what surprised her even more was that she meant it.

Things were different between them after that night. Whenever Dani couldn’t sleep, she found herself staying up with Fiona. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they watched movies-Fiona was appalled when she’d heard Dani had never actually seen Home Alone, and this led to an entire Christmas movie marathon. Fiona was actually a really fun person to watch movies with, and one of very few people who didn’t mind Dani’s need to immediately discuss all of her feelings about whatever they’d just watched. So when Dani was wandering around one of their venues, and heard Fiona singing a song she didn’t recognize in her dressing room, she didn’t hesitate to walk over and listen for a little while.

“What song is that?” she asked, leaning in the doorway, after Fiona had stopped singing.

“Oh, it’s just something I’ve been working on,” Fiona shrugged, putting her guitar down.

“Why don’t you make more music like that? It’s beautiful, it’s about real problems, it’s not-”

“Bubblegum?” Fiona broke in cooly, and Dani flinched. Okay, she kind of deserved that one.

“I wasn’t gonna say that.”

“Yeah, you were. You’ve been condescending about the kind of music I make since the day I met you. But here’s the thing: I like the music I make. It makes people happy, it makes them want to dance. Maybe it’s not ‘changing the world’ or whatever, but it doesn’t have to.”

“I didn’t mean anything by that. I just think it sends a message to young girls that-” Dani started to explain, but Fiona cut her off.

“See, there you go again! How is me being myself sending a bad message?”

“I never said that! I would never shame someone for the way they choose to express themselves,” Dani argued, and Fiona rolled her eyes.

“Are you actually kidding me right now? All you’ve ever done is shame me for the way I choose to express myself—my music, the way I dress, the way I wear my hair. You seem to have gotten it into your head that I wake up every morning and go, ‘huh, how can I exist for men’s entertainment today,’ which is honestly laughable for so many reasons,” she replied, and a realization hit Dani like a bucket of ice water. She was being a complete hypocrite. Here she was, priding herself on spreading the message that there was no one right way to be a woman, and she’d been doing nothing but looking down on Fiona for just being herself. How backwards was that?

“I guess I just grew up being inundated with this idea of what a woman is supposed to be, and so the minute I could I rebelled against it, and started to resent everything that didn’t,” Dani explained. It maybe wasn’t the most rational thought process in this world, but she’d spent so much of her life being put down by exactly the kind of person Fiona was, she immediately jumped on the defensive without considering that maybe everyone wasn’t out to get her.

“I get that. But you know, infighting only makes the oppressor stronger,” Fiona pointed out, and Dani just stared at her, speechless.

“What, you think I don’t know anything because I make cheesy love songs?” she asked, picking her guitar back up, and strumming at it lazily.

“I never said your songs were cheesy,” Dani muttered, looking down.

“Just vapid, shallow, asinine, and meaningless,” Fiona listed off pointedly, and Dani flinched with each word.

“I’ve been a jerk, huh?” she asked. Just because Fiona made music that was different than hers didn’t mean that the kind of music Fiona made was bad. And besides, Fiona was one of the best live vocalists she’d ever heard. She could learn a lot from her if she let herself.

“Yeah, a little,” Fiona replied laughing. “But I forgive you.”

“You don’t have to, you know. I was being unfair, and judgey, and I get it if you don’t really want to.”

“I want to. Life is easier that way. Besides, who could stay mad at a face like that?” Fiona asked, smiling up at her, and Dani was actually going to melt into a puddle right then and there. This was bad. This was very bad. She had to get out of there now.

“Oh. Well. Thanks. I should—I’ve got—um… I’m gonna go now,” she rambled, inwardly cursing herself for being the least articulate person in the world.

“Okay, weirdo. I’ll see you later,” Fiona said laughing, and Dani spun around so fast she almost hit her head on the doorframe.

Dani sat at the piano in her dressing room, playing random chords, and humming to herself. It had been a surprise when they’d gotten to the venue and she’d nearly tripped on it, but she was glad it was here. She’d had this melody stuck in her head ever since their last show, but she didn’t know what to do with it. She was so engrossed in playing, she almost didn’t notice when Fiona sat down next to her.

“Hey,” Fiona said softly, startling her back into reality.

“Oh! Hey,” Dani said, turning to her. Fiona was wearing a dress with R2D2 on it, and smiling at Dani softly, and she really was so gorgeous it hurt.

“What’re you working on?” Fiona asked, completely oblivious to the mini crisis Dani was having.

“I don’t really know yet. This melody just popped into my head,” Dani explained, before playing it.

“That’s really pretty. I’ve always wanted to try songwriting,” Fiona said, tapping a few random keys on the keyboard.

“What about that song you were singing the other day?”

“Oh, that’s not… That doesn’t count. I was just messing around,” Fiona said, looking down sheepishly.

“All songs start out as messing around. I can help you write one. I mean, if you want,” Dani offered, before she could think better of it. What was she doing? Spending more time with Fiona was nothing but a recipe for disaster.

“Really?” Fiona asked, smiling at her excitedly.

“Really.”

“You’re the best, thanks Dani,” Fiona said, hugging her. It was a bit of an awkward angle, considering they were sitting on a piano bench, but Fiona smelled like vanilla and honey, and honestly, Dani could’ve stayed like that forever.

“I’m in trouble,” Dani announced, throwing herself down on the hotel bed dramatically.

“Trouble how? Do we need to set up an alibi?” Dodie asked, from where she was sitting on the floor next to her bed, playing her guitar.

“I may actually be like... really into Fiona,” Dani admitted, rolling over so she was staring at the ceiling.

“Oh, that kind of trouble,” Dodie said smirking, and then started to sing.

She could be the one, she could be the one

“Are you actually singing a Hannah Montana song to me right now? In this time of crisis,” Dani asked, glaring over at her best friend, but Dodie remained unfazed.

“You never should’ve told me about your Hannah obsession,” she teased, continuing to sing He Could Be the One and changing all the pronouns.

“I was twelve!”

“Okay, okay, sorry. If you like Fiona, why don’t you just tell her?” Dodie asked, setting her guitar down next to her.

“Because she’s straight? Because I spent a really long time being unnecessarily mean to her, so even if she did like girls, she’d never be into me now,” Dani listed off, and then groaned. This was awful. She was gonna spend the rest of tour looking like a lovesick puppy. She was pathetic, and breaking every rule she’d set up to protect herself.

“One, how do you know she’s straight? She’s never had a public relationship, and you’ve never asked. And two, you’ve apologized for that, and she’s forgiven you. I think you’re making up excuses not to put yourself out there,” Dodie said, and Dani really, really hated it when she was right.

“It wouldn’t be worth it though, right? I mean, we’re on tour for another month, and we just became friends. How would I face her every day?” Dani asked, sitting up, and Dodie crawled up on the bed to sit next to her.

“You’d take a deep breath, and be a professional about it. But you’ll never know unless you go for it.”

“Okay, what if you’re right? What if I ask her out, and she says yes? She’s never had a public relationship. What would that mean for me, dating someone that’s closeted? I’d be hiding a part of myself, and I decided a very long time ago that’s not something I’m comfortable doing. I’ve built a whole career on being out and proud, and people have responded to that. I love it when people come up to me, and tell me I gave them the courage to come out. What would I even say to them if I was in a closeted relationship?”

“Okay, now you’re just getting ahead of yourself,” Dodie said, and Dani glared at her.

“I’m being serious.”

“Dani, you are one of the strongest women I know. The worst thing that could happen is she says no, and if she does, we’ll write a really good song about it. And if she says yes, but wants to hide it, well… you can cross that bridge when you get to it. Either way, you’ll get through this,” Dodie said, wrapping an arm around her comfortingly.

“Since when are you the wise level-headed one?” Dani asked teasingly resting her head on Dodie’s shoulder, but she was more than grateful to have a friend like her.

“First time for everything I guess. Come on, let’s go find Sam’s room and see how fast we can get into the minibar,” Dodie suggested, squeezing her arm.

“Now that is a brilliant idea.” 

“So what’s your process?” Fiona asked a few days later. They were sitting at the piano onstage during one of their rare days off. It had taken some convincing, but the owner of the venue had let them in a day early so that they could use it. They could’ve just used Dani’s digital keyboard, but those were really only meant for one person. And, plus, Dani kind of liked the way they had to squeeze together on the piano bench.

“My process?” Dani repeated teasingly, and Fiona rolled her eyes.

“Shut up, you know what I mean. How do you start writing?”

“I don’t know, really. A melody comes to me, or something happens and I need to write about it, or I see an image I want to capture, and then I just… mess around on the piano for a few hours,” Dani explained, shrugging.

“Helpful. So, how’d you come up with Flowers in Your Hair ?” Fiona asked, hitting a random note on the piano.

“That’s the song you wanna know about? The one with the single most embarrassing origin story?” Dani asked, and Fiona bounced up and down excitedly.

“Now you have to tell me.”

“I wrote it to impress a girl,” Dani muttered, looking down. She’d met Violet when they both went to pick up the same It Was Romance album at a music store, and it was instant fireworks. She used to go back to that store an embarrassing amount of times a week to see if she could run into her, and eventually Violet got tired of waiting and asked her out first.

“Oh my God! That’s amazing. Did it work?” Fiona asked excitedly, and Dani laughed.

“For a little while,” she replied, shrugging. One day, without warning, Violet called her to tell her she reminded her too much of her ex, and she just couldn’t stay with someone like that.

“Oh. Sorry. We don’t have to talk about it if it’s sad,” Fiona said, placing a hand on her shoulder gently.

“It’s not. Well, it used to be, but that was a long time ago, I’m beyond over it now, and she’s married,” Dani said, waving it off.

“Whoa, really?”

“Yup.”

“I wish I could do that,” Fiona said wistfully.

“What, get brutally dumped?”

“No, I mean, I’d never have the courage to do what you do,” Fiona explained, and Dani braced herself to hear how brave it was of her to be out, and even when people meant well, it still felt kind of condescending.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“To write about loving women the way you do. It’s beautiful, I’ve never heard anyone capture that feeling so well.”

“...Oh,” Dani replied, completely taken aback. Was Fiona… coming out to her right now?

“Don’t look so shocked! I’ve been flirting with you for weeks,” Fiona said, bumping their shoulders together.

“You’ve been what?” Dani asked, turning to her. This was too much information at once, she was going to short-circuit.

“Come on, someone promised me they’d help me write a song,” Fiona said, turning back to the piano.

“Right, the song. So I was thinking it could start out like this,” Dani said, playing a few notes.

“Oh, that’s pretty. Play it again, I think I’ve got something,” Fiona said, and Dani nodded. She started to play again, and Fiona started to sing.

“Wow,” Dani said after she’d finished singing.

“It’s good?” Fiona asked hopefully.

“It’s more than good, it’s incredible,” Dani told her, and Fiona looked down, her entire face turning bright red.

They spent the rest of the day working on the song, and by the time they were finished with it, they were tired, and their voices were hoarse, but Dani had never been more proud to be a part of something.

“Thank you. For doing this for me,” Fiona said, smiling over at her.

“Of course. I had a lot of fun writing with you,” Dani replied, smiling back at her, and it dawned on her just how close they were sitting. She could see the roots in Fiona’s hair where the dye was fading, and the flecks of green and gold in her already stunning blue eyes.

“Look, Fiona, I-”

“Yes?” Fiona asked, and they were so close, Dani wanted nothing more but to close the gap between them, but she couldn’t possibly do that... Could she?

“Fiona! What are you still doing here? You were supposed to be in hair and makeup twenty minutes ago,” Diane called, and the two of them jumped apart.

“I’d better go. Thank you again for this,” Fiona said, standing up.

“Anytime,” Dani replied, and Fiona waved, before following Diane out of the room.

“What the fuck am I doing?” Dani muttered to herself as she watched them walk away.

It was their last show. Dani couldn’t believe it. All those months on the road, waking up in a different place every morning, and it was all coming to an end. She was sitting in her dressing room absentmindedly hitting notes on her keyboard when Fiona walked in.

“End of tour blues?” she asked, sitting on the couch next to her.

“You get those too?” Dani asked, surprised. She’d figured Fiona would be overjoyed—now that tour was over, she could go home and see her family. Dani had talked to them a few times while Fiona was skyping them, and she could tell they missed her as much as she missed them.

“I think everyone does. For months, you have this purpose. You get up every morning, and it’s like, okay, today I’ve been put on this planet to entertain people. And those people come up to you, and tell you how much your music means to them, and it all feels so tangible. You don’t get any of that in the recording studio,” Fiona explained, sitting down next to her.

“Wow, that’s… That’s exactly how I feel about it too,” Dani replied, in awe. Fiona just kept finding ways to surprise her.

“I want you to perform with me tonight,” Fiona blurted out, and Dani couldn’t believe it. Her, perform with Fiona? They’d had a ton of fun writing together, but she never in a million years thought Fiona would want to full out perform with her.

“What?”

“Our song. I want to perform it. Diane would never let me release it formally—something about alienating listeners. But I think it’s amazing, and I’m so proud of it, and I want everyone to hear it,” Fiona told her, and if Dani was a cartoon, there’d definitely be hearts floating around her head right now.  

“You’re amazing,” she blurted out without thinking, and Fiona blushed, and smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“So you’ll do it?”

“Yes, of course,” Dani told her, because there was no way she could say no to Fiona when she looked at her like that.

“You’re the best,” Fiona said, hugging her.

“That’s me,” Dani answered, hugging back.

Fiona pulled away, and smiled at her again, before standing up.

“This is gonna be our best show ever. I can’t wait,” she said, clapping her hands the way she always did when she was excited. It was strange the things you started to notice about a person once you’d been around long enough. Like how Fiona was almost always wearing glasses unless she was onstage, or her extensive collection of thigh highs with silly patterns on them, or how she loved pizza, but had been completely offended when Dani offered her a grilled cheese one day on the bus. She was weird and endearing, and she cried when fans brought her pictures of their dogs, and Dani fell harder for her every day.

Dani also couldn’t stop thinking about what Fiona had said, about having been flirting with her for weeks. She hadn’t brought it up again after that, and Dani was way too nervous to say anything. What would she say anyway? Hey, sorry for taking out my internalized misogyny on you, wanna go out? Something about that seemed so wrong.

“What are you so deep in thought about?” Dodie asked, walking in.

“I really gotta start closing my dressing room door,” Dani sighed, looking up.

“Come on, I know your overthinking face. Spill, what’s going on with you?”

“It’s Fiona—she kind of came out to me,” Dani admitted, looking down at her hands. Something about saying it out loud made it even more real, and she absolutely did not know how to handle this.

“Well, isn’t that great news? Now you can ask her out,” Dodie squealed, shaking her excitedly.

“Just cause she’s into girls doesn’t mean she’s into me,” Dani pointed out, and Dodie rolled her eyes.

“Dani, the only way you’d know if a girl was into you is if she held up a giant sign that said DANI I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU, and you’d probably still ask me what it meant.”

“I guess I can be kind of clueless, huh?”

“Yes. Look, Fiona trusted you enough to tell you something that deep and personal about herself. I think that means you’re good enough friends now that even if she does say no, it’ll be okay,” Dodie reassured her, wrapping an arm around her comfortingly.

“And if it’s not?” Dani asked in a small voice.

“I’ll be here for you,” Dodie told her, and it was good to know that no matter what happened, she’d always have her best friend.

When the lights came up that night, it was unlike any other performance. Tonight was gonna be different, Dani could feel it. They played their set, and the audience was a little bored at first, most of them just wanting this to be over so Atomic Kittens could come on. Dani remembered that feeling, the anticipation of seeing your favorite band, and having to sit through artists you sometimes didn’t even recognize at first. But eventually, the crowd warmed up to them, cheering and singing the choruses back to them.

“What a good crowd!” Sam said excitedly, once they were backstage, but Dani barely heard her. Fiona was walking over, dressed in her outfit for the show—a denim dress over a crop top, and of course a pair of thigh highs. These ones had dinosaurs on them, and Dani really wished she’d stop getting more perfect every time she saw her. She leaned in close to Dani so she could hear her over the music.

“Are you ready?”

“Of course,” Dani replied, once she found her voice. She didn’t know how much longer she could handle being this close in proximity.

“I’m so nervous, but also more excited than I’ve ever been about a performance,” Fiona told her, and she was usually only this jittery if she’d had too much coffee.

“You’re gonna be incredible,” Dani told her, and Fiona gave her a smile that could make flowers grow.

“Thanks. I’ll see you out there?”

“You know it.” Fiona gave her a quick hug, and then headed for the stage.

Dani wandered about backstage having snacks and scrolling through twitter on her phone, and before she knew it, she heard her cue.

“Do you guys wanna hear something new?” Fiona was asking the crowd, and they were cheering so loud, Dani almost didn’t hear what she said next.

“I wrote this song with someone very special to me, so I think it’s only fair she come out and perform it with me.”

Dani steeled herself, and walked out onto the stage.

“Please welcome back Dani Howell, lead singer of the Violent Femmes,” Fiona announced, and Dani waved to the audience.

“Thank you. For everything,” Fiona said hugging her, and Dani hugged back, before going to take her seat at the piano. She started playing, and Fiona sat down on top of the piano before starting to sing.

Performing with Fiona was unlike anything Dani had ever done. They played off of each other so well, and their voices sounded so good together. Dani felt like she was floating—she always had fun performing, but this was something else entirely. When they finished the song, she could see Fiona tearing up a little.

“That song is about the first girl I fell in love with, and I’m so glad I got to share something so meaningful with all of you. I uh, hope that you’ll keep support-” the crowd burst into the loudest cheering Dani had ever heard, drowning out the rest of Fiona’s words. People were standing, and a chant of “We love you, Fiona” had started up. It was all so wonderful, it made Dani feel a little teary eyed herself. She stood up, walked center stage, and waved for Fiona to come over. Fiona walked over, and she took her hand so they could bow. Then she moved aside so Fiona could have her moment. She deserved it.

Dani was glad this had all gone so well, and honored to have been a part of it. She was about to walk offstage when Fiona turned to her. Fiona held out her hand, and Dani took it, finding herself center stage again.

“I couldn’t have done this without you,” Fiona said, and her mic was on, so Dani knew everyone could hear, but it felt like it was just them. She shrugged, getting ready to wave it off—of course Fiona would’ve been able to do this all on her own.

But before she could formulate a response, Fiona was kissing her. Her lipstick was sticky, and it tasted like strawberries, and her hands were holding Dani’s face so gently, she never wanted it to end. Dani put her arms around Fiona’s waist and pulled her closer, but all too soon she was pulling away. Fiona smiled at her, and looked over at the crowd. Right, she still had a show to put on. Dani nodded, and kissed her one last time, before waving to the crowd and leaving the stage.

Once the adrenaline of everything that had just happened wore off, Dani found herself completely in shock. Fiona had just kissed her. On stage. In front of everyone.

“Dude! What just happened?” Dodie asked when she got back to the dressing room.

“I kissed Fiona,” Dani replied, still in shock.

“Well, yeah—I’ve seen twenty different videos of that. But like, what does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Dani replied. There could’ve been a thousand reasons why Fiona kissed her—they were on stage, they’d just sang a really intimate song, she could’ve just been caught up in the moment. Or maybe she just wanted to make the message of the song clear.

“Dani, come back to me. It’s gonna be okay. Just talk to her while she’s on her break,” Dodie suggested, and Dani nodded. It wouldn’t help anything to just sit around thinking up worse case scenarios. The only way to know what Fiona was thinking was to talk to her.

It felt like forever before Fiona came down to the dressing room during her break.

“Hey,” she said, hovering in the doorway.

“Hey,” Dani said back, and Dodie rolled her eyes, stood up, and pulled Fiona to the couch where Dani was sitting.

“You two are gonna talk about this now.”

“Uh, Dodie?” Dani asked after she hadn’t moved from standing in front of them.

“Oh! Right. I’ll be around if you need me,” she replied, closing the door behind her.

“So…” Dani started to say, but Fiona launched into a full ramble, cutting her off.

“I’m so sorry. It was all so much, and I like you so much, and I just got caught up in the moment. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way, it’s more important to me that-”

“Fi, slow down,” Dani broke in, laughing.

“What’s funny?” Fiona asked, and she sounded so hurt and confused, Dani stopped laughing immediately.

“Sorry, sorry, I just. I can’t believe you think there’s any chance I’m not crazy about you,” she explained, and Fiona smiled in the way only she could, that lit up her entire face.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So… now what?” Fiona asked, looking far more nervous than she needed to be.

“Well, generally, I like to take a girl out before kissing her in front of a huge crowd of people,” Dani replied, and Fiona laughed.

“So, a date is in order then?” she asked, but before she could answer there was a knock at the door.

“Fiona, five minute warning!” Diane called.

“I’d better go. We’ll uh, continue this later?” Fiona asked, standing up.

“Of course,” Dani said, smiling up at her. Fiona smiled back, and they probably looked ridiculous, standing there staring at each other, but Dani was too hopelessly endeared to care. Her heart felt like it was beating out of her chest.

“Fi. Go,” Dani said laughing, and Fiona turned bright red.

“Right. Going. See you soon,” she said waving, and leaving the room, and Dani lay back on the couch, completely overwhelmed. She couldn’t believe anything that had happened that night.

“So, I take it that went well?” Dodie asked, walking back into the room.

“I feel like I’m floating,” Dani sighed, grinning over at her.

“I haven’t seen you like this in a really long time,” Dodie said, perching on the arm of the couch, and Dani laughed.

“Yeah, I can’t remember the last time I felt like this either.”

“I’m happy for you,” Dodie told her, reaching down to ruffle her hair.

“Hey! Stop it,” Dani laughed, shoving her hand away. But she was happy too. It was quite possible that this was the happiest she'd ever been.

Six Months Later

“Are you sure about this?” Dani asked, standing behind her girlfriend in front of the mirror at her favorite hair salon.

“For the thousandth time, yes,” Fiona replied, laughing. “It’s time for a change.”

“I just don’t want you to feel like you have to, to like, prove something. You’re not any less gay because you have long hair,” Dani told her, and Fiona rolled her eyes fondly.

“Well, thank you, but it’s not like that. I’ve spent so long being what I thought other people wanted me to be, and I feel like a lot of that’s been tied to the way I keep my hair. Do you know my hair looks the same on every single one of our album covers?”

“Well, yeah, but if that’s the way you like it-” Dani started to say, but Fiona cut her off.

“That’s the thing! I don’t know if that’s the way I like it. I was just scared if I changed it, no one was gonna want to listen to our music, or come see me at shows. And I already took a huge risk by coming out the way I did, and that’s only made my fanbase stronger. This is something I need to do for me,” Fiona told her, and Dani had never been more in love.  

“I love you. So much,” she said, wrapping her arms around her, and Fiona smiled at their reflection in the mirror.

“I love you too, weirdo. Can I get my haircut now?” Fiona asked, spinning around in her arms.

“If you two are done over there, I’m ready for you know,” Jessie, Dani’s usual hairdresser broke in, and Fiona nodded.

“Wish me luck,” Fiona called, following Jessie over to her station.

Dani sat in the waiting area playing games on her phone until Fiona was finished.

“So, what do you think?” Fiona asked, walking back over about an hour later. Dani looked up, and almost dropped her phone. Fiona’s hair was now in a mixed length pixie cut with one of the sides shaved, and she was smiling at Dani in the way only she could. Dani stood up, and leaned in close.

“I think we should go home immediately so I can show you exactly how amazing I think you look right now,” she said lowly, and Fiona blushed and smiled at her that way only she could.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I’m gonna go tip Jessie, and then I’m gonna hold you to that,” Fiona said, and Dani watched her walk away, feeling more than lucky that she got to be with someone as talented, and fun, and beautiful, and perfectly suited for her as Fiona was. She didn’t know what the future held for them, but the one thing she did know was that she wanted Fiona in her life for as long as she would have her.

#phanfiction #Phanfic #phanfic au #phandom fic fest

[gfriendlighting460]

Dating Sites With Trans Option

Brook Shelley’s previous work for The Toast can be found here, and our previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here.

Hearing about people being afraid of or not open to dating a trans person is just one reason why it is so hard to date as a trans person. And even though I have heard it many times before, it is still hard to confront. I looked at eight popular dating sites to see which are the most gender inclusive. Dating only trans people, at least here in my local community, do not seem like a realistic option since we are too few. Finding the right person would be next to impossible. Well, that was my 2 cents on that. I,m actually surprised by the comments so far. TRANSGENDER, PANSEXUAL, LESBIAN, GAY, GENDER-FLUID, Bi-SEXUAL & NON-BINARY DATING SITE & SUPPORT. We are a Transgender, Pansexual, Lesbian, Gay, Gender-fluid, Bi-sexual & Non-Binary dating site where you can find support, make friends, talk to others about their journey, look for love and so much more. Reddit’s r/t4t subreddit is essentially a personals-style online dating forum for transgender people. While it’s not as detailed as more established trans dating sites, this subreddit is designed.

Welcome to lesbian trans womanhood. I know, we aren’t supposed to say that. Welcome anyway. Let’s assume you know two things: that you are a woman, and that you like other women. Good. That’s a fine place to start. Follow along, and we will get you from this humble beginning, to being a real-live dater.

Take a deep breath. Ready?

1. First, lower your expectations. Whatever you think might happen in the next few paragraphs, or in the next few months, expect less.

Dating Sites With Trans Options

This isn’t in reference to any particular difficulty facing trans women, though there are many; it is always helpful to lower your expectations. Low expectations mean high excitement at small success.

For example, if you expect to dance alone at a bar, you will be thrilled to find that someone beautiful is dancing with you. Repeat as needed.

2. Next, create an online dating profile. OkCupid, Match, or Tinder; it doesn’t really matter where, but you’ll need one. This is how you meet shy lesbians. You may be shy yourself. This could be the best place for you.

3. Spend quite a bit of time agonizing over the photos and your description and hobbies. Be clever. Be charming. Ask a few close friends, “would you theoretically date me based on this profile?” Hear them laugh a little. Tell them, “No, I’m serious. Is any of this good?”

4. Take their advice. If they have no advice, find some other friends. Without them, you will end up posting a photo with kale in your teeth, or where there is clearly a dog using the restroom in the background. You will not notice this on your own.

5. While you wait for responses, go find the queerest bar nearby. Attend events specifically targeted towards lesbians like you. Dance. Get used to dancing. The music will likely not be great. Get used to a mix of pop hits, Shakira, and Bikini Kill. Don’t try to explain why Kathleen Hanna is problematic while dancing.

6. Wonder, “why do so many of these girls have bow-ties on?”

There is no answer.

7. Assume they must not be able to take them off. Do not offer to help them take their bow-ties off. Just dance away.

8. Flirt. Often.

9. Hone your ability to turn a conversation into a fun tête-à-tête. Read the face and responses of the other people. Assume that at any moment, they might sour, and you will need to disengage. Be lighthearted. Be friendly. Don’t press anyone, and focus on enjoying yourself. Cool people enjoy themselves. Cool people are definitely not sweating horribly, right now, as they dance around the room, hoping for a match. When someone asks how you are doing, never mention the harassment, mis-gendering, or stress you’re going through. They don’t actually want to know that stuff yet. Talk to your aforementioned friends about those.

10. Hear, “wow, you’re tall,” at most of these events. Kiss a few people, gently. Brace yourself for the inevitable pre-hookup question or revelation about your body or identity. Practice explaining why “biological woman” is ridiculous. Use lines like “Of course I’m a biological woman, and not a cyber woman… or a giant snake.” At no point be seen unhinging your jaw to devour a goat.

Also try, “Hi, this is how my body works… and this is what I like.”

11. Be prepared for some rejection at this point. Practice your smile and, “Ok, that’s fine, I had fun,” response to “I can’t sleep with you now,” or “I’m just not attracted to (your genitals),” or “I’m a gold star lesbian, I can’t sleep with you.” You may also hear, “you’re so brave.”

12. Find ways to forgive them in your heart for being such shitheels.

13. Be surprised when not everyone rejects you. Bask in the glow of reciprocal attraction when it does occur – it may be rare. You may want to high-five the women who are still attracted to you, regardless of what you discuss. Resist. High-fives are firmly in second date territory.

14. Check your phone. Oh, your mom called. Call your mom back. Remind her that you won’t be meeting any nice boys because you are a lesbian. Yes, you might want to settle down. No, there’s not much going on lately. Yes, you’re really a lesbian. No, this isn’t a phase. Yes, you did get the dress she sent… it’s… nice. Tell her you love her. Hang up.

15. Check your phone again. There sure are a lot of biologists on your online dating site.

How’d they get access to my karyotype? Did they take a blood sample?

What’s that game? You know the one… Where complete strangers ask you about your genitals? https://gfriendlighting460.tumblr.com/post/655947581619388416/dating-anyone-in-carrboro-nc. You’ll be playing this whether you like it or not a lot more often now. It is not possible to win this game.

Does Tinder Have A Trans Option

16. Use some of your flirting skills from being at the bar while you are online. Realize those skills don’t translate. A lot of people online are too shy to go out, so they will not know how to respond to you. You may be seen as forward, or at least not shy enough. Carry on.

17. Talk about books. Talk about food. Talk about anything but how you’ll probably never meet up, and if you do, there won’t be a second date. There often isn’t a second date.

18. Get ready to hear a lot of very surface-level readings of Judith Butler. Take heed that many of your fellow women have taken exactly one women’s and gender studies course in college, and “know all about being transgendered.” (sic) Be prepared to hear girls talk about how they’re “not really feminists, because they like to have fun.” Feel free to shake your head and pour a drink. Get better at reading through their answers to weed out the ubiquitous racism, transmisogyny, littering, and incompatible goals. Remember that you don’t have to settle.

19. You should probably have a pet. I should have said this at the beginning. Choose: cat or dog. Go adopt your choice animal. Start at the top. I can wait. You may be alone for a while.

20. Find a partner or dater. At some point, you will succeed. You will feel like you won the lesbian lottery. You will be elated in your heart that someone cares about you, and wants to kiss you… like more than once a week. High fives may be appropriate at this point.

These dating sites aren’t just for women either. The detailed description of the freebie is published on the blog. Find society & people themes in the same name category at Template/p Read More. JerkBoy – This app has been called the most honest, accurate dating service out there. It’s a tool for users to showcase. 18-25 years old; 26-39 years old and looking for short-term fun; 26-39 years old and looking for girlfriend material; 40+ years old; The Best Dating Apps For Men Ages 18 To 25 1. Tinder is the most popular dating app in the US. You probably have a buddy who met his girlfriend on it. Step further like for example most dating websites, if you want to actually communicate with other members then you need to subscribe to a membership and you get full benefits of the website. If you're serious then out of those 3 go with Match. You will definitely get hit up, probably too many to count and you'll most likely make a ton of guys wonder why girls never respond hahaha. Dating was created and is run by Dan and a group year techies who truly care about what they do. Security and privacy dating top olds at Teens Town, which is why the olds verifies every member and ensures dating no adult content shows up on the site. Teens Town also every to help you have fun and connect with your fellow teens. ★★★★★ Match.com 4.8/5.0. Our expert ratings are based on factors such as. Best dating websites for 19 year olds.

21. Prepare yourself for anyone you date to be called a chaser. It doesn’t matter if they actually care about you for who you are as a person, there are many who enjoy distilling you to your transgender history. Gird your loins against the barbs flung at you and your partner. Learn to laugh, and to cry. Embrace being a really hot lesbian with a super amazing girlfriend. It’s pretty great.

22. Laugh to yourself at all the ridiculously sad people who would want to hurt you and your partner. Try to not be burned by them with every single uneducated, casual insult. It will sting, but you can be strong.

23. But, most of all, have fun! Being a lesbian trans woman is probably the best thing in the world. Be proud of yourself. Be excited. You get to kiss other girls.

Elite dating site. Questions about online dating? Enjoy our ultimate online dating guide; Interracial Dating. If there were previously stereotypes, preconceptions or presumptions about interracial dating, these outdated attitudes are transforming as more and more American singles are seeking partners from other ethnic groups, and couples’ relationships no longer being defined along racial lines. It’s fair to say that our interracial dating community represents the enlightened majority in American society. A Gallup poll in 2013 found that 96% of black people and 84% of white people approve marriage between blacks and whites. This means that 87% of Americans overall see no problem with black-white marriage, up from a meager 4% in 1958 1. Interracial dating: meeting singles serious about love. According to Statistics Canada, the number of long-term Canadian couples in partnerships that can be described as mixed unions has doubled over the last 20 years. 1 For those in lesbian relationships or gay. Interracial dating in SA: meet singles who suit you. When you search for interracial dating sites it can be tough to find supportive platforms that encourage long-term commitment. At EliteSingles, however, we cater for South African men and women who desire more from love; making us the dating site to use if you’re looking for compatible. Interracial dating: meeting singles serious about love. According to the Office of National Statistics, almost one in 10 people living in Britain is married to or living with someone from outside their own ethnic group. Clearly, there are single men and women in the UK for whom interracial dating.

Brook is a queer trans woman living in Portland who hangs out with her cat, and does all manner of technical magic for a software company. She travels as often as possible, and can often be found on her couch, reading and enjoying a cider.

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Best Horror Movies Streaming on HBO Max

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Editor’s Note: This post is updated monthly. Bookmark this page and come back every month to see the new horror movies on HBO Max.

Updated for October 2020

What ever would we do without horror?

So much of our daily life is built around logic and known, verifiable facts, and for some, the rest of the time must be supplemented with comforting reassurances that everything is going to be alright. Well if the last year has taught us anything… that’s not the case. Perhaps this is why horror hounds know the best way to face abstract fears is to confront them head on… and preferably with a screen in the way.

So, with Halloween around the corner, we figured it’s time to get in touch with our illogical, terrified animal brain. That’s where horror and horror movies in particular come in. Gathered here are the best horror movies on HBO Max for your scaring needs.

Alien

“In space, no one can hear you scream,” the tagline for Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror epic promised. Well maybe they should have screened this thing in space because I’m sure all that audiences in theaters did was scream.

Alien has since evolved into a heady, science fiction franchise that has stretched out for decades. The original film, however, is a small-scale, terrifyingly claustrophobic thriller.

Altered States

What if you could tap into the vast swaths of the brain you never use? What if you did and didn’t like what we found? And what if it was an absolute psychedelic rush of a cinematic experience?

All three questions are answered in their own way during Ken Russell’s Altered States, a wild sci-fi thriller. In the film, William Hurt stars as a psychologist who begins experimenting with taking hallucinatory drugs while in a sensory depravation tank.

Yes, he manages to expand his consciousness; he also begins to expand his physical body as it transforms beneath his skin. Or does it? Well that’s yet another good question…

An American Werewolf in London

Arguably the definitive werewolf movie, John Landis’ 1981 horror masterpiece has the single greatest on-screen lycanthropic transformation in movie history… and that’s only one of its appeals.

Peppered with loving references to the werewolf movies that came before it and a few legitimate laughs to go along with the scares, An American Werewolf in London is remarkably knowing and self-aware, without ever flirting with parody.

Read more

Movies

An American Werewolf in London Is Still the Best Horror Reimagining

By David Crow

Movies

13 Must-See Werewolf Movies

By Mike Cecchini

Not enough can be said about Rick Baker’s practical effects, which extend beyond the aforementioned on-screen transformation and into one of the most gruesome depictions of a werewolf attack aftermath you’re ever likely to see. A classic of the era, it still can get under the skin whenever Griffin Dunne’s mutilated corpse rises from the grave to warn his friend to “beware the moon.”

The Brood

I bet you never thought placenta could look so tasty, but when Samantha Eggar’s Nola Carveth licks her newborn clean you’ll be craving seconds within the hour. She brings feline intuition to female troubles. We get it. Having a new baby can be scary. Having a brood is terrifying. Feminine power is the most horrifying of all for male directors used to being in control.

David Cronenberg takes couples therapy one step too far in his 1979 psychological body-horror film, The Brood. When it came out critics called it reprehensible trash, but it is the writer-director’s most traditional horror story. Oliver Reed plays with mental illness like Bill Sikes played with the kids as Hal Raglan, the psychotherapist treating the ex-wife of Frank Carveth (Art Hindle). The film starts slow, unfolding its drama through cuts and bruises.

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Movies

Best Horror Movies on Netflix: Scariest Films to Stream

By David Crow and 2 others

Movies

Katharine Isabelle on How Ginger Snaps Explored the Horror of Womanhood

By Rosie Fletcher

Cronenberg unintentionally modifies the body of the Kramer vs. Kramer story in The Brood, but the murderous munchkins at the external womb of the film want a little more than undercooked French toast.

Carnival of Souls

Carnival of Souls may be the most unlikely of chillers to appear in the Criterion Collection. Hailing from the great state of Kansas and helmed by commercial director Herk Harvey, who was looking for his big break in features, there is something hand-crafted about the whole affair. There’s also something unmistakably eerie.

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Movies

Carnival Of Souls: The Strange Story Behind the Greatest Horror Movie You’ve Never Seen

By Joshua Winning

Movies

A24 Horror Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

By David Crow and 3 others

The story is fairly basic campfire boilerplate, following a woman (Candace Hilligoss) who survives a car crash but is then haunted by the sound of music and visions of the ghoulish dead–beckoning her toward a decrepit carnival abandoned some years earlier–and the acting can leave something to be desired. But the dreadful dreamlike atmosphere is irresistible.

With a strong sense of fatalism and inescapable doom, the film takes an almost melodic and disinterested gait as it stalks its heroine to her inevitable end, presenting images of the walking dead that linger in the mind long after the credits roll.

The Curse of Frankenstein

Hammer is probably best remembered now for its series of Christopher Lee-starring Dracula movies. Yet its oddball Frankenstein franchise deserves recognition too. While Hammer’s efforts certainly pale in comparison to the Frankenstein movies produced by Universal Pictures in the 1930s and ’40s, the Hammer ones remain distinctly unique. Whereas the Creature was the star of the earlier films, so much so the studio kept changing the actor beneath the Jack Pierce makeup after Boris Karloff got fed up three movies in, the not-so-good doctor leads the Hammer alternatives.

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Movies

The Conjuring Timeline Explained: From The Nun to Annabelle Comes Home

By Daniel Kurland

Books

Frankenstein Adaptations Are Almost Never Frankenstein Adaptations

By Kayti Burt

Indeed, between bouts of playing the almost sickeningly pious Abraham Van Helsing, Peter Cushing portrayed a perverse and dastardly Victor Frankenstein at Hammer, and it all begins with The Curse of Frankenstein. It isn’t necessarily the best movie in the series, but it introduces us to Cushing’s cruel scientist, played here as less mad than malevolent.

It also features Christopher Lee in wonderfully grotesque monster makeup. This is the film where Hammer began forming an identity that would become infamous in the realm of horror.

The Conjuring 2

Making an effective, truly spooky mainstream horror film is hard enough. But The Conjuring franchise really nailed things out of the gate with a sequel that is every bit as fun and terrifying as the original.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return as paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring 2. This time the Warrens head to Great Britain to attend to the Hodgson family, dealing with some poltergeist problems in their Enfield home. The source of the Enfield haunting’s activity contains some of the most disturbing and terrifying visuals in the entire Conjuring franchise and helped to set up a (sadly pretty bad) spinoff sequel in The Nun.

Doctor Sleep

Let’s be up front about this: Doctor Sleep is not The Shining. For some that fact will make this sequel’s existence unforgivable. Yet there is a stoic beauty and creepy despair just waiting to be experienced by those willing to accept Doctor Sleep on its own terms.

Directed by one of the genre’s modern masters, Mike Flanagan, the movie had the unenviable task of combining one of King’s most disappointing texts with the opposing sensibilities of Stanley Kubrick’s singular The Shining adaptation.

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Movies

Doctor Sleep Director Mike Flanagan on the Possibility of The Shining 3

By John Saavedra

Movies

Doctor Sleep: Rebecca Ferguson on Becoming the New Shining Villain

By John Saavedra

And yet, the result is an effective thriller about lifelong regrets and trauma personified by the ghostly specters of the Overlook Hotel. But they’re far from the only horrors here. Rebecca Ferguson is absolutely chilling as the smiling villain Rose the Hat, and the scene where she and other literal energy vampires descend upon young Jacob Tremblay is the stuff of nightmares. Genuinely, it’s a scene you won’t forget, for better or worse….

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

Hammer Films’ fourth Dracula movie, and third to star the ever reluctant Christopher Lee, is by some fans’ account the most entertaining one. While it lacks the polish and ultimate respectability of Lee’s first outing as the vampire, Horror of Dracula (which you can read more about below), just as it is missing the invaluable Peter Cushing, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave arrived in 1968 at the crossroads of Hammer’s pulpy aesthetic. Their films had not yet devolved into exploitative shlock as they would a few years later, but the censors seemingly were throwing up their hands and allowing for the studio’s vampires to be meaner, bloodier, and sexier.

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Movies

Taste the Blood of Dracula: A Hidden Hammer Films Gem

By Don Kaye

In this particular romp, Dracula has indeed risen from the grave (yes, again!) because of the good intentions of one German monsignor (Rupert Davies). The religious leader is in central Europe to save souls, but the local denizens of a village won’t go to a church caught in the shadow of Castle Dracula. So the priest exorcises the structure, oblivious that his sidekick is also accidentally dripping blood into the mouth of Dracula’s corpse down the river. Boom he’s back!

And yet, our fair Count can’t enter his home anymore. So for revenge, Dracula follows the monsignor to his house and lays eyes on the patriarch’s comely young niece (Veronica Carlson). You can probably figure out the rest.

Eraserhead

“In Heaven, everything is fine,” sings the Lady in the Radiator in Eraserhead. “You’ve got your good things, and I’ve got mine.”

You may get something short of paradise, but the insular world David Lynch created for his 1977 experimental existential horror film is a land of mundane wonders, commonplace mysteries, and extremely awkward dinner conversations. Lynch’s first feature film is surrealistic, expressionistic, and musically comic. The minor key score and jarring black and white images bring half-lives to the industrial backdrop and exquisite squalor. At its heart though, Eraserhead is poignant, sad, and ultimately relatable on a universal level.

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TV

Buffy: The Animated Series – The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Spin-Off That Never Was

By Caroline Preece

Games

How Scorn Turned the Art of H.R. Giger into a Nightmarish Horror Game World

By John Saavedra

Jack Nance’s Henry Spencer is the spiky-haired everyman. He works hard at his job, cares deeply for his deformed, mutant child, and is desperate to please his extended family. Lynch lays a comedy of manners in a rude, crude city. The film is an assault on the senses, and it might take a little while for the viewer’s brains to adjust to the images on the screen; it is a different reality, and not an entirely inviting one, but stick with it. Once you’re in with the in-laws, you’re home free. When you make it to the end, you can tell your friends you watched all of Eraserhead. When they ask you what it’s about, you can tell them you saw it.

Eyes Without a Face

“I’ve done so much wrong to perform this miracle,” Doctor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) confesses in the 1960 horror film Eyes Without a Face. But he says it in French, making it all so much more poignant, allowing it to underscore everything director and co-writer Georges Franju did right. We feel for the respectable plastic surgeon forced to do monstrous things. But the monster behind the title character is his young daughter Christiane (Édith Scob). She spends the majority of the film behind a mask, even more featureless than the unpainted plastic Captain Kirk kid’s costume Michael Myers wore in Halloween. The first time we see her face though, the shock wears off quickly and we are more moved than terrified. 

Like Val Lewton films, the horror comes from the desolate black-and-white atmosphere, shrouding the claustrophobic suspense in German Expressionism. Maurice Jarre’s score evokes a Gothic carnival as much as a mad scientist’s laboratory. After his daughter’s face is hideously disfigured in an accident, Dr. Génessier becomes obsessed with trying to restore it. We aren’t shown much, until we’re shown too much. We see his heterograft surgical procedure in real time. A woman’s face is slowly flayed from the muscle. The graphic scenes pack more of a visceral shock after all the encroaching dread.

Godzilla

As the original and by far still the best Godzilla movie ever produced, this 1954 classic (originally titled Gojira), is one of the many great Showa Era classics that the Criterion Collection and HBO Max are making readily available to American audiences. And if you want to watch one that is actually scary, look no further.

In this original uncut Japanese form, the movie’s genuine dread of nuclear devastation, as well as nightly air raids, less than 10 years since World War II ended in several mushroom clouds, is overwhelming. Tapping into the real cultural anxiety of a nation left marred by the memory of its dead, as well as the recent incident of a fishing crew being contaminated by unannounced hydrogen bomb testing at Bikini Atoll, Godzilla encapsulates terror for the atomic age in a giant lizard.

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Movies

Godzilla: First 15 Showa Era Movies Ranked

By Don Kaye

Movies

Godzilla 1998: What Went Wrong With the Roland Emmerich Movie?

By Jim Knipfel

And unlike the sequels there is nothing cuddly or amusing about this original Kaiju with its scarred body and legion of tumors. This is the one Godzilla movie to play it straight, and it still plays today.

Horror of Dracula

Replacing Bela Lugosi as Dracula was not easily done in 1958. It’s still not easily done now. Which makes the fact that Christopher Lee turned Bram Stoker’s vampire into his own screen legend in Horror of Dracula all the more remarkable. Filmed in vivid color by director Terence Fisher, Horror of Dracula brought gushing bright red to the movie vampire, which up until then had been mostly relegated to black and white shadows.

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Culture

The Bleeding Heart of Dracula

By David Crow

TV

BBC/Netflix Dracula’s Behind-the-Scenes Set Secrets

By Louisa Mellor

With its penchant for gore and heaving bosoms, Horror of Dracula set the template for what became Hammer Film Productions’ singular brand of horror iconography, but it’s also done rather tastefully the first time out here, not least of all because of Lee bring this aggressively cold-blooded version of Stoker’s monster to life. It’s all business with this guy.

Conversely, Abraham Van Helsing was never more dashing than when played by Peter Cushing in this movie. The film turned both into genre stars, and paved the way for a career of doing this dance time and again.

The Invisible Man

After years of false starts and failed attempts at resurrecting the classic Universal Monsters, Universal Pictures finally figured out how to make it work: They called Blumhouse Productions.

Yep, Jason Blum’s home for micro-budgeted modern horror worked wonders alongside writer-director Leigh Whannell in updating the classic 1933 James Whale movie, and the H.G. Wells novel on which it is based, for the 21st century.

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Movies

How Jason Blum Changed Horror Movies

By Rosie Fletcher

Movies

How The Invisible Man Channels the Original Tale

By Don Kaye

Turning the story of a man who masters invisibility into a horrific experience told from the vantage of the woman trying to escape his toxic violence, The Invisible Man becomes a disquieting allegory for the #MeToo era. It also is a devastating showcase for Elisabeth Moss who is compelling as Cecilia, the abused and gaslighted woman that barely found the will to escape, yet will now have to discover more strength since everyone around her shrugs off the idea of her dead ex coming back as an invisible man…

Lifeforce

Most assuredly a horror movie for a very acquired taste, there are few who would call Tobe Hooper’s career-destroying Lifeforce a good movie. There probably aren’t even many who would call it a fun movie. But for those with a singular taste for batshit pulp run amok, Lifeforce needs to be seen to be believed: Naked French vampire girls from outer space! Hordes of extras as zombies marauding through downtown London! Lush Henry Mancini music over special effects way outside of Cannon Films’ budget!!! Patrick Stewart as an authority figure possessed by said naked French space vampire, trying to seduce an astronaut via makeout sessions?!

Read more

Movies

Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce: Space Vampires, Comets, and Nudity

By Ryan Lambie

Movies

The Mummy and Lifeforce: The Strange Parallels

By Ryan Lambie

… What is this movie? Why does it exist? We don’t know, but we’re probably more glad it does than the people who made it.

Magic

As much a psychological case study as as a traditional horror movie, for those who like their terror rooted in humanity, Magic may be the creepiest iteration of the “killer doll” subgenre since this is about the man who thinks his dummy is alive. Starring Anthony Hopkins before he was Hannibal, or had a “Sir” in front of his name, Magic is the brain child of William Goldman, who adapted his own novel into this movie before he’d go on to do the same for The Princess Bride (as well as adapt Stephen King’s Misery), but after he’d already written Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Marathon Man.

In the film, Hopkins stars as Corky, a down on his luck ventriloquist who tries to get his life together by tracking down his high school sweetheart (Ann-Margret). She’ll soon probably wish he didn’t bother once she realizes Corky believes his ventriloquist dummy Fats really is magic… and is determined to get him to act on the most heinous of impulses.

The Most Dangerous Game

Before King Kong, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack released The Most Dangerous Game, one of the all-time great pulp movies, based on a short story by Richard Connell. This classic has influenced everything from Predator to The Running Man, The Hunger Games to Ready or Not.

It’s the story of a big game hunter who shipwrecks on a remote island with an eccentric Russian Count who escaped the Bolshevik Revolution (Leslie Banks). The wayward noble now drinks, studies, and charms his apparently frequent array of unannounced guests, including two other survivors from a previous (suspicious) wreck. The film quickly boils down to a mad rich man determined to hunt his guests as prey across the island for the ultimate thrill.

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Movies

The Most Dangerous Game That Never Ends

By David Crow

Culture

Why King Kong Can Never Escape His Past

By David Crow

Man hunting man, man lusting after woman in a queasy pre-Code fashion, this is a primal throwback to adventure yarns of the 19th century, which were still relatively recent in 1932. Shot simultaneously with King Kong, this is 63 brisk minutes of excitement, dread, and delicious overacting. Let the games begin.

Night of the Living Dead

“They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”

The zombie movie that more or less invented our modern understanding of what a zombie movie is, there is little new that can be said about George A. Romero’s original guts and brains classic, Night of the Living Dead. Shot in black and white and on almost no budget, the film reimagined zombies as a horde of ravenous flesh-eaters, as opposed to a lowly servant of the damned and enchanted.

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Movies

Night of the Living Dead: The Many Sequels, Remakes, and Spinoffs

By Alex Carter

Games

The George Romero Resident Evil Movie You Never Saw

By David Crow

Still visually striking in black and white, perhaps the key reason to go back to the zombie movie that started it all is due to how tragically potent its central conflict from 1968 remains: When strangers are forced to join forces and barricade in a farmhouse to survive a zombie invasion, the wealthy white businessman is constantly at odds with the young Black man in the group, to the point of drawing weapons…

Ready or Not

The surprise horror joy of 2019, Ready or Not was a wicked breath of fresh air from the creative team Radio Silence. With a star-making lead turn by Samara Weaving, the movie is essentially a reworking of The Most Dangerous Game where a bride is being hunted by her groom’s entire wedding party on the night of their nuptials.

It’s a nutty premise that has a delicious (and broad) satirical subtext about the indulgences and eccentricities of the rich, as the would-be extended family of Grace (Weaving) is only pursuing her because they’re convinced a grandfather made a deal with the Devil for their wealth–and to keep it they must step on those beneath them every generation. Well step, shoot, stab, and ritualistically sacrifice in this cruelest game of hide and seek ever. Come for the gonzo high-concept and stay for the supremely satisfying ending.

Sisters

One of the scariest things about the 1972 psychological thriller Sisters is the subliminal sounds of bones creaking and muscles readjusting during the slasher scenes. Margot Kidder plays both title characters: conjoined twins, French Canadian model Danielle Breton and asylum-committed Dominique Blanchion, who had been surgically separated. Director Brian De Palma puts the movie together like a feature-long presentation of the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. The camera lingers over bodies, bloodied or pristine, mobile or prone, with fetishistic glee before instilling the crime scenes in the mind’s eye. He allows longtime Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann to assault the ear.

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Movies

Ready or Not Ending Explained

By David Crow

Movies

Best Horror Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now

By Alec Bojalad and 3 others

De Palma was inspired by a photograph of Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova, Russian conjoined twins with seemingly polarized temperaments. There may be no deeper bond than blood, which the film has plenty of, but the real alter ego comes from splitscreen compositions and an outside intruder. The voyeuristic delight culminates in a surgical dream sequence with freaks, geeks, a giant, and dwarves. Nothing is as it seems and an out-of-order telephone is a triggering reminder.

Us

Jordan Peele’s debut feature Get Out was a near instant horror classic so anticipation was high for his follow-up. Thanks to an excellent script, Peele’s deep appreciation of pop culture, and some stellar performances, Us mostly lived up to the hype.

Read more

Movies

Us Ending Explained

By David Crow

Movies

Us: How Jeremiah 11:11 Fits in Jordan Peele Movie

By Rosie Fletcher

The film tells the story of the Wilson family from Santa Cruz. After a seemingly normal trip to a summer home and the beach, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), Gabe (Winston Duke) and their two kids are confronted by their own doppelgangers, are weird, barely verbal, and wearing red. But then Adelaide is not terribly surprised given her own personal childhood traumas. And that’s only the beginning of the horror at play. Fittingly, Us feels like a feature length Twilight Zone concept done right.

Vampyr

A nigh silent picture, Vampyr came at a point of transition for its director Carl Th. Dreyer. The Danish filmmaker, who often worked in Germany and France at this time, was making only his second “talkie” when he mounted this vampire opus. That might be why the movie is largely absent of dialogue. The plot, which focuses on a young man journeying to a village that is under the thrall of a vampire, owes much to Bram Stoker’s Dracula as well as F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu from some years earlier.

Yet there horror fans should seek Vampyr out, if for no other reason than the stunning visuals and cinematography. Alternating between German Expressionist influences in its use to shadows to unsettling images crafted in naturalistic light, such as a boatman carrying an ominous scythe, this a a classic of mood and atmosphere. Better still is when they combine, such as when the scythe comes back to bedevil a woman sleeping, trapping us all in her nightmare. Even if its narrative has been told better, before and after, there’s a reason this movie’s iconography lingers nearly a century later.

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The post Best Horror Movies Streaming on HBO Max appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[bitchfromtheseventhhell]

The Problem with Dany

If I had to pick a character who was the most difficult to talk about in this series, it would probably be Daenerys Targaryen.  The intersection of every single conflict and perspective--in world and modern--about her is one that is almost impossible to address without sidelining one element of it.

That her arc relies intensely white saviorism; depictions of the Dothraki are laden with racist tropes; her experience in Slaver’s Bay harkens to (but does not perfectly mirror) white conquest in the 19th century.  This pairs uncomfortably with the fact that she is 13-16 years old (I’m focusing predominantly on book!Daenerys in this--if you are here for show!Daenerys proceed with that in mind), a child sold into sex slavery, a rape victim, and someone who believes firmly and acts upon the belief that any society that relies upon slavery is not society.  As a woman in Martin’s historically inaccurate misogynistic world, she confronts challenges that are designed by the creator of the series to confront her womanhood; as a Targaryen/Valyrian/Westerosi far from her home and without the resources of that home, she is left with little choice but to look forward.

Creator-Character-Consumer

Before even touching on the content of A Song of Ice and Fire, a point that causes trouble, right out of the gate, is where do “problems” with Daenerys arise?  When, for example, does responsibility lie with a character, and when with the architect of her story?  Add into that--when does the responsibility lie with neither character, nor creator, but with instead the fans who are discussing the media in question?

All this is not to absolve Daenerys of whatever sins exist within her storyline. There are choices that the character makes that are reprehensible and for which the ultimate responsibility does lie with her; however it is also to say that many of the things that Daenerys is loathed for are decisions that lie instead at Martin’s feet.

Creator: White Saviorism & Daenerys

Jon Snow has a “practice monarchy,” it is in the North at the Wall, where he is elected Lord Commander by his brothers in black.  Tyrion has a “practice monarchy,” it is in King’s Landing where he briefly serves as Hand of the King in his father’s stead and where, out of spite for his father and sister as much as out of his own idealism denied, he states, in response to Shae’s question of “So what will you do, m’lord, now that you’re the Hand of the King?”

“Something Cersei will never expect,” Tyrion murmured softly against her slender neck. “I’ll do... justice.”  (Tyrion I, ACOK)

In both cases, if their ultimate destiny is to save Westeros (and the world?) from an ice-demon apocalypse, then it is happening locally.  Jon is working with the Free Folk--the first victims of this impending apocalypse--and Tyrion is working with those who hold power in the society that’s about to be attacked.  Jon is working from the bottom-up, Tyrion is working from the top-down.  

Neither is true of Daenerys.

The word that I see thrown around frequently about Daenerys is that she is an imperialist.  The trouble with this argument is that imperialism is a technical term, and one with a specific definition based on the historical era it comes from.  It is the conquest and subjugation of a people in the name of an empire, justified primarily by god, gold, and/or glory.  This subjugation is seen as “for the good of the people” but the imperializer, and brought--without exception--the economic destruction of a colonized country’s livelihood in the name of the wealth of the colonizer.

The trouble is that Dany, herself, is not an imperialist.  She does not--as many around her do--consider the Dothraki “savages” who deserve to be ruled and bettered by her presence.  She grapples with her own perspectives on the matter, but it was with the Dothraki that she first experienced her own independence, and her own first leadership.  When she sets out to rid Slaver’s Bay of slavery, it is not for her own greater glory, for the improvement of her financial standing, or because she feels a holy motivation to do so.  She does so because she herself cannot abide by slavery.  Daenerys is a conqueror--with echoes down to the three dragons back to her ancestor Aegon the first--but she is not an imperialist.

Martin is the imperialist.

Martin took a top-down preparation for apocalypse for Tyrion, and a bottom-up preparation for apocalypse for Jon, and with Daenerys--no matter what--her “preparation” comes on the backs of those in a region that is inspired by the Middle East/Central Asia--areas that suffered intensely from imperialism.  Daenerys’ parallels to Aegon the Conqueror (also not an imperialist, for he conquered and stayed in Westeros as its new King, rather than sucking the power out of the region and sending it elsewhere) are for Westeros, not for Meereen, Yunkai, Astapor, or Vaes Dothrak.  They are “practice,” and whatever Daenerys’ intent in freeing the people enslaved in the region--whatever poetic parallel Martin may be trying to make of the Valyrians bringing slavery to the region and a Valyrian ending slavery in the region--it still requires an external “savior” figure to do so.  If imperialism is about removing the power from one area for the embetterment of another, Martin’s narrative imperialism removes the power from Essos and brings it to Westeros via Daenerys, even if Daenerys’ actions are at odds with the very definition of imperialism.  On top of that, it helps nothing that Daenerys--and Valyrians generally--are racially coded as being extremely pale white; and while the slaves themselves in Slaver’s Bay come from many different ethnic backgrounds (unlike what is depicted in Game of Thrones--a frustrating instance of taking something that is already racist and making it more-so because most of the extras on site in Morocco were non-white locals), those who hold power in the region, and whose power is ultimately being challenged are not white.  

For the Westerosi apocalypse, Daenerys’ being an external savior is not a bad thing.  Daenerys’ considers herself to be Westerosi, her ultimate goal is to create a home for herself in the place she was raised to believe was her rightful home.  The trope of the exiled prince returning to save the kingdom is a well-used and frequently enjoyable one, especially when there are dragons.  It would be well and lovely to have her fill this trope neatly, and her presence and dragons will ultimately make for good reading when she does return to Westeros.

That does not change the fact that her arrival and her preparation for Westeros will come ultimately from her actions in the a region halfway around the world, and that those who live there will have to grapple with her impact long after she is dead (whenever that may be, because they’ll be dealing with it for a long time).

The question gets stickier: frequently in critiques of Daenerys, one will see the argument “she shouldn’t have done anything in Slaver’s Bay,” and her age, gender, and history of abuse are frequently thrown out of the window--as well as all pretense that slavery of any kind is an abomination and that any society reliant on slavery is one that violates the personhood of millions of people in the name of the “freedoms” of the few.  

What subsequently arises from defenses of that argument is to say that Daenerys’ motivations were pure, were idealistic, but that she didn’t know what she was doing.  This is true; it is simplistic.  “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” gets thrown around a fair amount, and we end up back where we start: unable to detach Daenerys from Martin, the object from the creator and allow the fact that Daenerys’ motivations were good and, having been sold as a sex slave, of course she was going to want to free slaves and destroy a mechanism that would further allow for slavery, and that it was Martin who created the scenario and path she would follow, in all its racism and white saviorism.

The truth of the matter is that, for Daenerys, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Her intent is good when she destroys the functioning government and working economy of Slaver’s Bay.  Millions of the residents of that area do not have bodily autonomy, much less economic equality, all thanks to the Valyrians who, blood-magic slave society that they were, brought slavery into the region when they conquered the Ghiscari.  The region will likely be unstable for many years to come because of that, and--as in the American South, among other regions in our world--it’s highly unlikely that those who suffered through bondage will know the economic or social equality they deserve because in all likelihood the white savior figure is going to leave before anything is finalized.  Daenerys’ final chapter in A Dance with Dragons is supposed to be a recentering for her, an internal and psychological reminder that she wants Westeros, and if it took Tyrion an entire book to get from King’s Landing to Meereen, chances are Dany’s going to have to move before the end of the next book in order to make it to Westeros for the impending ice apocalypse--which is definitely not enough time for her to leave Meereen and the rest of Slaver’s Bay stable.

Jon was killed by those he was leading; Tyrion, for all he was playing the political game well, ultimately was ousted from power because he was not either the King or truly the Hand, and then was framed for a murder he did not commit.  Daenerys will leave Slaver’s Bay of her own choice and her work there will never be finalized (best case scenario).  Her work to “fix” a region that was societally broken (slave societies are fundamentally broken; that slavery originated in Valyria) will be a failure that echoes back to the horrible ramifications of imperialism that the majority of countries are still working to undo even now, even if Daenerys herself was not an imperialist.  The simple fact that Martin arced her story this way is a child of our own imperialism, and to put that aside is an injustice to the realities of our world.

Character: Queen You Shall Be

I won’t be discussing whether or not Dany is the rightful queen of the seven kingdoms of Westeros.  I have my thoughts--many thoughts, indeed--about the question of “right” and “rightful” when it comes to this series, and it’s a tangent that is unrelated--or at least subsequent to everything I’m about to say.  

Here, instead, is where we get into Daenerys as a feminist figure within the series, and what sort of feminist she is, and what sort of patriarchy she confronts, given the fact that her arc is laden with racism and white saviorism.  The definition of feminism I’m using is an intersectional one: it looks at class and race in conjunction with gender when approaching what it means to be at a disadvantage in society.

Daenerys is one of the few characters in Martin’s world who becomes free to confront the patriarchy she experiences head on and with (almost) complete independence.  She does not begin that way.  Her story begins with her brother selling her into sex slavery, experiencing Stockholm Syndrome (aided and abetted by the fact that her rapist provides her with more autonomy than her brother), and ultimately, upon the death of her husband, being told that she must spend the rest of her days in a holy space of widowed khaleesis.  (Widowhood, ironically in this case, is one of the ways that women have historically emancipated themselves from patriarchy).  She engages in a blood magic ritual which leads to the rebirth of dragons in her world, and from there we’re off to the races with Daenerys and newfound power and autonomy.  

Daenerys stands as a threat to Martin’s patriarchy--and to the patriarchy in our own world.  She is (ostensibly) infertile, widowed, sexually active, young, beautiful--on top of holding power that is completely her own which she uses to upend multiple social mechanisms that place men above women and the powerful above the enslaved.  Even her marriage to Hizahr zo Loraq is one that she enters into on fairly equal footing: she is the queen and does not relinquish that right; he is the consort and is “bringing something to the table,” specifically the promise of swift and easy peace within her domain.  It’s a marriage of inversed historical norms, where the reverse might be true (and, indeed, is true in the case of Joffrey and Margaery).  Any attempt to subdue her after Khal Drogo dies is met with failure, and any attempt to claim her dragons (the affirmation of her power) is similar.  She exists as an empowered young woman in a world where women are rarely allowed to be empowered.

The patriarchy that Daenerys threatens is not simply a matter of men holding power over women, she threatens a class-based patriarchy as well.  She sees herself as--and acts as--a champion for those at the bottom of the food-chain.  She questions why institutions exist and who they serve and frequently the answer to that is wealthy, powerful men--an answer that Daenerys finds unsatisfying.  If patriarchy more broadly manifests as men being structurally prioritized over women, it exists in tandem with the wealthy few being prioritized over the numerous poor, and Daenerys stands as a shield for those who are maligned in both cases and wishes to create a society where no one’s life or livelihood is threatened based on sex or wealth.  This as a goal is one that fundamentally threatens the formerly-slave-holding status quo of Slaver’s Bay, and one that will threaten the patriarchal power structure of her homeland as well.  She is a symbol of challenge to the way the world has been in the name of what the world must be in order to save it from apocalypse.

If Martin has created fodder for comparison for leadership between Daenerys and Jon (and Robb) and Tyrion, he has specifically created a comparison for queenship between Daenerys and Cersei.  And what is most interesting about that comparison is the way the oppositions and parallels weave among each other.

In Cersei, you have a rape victim, a widow, a mother of three; you have a woman whose autonomy is constantly under threat by the men around her who seek to claim the power she gains from her regency from her with varying levels of success.  But where Cersei couldn’t even pretend to care about the people she rules, Daenerys actively does care about everyone she encounters (and the road to hell is paved with good intentions).  It is Daenerys caring for the Unsullied, the babies they kill during the training and the enslaved mothers of those babies, that catalyze her decision to sack Astapor and end slavery in the region.  One of Daenerys’ first empowered acts when Khal Drogo is still alive is to halt the rape of the Lhazarene that the Dothraki are enslaving, which is what first throws Mirri Maz Duur across her path.  Cersei cares neither for women (considering them weak and insipid) nor for the poor she has responsibility for as Queen Regent, while Daenerys cares so much for them that she derails her own quest to return to Westeros.  

But they do not exist to simply be contrasted, for both commit similar acts that are questionable at best and reprehensible at worst, though the context for each is different.  Both send innocent women to be tortured: Cersei sends Falena Stokeworth to Qyburn for his research largely because the woman annoys her, and Skahaz manipulates Daenerys into torturing the daughters of a treasonous wineseller.  In addition to that, both queens engage in sexual acts that span from dubious consent to downright rape.  Cersei rapes Lancel, a teenaged boy, to manipulate him into doing what she wants.  When Cersei is having sex with Taena Merryweather, her internal monologue is one that is scarred with Robert’s repeated rapes, but the monologue is not one of intimacy; instead it is one where Cersei is trying to process what happened to her for many years and in so doing layers her own voice with her abuser.  And while Taena is consenting to the act (whether because she wants to or because she is spying on Cersei and wants to have more power over her), Cersei’s mindset in the moment is one that is laced with her own internalized misogyny and her own negative views of women and femininity.   Meanwhile Irri’s consent in her sexual relationship with Daenerys is dubious at best.  She offers to take over when she awakens and finds Daenerys masturbating, though whether she wants to or she considers it duty/responsibility is questionable; and what that means for their later sexual relationship is unclear, and opens up a conversation of the nature of compulsory sex work and rape.  Daenerys certainly interprets it as a voluntary act--and her connections with her past relationship with Drogo are not ones of processing rape and aligning with her rapist so much as longing for emotional intimacy--but no voice is given to it from Irri’s perspective, making it impossible to know for sure.  

What fundamentally differs these two queens, both in their parallels and in their contrasts, is their capacity for sympathy and empathy with those around them.  Cersei has neither--not even Jaime when he returns from war without a hand.  Everyone around her is a function of her life--even her children whom she views as an extension of herself.  Daenerys, meanwhile, young and--yes--ignorant though she is, constantly seeks to serve those around her.  If Cersei’s desire to protect her power is to protect herself, Daenerys’ desire to protect her power comes hand in hand with the desire to protect those people she freed from slavery, to serve them better, to make their lives secure and to open doors for them.  The conflict for Daenerys arises in the fact that, no matter how much she loves and cares for her people, no matter how much she wants to protect them and expand their wellbeing, she will ultimately leave them, and that, as stated above, the people and the region are stepping stones to her arriving in Westeros as a queen returning home just in time to help save the world from devastation.

The deep way that Daenerys cares about her people is ultimately a double-edged sword: on the one hand, she cares for the lowest of the low and genuinely does what she can to improve their lives as a “good” ruler should, using her power to expand the lives of those without; on the other hand this deep caring will ultimately hurt the region and leave a vacuum of power when she does ultimately leave Meereen for good, because anyone she leaves to rule in her stead (in Game of Thrones it was, laughably, Daario Naharis) will be woefully unequal to the task, as Daenerys herself was unequal to it.  

Consumer: And Fandom

I’ve avoided up until now bringing fandom into it, except when mentioning arguments that I’ve seen (on reddit; on westeros.org; on tumblr; on facebook; in media outlets) about Daenerys.  Fandom is frequently a tricky thing to navigate because most arguments involving “what the fandom thinks” or “how the fandom behaves” makes such broad generalizations that it’s literally impossible for a fandom to agree on all the contradictory ideas attributed to it.  

What I see as the major dancers in fights about Daenerys are as follows:

That Daenerys is a woman, a rape victim, a feminist, and therefore we should ignore the white savior factor in her arc because she herself is someone who cares about women, about the enslaved, about those in greatest need and that is admirable.

Daenerys is a white savior, and therefore none of her human characterization matters.

Round and round and round they swirl and you get to the point where it becomes an either-or situation, rather than a both-and.  Daenerys Targaryen is a rape victim, a feminist, a well-fleshed-out character AND there is intense racism in the arc that Martin crafted for her.  One addresses a character issue, another addresses a systemic issue of race in media, which means that--far from being contradictory opinions, they exist in the same time in the same story in the same person.

They sit very uncomfortably together, especially given the tendency in modern mainstream feminism to focus on an assumed upper middle class white woman rather than grabbing the fact of racialized class structures around the world and saying that those matter intensely as well.  

Add into that that--this specifically in tumblr fandom--the usage of flat out racist imagery in gifsets (Daenerys’ being raised up on the shoulders of the emancipated slaves in her “Mhysa” scene at the end of season 3 specifically, among others), seemingly without any acknowledgement of the racism of the depiction, which undercuts a feminism that does acknowledge both race and class.  

It grows even more complicated when you have the contrasting book depiction of Daenerys as a sixteen year old girl who is learning and growing as best she can in an arc that has far more global (in our world and in hers) consequence than she is aware of and who is constantly trying to change in order to do the best she can with the image of mid-twenties Game of Thrones Daenerys who is seemingly confident in every action, making the visual racism of her arc in Slaver’s Bay even harder to stomach.  

And of course, ultimately, there exist fans who will make remarkably sexist and racist comments about both Daenerys and her arc, which ultimately can derail from any conversation about one, the other, or both.

Daenerys and her story suffer from challenges that do not exist elsewhere in the series.  She is a white woman whose travels and actions take her through one of the few areas in the story where the predominant population are people of color, and where frequently those cultures end up suffering from being written as racist caricatures drawn from racist tropes rooted in our reality.  This is an issue that exists for no other major character.  She is a white savior figure without imperialist motivation, even if there is structural imperialism within her arc; she is one of the only major characters who challenges power structures that damage those who aren’t empowered, championing changes in extant class structures--one of the few major characters to do so despite (or perhaps because of) how many noble point of view characters we have; and she is a female character who seeks to protect and enhance the lives of the women she rules.  All of these things are true, and all of them are important to the discussion of the series at large, given how Daenerys is one of the most important characters in it.

#daenerys targaryen #meta #daenerys meta #lyannas #rumaan #(thank you for reading drafts of this <3) #asoiaf critique

[seekingheavenlymother-blog]

While I no longer remember the exact words my house mate said to me on that day, I remember her fervor. As she sat perched on the edge of her bed, expressing her sadness that not everyone knew they had a loving Heavenly Father and a Savior who died for them, I thought of my Mother – the Heavenly Mother, so unknown and oft-ignored, yet so powerful and vitally important to my testimony. It was that testimony that had brought me to this point, serving as a missionary in Santiago, Chile. I had chosen to serve a mission for many reasons, but among them was my belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ as the most empowering, ennobling force for good in the world. A key element of its empowering nature is found in the belief that godliness and divinity is not only for men, but for all of God’s children, as reflected by the existence of Heavenly Parents. To leave out one of our Heavenly Parents is to lose one of the most beautiful truths the gospel contains – and yet, this omission occurs often.

It is hard to say at what precise moment I became aware of my Mother’s existence. It certainly did not occur in my Primary classes, where we learned about the all-male Godhead. It also did not come from my years in the youth program, where all the young women recited every week about their identity as daughters of a Heavenly Father. The only clue I have as to the beginnings of my awareness is a piece of wrinkled paper I found among my childhood things. On the paper is drawn a family tree. It lists my immediate family and extends off into other beloved relatives. At the top is listed, “Heavenly Father, Heavenly Mother, and Jesus.” In my rough, childhood handwriting, I found the beginnings of my testimony of my Mother. I remember that as a young child, I asked a relative about my Heavenly Mother and was told that she was too sacred to discuss. This standard, doctrinally incorrect response given to questioners who go seeking for traces of her was acceptable to my young mind. For years, my thoughts of her dimmed to a dull awareness in the back of my subconscious. I testified from the pulpit of the Father and the Son; I celebrated their plans for me as outlined in my patriarchal blessing. For a long time, I was happy without answers. I was complacently content.

It was when I was fourteen that my journey truly began in earnest. I did my Faith project for the Personal Progress program on the priesthood. I wanted to confront the controversial questions regarding women and the priesthood head-on, especially since gender issues had begun to appear in my life during my early adolescent years. I compiled a binder, overflowing with documents, that contained everything from scripture references to blog posts on the subject. I felt satisfied. At that time, I still did not recognize my hunger for Mother, but I had already begun my search. I had studied priesthood because I wanted to understand power, and in order to understand power, I needed to know its source. Therefore, questions regarding the priesthood, church policies, gender roles, and all other doctrinally-based discussions related to womanhood were all stepping stones in the journey.

At sixteen, I again became conscious of my questions while in the car with a friend whose husband had left the LDS Church. She did not know everything about our religion, but she knew a lot – and she definitely knew why her husband had left years before he married her. She never told me exactly why, but I came to understand that it had something to do with equality. She asked me questions about temples and gender, but I did not have answers for her. As I myself had not been endowed, I did not know what happened in sacred temple rituals or if any of the rumors she had told me were true. I was unsettled, uneasy, and concerned. Again, questions filled my mind about power and the worth of women.

At the age of seventeen, I was looking for answers to these questions when I found my Mother. She was tucked in the pages of a piece reconciling doctrines related to women and ideas of equality – it was a faithful feminist theology. Mother was an integral part of it, and I rejoiced. I came to see her as the counterpart to Father – which she literally is, of course. Rather than simply try to understand what power men had and why I did not have it, I began to think in terms of my own power as a woman and where it came from, as well as how it could be manifested. My journals filled with pages seeking for knowledge and explanations. I drew, I diagrammed, I outlined. More than anything, I was happy. I had a Mother and a Father, and they loved me.

It was at age eighteen that everything shifted once more. I had just started college, and I was seeking to find my path in the world. The experiences of new people and new places opened my mind to bigger problems than I had encountered at home. The answers that had once seemed satisfying were now inadequate. If women had a Mother and were empowered to become like her, where was the power and where was the Mother? I felt a physical ache that would not go away. I cried and prayed and pleaded. Were men destined to become gods, but women destined only to be priestesses and helpmates? Where were the answers?

As I look back now, I blush at my impatience. So many other questioners have spent years and lifetimes asking and suffering. Much of their work that was born out of their struggles was essential to me as I began my own search. After three weeks of nausea and confusion, I was blessed with a measure of peace. I say only a measure, because to come to the awareness of the Mother and then see how forgotten she is by her children, one is never fully at peace again. Nevertheless, this measure of peace did come, and it gave me the strength to push on. It did not bring me all the answers, but it strengthened my convictions enough to motivate me to search for them. Re-established firmly in my mind was the truth that equality is innate – men and women, my male counterparts and I, the Father and the Mother. The two halves must be equal, for everything has its balancing force. To weaken and degrade one half was to endanger the whole. Yet, now that I had my convictions firmly in place, the questions were even more pressing. If they were equal, why was she absent? Where was she? What had happened?

Just as I had done for my Faith project years before, I began to search. I found blog posts and poems and articles and artwork. At about this time, the Church published an essay about Heavenly Mother, and I rejoiced. I devoured it, I shared it, and I celebrated it, but I did not pause. I displayed quotes from church leaders on my dorm room door that gave evidence of her existence. I shared copies of the essay with every woman in my hall. I began to include the words “Heavenly Parents” in every single testimony I bore from the pulpit. I continued my search for her as I prepared to serve a mission. As I boarded the plane to the Mexico City Missionary Training Center, I carried a copy of the Heavenly Mother essay in my luggage. For me, it was more than just a reminder of her existence; it was also a reminder of who I was, what I could become, and the testimony I had that motivated me to serve.

It was in the early part of my mission in Santiago, Chile that I sat and listened to that eager house mate, so anxious to tell the world of her Father and Elder Brother, but so wholly apathetic to the presence of her Mother. Her testimony, though beautiful, grated against my heart, reminding me of the absence of my divine counterpart. Though I had found her, it seemed that few others were even searching.

It was months later that my companion, the young missionary I was training, bluntly and loudly told me that Heavenly Mother was important, but Heavenly Father was God. Eve was subject to Adam, women were subject to their husbands, and that was the way things were. Her proclamations were so bold, so disturbing, and so deeply painful. It was so odd to hear such an empowered, fiery young woman declare with resolve her subordinated status, both here on earth and in the eternities. No matter what I said, she would not hear me, would not listen, would not feel what I felt. She made it clear that she had no interest; she was convinced that there was nothing to be known about our Mother. The reaction I received from her was the most painful rejection of my mission – far more heart-wrenching than any door slammed in my face.

Despite this painful experience, I persevered in my journey. I continued to keep copies of the Church essay with me, as it was the only Church approved resource about Her that I could find. I had copies of it in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. I was ready to present it to any fellow missionary that showed the least bit of interest in knowing their Mother. Eventually, I was inspired to share knowledge of Heavenly Mother with a few members as well – most of whom were converts and had never even heard of her before. As I did so, I kept reminding myself: “if not now, when? If not me, who?” How else would they come to know their Mother if I did not share? Most of my experiences were overwhelmingly positive. While a few members showed disinterest, most responded with joy, happiness, and surprise that they had not learned of her before. It seemed to them that knowledge of her was important and inspiring.

At about this time, the Church produced a new missionary pamphlet about families and temples. The opening paragraph talked all about our Heavenly Parents. It was the first missionary resource outside of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” to even acknowledge her existence. It was a valuable tool for me in my efforts to spread knowledge of her. I quoted the opening paragraph in a Church talk, and I used it for my spiritual thought after meals with members. I gave copies of the pamphlet whenever I could and urged members to study it with their families. While I still spent most of my days testifying of only the Father and the Son, the moments of my mission when I spoke of my Mother are the ones that changed me the most.

After eighteen months of service, I completed my mission. The year that followed was filled with more searching, questioning, and learning. More books had been published, filled with poetry and light and love for the Mother, since I had last been home. I eagerly tore through the pages, finding others who, like me, had felt her absence and longed for her presence. As I sought for direction about how to continue with my life, I realized that I wanted my search for my Heavenly Mother to be a central part of it. I wanted to help others who questioned their power and worth as women to come to know her. More than anything, I wanted to discover why she had gone missing from our collective memory and testimony as a Church, and thereby find a way to restore her to her rightful place in our religious understanding.

Almost exactly a year after my return home from my mission, I agreed to do an interview with a student researcher on Latter-day Saint cultural beliefs about Heavenly Mother. It was in that interview that I came to an incredible realization. As I explained to her my way of connecting to Heavenly Mother, a phrase fell out of my mouth that took me by surprise. “For me, research is a form of worship.” As I heard myself say the words, they rang true. Heavenly Mother is not explicitly mentioned in any official ordinance, any frequent practice, any corner of our temples, any page of our canonical scriptures, or any element of our normal, everyday experience as Church members (outside of an occasional reference to Heavenly Parents). However, my act of seeking for her in each of these places and in the voices of other disciples had become my act of worship and adoration. Research – the act of seeking information, recording it, analyzing it, and searching for more – had become a habit to me when it came to my Heavenly Mother. I never stopped searching, seeking, or asking. I never let a setback stop me. I had come to know of my Mother, and I would never let her go.

As I reflect back on my house mate who so boldly proclaimed her love for the Father and the Son and her desire to serve a mission to share her knowledge of them, I now feel a bit of gratitude along with my pain. I too love the Father and the Son and seek to share my knowledge of them. That was part of the reason I chose to serve a mission for eighteen months. I recognize in myself the same feeling she had – but for me, it is not only for the Father and the Son. It is for the Mother, too.

Though I no longer wear a name tag, have no official mantle, and have been given no formal call to serve by my Church, I find myself once again on a mission. This is a mission for my Heavenly Mother. I bear her image, I carry her spiritual DNA, and I have the potential to one day become like her. I am her daughter, she is my Mother, and this is my lifelong calling. While I will also spend my life proclaiming the truth about my Heavenly Father and my elder brother Jesus Christ, I recognize that in those missions I am joined by the millions. In the mission for my Mother, those of us who serve are far and few between. Yet, we are persistent. We believe that by questioning, we have received answers; by searching, we have become enlightened. Now that we have been given the gift of knowing, we cannot – we will not – turn away.

The doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ is indeed powerful, transformative, and uplifting. It is for everyone, always. There are no exceptions to the plan of God – it is for all. However, I have come to know that we cannot harness its full power unless we include our Mother in our doctrinal consideration. Learning to live like our Heavenly Parents requires coming to know both of them. The pathway may not seem obvious – Heavenly Mother is not found in manuals or Church magazines. However, it is in taking the unseen path that we learn to rely upon the Spirit. It is in following the questions of our heart and soul that we find what our true mission in this life may be. In my searching, I found not only my Mother, but also myself. I learned why I am here, at this moment and in this time.

I have been called to serve by Her. Her truth, Her existence, and Her love I will proclaim.

#journey of faith #kayla bach #lds #mormon #the church of jesus christ of latter day saints #tumblrstake #heavenly parents #heavenly mother #seeking heavenly mother

[necromancer-nonbinary]

God has no power to stop my hand, subtitled: apparently I can write 7-page papers no problem, just not about anything I actually need to write about.

Carrie: The Musical. Notorious in its 1980’s rendition as one of the biggest flops in Broadway history (right up there with the disastrous Spider-Man musical), it had a small resurgence in a 2012 off-Broadway rewrite. This rewrite changed a number of details, though I’m only familiar with the ones at the very beginning and very end, as I physically could not bring myself to watch more than five minutes of the recording my castmates found on YouTube. A community theatre on a military base in Stuttgart, Germany, put on a production of the revival version in 2014, which I was a part of. It was a very fun show to do, especially as my first in any sort of major role, and even now, I occasionally go back to it via the video recording we definitely did not make and the shitty cast album I ripped from the audio of that same definitely nonexistent recording. It’s fun to see what I remember from it, and how much my body and my emotional state still respond to something I did for just a few months years ago. But what really gets me more and more each time I come back to it is just how easy it is to read the title role of Carrie as trans.

           I’m biased. I’m trans myself. Two other people in the cast (that I know of) have also come out in the years since, bringing it up to three out of a cast of twenty. I can, have, and will continue to find a trans reading of almost everything I love, because why shouldn’t I? These readings almost invariably enrich the characters in question, and it’s fun to piss off cis people who clutch their pearls at the notion that people can be trans without explicit confirmation or their stories revolving around coming out. I almost hesitate with my reading of Carrie because (spoiler alert, if you haven’t either read the book or seen any of the many adaptations of the story since the 60’s), Carrie not only dies, but goes out in a burst of rage that kills almost every single other named character in the story. It’s not the world’s nicest trope. The saving grace in this case, I think, is that what sends Carrie over the edge is explicitly not a problem within her own mind; it’s the actions of people who are unjustly cruel to her. Still not a happy ending. But then again, it’s horror. What else would we expect?

[cut for length. this thing is seven fucking pages long according to microsoft word.]

           This reading is going to take into account the aspects of the revival musical which support my reading, address those which don’t (not necessarily in a way that resolves them! Just admitting that I know they are there before anyone starts arguing “well she had a period blah blah” I know this. I memorized that whole script. I ran out onstage screaming that I was bleeding and dying at least 4 dozen times. I know), and possibly something else which I can’t remember right now because it was a tangent I got on in the shower this morning and was probably still more related to gender than anything else.

           The biggest thing I want to discuss is Carrie’s own language about herself in the show. She speaks very little in comparison to the other teenagers in the show; most of her vocalization is either in song or dialogue contained within a song. Her first words in the play are not her own; she’s repeating the Lord’s Prayer, trying to calm herself down (something I want to come back to later when I discuss religion). Her next are almost incoherent, when she runs out of the shower after realizing she’s bleeding and begs the other girls for help. “It hurts,” she says to Ms. Gardner when she comes in to see what’s happening. “My stomach.” Carrie is not eloquent in standard speech, which also probably contributes to the teasing she suffers (in our production, she was played by me, which also means she definitely came across as autistic – another strike against her, but that’s not my point right now). But what elicits her first powerful verbal expression is right before the song “Carrie”: overhearing Chris tell Sue about the various nicknames people at school have for Carrie, in particular “Scary White,” which is followed by a chorus of students – implied, I think, to be in her own head (which comes back later!) whispering, then chanting, then shouting the nicknames. “Scary White,” they croon, and more generic insults such as “Weirdo!” “Loser!” “Freak!” and “Dumb bitch,” until Carrie screams, “That’s not my name!”

           The first coherent words of her own in the play: the insistence upon being called her own name. This entire song is alternately her repeating her own name and lamenting that the other students are so cruel to her: “I will not cry. I’m okay/I try so hard to play their way/Why do they find it so hard to say/Carrie?” This is a feeling that any trans person with a new name can relate to, especially when the people in their life are less than thrilled about respecting it. As she moves through the song, repeating her name, though, she grows more confident in it, until she reaches the final lines and exclaims, “But someday/Oh my, someday/Someone will know my name!”

           I am not going to spend much time on “And Eve Was Weak,” in part because it still freaks me the fuck out five years after the end of the show, and in part because its focus rests on Carrie’s period and the deeply upsetting relationship between her and her mother. All I will say about it is that it ends with Carrie being hurled into a closet. Which, really, is all the proof I need to decide that she is trans. Also bi, but that’s not really the focus of this essay.

  ��        Time and time again, we also hear Carrie referring to the “other” in a way that indicates that she has only recently been able to insert herself into the category of “girl.” In the end-of-the-act confrontation song “I Remember How Those Boys Could Dance,” she tells her mother that “I know I’m not like all the others/Sometimes I dream in color” and that “nobody feels the things that I do.” This is an easy surface reading that of course she doesn’t feel like anyone she knows; she is isolated from other people her age by their cruelty and from any adult other than her mother by the town’s distaste for her mother. But trans people almost invariably feel separated from the people around them, especially before they realize they’re trans: they feel alienated from their AGAB but as if they couldn’t possibly belong with people of their actual gender, no matter how untrue that feeling may be. Notable here is that at no point does Carrie refer to that feeling that she’s unlike others as an explicitly negative one. “Sometimes I dream in color” is a kind of nonsense line, one I never could puzzle out while I was actually in the show, but it isn’t negative; she senses there is something more to her because of her difference, and it’s good. In at least two other songs, she talks about other girls specifically: “I bet other girls already know/the ways to get their skin to glow/but I can learn./I’m not sure how all these colors mix/those other girls, they’ve got their tricks/but I can learn/It’s my turn/on Saturday night!” (from “A Night We’ll Never Forget”) and the repetition of a formulaic “if other girls (X)” than I can too in “Why Not Me?” – “if other girls can do this, why can’t I?”, “and if other girls get through this why not me?”, “I know I may not be welcome but at least I will be there/and if other girls belong, then I do too.” What is especially interesting to me when she refers to others is the shift in the way she does so. Early on, at the end of the first act and in “Night We’ll Never Forget,” it is almost exclusively about the physical. The line I mentioned earlier, “sometimes I dream in color,” is followed immediately by the line “sometimes I even think I’m lovely,” and of course, in “Night We’ll Never Forget” she is trying to learn how to do her makeup the way that other girls do. But by the time we reach “Why Not Me?”, she has reached beyond wanting to physically look like other girls and instead is asserting that she has just as much right to belonging as every other girl at the school. There is a subtext of physicality to this song, because as she sings it, she is getting made up to go to the prom, but it isn’t just about looking like a girl anymore. It’s about being one.  

           I want to move now to things other people and the narrative as a whole say about Carrie, starting with the obvious: seventeen is incredibly late to start menstruating and, despite a general decrease in the age of onset over the last few decades, was still very late in the 60’s when the book was first written. Most people who experience periods in the US begin menstruating about the age of twelve and 90% have begun by the time they are fourteen. It is obviously intended to be linked to her telekinetic powers and her mother’s paranoia about Carrie reaching an age of sexual maturity, and it is a literal period – the stage directions and later dialogue explicitly refer to Carrie coming onstage with blood on her hands and dripping down her legs – but there are interesting implications for my reading in it being so late. Menstruation is linked in the cisgender mind to womanhood. It is not a sure sign, as any trans person could tell you, but it is one of the easiest ways to signify to a cis audience that a character is a woman. This has numerous flaws – the most obvious in relation to my topic being that not all people who menstruate are women, and not all women menstruate – but also because the onset of menstruation, even in cis women, does not mean that person is now a woman. A twelve-year-old could by no stretch of the imagination be considered an adult. It doesn’t even mean sexual maturity; from a simple biological standpoint, the child who has just begun menstruating is not biologically ready to have a child, as their body is not yet fully grown and often the first several periods a child has are nonovulatory. Despite these flaws, what Carrie’s period tells most of the audience is that she is coming to womanhood years after most of her peers. Her mother held to an unreasonable hope that she would never come to it at all.

           Carrie’s mother is another clear roadblock to the theory of Carrie as a trans woman; such a viciously religious woman would be very unlikely to allow her child to express being trans. But I also think there’s something to be said for the fear with which she treats Carrie’s womanhood. The narrative makes it obvious she fears Carrie growing up and being able to leave her behind, and a few offhand lines in “And Eve Was Weak” indicate that she knows something about Carrie’s telekinesis: “The seed conveys the power and it’s come again/it’s come again/it’s come again/Until the seed is crushed this power never ends/it never ends/it never ends.” Margaret White does not know about Carrie’s powers until she reveals them at the end of the act, but she suspects that something will come of her maturation other than her own loss of control over her daughter’s life. But this doesn’t change the fact that she regards Carrie’s womanhood with more fear than is reasonable, and the simple fact that Margaret is not sound of mind doesn’t necessarily explain all of it.

           The treatment she receives from her peers is also interesting in the light of a transgender reading. Carrie is undeniably odd; she talks infrequently, dresses strangely, and has a mother who is the town outcast (and again, when played by yours truly, she reads very autistic), but she is not strange enough on her own to become an outcast; when she gets to the prom, Frieda and Tommy treat her very kindly, and they seem to have an easy time talking to one another. Her mother’s strangeness is meant to be the clear reason why she is treated so badly. The other students know from their parents that Margaret White is a Bible-thumping weirdo, and so assume Carrie would be too. The trouble with that is that she clearly is not. Outside of her home, she references religion twice in the play, both times in the same way: by reciting the Lord’s Prayer to calm herself down. During “The Destruction” she also repeats her mother’s admonition that “God made Eve to bear the curse/The curse of blood,” but there is a strong argument to be made that most of the events at the beginning of “The Destruction” are actually only happening inside her head. There is an abrupt switch after her line, “Oh my God oh my God oh my God” and before she begins singing where the other students and both teachers at the prom (including Tommy and Frieda, who had been nice to her all night, and Miss Gardner, who has been kind to her throughout the play) begin laughing and jeering and echoing the fragments of songs which Carrie sings, and another abrupt switch as she sings her final line in the song when everyone stops and appears to be in shock. The fact that every line of “The Destruction” is one taken from an earlier song and twisted back at her mockingly also indicates that this is an extreme panic reaction and not something actually happening or spoken aloud. What this means is that, one, the students and teachers did not actually begin mocking her as she believed, and instead were as horrified by Chris’s prank as the audience, and two, that the fragment of her mother’s kind of religion she spits is not actually her but the version of her mother that lives in her head. I think most of us have that, but for Carrie, it is a source of fear rather than common sense. On multiple occasions through the play, dialogue makes it clear that Carrie is a normal girl who happens to be outcast and also have secret telekinetic powers. People very rarely end up outcasts for no reason; bullying does not happen randomly. Her mother’s oddity may have made her a target to begin with, but it is made clear narratively that she does not share it. Thus, there must be another reason why the other students cast her out. Enter the theory that she is trans, therefore different, therefore to be mocked.

           It isn’t a happy view of transness from several angles, not least of which being that she dies and takes everyone out with her, but from outside the horror aspect, a trans reading of Carrie is almost positive. She finds support in Miss Gardner, who is heavily coded to be LGBT herself, and despite opposition is able to stand proudly in her womanhood at the prom and begin proving – rather easily, even – that she belongs there just as much as everyone else. I doubt there’s a way to actually make the angle of Carrie as a trans woman work onstage, because of the various obstacles I outlined, but I do believe that being able to take a character or story and read transness in it gives it new dimensions. There’s value in finding an understanding of media which goes outside of the standards we’ve unconsciously set as the norm; it helps expand our definition of what “normal” is and gives us insight into a part of life that many people don’t often think about.

#one fucking hour one hour was all this took #i've spent a whole week trying to write a four-page paper why is this the way my brain works #do you think my theatre history prof will let me turn this in as the other paper i need to write for class #last year i wrote six pages abt why oscar wilde being gay was intrinsic to his work being how it is #this is only slightly more off-topic #long post

[chocolate-brownies]

Last July, at age 33, I separated from my husband. We had been unhappy for a while, but were both absolutely shattered when it all unraveled. Friends and family were there for both of us, though I suspect that their support was slightly different depending on to whom they were talking. It invariably didn’t take more than three or four well-intentioned platitudes before the person asked me about what I was going to do about having children. I was 33 going on 34, after all. My window was closing.

My husband never experienced this. He had a long rich life ahead of him, whether he had children or not. I, as a woman, was teetering dangerously close to the unfulfillment of my biological purpose—something that not only makes me selfish, but also a deeply tragic figure, destined to grow old alone without any joy or companionship in my twilight years.

But all of that, of course, is bull.

A Woman’s Private Parts Are… Private

According to Brianna Madia, a storyteller and professional vagabond, we all know the “rules” when it comes to religion, politics, or salary. “And yet,” she says, “even in our current culture of correctness, it is still deemed socially acceptable to ask a woman about something as personal as the status of her reproductive organs. I’ve been confronted about my childlessness at cocktail parties, holiday dinners, and even standing in front of an office copy machine.”

It’s not just a rude and deeply personal question, it can also be triggering and—even unintentionally—open wounds. “That woman standing before you may have just experienced her fourth miscarriage or her third round of IVF fail,” says Brianna. “She and her partner may be knee-deep in the excruciating pain that infertility can bring upon a couple. And here you are, demanding to know about a child she’d love nothing more than to tell you about… If only she could.”

On the other side of the spectrum, women who choose not to have kids sometimes face the insinuation that they’re somehow devoid of maternal instinct or the capacity to love. “Several years ago, due to a family emergency, my 17-month-old nephew was sent from California to live with my husband and I in our studio apartment for over two months,” says Brianna. “It was one of the most challenging and emotionally trying things we’ve ever gone through. Just once I wanted to be told, ‘you’re a great aunt’ instead of, ‘you’d make a great mother.’”

The Unconventional Realization

Whitney Smith is a graduate student whose parents, she writes, “had a rocky relationship with parenthood.” Despite that, Whitney says that she feels as if she was effectively brainwashed, “programmed to ignore or deny any negative thoughts associated with motherhood.” She’s recently realized that she isn’t, in fact, required to procreate; that she doesn’t owe society a child, and that her femininity and womanhood isn’t threatened by deciding not to have kids.

I was programmed to ignore or deny any negative thoughts associated with motherhood. – Whitney Smith

“I know women,” Whitney writes, “who have been pressured and judged to the point that they fall victim to coercive tactics, only to be left in a position they were not prepared for or ultimately did not desire.” That is, women who DO have kids are not permitted—not even once—to have the unthinkable thought that their life could’ve been better, or at least different, without kids. She’s immediately cast as a wayward mother, failing to tap into feelings that define the feminine experience, rather than a human being with complex and competing desires and life plans. Men do not face this same stereotyping. Patriarchy, much?

And then, of course, there’s the “biological clock,” which is what I was reminded of when I separated from my husband. According to Whitney, the pressure to have kids definitely amps up as a woman approaches her mid-30s. A woman, writes Whitney, is expected to be grateful for the years in which she was able to unconventionally eschew maternity for a career or continuing education—as if those years were a bonus, rather than a path.

“If the amount of childfree years did not suffice, a women risks being viewed as greedy, selfish, unloving, less womanly, and even subjected to dehumanization,” she writes. “Freedom of choice doesn’t afford us women the ability to choose not to have children and exist in a judgement-free world.”

You’re Not Alone

When I started working on this piece, I posted a simple query on Facebook, asking women who had chosen not to have kids if they had ever felt a stigma. The question got as much engagement on my personal page as the sharing of my wedding photo album (and the photos of friends’ newborns, for that matter). Responses came in from all over the country, from women on disparate walks of life, with disparate backgrounds and experiences.

“Your life can be full without being a parent,” says Kristi Siconolfi. “And guess what? You still have tons of responsibilities.” She says that people often comment on how lucky she is that she doesn’t have kids, because it obviously means she just does whatever she wants, when she wants. “Umm, no,” she says. “I have responsibilities at work, for my dogs, to keep my home looking nice, to pay my bills.”

Brianna has faced this kind of stereotyping as well. “There’s this horrible connotation that people without children sleep until 10am every day, spend all their money on brunch, and couldn’t possibly know what it means to have a responsibility to someone outside of themselves,” she says. “Perhaps this is a pipe dream of exhausted parents, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. There are childfree individuals who, perhaps unbeknownst to you, have dedicated their lives to bettering yours and your child’s,” she says.

There’s this horrible connotation that people without children sleep until 10am every day and spend all their money on brunch. – Brianna Madia

For Megan Carl, it’s not about not wanting to have kids at all—it’s about meeting the right person with whom she’d like to raise a family. Ironically, says Megan, it wasn’t until she was diagnosed with complicated chronic illness that her opinion on having kids changed.

“I am 90 percent sure I want kids, but up until very recently I was at maybe 50 percent,” she says. “However, I am 100 percent glad that I didn’t have them yet—at the wrong time (in my development as a human) or with the wrong partner. I can’t imagine being bonded to the wrong someone in that way for the rest of my natural life. I say this all the time but I truly mean it. We are all EXACTLY where we are supposed to be, right at this moment. The universe wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Right on, Megan. Kids, no kids, pets, no pets: It’s all about knowing what feels good for you. So happy Mother’s Day—to mothers of all kinds, and to women who honor their maternal instinct in all sorts of unconventional ways. You’re exactly where you need to be.

—

Lisette Cheresson is a writer, storyteller, yoga teacher, and adventuress who is an avid vagabond, homechef, dirt-collector, and dreamer. When she’s not attempting to create pretty sentences or reading pretty sentences other people have created, it’s a safe bet that she’s either hopping a plane, dancing, cooking, or hiking. She received her Level II Reiki Attunement and attended a 4-day intensive discourse with the Dalai Lama in India, and received her RYT200 in Brooklyn. She is currently the Director of Content at Wanderlust Festival.

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#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping