Ana Mardoll's Ramblings

Open Thread: Favorite Video Game Plot?

2012-05-25T09:00:00.001-05:00

What's your favorite video game plot of all time? (Differentiated from "favorite video game" because play mechanics can ruin the overall experience, I know.)

I really, really, really love Persona. I really like the whole "many selves within you" aspect, probably not the least because it always used to bug me growing up that people would talk to me about wanting to know "the REAL Ana" as if I wasn't real all the time. I really like the character of Mary, because she's a relatively rare disabled (sort of. It's complicated.) character in the video game landscape, and I really like the exploration of her character as deeper than peaches'and'cream. And I love that the characters start off looking like stereotypes (the Rich Kid, the Responsible Kid, the Smart Kid, etc.) and then turn out to have all this depth of character unfold because people are not stereotypes, and if you think they are, it's your failure to look deeper. Ah, memories.

I don't like the PSP remake quite so much, I'm afraid.

Runners-up include Lunar (the PS remake where Luna gets some agency), Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy Tactics (the plot makes sense after the 8,734th play through!).

OPEN THREAD BELOW!

Hunger Games: A Question of Agency

2012-05-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

@ GordonAndTheWhale.com

Content Note: Death, Agency, Reproductive Rights

Hunger Games Recap: I've decided to run a Hunger Games deconstruction to post on a non-regular basis. This will not be a line-by-line deconstruction like Twilight and will not precisely be a read-a-long like Narnia; it will be a thematic deconstruction by chapter with the assumption that everyone is already familiar with the books. Spoilers lurk herein.

The Hunger Games, Chapter 1

I love "The Hunger Games". It's probably my most favorite book series of all time at this point. I've read the books half a dozen times. I've listened to the audio books more times than I can count. I love the series: heart, mind, and soul. I also feel like it's one of the most feminist book series I own. This is not a coincidence.

THG is a fundamentally political series. The novels follow the adventures of Katniss Everdeen as she is forced by an oppressive government to kill other young adults in order to survive. In the process, she becomes a symbol of defiance and rebellion against the corrupt government and she is forced to navigate a brutal civil war in order to protect herself and her loved ones.

But THG is also a deeply personal series, and the personal becomes so deliberately woven with the political that an appropriate tagline for the series would almost certainly be The Personal Is Political. Katniss' personal life is intruded upon, first by the deadly reality-TV program she is forced by the government to participate in, and then later as part of a propaganda series in order to encourage the members of the rebellion. Her emotions and actions are on display and are appropriated as part of a larger cause: her love for her sister, her love for her district partner, her love for her allies. And Katniss' feelings aren't just appropriated against her will; more often than not, they are deliberately manipulated, both by her enemies and her allies.

And so THG is ultimately a story about agency, and about the removal of such. It's a novel about reproduction and reproductive freedom, and how these very basic rights tie into every facet of one's life and choices. And thus it is not a coincidence that the first paragraph of the novel starts with a frightened child.

   When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

Prim is Katniss' little sister, but in many ways she is almost a surrogate daughter. When Katniss' father died, her mother spiraled into a silent depression and Katniss was forced to step in and be the parent her little sister needed until their mother was able to recover.

The Reaping, as we will learn, is a yearly ceremony in which two children -- a boy and a girl -- are chosen by lottery and sent to the Capitol as tributes marked for death. The children will be placed in an arena with 23 other children and only one child will be allowed to leave. That child chosen as winner will be the "winner" by virtue of the fact that they are the only one left alive: the other tributes will have been brutally bludgeoned, hacked, drowned, burned, or starved to death.

Attendance at The Reaping -- the ceremony at which your child may be taken from you and sent away to be violently murdered -- is mandatory. For weeks after the ceremony, live footage of your child's struggles will be piped into your home and onto the screens of the televisions in the town square. By law -- and for the sake of the rest of your family -- you must treat The Reaping as a great honor and a solemn celebration, or suffer serious consequences. When a "victor" who murdered your child goes on their victory tour in the year after the Games, the onus will be on you to stand by quietly in the crowd at the celebration held in their honor.

And this is a fundamental aspect of the series: the government of Panem can and will take away your children to die, and you can only watch helplessly. Small wonder that our protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, doesn't want to reproduce. Smaller wonder still that she will continually be pressured to do so against her will. Small wonder that she will learn that in Panem, women -- and especially women victors -- don't always have that choice.

Chapter 1 builds the foundation of Katniss' family life.

   My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me. [...] She must have really loved him to leave her home for the Seam. I try to remember that when all I can see is the woman who sat by, blank and unreachable, while her children turned to skin and bones. I try to forgive her for my father's sake. But to be honest, I'm not the forgiving type. [...]
   My father knew [how to hunt] and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.

Katniss' mother is not given a name in the books. She is simply referred to by her status as wife and mother: "Mrs. Everdeen" or "Mother". And I do think this is a deliberate choice, as Mrs. Everdeen / Mother represents that which Katniss desperately does not want to be. Her mother fell deeply in love, and married a man who made her feel safe and secure. They had two beautiful children together, while Mrs. Everdeen was respected and valued by the community as one of the few healers in the area. She had everything that she needed to be happy: a loving spouse, a fulfilling career, a beautiful family.

But she has zero control over any of that. Her husband was killed as part of his occupation; an occupation that he had no choice in, and which was characterized by hazardous conditions that the government didn't care to improve. Her children will be selected for The Reaping and one of them will be sent off to the Capitol to die. Her career as a healer will be curtailed by the limits of the supplies available to her: when the Capitol decides to crack down on District 12 and stop all visits to and from the forest for supplies, Mrs. Everdeen will be left with nothing but snow and bandages to work with.

Katniss can't control whether or not the Capitol decides to kill her, and she can't prevent her career from being a dangerous occupation imposed on her by circumstance rather than by choice. But she can choose not to open herself up to more pain by indulging in love or deciding to procreate.

   When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. [...] Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food shortages, or the Hunger Games. Prim might begin to repeat my words and then where would we be?

Despite her goal of closing herself off from more potential pain, Katniss is fiercely loyal to her family and her few friends. She knows precisely what it feels like to lose her father, and she's experienced enough of a preview of losing her mother to feel a lingering bitterness over what she perceives as abandonment. As a result, she's doing her best to protect her sister.

Someone else might draw away from Prim, trying to distance themselves from the recurring pain of yearly dreading that Prim might be selected for death. Someone else might feel compelled to live more dangerously, acting out against the Capitol despite the risks that would bring. But Katniss is daily struggling to skirt the line between obedience and defiance; those rules which she breaks are broken only to keep herself and her family alive, and each rule is broken carefully with a calculation of risk versus reward.

   I can feel the muscles in my face relaxing, my pace quickening as I climb the hills to our place, a rock ledge overlooking a valley. A thicket of berry bushes protects it from unwanted eyes. [...] Gale says I never smile except in the woods.

We're not but a few pages into the novel and already we see how the political influences the personal in this world.

Katniss doesn't smile in the woods because she's truly happy there in a "Sound of Music" joy bursting through my soul kind of way. She's not running carefree through the grass, sweetly singing songs about freedom and hills and hares and adventure. She's smiling here, and only here, because her face is allowed to relax and flex now that she's away from the District. Every other moment of Katniss' day -- every moment she is not in the woods -- she is under surveillance. There are Peacekeepers (the Capitol police) in town, and informers who turn in rule-breakers in exchange for money and favors. Even when she's at home, she has to watch her expressions and moods because what if her little sister begins to imitate her? They'd all be at risk.

Later, when Katniss is transported to the Capitol and thrown into the Games, this surveillance will only intensify. Katniss will be watched every moment, even while she sleeps. If her face isn't the perfect mixture of winsome, courageous, clever, brave, witty, obedient, and grateful, she won't win over the sponsors whose influence is necessary in order to survive the Games.

The oppression of being constantly watched, gazed upon, judged, and evaluated requires Katniss to suppress her thoughts and emotions if she wants to survive. Outwardly, she must display feelings she doesn't have; inwardly, she must repress her real feelings lest they show on her face. Only when she is safe can she enjoy such a basic freedom as letting her facial muscles relax.

   "We could do it, you know," Gale says quietly. [...] "Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," says Gale. [...] "If we didn't have so many kids," he adds quickly.
   They're not our kids, of course. But they might as well be. [...] "I never want to have kids," I say.

THG is a story about reproductive freedom. From the first chapter, Katniss declares that she doesn't want children. She doesn't want them because she knows she can't protect them, and she doesn't want to be victimized by the government by being forced to hand them over to die. She'll accomplish this childless goal the only way she can think of in this world without access to reliable birth control: she won't have sex. She won't fall in love, and this will doubly protect her from having to see her loved ones torn from her. She's not the only one who takes this route; her mentor Haymitch will live a similarly unattached adult life, wracked with grief for what he has lost.

But this isn't a world where Katniss has agency to make these kinds of choices. Her mentor will push her into a romantic relationship in order to generate necessary sponsors in the Games. The Capitol will force her to continue that relationship outside of the Games, in an attempt to spin Katniss' behavior as silly and lovesick rather than calculated and rebellious. As a female victor, Katniss will be forced to procreate so that her children can be "randomly" selected to compete: the audience loves to see the children of a victor go into the arena, and the commentators enjoy talking about how 'unlucky' the family line is.

A choice that should be Katniss' alone -- Shall I breed? -- is a choice that permeates the series. Katniss' lover is forced on her by circumstance, and she is required to make a public romance with him in order to survive. When she is tossed into the Games a second time, she is made to fake a pregnancy in a political move calculated to demonstrate just how brutal the Games truly are. Later, the fake pregnancy has to be explained away with a convenient miscarriage that her handlers use to drum up sympathy for her plight as she supports the rebellion as a symbolic figurehead.

Over and over and over again, the contents of Katniss' uterus and the discussion of what goes in and out of her vagina are deliberately thrust into the public spotlight. It's a huge invasion of privacy for a young woman who is squeamish about her own body and the bodies of the people around her. It's a major trespass on her basic rights as a person to unfold her own sexuality and reproduction in ways that she is comfortable with. It's a depersonifying method of controlling a young woman who only ever wanted to be left alone and free to live her own life in solitude.

And it's a hugely feminist issue in a world where women are being systematically denied birth control and the contents of their bodies are increasingly controlled by the state.

   After the reaping, everyone is supposed to celebrate. And a lot of people do, out of relief that their children have been spared for another year. But at least two families will pull their shutters, lock their doors, and try to figure out how they will survive the painful weeks to come. [...]
   I protect Prim in every way I can, but I'm powerless against the reaping. The anguish I always feel when she's in pain wells up in my chest and threatens to register on my face. I notice her blouse has pulled out of her skirt in the back again and force myself to stay calm. "Tuck your tail in, little duck," I say, smoothing the blouse back in place.

Katniss, as we will see, isn't quite powerless to protect Prim from The Reaping. She has a few years, a very short window of opportunity, when both she and Prim are eligible together. During that time, if Prim's name is called, Katniss can do what their Mother cannot: she can volunteer to take Prim's place. But she can't do this forever. Eventually Katniss will be too old to participate in the Games, and Prim will be on her own, year after year, waiting to see if she's the yearly tribute.

And even with the volunteering, Katniss can't protect Prim from The Reaping on a more fundamental level: she can't protect Prim from being emotionally hurt by it. Prim must watch her schoolmates taken off to die every year. She may have to watch her boyfriend dragged off one day. Someday she may have to see her children taken away to be killed. Katniss can't shield her sister from any of this, nor can she take away the nightmares that plague her little sister on the night before The Reaping.

   People file in silently and sign in. The reaping is a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on the population as well. Twelve-through eighteen-year-olds are herded into roped areas marked off by ages, the oldest in the front, the young ones, like Prim, toward the back. Family members line up around the perimeter, holding tightly to one another's hands. [...]
   Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch -- this is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. "Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there's nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen."

The Capitol exerts many layers of control on its citizens in order to keep them in perpetual slavery, but almost every layer boils down to exploiting the love its citizens have for one another. Where another book with another rebellion and another protagonist might try to make the case that slaves who don't want to be slaves should just kill themselves as a means of ultimate escape, THG asserts that such 'solutions' are harmfully simplistic.

The people in THG don't cooperate with the government because they fear death. They don't do as they're told because they are trying to avoid torture. No, they keep their heads down and their mouths closed because they are trying to protect the ones they love. Katniss hopes to protect her sister, just like Gale tries to protect his little siblings.

When they do fight, it's because they've been pushed farther than they can go. Katniss fights because she can't bear to let her friend die. She fights because she can't stand to have the Sword of Damocles constantly dangling over Prim's head. She fights because she doesn't want to be forced to have children just to have to inevitably give them up to the Games.

But once she starts fighting, she also fights her herself. She fights for her right to select her own lover, to have children on her own terms. She fights for the basic right to control how and when and with whom she reproduces. Katniss, as a character, is not overtly feminist -- she's not an idealist of any stripe -- but her story is one of feminism, of being allowed to choose when and where and how to have children, and of being allowed to nurture and protect one's chosen family and friends. And that is powerful.

Author Interview: Amanda Johnson on "Mommies' Priceless Moments"

2012-05-23T09:00:00.002-05:00

Ana: Today we have Amanda Johnson introducing their book, Mommies' Priceless Moments. I haven't read this book myself, but Amanda was kind enough to agree to guest blog about their book to any readers who might be interested in the subject. Amanda, how would you describe your book to your prospective readers? In broad terms, what is your book about?

Amanda: This book is a golden collection of short funny true stories about young children from parents worldwide.

Ana: What themes does your book explore and what do you hope the reader will take away from the experience? Is there a particular feeling or experience that you hope to evoke in the reader? Essentially, do you hope your book will mean to a reader?

Amanda: My basic aim was to expose the real challenges that come with being a parent, and to showcase them in an amusing light. I did this by speaking with parents up and down the country, and compiling a book that contains their [zany], courageous and sometimes almost unbelievable stories. My intent is to help parents to understand that they’re not alone in their experiences.

Ana: What prompted you to write this book and did you have a specific inspiration in mind? Were you influenced by a certain author or work that inspired you to add your voice to this genre? Besides the boatloads of money and rockstar fame, what motivated you to write this book?

Amanda: After having my son Tyson, I decided that the best advice I got about parenting was not from the “How To” books I read, but from other parent’s experiences. The [zanier] and funnier the experience, the more I felt like I was not alone. The biggest motivation behind this book was definitely my son and the stories friends and family told me to comfort me when he was first born.

Ana: If you could compare your book to any other existing works, which ones would it be and why? If the one thing you could say to a prospective reader was, "If you like X, you'll love my book!", which work would be invoked so that a reader could judge whether or not your book is their cup of tea?

Amanda: I would compare my book to "Belly Laughs: The Naked Truth about Pregnancy and Childbirth" by Jenny McCarthy. This is because her book is the naked truth about pregnancy and Mommies' Priceless Moments is the naked truth about raising children. The biggest differences between our books are that her book is only from her view and my book is a collection of short stories. Another difference is that she uses swear words in her book and mine is clean. But if you enjoyed reading Jenny McCarthy’s book you will enjoy Mommies’ Priceless Moments.

Ana: Is this your first or only published work, or have you published other books? If you have published other books, how do they compare to this one? Do you have any more books planned, either as a follow-up to this one, or as a completely different book or genre?

Amanda: This book is my first and only published book. If it does well I hope to come up with a second book with more funny true stories about kids.

Ana: Where can readers obtain a copy of your book for them to enjoy? How can they contact you with any thoughts or questions? And do you have a means by which they can "sign up" to be notified when your next book comes available?

Amanda: You can buy Mommies' Priceless Moments on Amazon for $2.99. You can also buy it as a hardcopy for $9.80. You can find me on Facebook or email me.

Ana: Thank you. I understand you have the first chapter of your book available as an excerpt for interested readers? Is there anything else you wish to add for our readers?

Amanda: You can preview my book here. Make sure you like my Facebook page I am always giving out prizes to my readers. I look forward to hearing from everyone so please also visit my website.

Thank you!

If you are an indie author interested in being interviewed, please read the interview policy here.

Narnia: Savior White, Savior Bright

2012-05-22T09:00:00.255-05:00

Content Note: Genocide, Othering through Romanticization, Nazis

Narnia Recap: The Pevensie children have rescued a dwarf.

Prince Caspian, Chapter 4: The Dwarf Tells of Prince Caspian

Hey! You know what would be awesome? I'm going to tell you what: leaving these Pevensie protagonists behind for four chapters or so. I mean, the book only has fifteen chapters total, so it's not like that's more than a quarter of the book. Let's go find a new protagonist, one who is less burdened by hurtful memories and sad emotions and muddled theological implications about gods who override choice despite ostensibly being all about free will. A new protagonist who represents everything that good, right-thinking people want and need in a protagonist: an innocent white male who will most definitely not be blamed for the heaping amounts of privilege he's been cozily wrapped in his entire life.

@ fanpop.com
Who needs a White Witch when you can have a White Knight?

And sarcasm aside, I really do not think it's a coincidence that the Prince Caspian narrative takes over here, with the Pevensie stuff being more like an unusually long prologue to the book, because Prince Caspian is very quickly going to be the glue that holds these books together, a sort of combination Protagonist-MacGuffin-WorldBuildingFillerPutty. Let's examine the series in the order in which it was written:

LWW: English children help Aslan take back Narnia from hostile forces.
PC: English children help Prince Caspian take back Narnia from hostile forces.
VDT: English children help Prince Caspian journey to the edge of the world.
SC: English children help Prince Caspian by finding his lost son.
HaHB: Prequel. (Sort of.)
MN: Prequel.
LB: English children help Prince Caspian descendent/Expy go to heaven.

So what I'm saying is to settle in because this Prince Caspian guy isn't going anywhere any time soon.

I don't think this is a coincidence; I think after LWW, the series needed something to coalesce around. Aslan isn't really a good focal point, since he's vague and mysterious and apparently all-powerful and how much help is the Son of God going to need from English children, anyway? The Pevensies aren't much of a focal point, either, or at least not one the author seemed willing to sustain -- already we're seeing the characterization wave-form collapse on itself, and it's not terribly surprising that he'll vote the oldest two off the island at the end as being dreadfully difficult to write. So much easier to pare the family down to the two youngest, and then toss in Eustace in the next book (and Jill in the book after that) to serve as the Outsider who doesn't know what's going on as well as the one to reform into a Better Person by the power of Narnia.

But you still need a focal point, so now we have Prince Caspian riding in to save the day. And of all the characters to coalesce the series around, he is a very problematic character indeed! (Whoops!) He's a human who is Ruler By Birthright in a land of talking animals, which was pretty problematic to start with when it was the Pevensies in LWW, but at least their rule was A Prophecy and they had been Brought There By Magic and good stuff like that. Caspian, on the other hand, rules because he's the descendent of some guy who conquered Narnia and then genocide'd all the inhabitants as best he could. I mean, Aslan gives Caspian his stamp of approval, but we're still basically stuck with Ender, Son of Hitler as the ruler here.

(Yes, I just Godwin'd Narnia. And, yes, I know Ender was not Hitler's son. That was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the controversy and concerns surrounding the character.)

And like Ender, the narrative wants to make this all very, very clear that none of the Bad Things are Caspian's fault. Just because he's a white male from a conquering race who enslaved and killed the indigenous peoples and now expects to rule over them by virtue of his pedigree doesn't mean he should be blamed for all that. In fact, despite his absolute buckets of privilege, we should feel very sorry for him, and we are going to feel sorry for him because the narrative is going to focus very closely on how rough his life has been and is going to pretty much disregard how rough all the non-privileged peoples' lives have been. K?

   PRINCE CASPIAN LIVED IN A GREAT CASTLE in the center of Narnia with his uncle, Miraz, the King of Narnia, and his aunt, who had red hair and was called Queen Prunaprismia. His father and mother were dead and the person whom Caspian loved best was his nurse, and though (being a prince) he had wonderful toys which would do almost anything but talk, he liked best the last hour of the day when the toys had all been put back in their cupboards and Nurse would tell him stories.

And now we come to the first thing that is really rough about Caspian's life: he's an orphan and he's being raised by his evil aunt and uncle. Isn't that just awful?

Using non-parents as stand-ins for evil parents is not a new thing; the Brothers Grimm were editing folk stories in the 1800s so that it was step-mothers doing the killing of children and step-fathers trying to wed the daughters against their will. (And speaking as a step-mother, this grates my gorgonzola a bit, but that's another story for another time, I suppose.)

But there's more going on here, I think, than just setting up a father figure who can be killed with impunity because it's not like he's Caspian's dad or anything, and we're back to this notion of divine right of kings. Caspian should be the ruler, because he's the genetic descendent of the guy who conquered Narnia; Miraz should not be the ruler, because he's also the genetic descendent of the guy who, wait. Hang on, I got myself confused there. Here we go, Miraz should not be the ruler because despite being the brother of the last king, he also killed him. There we go. Anyway, point being that Miraz is a usurper whereas Caspian is the real deal, blessed by god and Aslan and the lady of the lake.

And I hate this more than I hate most things because we're back to the same issue we saw with the White Witch, this bizarre insistence in the text that it's not enough that a ruler be evil or good as the determining factor for their reign, they have to also be illegitimate or legitimate. And this bugs me because if there's one thing that history has taught us, it's that the genetic legitimacy of a ruler has absolutely nothing to do with their awesomeness. And for that matter, where does that legitimacy come from? For the Pevensies, they were the only descendents of Adam and Eve in all of Narnia. That's still a bad thing to hinge legitimacy on, but it's something. Caspian is now one of lots (hundreds? thousands?) of descendents of Adam and Eve, now that the Telmarines have spread throughout the land. So why is Caspian special simply because his ancestor was the lead guy in the invasion?

Free elections for Narnia, folks, is what I'm saying.

Anyway, Miraz who is TOTES EVIL is grooming Caspian to be king. Which he doesn't get points for, obviously, because Caspian is supposed to be the true king anyway (by virtue of being the sperm-baby of the last king) and Miraz is only keeping him alive until he has his own sperm-baby. And because of all those things -- because Caspian's parents were killed by his awful uncle and because his awful uncle is keeping him alive and teaching him and training him and raising him like the princeliest prince that ever princed past the princing parlor -- we should probably feel really bad for Caspian.

   "I wish -- I wish -- I wish I could have lived in the Old Days," said Caspian. (He was only a very little boy at the time.)
   Up till now King Miraz had been talking in the tiresome way that some grown-ups have, which makes it quite clear that they are not really interested in what you are saying, but now he suddenly gave Caspian a very sharp look. [...] "Who has been telling you all this nonsense?" said the King in a voice of thunder. Caspian was frightened and said nothing. [...]
   "N -- Nurse," faltered Caspian, and burst into tears.
   "Stop that noise," said his uncle, taking Caspian by the shoulders and giving him a shake. "Stop it. And never let me catch you talking -- or thinking either -- about all those silly stories again. There never were those Kings and Queens. How could there be two Kings at the same time? And there's no such person as Aslan. And there are no such things as lions. And there never was a time when animals could talk. Do you hear?"
   Next day Caspian found what a terrible thing he had done, for Nurse had been sent away without even being allowed to say good-bye to him, and he was told he was to have a Tutor.
    Caspian missed his nurse very much and shed many tears; and because he was so miserable, he thought about the old stories of Narnia far more than before. He dreamed of Dwarfs and Dryads every night and tried very hard to make the dogs and cats in the castle talk to him. But the dogs only wagged their tails and the cats only purred.

Isn't that sad? Oh my gosh, that is very sad. Prince Caspian was only a very little boy, and his uncle yelled at him and then took his nurse away and he didn't even get to say goodbye to her. That is so very sad. And then he cried and dreamed of things he wanted but couldn't have and tried to teach the castle animals to talk and they wouldn't. That is so so sad.

(Hey! You know who else had all their loved ones taken away from them without being able to say goodbye and who could only experience the wonderful things of Narnia in dreams and wishes and tears and who may very well have tried to teach their pets to talk but they wouldn't? No, never mind, moving on.)

In all seriousness, it is sad. Miraz really is evil and Caspian really is being raised in an environment that is neither safe nor loving. This is basically the life Edmund would have had if LWW had been totally different and the White Witch really had taken him to raise as a prince.

But as sad as this genuinely is, this eclipses all the sads that are happening to people who aren't Prince Caspian, who aren't white and male and human and princes. Outside the castle walls, people are being killed if they don't look human enough. Those non-humans who can't pass for human and who want to survive have to go into the deepest hiding, driven from their homes. The persecution and bloodshed is so much worse than that which everyone suffered under the White Witch's reign -- who, after all, allowed pretty much everyone to live and go about their daily business as long as they kept their heads down -- and has been going on for much longer. The snowpocalypse lasted for 100 years; the Telmarines have been wiping out the Narnian peoples for 300 years. Three hundred years.

It can be argued that these things shouldn't be shown in a children's book and... maybe that's true. I honestly don't know. But I do know that this framing -- the Loss of Narnia as encompassed not by those people who have personally suffered the loss, but by those people who have romanticized it as something they'd sort of enjoy -- struck me as entirely natural as a child. Why shouldn't it? I was a privileged child living in a world of privilege wrapped in comfy privilege blankets at night. It never struck me as odd that the Loss of Narnia should be seen through the eyes of someone different from me. And I wish, deeply, that more stories did show that loss through the eyes of the natives who have actually had to suffer that loss. People who don't miss the romantic version, but the real one -- the one where their homes weren't burned and their families weren't murdered.

And it all reminds me so much -- too much -- of Pocahontas where the stealth protagonist John Smith is providing the Privilege Gaze throughout the film of look at this beautiful paradise we're ruining, isn't that so sad and stuff? and the many, many problems with that is that we really should hear from the people who have actually have their homes there and whose lives are being actively destroyed because THEIR VIEWPOINT IS THE ONE THAT MATTERS MOST. But it's being shoved aside in favor of Privilege Gaze because privilege lets you do stuff like that. And the worst thing about privilege is that you frequently aren't even aware you're doing it.

   Caspian felt sure that he would hate the new Tutor, but when the new Tutor arrived about a week later he turned out to be the sort of person it is almost impossible not to like. He was the smallest, and also the fattest, man Caspian had ever seen. He had a long, silvery, pointed beard which came down to his waist, and his face, which was brown and covered with wrinkles, looked very wise, very ugly, and very kind. His voice was grave and his eyes were merry so that, until you got to know him really well, it was hard to know when he was joking and when he was serious. His name was Doctor Cornelius.

Speaking of which, it's good to see that the first Native Narnian in Caspian's story isn't pissed off over that whole genocide thing. Always ready to smile and laugh for the privileged people, that's what I like in my oppressed natives. (More on that next week.)

   Of all his lessons with Doctor Cornelius the one that Caspian liked best was History. Up till now, except for Nurse's stories, he had known nothing about the History of Narnia, and he was very surprised to learn that the royal family were newcomers in the country. [...]
   "Please, Doctor," asked Caspian one day, "who lived in Narnia before we all came here out of Telmar?"
   "No men -- or very few -- lived in Narnia before the Telmarines took it," said Doctor Cornelius. [...]
   For a moment Caspian was puzzled and then suddenly his heart gave a leap.

Do you want to hear a funny joke? Of course you do!

"The difference between America and England is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way." --Earle Hitchner

However, I am going to opine that if you're building a fictional world that doesn't exist more than about 2,500 years total, then calling a 300 year chunk in the middle of that a not-really-that-long-of-a-time is maybe not thinking everything through super well. Especially since the Caspian family which has ruled for ten generations or so are "newcomers" to Narnia, in the same way that the current British royal family are "newcomers" to the throne, what with George I being the first British monarch from the German House of Hanover.

Anyway, Caspian's heart leaps at the news that the Old Stories might be true, which you can really understand from his point of view, but I feel compelled to point out that if the Old Stories ARE true, that means that a whole lot of genocide has been going on for the last 300 years which is the sort of thing that might give you pause if you hadn't been socialized from birth to only view things in terms of how it affects you, personally.

Cornelius refuses to tell Caspian any more, saying that he'll end up with his (Cornelius') "head cut off" by Miraz if he tells Caspian any more, but he then takes Caspian up onto a tower in the middle of the night for an astronomy lesson.

   "It's a pity that tree gets in the way," said Caspian. "We'd really see better from the West Tower, though it is not so high." [...]   "The virtue of this tower," said Doctor Cornelius, "is that we have six empty rooms beneath us, and a long stair, and the door at the bottom of the stair is locked. We cannot be overheard." [...] "Listen," said the Doctor. "All you have heard about Old Narnia is true. It is not the land of Men. It is the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible Naiads, of Fauns and Satyrs, of Dwarfs and Giants, of the gods and the Centaurs, of Talking Beasts. It was against these that the first Caspian fought. It is you Telmarines who silenced the beasts and the trees and the fountains, and who killed and drove away the Dwarfs and Fauns, and are now trying to cover up even the memory of them. The King does not allow them to be spoken of."
   "Oh, I do wish we hadn't," said Caspian. "And I am glad it was all true, even if it is all over."
   "Many of your race wish that in secret," said Doctor Cornelius.

I'm really not trying to be a dreadful, mean, bitter, cynical person here; I'm really not. I'm not trying to suck all the joy out of literature or take away all the nice things. I'm not trying to say that fantasy like this is bad or that you shouldn't enjoy it or that this book didn't resonate with me and enrich my life as a child. I don't want any of those things to be the take-away here.

But for the record, here are some reasons why the above is problematic.

The above is problematic because there is a huge power differential between tutor and child, with one taking all the risk and the other reaping all the reward, and yet the narrative is obstinately focused on the privileged one. Cornelius is telling things to Caspian that could end up with him being executed. He's taking a huge risk, but it's a risk that is barely touched on because he's not the star of this show and Caspian is. So once again -- and this is example 5,674,893,412 if you're counting -- we have a disadvantaged person whose role in the plot is to educate the privileged person, even if it's at great personal risk to themselves. And they do so cheerfully, happily, kindly, sweetly because that's what disadvantaged people do, they coddle privileged people and understand their role in life.

The above is problematic because Caspian has just said to this person who is risking his life to tell Caspian these things that he's "glad it was all true, even if it is all over". And we understand that because we understand Caspian's desire to romanticize that which he has never known. But what Caspian is saying, without realizing it, is that he's glad that Cornelius' people were around to be genocide'd because it makes Caspian feel nice to romanticize the dead. He's making all the horrors of the past about himself and expressing how it makes him feel. Caspian is sad that the Narnians are dead because he would have liked to see all the pretty Others. Caspian is happy that the Narnians existed because he likes dreaming about what it would have been like to see all the pretty Others. He, him, himself.

The above is problematic because the Narnian who has suffered so much is sagely saying "many of your race wish that in secret". And while this is a drop that Cornelius is a Native Narnian, it's also something much more, because Caspian's story isn't just about him joining the Native Narnians and embracing their ways and driving out the invaders. It's a story about the Good White People and the Bad White People duking it out on the battlefield over how the Narnians will be treated henceforth. And, yes, some of the Narnians will be there to help out. And, yes, it's a story of reconciliation between two peoples and bringing peace to a divided country. But it's a story where the country is divided because the privileged people have been murdering the marginalized people for three hundred years, and it's a story where the privileged people get patted on the back by the marginalized people if they reach a bare minimum of decency.

   All at once Caspian realized the truth and felt that he ought to have realized it long before. Doctor Cornelius was so small, and so fat, and had such a very long beard. Two thoughts came into his head at the same moment. One was a thought of terror -- "He's not a real man, not a man at all, he's a Dwarf, and he's brought me up here to kill me." The other was sheer delight -- "There are real Dwarfs still, and I've seen one at last."
   "So you've guessed it in the end," said Doctor Cornelius. "Or guessed it nearly right. I'm not a pure Dwarf. I have human blood in me too. Many Dwarfs escaped in the great battles and lived on, shaving their beards and wearing high-heeled shoes and pretending to be men. They have mixed with your Telmarines. I am one of those, only a half-Dwarf, and if any of my kindred, the true Dwarfs, are still alive anywhere in the world, doubtless they would despise me and call me a traitor. But never in all these years have we forgotten our own people and all the other happy creatures of Narnia, and the long-lost days of freedom."

Two things. One, Caspian's first thought is that his kind, nice, wise, trusting tutor will kill him simply because he's not a white human like Caspian is. Two, the kind, nice, wise, trusting tutor affirms that real Narnians -- ones who don't have the blood of white humans in their veins -- would shun and condemn him for doing what he had to in order to survive the last 300 years of genocide.

So, basically, people who aren't at least partially white humans are very unreasonable and violent and Caspian was probably right to be scared of them. And once again we're back to dwarves being awful just because the narrative says so yet we've still not seen an unambiguously evil dwarf yet who couldn't be explained away by being pressed into servitude by a powerful magician with mind-mojo-magic food.

"I'm -- I'm sorry, Doctor," said Caspian. "It wasn't my fault, you know."

And that's the crux of Prince Caspian, both as a book and as a character.

It's not Caspian's fault that the Native Narnians have been persecuted and murdered for the past three hundred years. He hasn't even been alive for most of that, and when he has been alive he's been a child, and completely isolated from the violence going on in the kingdom. Caspian isn't responsible for the sins of his fathers.

But that's not the point. Privilege doesn't mean Responsible. Privilege doesn't even need to mean that the privileged person is participating in oppression or condoning it or actively furthering it. The horrible thing about privilege is that the privileged person can lie back, close their eyes, and let it wash over them like a warm current, all the while feeling like a very good person for not being at fault for any of it.

Caspian's kingdom was built on the blood of those his ancestors murdered. He's not at fault for that. But he will go on to profit from it. He'll set himself up as the True King and he'll fight his uncle and he'll reign as supreme monarch for the majority of the series. He'll eat the best foods, drink the best wines, marry the prettiest woman, go on the best adventures, and have all the best things because ultimately his ancestors paved the way for him to do these things through brutal conquest.

And if anyone brings up these unfortunate facts, the narrative and the character will make the entire thing about his feelings, his innocence. It's not my fault!, he cries here, even though Cornelius hasn't indicated even the slightest bit of anger or frustration or exasperation at his student. At most, he's allowed some sadness to creep into his voice, and Caspian took that as a cue to point out preemptively that while he's very very sorry about that whole genocide thing, people should most definitely not blame him for it.

In fact, they should set their own feelings aside to coddle the prince. "Poor little prince, who has reaped all the benefits of genocide and feels his conscience slightly troubled by that! Here, let us soothe you. The genocide has been rough on us, it is true, but so much more so on you, since you have to feel vaguely uncomfortable about it."

Will that coddling be enough to make Caspian feel less bad about his privileged origins? No, the coddling will not be enough. But fortunately, there is a solution!

   "I am not saying these things in blame of you, dear Prince," answered the Doctor. "You may well ask why I say them at all. But I have two reasons. Firstly, because my old heart has carried these secret memories so long that it aches with them and would burst if I did not whisper them to you. But secondly, for this: that when you become King you may help us, for I know that you also, Telmarine though you are, love the Old Things."
   "I do, I do," said Caspian. "But how can I help?"
   "You can be kind to the poor remnants of the Dwarf people, like myself. You can gather learned magicians and try to find a way of awaking the trees once more. You can search through all the nooks and wild places of the land to see if any Fauns or Talking Beasts or Dwarfs are perhaps still alive in hiding."

"As penance for your privileged origins, and so that you need not ever again feel guilty about the genocide your ancestors committed on us, we request that you rule over us with absolute, unquestioned power, and that you meet a minimum standard of decency by not continuing to genocide the few of us who are left. We also ask that you revive the pieces of our culture that you've romanticized, without -- you know -- giving up any of that absolute, unquestioned power stuff."

It's a tough job, to be sure, becoming the all powerful king of a rich and beautiful country so that you can then enjoy all the best things for the rest of your life while picking and choosing which aspects of native culture to romanticize and keep and which to throw away as non-valuable or incompatible with your own preferred culture.

But they wouldn't call it the White Man's Burden if it was easy.

Review: Slow Cooker Revolution

2012-05-21T09:00:00.001-05:00

Slow Cooker Revolution
by America's Test Kitchen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Slow Cooker Revolution / 978-1933615691

We've made several recipes out of this book and both my husband and I really like it.

The layout is very nice -- bolded recipe list on the side of each recipe, with the instructions across from the list. A lot of the recipes have little "tips" at the bottom of the page, often for how to select product or keep things from going bad. There are pictures, but there's not one for every recipe, but since this is a crock-pot book and not dishes that require a lot of assembly, I don't mind so much as I normally would.

I do wish that in addition to the cooking time, there was a "prep" time -- the last two recipes we tried (Baked Potato Soup, and a pork chops with soy sauce) had a lot of "fry the bacon in a pan, fry the chopped onions, stir in flour, stir in chicken broth slowly, THEN dump everything in cooker" and that takes a bit of time in the mornings when you're trying to get off to work. But it's a minor complaint and can be figured up pretty easily with a little more reading prior to trying the recipe.

Taste-wise, everything we've made so far with this book one or both of us has liked, so if you happen to share similar taste-buds with two random internet strangers, you'll like these recipes! For my friends in the food intolerances camp, this book doesn't try to be food intolerance friendly and there are no obvious recipe alterations offered for that. (Not surprising, since that's not how it's being marketed, but now you know.)

If you've got a slow cooker and you'd prefer a book of recipes to the hit-or-miss internet, I can recommend this one as having some solid offers.

NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through Amazon Vine.

~ Ana Mardoll

Metapost: Surgery

2012-05-20T13:00:00.004-05:00

Content Note: Surgical Stay, Cancer

Ramblites, I meant to put out May/June newsletters about this, but not all of you are subscribers and time got away from me, so here's just a regular metapost.

I'll be having back surgery on 5/29, which is a Tuesday. I should be in the hospital for about 3-5 days for recuperation, and Husband will be with me during hospital visiting hours. (Mom and Dad will not be able to attend as previously planned, because Dad is going through his radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

After my surgical stay, I'll be out of work and largely house-bound for 8-12 weeks (at which point I hope to go back to work), and I do not at this time know what level of consciousness I'll have. (Depending on how my body reacts, there may be lots of sleeping involved.)

Posting-wise, I think we'll be alright. Here's what I have pre-posted as of today:

I expect to keep adding to that; if I absolutely can't keep up, we'll have another week of open threads or something. You were all very kind and patient during the last one, and I can't thank you enough. Thank you.

Moderating is another thing entirely: I can reply to comments, and delete comments, and spam/un-spam comments from my Disqus phone app and that's going to be about it for at least my hospital stay. I certainly won't, for instance, be able to ROT13 comments, since that takes a lot of movement and access to relatively high-level computer resources. If we get some kind of bizarre troll influx, I'll just mark the crappy stuff spam for temporary purposes and sort it all out later, but what are the odds of that happening? (Famous last words.)

--- YOU CAN STOP READING NOW. THE REST OF THE POST MAY REQUIRE SPOONS. ---

I guess I should say something about me now for those of you who want to know and have the spoons.

I'm doing fine, although I'm at the point where I'm feeling a little subdued and tired in advance of everything. This is the second time I've had this surgery, so I know what to expect and am not really apprehensive, but I'm not really jumping for joy either. I just had my hair sheared down to a pixie cut yesterday because I did this surgery before with longer hair and it was a pain to manage in-hospital, and while I look cute and feel cute, it's not the cut I would have chosen for myself normally (or I'd have already had it), so that and about a million other things kind of squat on my shoulder and remind me that I don't have nearly as much control over my life as I would like.

So I also had the hair-stylist put in bright red streaks, and I bought some feathery headbands and a couple of pairs of legwarmers, because goddamnit, if I have to be in hospital, I am determined to have fun. Also, legwarmers are permanently affixed in my mind to Cleo the Cat who I remember thinking was cool, classy, and sexy. (Disclaimer: I haven't watched Heathcliff in years and my childhood impressions were rarely accurate.)

And, of course, there's Dad. He's doing fine so far, but all the doctors and nurses assure us that Things Will Get Worse (in terms of pain and tiredness and swollen throat and stomach tubes) which is obviously not very reassuring at all. But theoretically after he passes through the fire on all this, he should be cured of cancer. Which is great, but supposedly he'll also have dry-mouth for the rest of his life, an increased risk of other kinds of cancer thanks to the radiation, and he might not have taste-buds after this. Basically, I'm dealing with this by not thinking about it very much.

So. I'm fine, really I am. Husband has gotten me a nice spreadsheet game to sink into (Patrician IV), and I have a backlog of Kairosoft games to play, and I have about eight zillion books to read, and of course there are things to say about Twilight so I'm doing alright. This is really just a heads-up to let people know what's up and what's going on and why I'm not always answering comments as much as I used to -- I love reading them (so much; there's at least a dozen a day that I read 3-4 times before filing them in the "Keeper Comments" folder on my gmail), but answering them is a little fiddly sometimes. And I am sorry for that.

Peace out, and I'm looking forward to waking up from surgery and seeing how you like that day's Narnia post.

Recommends: All Different Kinds of Sexy

2012-05-20T09:00:00.001-05:00

This is now way late, and I've already recommended Escher Girls before, but this post, so much: I Can't Be the Only One Disappointed it Wasn't Just Ponies Cosplaying as DC Heroines.

The background being that someone used My Little Ponies as a justification to draw your typical "sexy supergirl" pose, someone else was kind enough to do a redraw that actually provides some ethnic diversity, and someone else pointed out that the very real problem with the ubiquitous "sexy supergirl" is that it ignores that there's any particular kind of sexy besides simply having breasts and a willingness to wear very little in the way of clothing:

The sameness of the character designs hurts this. There’s a lot of different kinds of sexy. Athletic and tough can be sexy. Voluptuous and plump can be sexy. Nerdy and smart can be VERY sexy. Gentle and nurturing can be sexy and so forth. Here sexy is conveyed entirely by “large tits, lots of bared skin”.

This.

RECOMMENDS! What have you been reading/writing/thinking about lately?

Twilight: Appropriating Victims' Experiences

2012-05-19T09:00:00.019-05:00

Content Note: Rape, Vehicle Collision

Twilight Recap: Bella has been rescued from an imminent gang-rape by Edward Cullen.

Twilight, Chapter 8: Port Angeles

Twilight was not -- and I think most people will agree with this statement -- written to be taken as complex social commentary. It's a romance novel, built around the eroticism of sexual abstinence and denial. And for all that, it works pretty well if you like that sort of thing. Or so I'm told. YMMV.

Where Twilight fails -- and it does, notably in areas of racism and misogyny -- I honestly believe that it fails through ignorance or laziness or incuriousness rather than malice. Sure, the author and her editors could have spent a significant amount of time and effort removing the casual misogyny seen in the narrative treatment of Bella and Lauren and Rosalie and Leah and pretty much the entire rest of the female cast, and sure they could have pulled out the racism by excising the cultural appropriation and the Magic Dark People Legends and the portrayal of the werewolves as mindless and violent. But in order to remove those aspects, the team of people responsible for this book has to know they're doing it and (more to the point), they have to care. And we live in a society that is openly hostile to education on these issues and which rewards (with millions of dollars worth of sales!) books which contain racism and misogyny therein. So there's a definite problem of education and motivation there.

And I want to make this very clear, that if you are a Twilight-fan or a person responsible for Twilight, this deconstruction is not about you being a bad person. It's not. This deconstruction series is not and has never been about "OMG Twilight bad"; the point of this series is "OMG Twilight popular... so what does that say about us as a general whole?"

I say all that for two reasons. One, I think it needs to be reiterated from time to time that my goal here is social commentary, not grr-stupid-authors-and-their-stupid-fans because I do not feel that way at all about the authors and fans of anything I deconstruct. To Each Hir Own, I say. (And I like problematic things too!) But two, today we are going to talk about Twilight as it follows a trope that is older than dirt, but it still chafes my chaps. This isn't Twilight's fault; I don't expect every author on earth to reexamine their genre and rework every unfortunate trope ever in their genre. But it's here and it bugs me and I'm going to talk about it. And the "it" in that sentence is the Bella/Edward reaction in the wake of her near rape.

   I jumped into the seat, slamming the door shut behind me. [...]
   The tires squealed as he spun around to face north, accelerating too quickly, swerving toward the stunned men on the street. I caught a glimpse of them diving for the sidewalk as we straightened out and sped toward the harbor.
   "Put on your seat belt," he commanded, and I realized I was clutching the seat with both hands. I quickly obeyed; the snap as the belt connected was loud in the darkness. He took a sharp left, racing forward, blowing through several stop signs without a pause.

Edward is driving unsafely.

This is partly because of the situation, but it's also partly because total contempt for traffic laws is pretty much what the Cullens do. And we'll talk about this more later, but I just know it's going to come up in the comments, so briefly: this is awful.

It's awful because it wrecks the world-building. The Cullens are supposedly trying to be discreet and blend into the local population; driving like the rules don't apply to you isn't going to help that cause. I don't care how good Edward's telepathy is or what kind of range he can throw, someone is going to observe them doing this and then there will be trouble.

It's awful because it wrecks the characterization. The Cullens are supposedly largely humane people who just want to live with the minimum amount of death necessary to sustain them; driving unsafely is a sure means of getting someone killed. So what if Edward can sense everyone for a billion mile radius? Can he also sense the animals? When a moose or a deer wanders on the road and he careens into it because Vampire Reflexes are not Car Reflexes (meaning the car can only react so quickly, regardless of how awesome Edward is), Bella is going to die. (No, really, I have experience with this.)

And it's awful because it's once again glorifying privilege in a book that's absolutely marinating in privilege. Not only is being a vampire better because you're immortal and beautiful and graceful and perfect in every way (and let's not forget MORE PALE), you can also break traffic laws with impunity in your sexy car!!

*insert strangled noise at the back of Ana's throat*

(I'm not trying to be mean, I'm really not, it's just that after pages and pages of this, it starts to feel like this series should be called Twilight: Privileged For (Un)Life! or something.)

So, anyway, Edward is driving like he's Zeus in a Ferrari and endangering Bella whilst doing so (his "Put on your seat belt" command not withstanding) and while this is not unusual, the reason this time is that Edward is very very very angry about the whole rape thing.

   I studied his flawless features in the limited light, waiting for my breath to return to normal, until it occurred to me that his expression was murderously angry.
   "Are you okay?" I asked, surprised at how hoarse my voice sounded.
   "No," he said curtly, and his tone was livid.

And here is reason eleventy billion why Edward Cullen is a terrible person: he's making Bella's rape about him.

Men! Do not do this. I keep meaning to write a "How To Respond To A Rape Victim" post, and I keep not doing getting around to it, but here it is in short: Do not appropriate a rape victim's experience for yourself. You don't like rape? Good for you. It makes you angry? Keep it to yourself.

Seriously. I cannot count how many times I've confessed my experiences with rape to close friends and lovers, only to have them stomp about the room and RAEG that they're so angry, that if they even find the guy, they'll beat him up! They'll kill him! They hate rape SO much!

This is not helpful. You're making the whole experience about you. And by reacting as if this is The Worst Thing In The World OMG RAGE, you're signalling that you don't take rape seriously. If you did, you'd already know -- just by knowing that I am a woman -- that there is a 25% chance that I've been raped in my lifetime. That statistic is horrific and monstrous, yes, and it's something we should all care deeply about, but by being unable to control your reaction and acting like this is SHOCKING ASTONISHING NEWS, you are signalling that you are not an ally and that you additionally may have problems with temper, impulse control, and with making things All About You.

And that can make rape victims very, very nervous.

When a rape victim shares hir experience, the best way to react is with compassion and empathy, and with an attempt to take your emotional cue from them. Seriousness is good. Sympathy is good. "I'm so sorry that happened to you," is usually a safe thing to say. "They had no right to do that to you," if zie seems like they are feeling social pressure to justify that it wasn't entirely their rapist's fault. "No one should have to go through that," if zie seems anxious about sharing an "easy" rape when so many people have it worse.

Threatening to murder the people responsible for the rape? Does not help. I just want to repeat that.

"Distract me, please," he ordered. [...] "Just prattle about something unimportant until I calm down," he clarified, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

Additionally, ordering a rape victim to distract you so that you can calm down from your horrible trauma of being made aware that rape is a real thing that exists in the real world is also not helpful. Especially when the actual rape victim you are ordering around is at that moment having to deal with the horrible trauma of nearly-being-raped.

This is serious priority inversion, and it happens all the time in real life and in literature, and it irks me so very much. I have to assume it's a symptom of Privilege; when everything in your entire life has been framed in terms of how you -- Privileged White Male Vampire -- feel, then of course a traumatic experience that happened to someone else should immediately (and only!) be framed in terms of how the Privileged White Male Vampire in the room feels about things! It's just the natural order of things, right? Privileged White Male Vampire feelings come first.

   "Um." I wracked my brain for something trivial. "I'm going to run over Tyler Crowley tomorrow before school?" [...] So I figure if I endanger his life, then we're even, and he can't keep trying to make amends. I don't need enemies and maybe Lauren would back off if he left me alone. [...] "If he's paralyzed from the neck down, he can't go to the prom, either," I muttered, refining my plan.
   Edward sighed, and finally opened his eyes.
   "Better?"
   "Not really." [...]
   "What's wrong?" My voice came out in a whisper.
   "Sometimes I have a problem with my temper, Bella." He was whispering, too, and as he stared out the window, his eyes narrowed into slits. "But it wouldn't be helpful for me to turn around and hunt down those . . ." He didn't finish his sentence, looking away, struggling for a moment to control his anger again. "At least," he continued, "that's what I'm trying to convince myself."
   "Oh." The word seemed inadequate, but I couldn't think of a better response.

I'm not going to criticize Bella for talking about running over Tyler. I kind of want to, but I'm not going to because:

Bella's anger is entirely justified. Tyler is being incredibly aggressive by telling everyone not that he's planning to ask Bella to the prom, but that he's going to take her there as if it were a done deal. This puts Bella in the position of having to call Tyler a liar (and look cruel and heartless) or go with someone she doesn't like and can't trust. Predators are very good framing themselves as romantics.
Bella has just suffered a serious trauma. She's very nearly been gang-raped; I can give her a pass for not being the clearest thinker at the moment.
Bella has been ordered to perform. She's in a dangerously speeding car that has taken her out of town and into a remote area with a man who is seething with rage and has ordered her to speak now. See #2; I'm not going to leap on her here and now when we've more chances to do so later at a much better time.

So there's that. But we're not done because now I'm going to ding Twilight for something that pretty much every book does but that doesn't get them off the deconstruction hook.

Edward says it "wouldn't be helpful" for him to turn around and track down Bella's would-be rapists and murder them. And you know what? I agree with him; it wouldn't be helpful for him to do that. But you know what would be helpful? If he and Bella went and filed a goddamn police report.

I do not -- repeat: do not -- blame real life victims for not wanting to deal with the police. I didn't report my real life rapist to the police and if I could do it all over again, I still wouldn't. I know for a fact (because I actually do know a bit about my real situation and please keep in mind in the comments that you, personally, do not) that I would not have been believed, that the entire process would have been incredibly damaging to me, and that I would have been kicked out of the college I was attending at the time. (That last one very nearly happened anyway.)

But Edward and Bella are not real life people; they are characters in a book. Bella is a police chief's daughter, a virgin, and a stranger in a big city who was nearly gang raped by strange men in the middle of the street. If ever there was a rape victim who might be taken seriously by the police, surely it is she. Edward is the respected son of the local celebrity doctor, and he is handsome, polished, and poised. He is additionally telepathic. He can smoothly and perfectly answer every question put before them. He can easily pick the would-be rapists out of a line-up. He could take this moment to at least suggest to Bella that they do this -- that the pain and effort and trouble will be worth it if it saves some other girl like Bella from being raped tonight by these men.

Edward doesn't suggest it. Bella doesn't think of it.

They don't think of it because the rape wasn't real. The rape was a literary device to propel the characters together, a way for Edward to save Bella and a way for Bella to be grateful to Edward. The rape is intended to break down emotional walls, to make them both vulnerable (for varying degrees of "vulnerable") so that they can step away from the animosity they've built up and really see what's important: that they're in love.

That's a stock trope of the genre. S. Meyer didn't invent it. She was under no obligation to reinvent it. But I don't have to like it.

Edward will later justify his years of murdering humans because the men he murdered were rapists, murderers, predators of women. Edward asserts that he can't control his temper, that he is driven to vigilantism. This is a lie.

Vigilantism is the last resort of those denied the satisfaction of justice. It's what people turn to when rapists are allowed to get off scot-free because of their privilege, of their connections, of their power and money and influence. Edward, who has all those things in spades, doesn't need to fight clandestinely against rapists. He could put them away all on his own, the legal way, by being the perfect, trustworthy, privileged, telepathic witness for the prosecution that he is.

He doesn't do that, because Edward ultimately doesn't care about rape. He doesn't care about rape victims or about justice for them. He doesn't care about preventing rape. He doesn't care because rape, to him, is All About Him. Always, not just when it happens to Bella. Rape is all about his anger, his temper, his need for violence, his blood lust.

And because of that, Edward Cullen is a poster boy for the appropriation of victims' experience.

Open Thread: Fan Discontinuity

2012-05-18T09:00:00.007-05:00

What fan discontinuity are you (or would you like to be) a part of?

Personal example: It's such a shame that George Lucas never got around to making the prequel films for the Star Wars franchise.

Also: A Hitchhiker's Guide the the Galaxy movie would be awesome! It's a shame no one has ever picked up the rights for that.

Etc., etc., etc.

OPEN THREAD BELOW!

Deconstruction: The Patriarchy Hurts Women, Too

2012-05-17T09:00:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about Anne Boleyn.

It started simply enough: Husband was so excited at having Amazon Prime videos piped into the house that he wanted to start watching a new TV series together. A very great problem, however, is that I highly prefer subtitles for anything we watch and Amazon Prime is not (yet) streaming subtitles with the videos. We already knew from a previous aborted attempt to watch "The Tudors" that the DVDs of the series had surprisingly not been bundled with subtitles, so when we noticed that they were available to watch on Amazon Prime, they seemed like a reasonable choice since we couldn't get a better quality experience elsewhere.

See? Simple.

I've always enjoyed Tudor history, and I knew that "The Tudors" was pretty boldly inaccurate on more things than not, so I started reading Alison Weir's excellent non-fiction books on the family in order to brush up on what was true and what was not. First I read "Mary Boleyn" which I'd already had at hand, then I moved on to "Lady in the Tower" which tells in great detail the final days of Anne Boleyn in the political coup and very probably frame-up job that ended up costing her life.

What's been really interesting about the whole story is how much Anne was condemned in terms of her sexuality. If Weir is to be believed -- and I do believe her, just to be clear -- the allegations against Anne were concocted by Cromwell because the two were so at odds over the course of religious reformation (she wanted the monasteries of England re-purposed for charitable purposes and he wanted them sold off to bring fortune to the crown) that one of them was going to die by pleasure of the king at the instigation of the other. It was really just a matter of who struck first. Anne had made the opening threats, saying that she could have Cromwell's head taken off his shoulders, and Cromwell had acted swiftly and desperately to discredit and destroy the queen and her closest supporters.

The charges that he concocted were charges of the two kinds of betrayal that a husband like Henry VIII would most fear: adultery and murder. For a jealous lover and a paranoid king, these two things were beyond forgiveness in a way that, say, heresy or fiscal policy might not be. And yet what is fascinating is how Cromwell's case -- which seems hastily cobbled together and riddled with errors, considering that in a majority of the indictments, Anne or her supposed lovers were provably not even in the same physical location -- a good many people were nonetheless willing to believe all allegations against her, no matter how outrageous or spurious.

Tellingly, the word repeatedly brought against Anne in the source documents that Weir sites in her analysis is "whore", usually coupled with the term "great". That's "great whore" as in "so very much of a whore you wouldn't even believe" and not as in "so very great that I highly recommend her". The superlative here is meant to be an indictment, not a compliment.

And I find this interesting, because if there is one thing that Anne very probably was not, it was a whore. We can argue, centuries later, about her religious beliefs and her attitudes and her words and her deeds and about her personality that seemingly caused so many of her once-allies to turn on her, but her sexual history -- based on Weir's analysis -- would seem to be pretty tame. What sexual experience she had prior to her marriage was probably brief and may not have even extended to PIV penetration; after her marriage, it seems very likely that she was wholly true to the king. After all, she was constantly being watched and had more enemies at court than friends, and those men convicted of adultery with her were supposedly seduced by her on dates when she was already pregnant. She would have been risking everything -- her marriage, her position, her life -- for nothing, not even a desperate attempt to bear a child to pass off as the king's, as she was already pregnant when these seductions supposedly took place.

Yet, the masses both within England and without frequently called Anne the "great whore". She was viewed as having lured the king into an inappropriate marriage, was blamed for the setting aside of Queen Katherine and her daughter Princess Mary, and was reviled as a reformationist responsible for the break between England and the Catholic church. And she had, so the narrative went, done all this not with convincing arguments or clever political maneuvering, but rather through sex.

This narrative of Anne the Temptress may not be wholly incorrect, and yet I can't help noticing how well it fits within existing Patriarchal narratives of women. Anne seemingly did hold off King Henry's sexual advances for six years, believing that if she gave into his desires she would be used and cast aside like some of his previous mistresses. Forced to choose between life as a disgraced mistress and life as a notorious queen, Anne apparently decided to gamble big and risk all. And yet, in order to plausibly deny the king his desires, Anne felt she had to play up her virtue. She was, she apparently insisted, a virgin and would not give herself to any man not her husband.

Henry seems to have become swiftly disillusioned with his wife not longer after their much hoped for wedding. He confided to another that he believed his wife had been previously "corrupted", and that she was not the sexual innocent he had claimed to be. Weir believes that Anne may have had non-penetrative sex prior to marriage and that Henry was not in a mood for technicalities, but what is more interesting to me is how Anne was forced to walk the fine line of technicalities.

In order to appeal to the king, Anne had to understand sex. She had to be witty and sensual and skilled in the power of suggestion. And yet, in order to keep the king at bay, she had to play up her virgin status. She was forced to constantly dance between the Virgin / Whore archetypes, and the fact that this burden has and continues to be contradictory and nonsensical has not helped it to crawl off and die. It is still with us. Nor was Anne the only one laboring under this impossible double-standard: when Henry began to express interest in the seemingly-saintly Jane Seymour, one ambassador noted wryly that the king "may marry her on condition she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce, there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not." Why wouldn't there be? In a world where courtly dancing was presented as iron-clad proof of Anne's adultery and promiscuity, there would certainly be witnesses waiting in the wings to testify against the next queen.

The charges laid before Anne at her trial were unthinkably shocking, but they were all finely calculated to cast aspersion on her sexual character. She was accused of having sex whilst pregnant, though this could have undermined the crown's case that she was trying to pollute the royal succession with children not related to the king, because sex whilst pregnant was a social taboo and a sin against the church. She was accused of having sex with Mark Smeaton, whose status as a lowly commoner was continually played up in the court documents and propaganda, because sex below one's station was another social taboo and painted Anne as insatiably lustful. And she was accused of having sex with her brother, which was as shocking and disgusting to her contemporaries as it would be to most people today.

What is interesting is that these charges were apparently whole-heartedly believed by the majority of people in Anne's day, and not simply accepted as the safest, most politic response. And the reason that many people seemed to believe that Anne was likely to commit these shocking acts was simply because she was a whore, and shocking acts was what whores did. And she was a whore because she refused to have sex with the king until he married her.

Eleanor Herman has noted in her excellent "Sex With Kings" that the mistresses and wives of kings were frequently targets of political and social criticism. Some of this may have been a transference of risk, as it was safer to criticize the king's bedmate than the king himself. Some of this may have been the iconic representation of the mistress: a mistress who hailed from, for example, France would be subjected to all the criticisms against the French in times of diplomatic turmoil.

But what is interesting to me is how often this criticism focused on the gender and sexuality of the target. Queens and mistresses were not (or so it has seemed to me lately, from a non-scholarly and almost certainly confirmation-biased position) criticized for their words or their policies or their religions or their positions or their sympathies nearly so often as they were for their sexual habits and for what went on in their bedrooms.

When a woman had sex with the king without marriage, she was a whore. When a woman refused to have sex with the king unless he married her, she was a conniving whore. When a woman chose to sleep with one man and not another, she was a very great whore, at least if the latter man was a king and she failed to disclose information about her sexual past that was not his business and very likely would have angered him. When a woman danced with another man, she was an entertaining and merry queen until suddenly she was not, and was instead an adulteress. When a woman kissed her brother, she was a kind sister and an intelligent politician to maintain good relations with her family, until suddenly she was not, and was instead guilty of incest. And so it goes.

We live in a harmful Patriarchal society where women are frequently judged, insulted, and slandered not by their words or their positions or by their beliefs, but by their gender and sexuality. Many feminist bloggers, not the least being Sady from Tiger Beatdown, have convincingly illustrated that a very great amount of hate mail directed at women who choose to speak publicly is overlaid with sex and sexuality, with unsolicited observations of the woman's desirability, with threats of sexual violence, with wording that attempts to reduce the woman to nothing more than a collection of sexual organs. The intent is to de-personify women who commit the crime of being public figures, who work publicly for political and social change.

I don't know as much about history as I would like. I'm a dilettante, dabbling in non-fiction books that are written with an eye towards being entertaining as well as informative. I'm not a historian, nor am I formally training in social historical analysis. And yet, I can't shake the feeling that it's not a coincidence that Anne Boleyn was brought down by the same sexualized slanders and attacks that public women today are still having flung at them.

And that makes me kind of sad.

Author Interview: Jenna Katerin Moran on "Fable of the Swan"

2012-05-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

Ana: Today we have Jenna Katerin Moran introducing their book, Fable of the Swan. I haven't read this book myself, but Jenna was kind enough to agree to guest blog about their book to any readers who might be interested in the subject. Jenna, how would you describe your book to your prospective readers? In broad terms, what is your book about?

Jenna: Hi!

Fable of the Swan is a YA urban fantasy.

It’s about ... hm. Three things!

It's about objectification. If you know how, you can pull out somebody’s soul and turn their flesh into a reconfigurable weapon.

It’s about the source of value. A long time ago, one of the Jotun stole “being good” from Death’s dominion. As a species, they never quite managed to take advantage of that themselves, but at least the world itself was worth something after that.

It’s about a girl growing up in a kind of broken town surrounded by the multicolored void and how she makes and loses friends, achieves enlightenment, and eventually turns into a brass cephalopodan war machine and wrestles Death.

Trigger warnings: depersonalization and objectification, both self- and other-caused; abbreviated but graphic depiction of self-harm; emotional abuse within a relationship; realistic but tangential depiction of OCD; isolation and loss of family; non-consensual and physical-interaction grounded alteration of people's souls/minds; mild use of weightist language by characters; occasional references to "mad science" and similar uses of language by author and characters.

Jenna: Oh, man!

I feel so pompous when I try to talk about possible lessons or messages or themes, and then I feel like I’m dodging your question if I don’t.

I mean---mostly, it’s a book. It’s for reading. For fun!

I’d like to think that it might stir up the reader’s thoughts on being an embodied mind, or on what it means to be good or bad, but I didn’t even feel comfortable pushing non-controversial stuff like “acceptance is better than denial” all-out, much less any of the book's subtler messages.

I'd like to imagine that some of my thoughts on the persistence of personhood and the need for care with one's moral authorities will be useful to someone at some point? Except that that would imply that they're in the situation where that could be useful, and I don't really want anyone to be in a situation to need anything I might have said there, so I don't actually like to imagine that at all! Sorry for the false information at the start of this paragraph. ^_^

Mostly it is for fun.

Jenna: I’m writing a variant setting for my RPG, Nobilis, and wanted to kick it off with a novel. Mostly!

Jenna: Hm!

There’s a lot of Zelazny in this, a little bit of Barker, a bit of Vance, and some Revolutionary Girl Utena.

If you love those things then you might like Fable of the Swan.

Jenna: Most of my previous work was in RPGs---Nobilis, the Weapons of the Gods RPG, some stuff for Exalted. Most of that was under the name R. or Rebecca Sean Borgstrom. (Names are a trouble!)

I have a currently disorganized fiction blog, Hitherby Dragons, and another couple of books out there on Amazon/Smashwords: An Unclean Legacy, which is about family drama and redemption in Ye Standarde Faux-Medieval fantasy world* and Invasion, which is a picture book with illustrations by Elizabeth Sherry.

An Unclean Legacy is more chaotic, so there’s more jewels and a bit more fun in it but it’s also a little more demanding---I think? I don’t know! I can’t read them through someone else’s eyes!

Elizabeth Sherry’s work on Invasion is simply astounding; I think it deserves to be a modern classic, and I don’t mean because of my contribution but because of hers. The art. The ART!

On the other hand, I can see why not everyone would want to read a picture book that handles extremely innocuous content (Puppy, Kitten, and Lamb vs. ordinary things like lamps and blankets) under horror genre rules, so there is that.

I absolutely have more books planned!

I have one in my back pocket to cover me if health gets in the way of a steady release schedule, two in progress, and will be continuing the series that this particular book is in . . . hopefully, this year. ^_^

* unashamedly so.

Jenna: My books are available at Amazon, Smashwords, and DriveThruFiction/Comics/RPG.

I’m available on gplus as Jenna Katerin Moran (here), and people can generally catch my attention by commenting on my blog. That’s probably also the best place to check to find out when my next book will appear.

To find the book, hm! Here’s a Smashwords link, since it’s a nice simple link and Smashwords has practically all possible ePub formats: Fable of the Swan, at Smashwords.

^_^

Ana: Thank you. I understand you have the first chapter of your book available as an excerpt for interested readers? Is there anything else you wish to add for our readers?

Jenna: No, thank you! I appreciate your offering this opportunity.

As for the excerpt, you can find that on Smashwords too (in HTML or ePub; I’ve set it to make the first 40% of it readable for free).

As for adding something for our readers---thanks for your interest! I hope that if you buy my book it brings you some happiness. ^_^ I guess I also hope that you find happiness even if you don't buy my book, but that seems a little stingy of you in your magical castle of happiness. Think of . . . of . . . um, me!

Best wishes,
Jenna

If you are an indie author interested in being interviewed, please read the interview policy here.

Narnia: Where Angels Fear To Tread

2012-05-15T09:00:00.028-05:00

Content Note: Loss of Family, Execution Methods

Narnia Recap: The Pevensie children have determined that the ruined castle they have found themselves in is their old home, Cair Paravel.

Ana's Note: Because there has been some discussion in the comments about this, I want to reiterate that the charter for my deconstructions is not to say a book is bad, or that an author is bad, or that a fandom is bad. I believe art is subjective, that most problems occur in text despite (rather than because of) the author's intentions, and I believe people should enjoy what they enjoy without guilt.

My deconstructions are about having a conversation with Society, about voicing my opinion about an aspect of art and how Society at large frequently chooses to interact with it, and about using that art as a stepping-stone for discussing feminist issues. Discussing long-dead authors may be interesting, but discussing our modern society and how we are influenced by and interact with their works is much more so for me -- and this is what I've tried to do.

I hope you enjoy the result, and thank you for reading.

Prince Caspian, Chapter 3: The Dwarf

It's time for someone to come along.

This is a fantasy rule: someone native to the fantasy country must come along to meet the children and provide plot exposition and embroilment into the mandatory plot conflict. In LWW, this someone was for Lucy the faun Mr. Tumnus, and this someone was for Edmund the antagonistic White Witch.

But a very real problem here is that it's very difficult to tell whether the someone who comes along is good or bad. Mr. Tumnus seemed good, with his faun-legs and bright umbrella and cheery packages, but he was a spy in the employ of the Witch Witch and was bound to turn over any human children he met to her. He didn't do this, of course, having a change of heart once he actually met Lucy, but the risk was there. And the White Witch was not with Edmund for more than a few minutes before she had tricked him into eating magically poisoned food that overrode his will and made him subservient to her.

So it would seem that caution would be in order when meeting a new person in a fantasy land. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

   THE WORST OF SLEEPING OUT OF DOORS is that you wake up so dreadfully early. And when you wake you have to get up because the ground is so hard that you are uncomfortable. And it makes matters worse if there is nothing but apples for breakfast and you have had nothing but apples for supper the night before. When Lucy had said -- truly enough -- that it was a glorious morning, there did not seem to be anything else nice to be said. Edmund said what everyone was feeling, "We've simply got to get off this island." [...]
   "We'll have to swim," said Edmund.
   "It would be all right for Su," said Peter (Susan had won prizes for swimming at school). "But I don't know about the rest of us." By "the rest of us" he really meant Edmund who couldn't yet do two lengths at the school baths, and Lucy, who could hardly swim at all.

What is interesting to me is how delicately the Pevensie children have avoided the real subject: they're back in Narnia, and yet everything has changed. Yesterday, Susan was reduced to tears on discovering the little gold chess-piece. The children then broke into their storage room and found proof positive that they were in Cair Paravel, along with a great deal of evidence in the form of copious dust and dilapidated ruins, that indicates that something has gone horribly wrong. They don't yet know what, but they know it's something serious: this is not the Cair Paravel they left behind.

The children want to get off the island, and this is not in itself a bad idea, but it's strange that they don't seem to have a destination in mind. There are many possible reasons for this -- maybe they can't remember enough to formulate a plan, maybe they're too overwhelmed to think far ahead, maybe the author didn't bother to give them a goal that wouldn't be met anyway -- but it's strange to me that they seem to be making this decision without any planning.

They've come to their home and the seat of their government only to find everything awfully wrong: now what? Was there ever designated a fallback position of government, maybe in the form of another castle elsewhere in Narnia? Are there any great cities or port towns to head towards? Might they strike out for the home of a close friend -- Mr. Tumnus, perhaps? -- or a landmark such as the Stone Table? Even if they can't think of a place to head to for help, they should at least do something other than wander randomly. Even now, when they've finally agreed that this is Narnia, they don't use that knowledge to guide their footsteps. The Pevensie children seem to follow mindlessly the line laid out by the narrative.

Worth noting is that again we have a mention of Susan's swimming prowess, and Susan will be instrumental in this chapter as the single child responsible for saving their new guide. And it's interesting to me that Susan, who spoke so little in LWW and who has spoken comparatively little in PC so far, will turn out to be the child most skilled at living and working in Narnia, no matter what body she's in. Possibly this is narrative convenience -- Peter will need someone to help him pull a boat to shore, so why not the second-oldest child? -- as well as a stab at narrative consistency since Susan's bow from LWW will come into play here, but it strikes me as somehow sad that Susan (as a character) will be so useful here and then tossed aside so callously at the end of this novel, not to be picked up again until The Last Battle

   "But, Peter," said Lucy, "look here. I know I can't swim for nuts at home -- in England, I mean. But couldn't we all swim long ago -- if it was long ago -- when we were Kings and Queens in Narnia? We could ride then too, and do all sorts of things. Don't you think -- "
   "Ah, but we were sort of grown-up then," said Peter. "We reigned for years and years and learned to do things. Aren't we just back at our proper ages again now?"

And now it occurs to me that possibly Lewis was just as confused about his characters, their personalities, their memories, and their abilities as I currently am. Yet, it seems like this is precisely the sort of thing one can expect when in a single paragraph in a final chapter, an author gives their characters entire lives off the page and then just as quickly yanks it all away and tosses them back through a time portal. If an author isn't planning to put serious thought into how something like that will affect the characters' memories, skills, and mental processes (as well as how it affects them individually, allowing for variations in type and personality), then I don't think they can expect to just brush past all that when it comes time to write a sequel, because nit-picky readers like me are going to be confused and frustrated.

But I digress. Lucy has asked a valuable question: at some point in her mental past -- though possibly not in her current body's physical past -- she knew how to swim. Where has that skill gone? Does she have all the knowledge of how to swim, but none of the muscle memory? Could she regain this skill more quickly now that she has that knowledge, or does she only retain a memory of that knowledge? (I.e., I remember being able to flap my wings and fly last night in my dreams, but I have neither the muscle memory for that nor the mental understanding of the technique.)

The obvious answer would seem to be to let Lucy wade out with Susan at her side and see how it goes. But we don't get to see that because there's a whole host of accompanying world-building questions that would answer (and probably new ones that would be created) and that's not what we're here for.

   "Oh!" said Edmund in a voice which made everyone stop talking and listen to him. [...] "You know what we were puzzling about last night, that it was only a year ago since we left Narnia but everything looks as if no one had lived in Cair Paravel for hundreds of years? Well, don't you see? You know that, however long we seemed to have lived in Narnia, when we got back through the wardrobe it seemed to have taken no time at all?"
   "Go on," said Susan. "I think I'm beginning to understand."
   "And that means," continued Edmund, "that, once you're out of Narnia, you have no idea how Narnian time is going. Why shouldn't hundreds of years have gone past in Narnia while only one year has passed for us in England?"
   "By Jove, Ed," said Peter. "I believe you've got it. In that sense it really was hundreds of years ago that we lived in Cair Paravel. And now we're coming back to Narnia just as if we were Crusaders or Anglo-Saxons or Ancient Britons or someone coming back to modern England!"
   "How excited they'll be to see us -- " began Lucy, but at the same moment everyone else said, "Hush!" or "Look!" For now something was happening.

I don't really understand why this was some kind of revelation all the way into Chapter 3 as we are. Edmund already pointed out last night that Cair Paravel had hundreds of years of ruin heaped on the site, and they've had an entire night on the hard ground to think all this through, but regardless here is the reveal: they children are back in Narnia, but 1,300 years have passed since their reign...

...and Peter's and Lucy's immediate reactions are how awesome it will be to pitch up on someone's doorstep claiming to be King Arthur. Yeeeah.

I'm sure that's going to go really well for them. I mean, why wouldn't it? They've only been gone thirteen hundred years. Our personal equivalent would be Hesiod or Homer or Sargon II showing up*. As small children. Without pretty much any of the skills or memories or qualities that made them most famous as rulers, except for a talent with the bow. In a world where written records are apparently rare (if not entirely non-existent) and paintings, portraits, statues, and the like don't seem to exist at all. Gods, they'll be lucky if anyone even remembers them considering that they reigned less than a couple of decades and their most notable achievement after defeating the White Witch (which was probably mostly credited to Aslan anyway) was disappearing mid-reign without an established heir.

* Correction: 700 BC is not the same as 700 AD, no matter how much a sleep-deprived Ana may think it so. See comments below.

Maybe if they're really lucky, they can find a Tree to vouch for them. Assuming the invaders didn't torch the forest surrounding the lamppost, and also assuming that the Trees can live 1,300 years. Otherwise, good luck with that.

But beyond that, there's an obvious issue that Lewis has either not thought of or shoved aside in the hopes that we won't notice it and it's this: everyone they've ever known in Narnia is dead. Mr. Tumnus is dead. Philip the Horse (who only existed in the movies, but won all our hearts) is dead. The men and boys who courted Susan and Lucy are dead. The nymphs and naiads who (I'm guessing) flirted with Peter and Edmund are (probably) dead. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are dead. Everyone at their court, everyone they knew and loved in Archenland, everyone the Pevensies have ever known in this land, they are all now dead.

Except Aslan. But they surely can't know that. Why would the lifespan of Aslan automatically be "infinite" and not just "super longish"?

For me, something like this would be a bit of a blow. It would be like waking up tomorrow in a Rip Van Winkle scenario and finding out that Husband, Mom, Dad, Best Friend, and both my cats died and I never even got to say goodbye. (All the blubs just thinking about it.) For Lucy, it doesn't seem to sink in at all. "How excited they will be to see us," she says, but who is "they"? Does she think the Narnians she remembers are still alive and waiting to see her again? If she does, she's in for a bit of a shock. Does she mean those Narnians' descendents will be happy to see them? And, if so, why would they be? The Pevensies are now strangers to Narnia, and potentially dangerous ones to the existing political order.

Imagine if, say, Edward V of England showed up today and it could be conclusively proven that he was who he claimed to be. What do you then do with him? Does he have some kind of claim on the throne, even though he has no concept of the modern age nor how to rule the modern British kingdom? And what do you do with the fact that he's been transported to our time by a magical portal that no one can understand or explain? And that this magical portal is somehow linked to his initial mysterious disappearance? My head hurts just thinking about it.

   There was a wooded point on the mainland a little to their right, and they all felt sure that just beyond that point must be the mouth of the river. And now, round that point there came into sight a boat. [...] Both these people seemed to be soldiers. They had steel caps on their heads and light shirts of chain-mail. Their faces were bearded and hard. The children drew back from the beach into the wood and watched without moving a finger.
   "This'll do," said the soldier in the stern when the boat had come about opposite to them.
   "What about tying a stone to his feet, Corporal?" said the other, resting on his oars.
   "Garn!" growled the other. "We don't need that, and we haven't brought one. He'll drown sure enough without a stone, as long as we've tied the cords right." With these words he rose and lifted his bundle. Peter now saw that it was really alive and was in fact a Dwarf, bound hand and foot but struggling as hard as he could. Next moment he heard a twang just beside his ear, and all at once the soldier threw up his arms, dropping the Dwarf into the bottom of the boat, and fell over into the water. He floundered away to the far bank and Peter knew that Susan's arrow had struck on his helmet. He turned and saw that she was very pale but was already fitting a second arrow to the string. But it was never used. As soon as he saw his companion fall, the other soldier, with a loud cry, jumped out of the boat on the far side, and he also floundered through the water (which was apparently just in his depth) and disappeared into the woods of the mainland.

Susan, pale-faced but grimly determined, has in a moment strung her bow and utterly routed the two soldiers in the boat. (She missed fatally striking the men on purpose because this is a children's book and Susan is The Gentle, but it will be underlined that she missed on purpose.)

She has, presumably, taken this action because she couldn't stand by and watch someone be drowned to death. And this is actually very admirable and courageous, given that the children have no idea if there are more soldiers waiting across the channel to provide reinforcements against the four largely-unarmed children.

And yet this is a fairly decisive action, and not a little risky. The children know that they are in Narnia, but they are as ignorant as to the political and social situation as they were a year ago (or 1,300 years ago, depending on your timeline) when Lucy and Edmund were meeting Tumnus and the White Witch. The dwarf could be an incredibly dangerous villain; the soldiers could be good stewards of the land carrying out Aslan's peculiar orders. The children simply don't know.

Of course, the soldiers have "hard faces" and the method of execution they are following is not a terribly kind one. (Though possibly better than whatever the Pevensies had when they were rulers. I think I would rather die by drowning than die by axe beheading, having been reading up on Tudor history lately. And the Pevensies must have had some means of executing the unrepentant werewolves and giants they captured in their campaigns against the north.) But once again we see the children rushing in to side with one side of a Narnian civil war when they know almost nothing about the facts and history behind it. And now we're back to our dear little Edward V again because WHO WOULD EDWARD V BOMB? (My guess is France.)

It's really only a matter of narrative luck that the children haven't ended up on the side of the White Witch (that nice lady fighting that horrible lion who eats people alive with his huge jaws) or on the side of King Miraz against his nephew (he's a human trying to exercise his divine right to rule and doing his best to keep the trains running, after all). And how does any of this mesh with the Platonic codswallop fed to us in LWW where humans were divinely selected to rule and things-what-looked-like-humans-but-weren't (dwarfs were explicitly mentioned!) were to be kept at arms length because they were by and large irredeemably evil.

   When at last the Dwarf was free, he sat up, rubbed his arms and legs, and exclaimed:
   "Well, whatever they say, you don't feel like ghosts." [...] "I've been told all my life," said the Dwarf, "that these woods along the shore were as full of ghosts as they were of trees. That's what the story is. And that's why, when they want to get rid of anyone, they usually bring him down here (like they were doing with me) and say they'll leave him to the ghosts. But I always wondered if they didn't really drown 'em or cut their throats. I never quite believed in the ghosts. But those two cowards you've just shot believed all right. They were more frightened of taking me to my death than I was of going!"
   "Oh," said Susan. "So that's why they both ran away." [...] "I wasn't shooting to kill, you know," said Susan. She would not have liked anyone to think she could miss at such a short range.
   "Hm," said the Dwarf. "That's not so good. That may mean trouble later on. Unless they hold their tongues for their own sake."

He has a good point. As much as I admire Susan for sticking to her pacifist principles, she's not only declared war on the ruling powers in Narnia, she's also left them alive to report back what she's done. On the other hand, since no blood has been spilled, there's still a chance to write the whole thing off as a hilarious misunderstanding if it comes to that.

   "You tell us your story first," said Peter. "And then we'll tell you ours."
   "Well," said the Dwarf, "as you've saved my life it is only fair you should have your own way. But I hardly know where to begin. First of all I'm a messenger of King Caspian's."
   "Who's he?" asked four voices all at once.
   "Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, and long may he reign!" answered the Dwarf. "That is to say, he ought to be King of Narnia and we hope he will be. At present he is only King of us Old Narnians -- "
   "What do you mean by old Narnians, please?" asked Lucy.
   "Why, that's us," said the Dwarf. "We're a kind of rebellion, I suppose."
   "I see," said Peter. "And Caspian is the chief Old Narnian."
   "Well, in a manner of speaking," said the Dwarf, scratching his head. "But he's really a New Narnian himself, a Telmarine, if you follow me."
   "I don't," said Edmund.
   "It's worse than the Wars of the Roses," said Lucy.
   "Oh dear," said the Dwarf. "I'm doing this very badly. Look here: I think I'll have to go right back to the beginning and tell you how Caspian grew up in his uncle's court and how he comes to be on our side at all. But it'll be a long story."
   "All the better," said Lucy. "We love stories."
   So the Dwarf settled down and told his tale.

NO NO NO NO NO.

No.

Argh. No, you do not compare this whole mess to the Wars of the Roses as if this is all an academic exercise and you've never heard of Narnia before. You are Kings and Queens of Narnia for crying out loud, and as you continually keep reminding the reader as though the "once an X, always an X" actually had some kind of logical meaning behind it and wasn't just a meaningless platitude. You don't just say "oh, tell us what's going on" in a general sort of way. Is that how you questioned diplomats and spies and generals when you were ruling?

You ask guided questions. If you trust them, you tell them what you know and where you're starting from, knowledge-wise, so that they can fill you in as needed. You don't just clap your hands at the shiny story which is told by the complacent dwarf who is not at all surprised at the fact that you seem to not know any basic history at all and you smell faintly of Edward V. Gah.

The next four chapters will be the story of Prince Caspian. Settle in.

Review: The Lady in the Tower

2012-05-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn
by Alison Weir

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lady in the Tower / 9780345519788

I'm really beginning to like Weir's historical analyses, though they do seem to suffer from some of the same problems. Overall, though, I loved this book and though I initially borrowed it from the library, I ended up buying a copy of the audio book to listen along to as well as buying a copy of my own to keep on hand. So take that as the strong recommendation as it is.

This is a scholarly look at the last days of Anne Boleyn. Weir starts with the last time Anne saw her husband Henry, follows the coup that brought down Anne and her faction at court so swiftly, analyzes the trial in close detail, explains the finer details of the execution, and ultimately follows with a quick overview of how Anne has been historically portrayed, depending on era and religious inclination.

One thing I really love about Weir's books is her use of source material. Everything presented to the reader is presented with context: this was written by so-and-so, writing during the reign of such-and-so (which greatly influenced what was safe to write about Anne Boleyn), with a religious bias of thus. Weir uses biased and hostile sources, but she uses them with discretion, noting whether or not she believes the source to be true or a fabrication. I like that, and I appreciate how she tries to provide a very broad-yet-clear view of the subject.

Some of the writing stumbles I noticed in her book "Mary Boleyn" are repeated here, though. There is a lot of repetition throughout the book, probably to help the reader follow along, but there is sometimes a strange sense of devja vu, as though you've accidentally flipped back a few dozen pages without meaning to. And the source material is sometimes sprinkled in so liberally that it threatens the flow of the reading -- this was why I ended up switching to the audio book, which handled the presentation much more smoothly. (And with really lovely accents on the part of the narrator; she cannot be praised enough.)

Then, too, the last chapter of the book (the one after Queen Elizabeth) should, in my opinion, be avoided entirely. The whole chapter embarks on a Golden Mean Fallacy intent on proving that the work you've just finished reading is unbiased and scholarly because it falls in the middling position of an analysis of Anne. It is extremely disconcerting as a reader to have just read how the jury was deliberately stacked against Anne, how an intended verdict may have been communicated to said jury in advance, how the king almost certainly must have sent for the executioner before the trial even began, and how Anne was very likely framed... only to have the author turn around and chide fellow historians for the "misconception" that Anne was "murdered". For Weir to assert that such a term is inappropriate because "she was executed in accordance with the law as it then stood" comes off as reaching, since it's entirely clear that she and the other historians are saying the same thing with different words: that Anne's death was deliberately engineered by others, and that the charges against her were spurious.

Having said all that, I strongly recommend this book, provided that you are good at following along over the copious quotes and sprinkled repetition (and, if you're not, check out the audio book which eases that almost entirely) and also provided that you take my advice and skip the last chapter.

~ Ana Mardoll

Recommends: Dragon Riders

2012-05-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

I don't read blogs as much as I'd like to because I seem to be so dang busy all the time lately, but this piece by Chris over at Stealing Commas blew me away: A thousand generations of Dragon Riders.

One of the funnest and yet hardest parts (for me) of fantasy writing is the world-building. Fun, because you can do pretty much whatever you like and have a jolly time doing it; hard, because it all has to weave together into a coherent narrative and heaven help you if someone comes along and, say, asks why Harry Potter can't 'participate' in the Tri-Wizard Championship by walking onto the field and getting zero points each time. (Because SHUT UP, THAT'S WHY, I'm guessing. Fantasy is hard, ya'll.)

So here is a dragon rider story that takes into account the evolution of weaponry, agriculture, and mathematics as a function of a fantasy world with dragon riders. And it is awesome.

RECOMMENDS! What have you been reading/writing/thinking about this week?

Twilight: When Rape Plays Matchmaker

2012-05-12T09:00:00.424-05:00

Content Note: Rape

Twilight Recap: Bella is on her way to Port Angeles to help Jessica and Angela pick out dresses for the school dance.

Twilight, Chapter 8: Port Angeles

Oh my gosh, ya'll, do you know what day it is? It's CHAPTER EIGHT DAY!

You may not immediately see why that is so very exciting, but let me assure you in advance that Chapter Eight is one of the very worst things I've read in my entire life. It is a carefully packed present of misogyny wrapped with a ribbon of loathing and addressed with a card filled with victim-blaming and a coupon for a free conservative nightmare lecture. Christmas has come early!

False cheeriness aside, this is the chapter where Bella and Edward will finally get together, have a nice lovely dinner date, Edward's secret about being a mind-reading vampire will come out, and then there will be no more secrets between the two of them and love will flourish and blossom forever. And all it takes in order for that to happen is for Bella to very nearly be brutally gang-raped.

Yes, saving the heroine from rape is a common trope in romance novels. Yes, even the For Better Or Worse comic author did it with Anthony and Liz. And, yes, Edward and Bella will manage to amp the creep factor up to eleven. How could they not?

   JESS DROVE FASTER THAN THE CHIEF, SO WE MADE IT TO Port Angeles by four. It had been a while since I'd had a girls' night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating. We listened to whiny rock songs while Jessica jabbered on about the boys we hung out with. Jessica's dinner with Mike had gone very well, and she was hoping that by Saturday night they would have progressed to the first-kiss stage. I smiled to myself, pleased. Angela was passively happy to be going to the dance, but not really interested in Eric. Jess tried to get her to confess who her type was, but I interrupted with a question about dresses after a bit, to spare her. Angela threw a grateful glance my way.

So much just in that sentence alone! Where do I begin?

You know how I'm always banging on about how Bella's internal narrative constantly sounds off because she's always putting herself down with her word choice? Well here it is again in spades. Jessica "jabbers", which is a word that could be used to convey "talked excitedly and at great length" but conveys all kinds of connotations of a girl who just won't shut up no mater how much her companions want her to. Angela is "passively happy", which could be a way of revealing that she's looking forward to the dance in her own quiet, restrained way, but leaves the impression that she's been tossed by Bella onto the Eric-grenade and isn't proactive enough to roll off because, hey, at least she gets a date to the dance out of it, and that's all a girl really wants, no?

Beyond the weasel words, this passage just sounds so bizarre to me. Maybe I'm a unique special butterfly, but I just cannot imagine talking like this as a teenager about myself and my activities. Look, I'll prove it. Here is Teen Ana:

[Teen Ana] "Estrogen rush"? Okay, um, estrogen is for, like, old ladies like my mom, and also is associated with her lady-bits and menopause so, um, ew. I mean, really, I have to, like, eat tonight, so try to keep that in mind. Also? My rock songs are not "whiny" no matter how many times you insist that they are. Oh, yeah, like your music is so deep because Creedence Clearwater Revival churned out meaningful treatises on the human soul and N'Sync is bland garbage, whatever, denial is not just a river in Egypt. And can you please stop referring to, like, important stuff as "stages"? Kisses are, um, a big deal, and good grief you sound like the jerks at school when you talk about it like it's some kind of hurdle to get past in a race. Geez, don't you know anything? [/Teen Ana]

Ah, Teen Ana. She was a firecracker, she was. /nostalgia

Beyond that, I'm amused that Jessica -- She Who Has Already Dated Mike -- is so anxious about this whole first-kiss business. Haha, continuity! We lacks it. I'm just going to put The Guide in the garbage for the moment and press on. Beyond that, it seems a little... sad, I guess, for Jessica to be so highly amped about her relationship with Mike, considering that we know that Mike only went out with her because he finally accepted that a relationship with Bella wasn't in the cards. And for Bella to be over there smirking with joy because she's finally gotten rid of Mike is just a really sour cherry on top; even if she's supposedly just happy that Jessica is happy, wouldn't she feel a little concern that Mike may not treat her well if he's only interested in her as a consolation prize?

Also, it's interesting that Bella sees herself as useful to Angela as a deflector of invasive questions. I'm tempted to wonder if this is a bit of projection on Bella's part -- one suspects that Angela may be closer friends with Jessica than is being portrayed if they've grown up together, and possibly Angela doesn't find these questions as invasive as Bella does -- but if it isn't projection, Bella and Angela seem like perfect candidates for best friends. Angela draws Bella out of her shell with questions about homework and they can each protect the other from invasive, unwanted questioning. It's almost a shame that Bella isn't narratively allowed to have friends.

Random: Charlie is now "The Chief"? That's a thing now? Because that seems like a very strange framing. Does Bella call him that anywhere else, ever?

   Port Angeles was a beautiful little tourist trap, [...] But Jessica and Angela knew it well, so they didn't plan to waste time on the picturesque boardwalk by the bay.

Well, if they decided to accomplish their errands right away and didn't choose to waste time on the heart-rending scenery, they must be absolute Philistines! I'll bet Edward would have stopped to enjoy the picturesque boardwalk by the bay whilst gently holding Bella's hand, gazing into her eyes, and somehow managing both to drink in the untamed beauty of the ocean and worship every pore on her face all at once! (It's just a shame he can't do all this in the daylight.)

   Both Jessica and Angela seemed surprised and almost disbelieving when I told them I'd never been to a dance in Phoenix. [...]
   "Really," I tried to convince her, not wanting to confess my dancing problems. "I've never had a boyfriend or anything close. I didn't go out much."

This is as good an excuse as any to recommend Melissa McEwan's absolutely incredible two-part post on disabilities and why failing to remember the existence of a disability is a really dreadful thing to do to a disabled person (assuming, of course, that a disability of memory is not part of the equation). And I know I recommend everything Melissa writes, usually twice over, but these really are incredibly powerful posts because forcing a friend or family member to continually explain the existence of their disability is incredibly demoralizing. There's a difference between "not fully understanding all the ramifications of a specific disability" and flat-out choosing not to remember that there's a disability in the equation.

(And while we're on the subject, I'm incredibly grateful to all the people on the board who have so patiently educated me on food allergies -- I took a casserole to a neighborhood block party after we moved in and was ready and able to rattle off everything in the dish, and as "cream of chicken" was one of the ingredients a vegetarian in the neighborhood was happy to be informed beforehand.)

So here's my obligatory "oh, look, Feminism in Twilight" moment for the week: Jessica's failure to remember Bella's balancing disability or to consider that such a disability might not be something Bella wishes to continually talk about and justify to others is demonstrated here as a damaging means of relating to Bella.

(Maybe I need to make a Feminist Twilight tumblr.)

But I'm pretty sure that's all the feminism you're going to get in this chapter. And even this isn't that feminist, because I have a sneaking suspicion that this conversation is just laying more groundwork to the characterization that Bella is a Pure Unsullied Virgin, which (again) is a common romance trope, but it's also in my opinion a damaging trope in the constant repetition, since it contributes to a harmful cultural fetishization of virginity.

   She looked skeptical. "People ask you out here," she reminded me, "and you tell them no." We were in the juniors' section now, scanning the racks for dress-up clothes.   "Well, except for Tyler," Angela amended quietly. [...]
   "Tyler told everyone he's taking you to prom," Jessica informed me with suspicious eyes.
   "He said what?" I sounded like I was choking.

This is one of those aspects of Twilight which strikes me as super-creepy and yet I can't tell if the narrative expects me to feel that way.

Tyler nearly killed Bella with his van. Arguably, the incident may not have been his fault, but whether it was or wasn't, it's a fact that without the supernatural intervention of Edward, Bella would be dead right now. To the best of my knowledge, this incident never directly affects Bella within the narrative except as a means of revealing Edward's true nature. But for some people in real life, an incident like this would have the potential to be highly traumatizing. It wouldn't be unusual at all for Bella to transfer some of the trauma from the accident to her feelings about Tyler. His presence could remind her of her mortality, of how nearly she came to being dead.

(Indeed, in a more nuanced vampire novel, the Van Incident would be directly linked to Bella's fervent desire to be vampire'd as soon as possible: the issue isn't merely her constantly-advancing age, it's that she should already be dead. What's to stop a thousand other fatal accidents from happening at any moment? Edward's selfish reassurances that his life would still be complete, having known her, doesn't change the fact that Bella would be dead and gone. Bella should be allowed within the narrative to have an opinion on that -- ideally one that has nothing to do with Edward and everything to do with her own wants and needs.)

Tyler seems to have taken this incident as proof that he's in some kind of heart-warming romantic comedy, and so naturally he's decided to act like a creepy and terrifying stalker because that sort of thing is sweet in romantic comedies, amiright?

Bella has decided to react with her trademark emotion spice-blend: absolutely justifiable anger mixed with a childish and ineffectual expression of same. Great. Everyone else seems to react with a Rape Culture sanctioned attitude of amused indulgence. Wonderful. Apparently including Bella's otherwise excessively protective and abusively jealous vampire lover, which implies that he does not consider this sort of stalking behavior to be dangerous, inappropriate, or upsetting to Bella. Probably because he engages in stalker tactics himself. Stellar.

   "That's why Lauren doesn't like you," Jessica giggled while we pawed through the clothes.   I ground my teeth. "Do you think that if I ran him over with my truck he would stop feeling guilty about the accident? That he might give up on making amends and call it even?"

And once again, we see that the young women of Forks engage in petty rivalries over the bad behavior -- notably infidelity in the face of the irresistible Bella -- of their menfolk. In case you're keeping score at home, this is Not Feminist.

   "Angela?" I began, hesitant, [...] I tried again. "Is it normal for the . . . Cullens" -- I kept my eyes on the shoes -- "to be out of school a lot?" I failed miserably in my attempt to sound nonchalant.
   "Yes, when the weather is good they go backpacking all the time -- even the doctor. They're all real outdoorsy," she told me quietly, examining her shoes, too. She didn't ask one question, let alone the hundreds that Jessica would have unleashed. I was beginning to really like Angela. [...]

This is a digression, but I include the above for reasons of world-building. One, apparently this is the first time Bella has put together that the Cullens are absent frequently and that their absences correspond to sunny days. This is way too late in the narrative for Bella to learn this, considering that she has apparently been at school for weeks (what, there were no sunny days in all that time except the handful of plot-specific Edward-Cullen-Didn't-Come-To-School-Today days?) and has been obsessed with Edward Cullen pretty much this entire time. Presumably this is why the information was moved up considerably in the movie.

Two, this is yet more evidence that Angela and Bella could be very good friends, were they not in a novel (or, to be more meta, in a culture) that treats female friendships as a frivolous diversion from the "real" matters of finding a husband, bearing him children, and being turned into the walking undead. Indeed, the two seem almost a match made in heaven: they're both quiet, studious, caretakers (Angela of her younger brothers, Bella of her immature mother), who seem to hold similar Good Girl values of modesty and polite behavior. Bella feels awkward because of her problems with balance; Angela apparently (according to The Guide) feels awkward because of her unusual height. Of course, Bella and Angela aren't obligated to be friends simply because they share some similarities, but it seems like such a shame that they're not closer throughout the series.

Three, here is the world-building that we already knew and yet still does not make very much sense to me: sunny days (or, more accurately, days with sunny moments) are so rare in Forks and the Cullens are so privileged in town that they can take off from school and work any time they want. And not just when it's sunny -- they also have to take off when it's going to be sunny, and you'd really think that someone would tweak to the fact that the Cullens literally have to be psychic in order for this to work. Cult leaders Jim Jones and Warren Jeffs, if I recall correctly, both used isolation of their followers and access to weather predictive services to convince people they were divinely able to predict the weather; surely someone would notice after awhile that the Cullens take off every time there is nice weather, even when the day started cloudy and the weather channel was predicting storms.

   I had no trouble finding the bookstore, but it wasn't what I was looking for. The windows were full of crystals, dream-catchers, and books about spiritual healing. I didn't even go inside. Through the glass I could see a fifty-year-old woman with long, gray hair worn straight down her back, clad in a dress right out of the sixties, smiling welcomingly from behind the counter. I decided that was one conversation I could skip. There had to be a normal bookstore in town.

Considering that Bella has been trawling Google for any and every Ancient Mystical Legend about vampires, no matter how vague or ambiguous or ludicrous (I mean, really? Vampires whose heads fly about at night, entrails dangling after them? That doesn't precisely strike me as... helpful here, Bella.), you might be surprised that she would so quickly turn up her nose at the golden opportunity presented here.

But here, for the record, is one of many reasons why Twilight is racist in general and why the appropriation of the Quileute peoples' legends was racist in particular. Bella isn't interested in the Ancient Mystical Legends of white people, because white people (or so goes the stereotype) don't have valid Ancient Mystical Legends. White people who claim to be in touch with nature or to have insight into the supernatural are aberrations, fakes, poseurs, or mentally ill. Real Ancient Mystical Legends come from dark people, who are defined by their heritage and statically roped to their past in ways that white people -- who represent the norm, the baseline of human experience -- are not.

The last time Bella spoke to someone with Ancient Mystical Legends, she was given valuable information about the man she loves and the race of beings that he belongs to. She accepted and encouraged this information because the person dispensing the information was dark-skinned and therefore a valid provider of Ancient Mystical Legends. Now Bella is facing another person who may have insight into the world that she is struggling to understand. She is looking directly at someone who might not mock her for her theories, someone who could perhaps offer valuable advice and worthwhile reading outside of The Google. But Bella turns away with a sneer because she knows that Ancient Mystical Legends dispensed by white people cannot possibly have value.

The reason she knows that is because of the stereotype -- here born out by the power of the narrative -- that dark-skinned people are tied to their cultural beliefs, whereas white-skinned people have transcended their past cultural beliefs to fully embrace modern culture. And, indeed, Bella as a white-skinned person in the pages of Twilight doesn't have a culture, in the same way she doesn't have an American accent, and in the same way that she is objectively beautiful, because her culture and accent and standards of beauty are considered so much the norm that they are rendered invisible and omnipresent, laying claim to everything that isn't expressly different. And of course such an attitude is both factually incorrect and packed with racism implications.

   I meandered through the streets, which were filling up with end-of-the-workday traffic, and hoped I was headed toward downtown. I wasn't paying as much attention as I should to where I was going; [...] I started to realize, as I crossed another road, that I was going the wrong direction. [...]
   A group of four men turned around the corner I was heading for, dressed too casually to be heading home from the office, but they were too grimy to be tourists. As they approached me, I realized they weren't too many years older than I was. They were joking loudly among themselves, laughing raucously and punching each other's arms. I scooted as far to the inside of the sidewalk as I could to give them room, walking swiftly, looking past them to the corner.

Despite the horrible, horrible squickiness that is involved any time an author bases a romantic relationship on a near-rape (see above, re: Tyler and why his presence could be residually distressing), I want to like this chapter. Not because I like chapters with gang-rape in it, mind you, and not because I appreciate that the portrayal of rape in Twilight to be limited to the rare-and-unusual case of gang-rape on a bright city street in America as opposed to common-and-invisible acquaintance rape of the kind that I strongly suspect Mike is capable of. Because I don't.

No, I want to like this chapter because -- frustratingly, considering the subject matter -- it contains more action on the part of Bella and more revelation of her underlying character than probably any other chapter in this book. Bella is realistically fearful, Bella reacts with realistic doubt and caution, Bella prepares to fight with both courage and intelligence, Bella keeps her head and doesn't panic. Considering how much rape and sexual violence is a part of our culture, I want to like that Bella meets the inevitable head-on, with grim determination to survive. Strong! Female! Character!

But... I can't like this. It's served with so much awfulness that I can't stomach the parts that, in another novel, would be more palatable. Already we see a hint of the victim-blaming to come: Bella gets in to trouble because she "wasn't paying as much attention as [she] should".

And this is the seduction of victim-blaming, the idea that sensible people can agree that Bad Things just happen, like the tides or tsunamis, and there's nothing we can do about them except insist that the potential victims of Bad Things police their every little movement and action in an attempt to avoid the unstoppable Bad Thing. Surely that's totally reasonable and logical and based on factual inference! And it kind of is, in the sense that yes, there will always be rapists. There will. No matter how much we push back against Rape Culture, no matter how much we educate people to stop raping, no matter how much headway we make statistically, there will always be at least one person out there willing to rape. So doesn't is make sense to try to avoid that guy?

But that's not how it works. Once that "should" framing creeps into the narrative, it's a steady and inevitable road to victim-blaming. A few pages from now, Edward will blame Bella for her own near-rape, and that blame is based on the framework being laid in the narrative now: Bella "should" have been paying more attention to where she was going.

It's a game she can't win. It doesn't matter if she's a stranger in a strange town. It doesn't matter if she has a disability that keeps her eyes focused on the ground (so she doesn't trip and hurt herself) instead of on the scenery. It doesn't matter if the city planners for Port Angeles took the concept of "tourist trap" a little too literally and designed the city to be an inescapable maze of no return. The situation is tautologically built against her: if someone is nearly raped in the streets of Port Angeles, she "should" have paid better attention. If she wasn't nearly raped, then she did something right. Logic!

   I'd wandered far past the part of Port Angeles that I, as a guest, was intended to see. [...]
   The sky suddenly darkened further, and, as I looked over my shoulder to glare at the offending cloud, I realized with a shock that two men were walking quietly twenty feet behind me.
   They were from the same group I'd passed at the corner, [...] My purse was on a shoulder strap and I had it slung across my body, the way you were supposed to wear it so it wouldn't get snatched. I knew exactly where my pepper spray was -- still in my duffle bag under the bed, never unpacked. I didn't have much money with me, just a twenty and some ones, and I thought about "accidentally" dropping my bag and walking away. But a small, frightened voice in the back of my mind warned me that they might be something worse than thieves.
   [...] Breathe, I had to remind myself. You don't know they're following you. I continued to walk as quickly as I could without actually running, [...] A blue car turned onto the street from the south and drove quickly past me. I thought of jumping out in front of it, but I hesitated, inhibited, unsure that I was really being pursued, and then it was too late.
   [...] They sounded farther back, though, and I knew they could outrun me in any case. I was sure to trip and go sprawling if I tried to go any faster.

One of the very few things I like about this passage is that it captures -- intentionally or not -- the Can't Win framing that the Patriarchy imposes on women. If Bella throws her purse to the ground, tears off in a run, and flings herself into oncoming traffic, she's going to be viewed as over-reacting to a perceived threat, even if she is right. Because if she is right that the men behind her are rapists, and if she acts on that belief and stops traffic, no one will ever know that she was right. And what is she going to tell the driver of the car she stops? "I'm so sorry, I must have tripped, but can I trouble you to take me into town with you?" And if that driver then rapes her, well then that was her fault too, for getting into a car with a stranger.

And this is a microcosm of the doubt applied to women and oppressed peoples all the time. A woman who is getting troll-vibes from a hostile commenter and who reacts strongly is at risk of being shouted down and chastised by the other commenters. After all, she couldn't psychically know the commenter was a troll, could she? And, yes, he did eventually start spewing utterly inappropriate sexist slurs, but we don't give out points for being right in hind-sight, now do we? And the very idea that maybe there are sexist and racist and ableist and homophobic dog-whistles that some people are more sensitive to than others is just completely disregarded because that would mean that the unattuned people aren't as insightful as they previously thought. And no one wants to hear that.

Bella lives in a society where the burden of Not Getting Raped is unfairly placed on the victim. Pepper spray isn't going to be effective against a group of four determined men, especially not when she's lost and can't run without falling down, but that doesn't mean she won't be blamed for not carrying it. Throwing down her purse or flinging herself into traffic are serious decisions made with real risks involved, but that doesn't mean she won't be blamed for making the wrong choice regardless of whichever choice she ends up making. I want to give points to the narrative for accurately portraying how harmful victim-blaming is, but I can't when both hero and heroine are nodding along to the victim-blaming.

   It seemed to take forever for me to get to the corner. I kept my pace steady, the men behind me falling ever so slightly farther behind with every step. Maybe they realized they had scared me and were sorry. I saw two cars going north pass the intersection I was heading for, and I exhaled in relief. There would be more people around once I got off this deserted street. I skipped around the corner with a grateful sigh.
   And skidded to a stop.
   [...] Because lounging against the western building, midway down the street, were the other two men from the group, both watching with excited smiles as I froze dead on the sidewalk. I realized then that I wasn't being followed.
   I was being herded.

And now is as good a time as any to tell you how utterly frustrated I am that the only real treatment of sexual violence in this novel is here, as a carefully orchestrated gang-rape on the open streets in the early evening of a quiet northern American tourist town.

Gang rape isn't (or doesn't seem to be; I'm struggling to find firm statistics) a rare thing. One source online states that 43% of rapes involve more than one assailant (a very large number of these seem to be perpetuated on college campuses by fraternities, but again I'm struggling to find firm statistics). But stranger rape comprises only 27% of rapes, and blitz rapes like the one here in Twilight would seem to be even more the exception rather than the rule. None of which means, of course, that this kind of rape doesn't happen because it does. And because it does happen, I'm not about to say that it shouldn't be portrayed in a novel, because survivors of gang-rape deserve to have their stories told in narratives too.

But the only rape we see in Twilight seems to be gang-rape: Bella is nearly raped by strangers in the middle of the street; Rosalie is raped by strangers in the middle of the street, an attack orchestrated by her fiance who is, himself, something of a stranger to Rosalie (they've only really been with each other at public events). In each case, there's a strong implication that the problem is that the women were alone. Bella is saved because Edward was following her; Rosalie regrets that she wasn't saved by the presence of her father. Both the narratives conveniently forget that, statistically speaking, Bella is far more likely to be raped by her boyfriend Edward and Rosalie is far more likely to be raped by her father than either young woman is of being raped in the middle of the street. Both narratives conveniently gloss past the fact that no matter who perpetuates the rape, the victim is the one blamed for being without the "right" person, with no earthly way to know for sure who the "right" person is.

   My steps had to slow now. I was closing the distance between myself and the lounging pair too quickly. I had a good loud scream, and I sucked in air, preparing to use it, but my throat was so dry I wasn't sure how much volume I could manage. With a quick movement I slipped my purse over my head, gripping the strap with one hand, ready to surrender it or use it as weapon as need demanded. [...]
   I braced myself, feet apart, trying to remember through my panic what little self-defense I knew. Heel of the hand thrust upward, hopefully breaking the nose or shoving it into the brain. Finger through the eye socket -- try to hook around and pop the eye out. And the standard knee to the groin, of course. That same pessimistic voice in my mind spoke up then, reminding me that I probably wouldn't have a chance against one of them, and there were four. Shut up! I commanded the voice before terror could incapacitate me. I wasn't going out without taking someone with me. I tried to swallow so I could build up a decent scream.
   Headlights suddenly flew around the corner, the car almost hitting the stocky one, forcing him to jump back toward the sidewalk. I dove into the road -- this car was going to stop, or have to hit me. But the silver car unexpectedly fishtailed around, skidding to a stop with the passenger door open just a few feet from me.
   "Get in," a furious voice commanded.

The car is Edward's, the voice is his own. Edward is furious at the men trying to rape Bella, but he's also upset with her for being a "magnet for trouble". This framing once again mirror's Rosalie's story, for Rosalie blames her own beauty for her rape, as if the one had anything to do with the other. In both cases, the narrative takes the responsibility from the guilty perpetrators and places it on the innocent victim who had little choice in their victimization: Rosalie did not choose to be beautiful and Bella did not choose to be clumsy.

Over the new few pages, it will be Edward's emotion, Edward's fury, that receives the bulk of the narrative attention. Bella's emotion is an afterthought, and when the afterthought comes it will turn out that she has nothing really to add. Her emotion is repressed in favor of Edward's. After all, Bella was only very nearly gang-raped for the first time in her life; Edward, on the other hand, was forced to struggle with his murderous impulses and barely restrained temper that has been with him for more than a century.

I think we all know what's more important here. Edward certainly does.

Open Thread: Anachronisms?

2012-05-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Ramblites, I have a question.

I cannot seem to watch or read historical fiction anymore without running into a scene where a Lady Of Very High Birth has a big fight (sometimes she wins, sometimes she loses) over the right to breastfeed her own child. And in almost all of these cases, it really is settled historical fact that a wet nurse would have been used in the cases I'm running into. And that's part of the big fight: her husband or her mother or her whatever expresses shock and horror that My Lady Of Very High Birth would balk tradition like this.

And I'm wondering: what's the truth behind this?

On the one hand, I suspect this is a bit of modernity leaking into these stories: modern perspective coloring our historical fiction. On the other hand, I really don't know; maybe lots and lots of Ladies Of Very High Birth really wanted to nurse and maybe really tried to do so, but the patriarchy and lack of social support made it too difficult.

On the third hand, maybe there was a little of both -- Ladies Of Very High Birth who didn't want to nurse and ones who did -- and I've just been reading all the historical fiction of the Ladies who did.

Can anyone answer this question?

Has anyone else noticed this in Every Historical Fiction Ever or is it just me?

Any other recurring anachronisms* people want to share?

OPEN THREAD BELOW!

* I would have added "functioning birth control" because it was a pet peeve of mine that people could fornicate their butts off in historical fiction and not get pregnant, but then I read "Mary Boleyn" by Alison Weir and she dropped this tidbit without so much as a how'd-you-do:

Other methods of preventing pregnancy included inserting pepper or a sponge soaked in vinegar into the vagina, sealing the cervix with beeswax, having anal sex, or doing some “hard pissing” after intercourse.

Well, okay, then! o.O

Deconstruction: When We Like Problematic Art

2012-05-10T09:00:00.001-05:00

This week I got in an argument about a movie.

The movie itself isn't important.* There were good things in it, there were problematic things in it. One side of the argument liked the movie overall but didn't like the problematic elements; the other side of the argument liked the good elements, but disliked the movie as a whole. Each side felt like the OTHER side was saying they were a Bad Person for having their opinion. Neither side, as it turned out, actually thought that at all -- they were just trying to have a discussion.

Communication, it would seem, is hard.

If there's one thing I've realized after years of reviewing and blogging about books and movies, I like some things which are problematic. Chances are that you do, too. We almost have to, if we are to like things at all. If there is a work of art, a book, a movie, a musical, or a video game out there that is wholly and entirely without problems of any kind, I can hardly imagine what it would look like. Almost everything has some problem, somewhere.

And yet almost everything has something redeeming, something that the fans of the work find valuable. We have found (and continue to find) elements of feminism in works like Twilight. Twilight is a work that I personally feel has far more elements of misogyny than feminism, and yet they're still there in small supply -- little glittery diamonds in a sea of toxicity.

And this is all complicated by the fact that the experience of art is ultimately truly subjective: so much of the experience depends on the subject who is experiencing it. That which is feminist to one person may be utterly oppressive to another. A story about a callous mother who is using the principles of the patriarchy to oppose her rebellious daughter will almost certainly be experienced differently depending on how closely the reader's experiences align with either mother or daughter. In real life, girls are abused daily by mothers who have internalized the patriarchy, so is it not Feminism to acknowledge that truth and show that girls are hurt by this? In real life, mothers are beat down daily by a society which questions every decision they make, such that no matter how they choose to parent, they are blamed, so can it really be Feminism to show yet another "evil" mother who is doing her best to acclimate her child to the harsh realities of the world? The answer is very likely both and neither and all of the above. The experience of art, too, can be hard.

Analyzing art can be less hard, but still not easy. There are some obvious checklists. Does the work contain any people of color? Does the work contain any QUILTBAG people? Does the work pass the Bechdel test? Does the work depict people of any social class other than Privilege McPrivilegeson? Does the work contain characters with a mix of religious and non-religious beliefs? Does the work depict people who have children, people who are childless by choice, and people who are childless not by choice? Does the work contain people who have pair-bonded in a romantic relationship, people who choose not to pair-bond romantically, and people who are romantically involved with more than one person? Does the work contain people of varying cultural backgrounds?

But once you have those lists, what do you do with them? If a work has someone from a non-white cultural background and yet they reject that background, are they a realistic depiction of a modern teenager who forges her own identity without clinging to a cultural heritage that doesn't contain personal meaning for her, or is she a white-washed minority whose background and heritage have been erased to make her easier for author and audience to connect with without having to grapple with multicultural concepts? More generally, if a work contains no people of color, surely that doesn't make the work automatically racist, does it? If a work contains no women, does it make the work automatically sexist? Have I not argued at length that the value in the Bechdel test comes not from scores for individual works, but rather the aggregate picture formed when we realize how few movies, total, barely pass the test, if at all?

These aren't just hypothetical questions; they're things that many of us struggle with on a daily basis. Do I like "The Wicker Man" because it's nice to see pagans getting to be the villains for once after all those "and it was the Christian Church all along! (dum dum DUM!)" twists, or do I dislike "The Wicker Man" because it's just one more case of pagans being misunderstood and villainized as hyper-sexed, naïve, and callously violent people? Do I like "Mulan" because she represents a rare Action Girl among the pantheon of Disney princesses, a young woman who can actively fight a man in battle and win through superior understanding of battlefield tactics, or do I dislike "Mulan" because she represents another piece of cultural appropriation in addition to being motivated wholly by ‘appropriate' familial love and devotion, instead of, say, wanting to run off to join the army because she likes that sort of thing and finds the gender roles of society constrictive (and wouldn't that latter story, if told, be even MORE cultural appropriation since I gather that's not how the original tale goes)? Do I like "Breaking Dawn" because it's about a woman making a reproductive choice and sticking it to despite the social pressures being applied to her, or do I dislike "Breaking Dawn" because that reproductive choice happens to be the socially-approved choice of carrying a dangerous pregnancy to term because it will hurt the baby's feelings if mommy aborts the pregnancy to save her own life?

I don't have answers to these things, by the way.

I don't have answers because I don't think there are answers. Whether I like or dislike these movies is something that only I can decide, by whatever criteria makes sense to me at the moment that I try to answer the question: did you like it? And the answer may still be, simply, I'm Not Sure. I liked some aspects of it, notably the parts with A, B, and C. I didn't like other aspects of it, including the parts with X, Y, and Z. I'm still trying to work out those details in my head. That, surely, is an acceptable answer.

The answer to the ubiquity of Problems in art isn't to stop liking art. Nor is it to go to another extreme and feel that everyone should acknowledge all art as great, simply because of the subjectivity of the experience. There are going to be things that individuals -- people like you and I -- like, sometimes for reasons that make no sense to other observers. There are going to be things that us same individuals dislike, frequently for reasons that may sound utterly silly to others.

And -- just to keep things interesting -- we're not always going to agree on those things.

I'll give you an example, if you promise not to hate me. I like "The Help". I do, I can't seem to help it. I've read wonderfully well-written arguments for why the book is incredibly problematic, and I cannot find fault with those arguments. And yet I enjoyed the book, the movie, and the audiobook. I like the way the story grapples with wage dependence, and the timely-and-necessary depiction of the lifelong sadness and frustration of being stuck in a job you don't want, you don't enjoy, and which is hazardous to your health (physically, mentally, and emotionally) and yet you cannot leave. (And it is surely not a coincidence that I see these themes in "The Help" because I have a experience with them in real life.) I happened to come to "The Help" immediately after re-reading Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed" and the similarities between the texts struck me as eerie.

We are still living in a world where employers hold a tremendous amount of power over us. Many of our employers control our access to basic medical services, including whether or not women employees will be allowed to control their reproductive health. Many of our employers can terminate our employment at will and with no notice whatsoever. Many of our employers have a tremendous amount of leeway to discriminate against us based on our body type, our race, our health, our gender, our sexual orientation, even what we write on our private Facebook pages. Many of us simply cannot afford to be terminated if-and-when our employer takes a dislike to us. Many of us struggle with keeping our mouths shut and our heads down while we privately struggle with feelings of frustration, anger, and helplessness.

These are the themes that stuck with me the most with "The Help", the sensation that for all our apparent progress, some things are still the same. The racism -- both violent and systemic -- that appears on the pages is still with us today. The classism that is used to separate and divide social groups is still with us today. And the wage dependence that keeps people in perpetual fear for their livelihoods and their lives is still with us today. Reading "The Help" is like using a painting of the past to illustrate the flaws of the present.

And yet none of these things that I enjoy or appreciate about "The Help" excuses or eliminates its many, many problems. The most memorable black man in the novel, the husband of one of the protagonists, is drunken and abusive. The other black protagonist experienced the pain of the father of her child running off with another woman. Those black men who are frustrated and upset about the racism they experience are portrayed as violent and dangerous; the black men who are not violent and not dangerous instead submit with quiet dignity to the atrocities heaped upon them. The stereotype is perpetuated, again and again, that anger -- even justifiable anger -- is wrong, bad, and counter-productive to a cause. And this is, of course, a terribly privileged view of anger and utterly unhelpful.

The abusive husband in "The Help" is only barely kept in check by his wife's threats that she will leave him and not take the kids with her. This framing of the narrative cheapens any portrayal of abuse, because the norm in abusive situations is for the abused party to be fearful for the children and for the abusive party to use that fear to control and manipulate the abused. The addition of this detail to the overall characterization of the situation makes abuse seem funny when it's not, makes it seem easy to get out of when it's not, and makes it seem like a mental chess game between worthy opponents when it's not. Abuse is not those things, but the frequent characterization of it as such leads to all kinds of victim-blaming and systematic denial of justice to abused women.

And the injustices heaped upon the maids in "The Help" are largely injustices of the spirit. The novel makes mention of physical and sexual assault, and a major plot point is the unfair imprisonment and dangerous blacklisting of maids by vindictive employers, but the larger share of the experiences depicted in the novel are injustices of othering, of making people of the "wrong" race or class feel as though they are without worth simply because they are not the "right" race or class. And -- again -- this is very effective as a tactic for showing why racism and classism and wage dependence are actively damaging to self-image and are toxic to a healthy society. But as a historical depiction of the actual history of black maids in white households, keeping the injustices to ‘merely' systematic othering without really accurately (i.e., outside of 3-4 mentions that I can recall) depicting all the other physical abuse that accompanied it is effectively softening history to make it easier to swallow. And that doesn't occur in a vacuum.

That's only three Very Problematic Things about "The Help". I could list a dozen more. And yet I still like the damn book. I kind of wish I didn't; it would make things a lot easier. I'd feel better about myself as a person. But what we like -- and what we don't like -- isn't something that we necessarily can control. If I could Conclusively Prove that "The Hunger Games" was the most feminist-friendly YA book on the market today, that wouldn't make those of you who don't like the book magically like it. It shouldn't. And if I could similarly prove that Disney's "The Jungle Book" is the most racist animated film ever created, that wouldn't make those of you who like the movie stop humming "Bear Necessities" in the shower. I don't think it can. I honestly don't think the human mind works that way.

I don't think the goal of artistic analysis is to make people -- or ourselves -- stop liking the "wrong" things and start liking the "right" things. I think the goal is to come to a more nuanced understanding of all these things. Some things are more problematic than others, why? What makes them that way? How do those problems manifest in the larger culture around us? How could those problems have been avoided without substantially altering the text? (Or could they?)

There's no easy answers, no agreement that everyone can all reach. The over-the-top level of violence against women in "The Millennium Trilogy" will always seem to me to be a deliberate artistic choice by a feminist-friendly author who wanted to shock the privileged reader into a better understanding of the oppression of the lower classes that they themselves quietly and unquestioningly support; the over-the-top level of violent against women in "A Song of Ice and Fire" will always seem to me to be a deliberate artistic choice by an author who cared more about juvenile titillation under the guise of being "edgy" than about telling a good story that realistically depicts the effect of violence on women. These are subjective opinions, not everyone is going to agree with them, and I'm probably not going to change my mind.

When I criticize a text, or when I praise another, I'm not criticizing or praising the fans. I find feminism in "The Hunger Games"; that doesn't mean I think all THG fans are inherently feminist allies. I find misogyny in "Twilight"; that doesn't mean I think every woman who loves Twilight is a self-hating anti-feminist who has deluded herself into buying into the patriarchy and who is either an opponent to be defeated or a sheep to be brought to the light. People are more complicated than that.

A few days ago, a very close friend asked me why I'd never been interested in watching "Dr. Who". I thought about that for a long moment. I said, "I know it's supposed to be really good, and just about everyone I know online loves it." He nodded, and I continued. "But, I think the reason given for why the actor changes all the time is that he can be pretty much anything, any race, any gender, any species, any color? If that's so, it bugs me that he is never a woman, or a person of color." My friend gave me a funny look and asked me why that would be a sticking point for me when the ‘explanation' is just an in-show hand-wave for real life actor swapping. He pointed out that my current TV show of choice, "The Tudors", doesn't have any people of color and largely treats the women characters as nothing more than a go-to device to reach the Showtime nudity quota. He asked why I would choose to not watch something really, really good just because of a casting choice -- White Male Protagonist -- that almost every other show I watch also makes.

I thought about this for a moment. "It just bugs me," I said with a shrug.

Being able to like or dislike the things we experience is a freedom of choice that no one should give up or try to take away. Being able to discuss the aspects that we like and the aspects that we didn't is a valuable way to compare experiences and express unique viewpoints. Being able to find something worthwhile in an otherwise-problematic piece reminds us that even bad art can have a purpose; being able to find problems in an otherwise-perfect piece reminds us that even good art is created by flawed humans. Being unable to agree which things are worthwhile and which things are problematic and which things the author intended or not sharpens our communication abilities and our critical thinking skills.

Artistic analysis isn't about finding The Answer. It's not about making a list of Good Art and Bad Art and then having everyone realign their tastes to match. It's not about coming to an agreement. It's about experiencing different viewpoints and understanding why other people think differently from you. And it's about taking those new perspectives with you and applying them to the next piece of art you experience.

And I guess it's also about learning how to passionately express an opinion to your mates without creating the impression that you're being all judgey on them. I'm still working on that one.

---

* Someone is going to ask, and I'm going to feel impolite ignoring the question, so just to cut past all that, it was Tron. The new one. There you go.

Metapost: Google-Fu Fail

2012-05-09T11:45:00.000-05:00

Someone -- Will? Chris? Laiima? A fevered dream brought on by too many sandwiches? -- explained a while back, probably not on THIS blog, but somewhere I read, about the difference between primary cause and secondary cause, and I recall arson being the analogy used. As in, the primary cause of the fire was gasoline and matches, the secondary cause is that the neighbor likes fire.

I cannot find this now and I want to reference it for a post. Does anyone remember where this was, because I cannot find it via Google. Much appreciation.

Author Interview: Anthea Carson on "The Dark Lake"

2012-05-09T09:00:00.002-05:00

Ana: Today we have Anthea Carson introducing their book, The Dark Lake. I haven't read this book myself, but Anthea was kind enough to agree to guest blog about their book to any readers who might be interested in the subject. Anthea, how would you describe your book to your prospective readers? In broad terms, what is your book about?

Anthea: This book is about Jane, a woman in her forties who is stuck in the past. She wanders the lake, where voices call to her from the bottom. She can't seem to get on with her life. She has these terrible nightmares, she can't sleep. She can't keep a job. Her therapist tries to help her. She says Jane needs to remember a past incident, and come to terms with it in order to forget it. Her AA group tries to help her. They tell her she needs to work through her issues. She has little more than contempt for them. Her mother tries to help her, but seems as overwhelmed as Jane is. And Jane isn't very nice to her mother. Then, to avoid jail time, Jane has to go to anger management. But then they start dragging her car up from the bottom of the lake. Why now, she wonders, after all this time, why are they dragging her car up from the bottom of the lake?

Anthea: The themes of this book are denial, refusing to let go of the past, guilt, repressed memories and addiction. Denial is a condition where we refuse to look at the truth, even though we know what the truth is. We push that truth out of our consciousness and lie to ourselves, and then believe our own lies. It is a very common condition. Letting go of the past is not something we really do, it's more that we accept that the past is gone. Denial can keep us in the past. These things operate together to keep us stuck. These defense mechanisms are there to protect us, but they don't really serve us. Repressing a memory is a form of denial so strong we can't even remember the truth. Sometimes we do this to avoid guilt or shame, guilt or shame we don't even know we have because we've constructed our walls of protection from the truth so well. Addiction is the result of a decision to live in lies.

Anthea: As I wrote this story I realized I had been writing this story in my subconscious for forty years. I am a recovering alcoholic, and if I were to relapse I believe this woman would be me. I am of course also influenced by some key sources. The movie The Sixth Sense, several episodes of The Twilight Zone, Lost Girls by Andrew Pyper, Swan's Way by Marcel Proust, James Joyce, both Tom Wolfes and perhaps William Faulkner have influenced my writing.

Anthea: If you like Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury, The Twilight Zone, The Sixth Sense, you might like my story. If you like to think, don't mind trying to solve a puzzle, don't mind rereading or struggling a bit to figure something out, or if you don't mind hazy endings. If you are okay with the ending of The Lost Girls by Andrew Pyper and don't feel you need to throw that book across the room when you are finished, you might like The Dark Lake.

Anthea: No, I have two other published books. One is called "How to Play Chess Like an Animal," (I'm a chess coach) and I had a co-author for that one (five time Colorado Chess Champion Brian Wall) and a young adult fiction called Ainsworth. The Dark Lake is the first part of a trilogy. The two books following it have already been written.

Anthea: My book is located on Amazon Kindle. People are welcome to contact me by email, although I get lots of spam so it might end up in my spam folder so perhaps Facebook or Twitter. I hadn't thought of setting up a way for them to be notified of my next book; I will set that up soon. Probably at my website.

Ana: Thank you. I understand you have the first chapter of your book available as an excerpt for interested readers? Is there anything else you wish to add for our readers?

Anthea: Here is the link to my online sample. Thank you for reading and supporting indie authors.

If you are an indie author interested in being interviewed, please read the interview policy here.

Narnia: If Only They'd Planted Ginkgo Biloba

2012-05-08T09:00:00.027-05:00

Narnia Recap: The children have been pulled back into Narnia and have found an abandoned castle with apple trees for sustenance.

Prince Caspian, Chapter 2: The Ancient Treasure House

Last week we talked about an ongoing world-building problem with Narnia: namely, how much the children remember about their adventures therein. This is not a trivial point to me, since it's on this question that hinges a great deal in terms of the Problem of Susan. After all, if some magic muddles the children's memories of Narnia, she can hardly be blamed for thinking of the whole experience as a child's dream game. And if magic doesn't muddle their perceptions and memories, then we are justified in asking how all this zig-zagging between Narnia and England and all this living of two lives concurrently is affecting the children emotionally and mentally.

The problem with "Prince Caspian" is that the whole book is a bit of a mess. And yet it's a mess that was written second in the series -- it's a little early to be jumping the shark but a little late to be struggling to hit one's stride. So it's a mess that, by gum, we're going to have to deal with, and I'm going to ask you to help me out by telling me what you think of my theory. It's my theory that the children remember Narnia only vaguely and in small pieces when they're outside Narnia, and that their memories return to them slowly when they're inside.

I will base that theory on a few things so far and then more yet to come:

The children are mentioned in the introduction of being sad at parting and sad at the prospect of school, but no mention in made in either narrative or dialogue about being sad at losing Narnia possibly forever (by leaving the Kirke house, which contains the one known portal to Narnia).
Within the first few minutes of their return to Narnia, the children mention the possibility that the land is Narnia, but they don't use their memories of Narnia to navigate this new and confusing world, even though they are highly motivated by hunger and thirst (indicating limited recollection).
Though the children vaguely hope that the land is Narnia, they feel no sense of urgency to find someone immediately so that they can assess the state of their kingdom and review any damage done since their unexpected leave (indicating they've forgotten their duties as monarchs).
The children remember nothing of basic navigation and food foraging, despite living and hunting in a forest for over a decade, and instead rely on classical literature to guide their actions (indicating they've forgotten basic skills acquired in Narnia).

I think that's everything so far. Now we find the children standing in Cair Paravel, munching on apples from the orchard they planted, and glancing about themselves in curiosity.

   "THIS WASN'T A GARDEN," SAID SUSAN presently. "It was a castle and this must have been the courtyard."
   "I see what you mean," said Peter. "Yes. That is the remains of a tower. And there is what used to be a flight of steps going up to the top of the walls. And look at those other steps—the broad, shallow ones -- going up to that doorway. It must have been the door into the great hall."
   "Ages ago, by the look of it," said Edmund.
   "Yes, ages ago," said Peter. "I wish we could find out who the people were that lived in this castle; and how long ago."
   "It gives me a queer feeling," said Lucy.
   "Does it, Lu?" said Peter, turning and looking hard at her. "Because it does the same to me. It is the queerest thing that has happened this queer day. I wonder where we are and what it all means?"

As a child, I suppose this all seemed very natural to me; as an adult, it utterly baffles me. How can the children not recognize their home, the castle they've spent most of their lives in?

Yes, it's been 1,300 years and the years can be hard on a castle. Yes, there have been other kings and queens (legitimate and otherwise) in Narnia in the intervening years and they may have made alterations to the castle. Yes, Narnia has suffered an invasion from hostile foreign forces and this perhaps led to some damage to Cair Paravel. And yet, the basic outline is still there, even if it's covered in ivy and vines and crumbling stone. The castle should still be shaped the same.

But maybe it's one of those square, boxy castles which all castles invariably look like? Except that Cair Paravel is on a cliff overlooking the sea, and has an eastern door that faces the sea, and in the Disney movie looks like this:

@ jaguarhero.blogspot.com

That's not the sort of castle that you can mistake for just any castle. And it's not the sort of location that you're just going to forget. Maybe it makes sense that the children don't acclimate to the location; the coastline has changed so much in the last 1,300 years that the peninsula of Cair Paravel has become a full island. And yet... surely the cliff is still there? Surely it overlooks the sea, and they can hear the sound of the waves? And surely they remember -- have they not talked about it? -- how time goes so differently in Narnia than in the real world. Are they forgetting or in denial?

   "I wonder, was it really the hall," said Susan. "What is that terrace kind of thing?"
   "Why, you silly," said Peter (who had become strangely excited), "don't you see? That was the dais where the High Table was, where the King and the great lords sat. Anyone would think you had forgotten that we ourselves were once Kings and Queens and sat on a dais just like that, in our great hall."
   "In our castle of Cair Paravel," continued Susan in a dreamy and rather singsong voice, "at the mouth of the great river of Narnia. How could I forget?"
   "How it all comes back!" said Lucy. "We could pretend we were in Cair Paravel now. This hall must have been very like the great hall we feasted in."

This passage is incredibly interesting to me. Peter is describing the dais, and describing it with increasing excited and agitation as he recalls what their dais looked like. Susan joins in the memory with a "dreamy" and "singsong" voice, as though she's only now recollecting the memory herself. Even her wording seems suspect; it's not "At Cair Paravel!" it's "In our castle of Cair Paravel" and it's not "at the river mouth" it's "at the mouth of the great river of Narnia." Her words are formal and stilted, describing things as though a stranger would describe them. This is probably for the benefit of the reader, but it gives the impression that Susan doesn't know these things intimately, but is more reciting the words as they come to her.

And Lucy puts the cherry on it with her statement that the memories are coming back, and the suggestion that they "pretend" they're in Cair Paravel, as if she only remembers their Narnian lives as a game, and as if she doesn't consider this adventure to be any more pressing or any more meaningful than yet another grand game.

I have to wonder at this, though. In between LWW and PC, the children apparently went on with their lives and when they spoke of Narnia at all, they did so in terms of dreamy fun-times. Apparently there wasn't a lot of weeping over what was lost, nor was there a lot of gnashing of teeth over them being unable to help the Narnians in their time of need (as they most certainly would be, given that the true rulers unexpectedly disappeared). And I think that sort of response to being magically tossed out of a magical land that one cannot re-enter at will is probably... well, I don't want to say healthy since it almost certainly involved magically mucking with the children's memories in order to get to that point, but certainly less emotionally fraught than the alternatives. So it seems like a good thing?

But then we see the Pevensies all grown up in "The Last Battle" and suddenly Narnia is Serious Business. There are meetings, and the meetings are important and serious and people who treat the whole thing as a half-remembered dream -- even though they all used to do that at one time -- are not held in high esteem by the larger group. And there are visits to go dig up magic rings and take them by railway to Narnian sympathizers who have not been explicitly forbidden to use the rings and it's all very exciting and action-packed and tense, and... it seems like such a huge paradigm shift. What happened? Why did Peter and Lucy and Edmund grow up to start caring about something that previously they'd not cared about -- either because magic robbed them of the capability to do so, or because they didn't believe in fretting over a world they could never visit or directly influence again? Did Eustace or Polly or Kirke or Jill fan the flames of... of what? Devotion? Extremism? Fanaticism?

And now I've veered way off course.

   "We shall need a camp-fire if we've got to spend the night here," said Peter. "I've got matches. Let's go and see if we can collect some dry wood."
   Everyone saw the sense of this, and for the next half-hour they were busy. The orchard through which they had first come into the ruins turned out not to be a good place for firewood. [...] They went to and fro with bundles until they had a good pile on the dais. At the fifth journey they found the well, just outside the hall, hidden in weeds, but clean and fresh and deep when they had cleared these away. [...] They tried roasting some of the apples on the ends of sticks. But roast apples are not much good without sugar, and they are too hot to eat with your fingers till they are too cold to be worth eating. So they had to content themselves with raw apples, which, as Edmund said, made one realize that school suppers weren't so bad after all—"I shouldn't mind a good thick slice of bread and margarine this minute," he added. But the spirit of adventure was rising in them all, and no one really wanted to be back at school.

Not a lot here to note. Basic needs are satisfied: apples for food, well-water for drink, matches (they were carrying matches with them to school? On their person, and not in their left-behind luggage?) for fire. And yet again we have that odd tone permeating the narrative and dialogue, a tone that would be perfectly appropriate if this were the first book in a Journey To A Magical Land series, and yet seems wildly out of place here. It almost feels like Lewis is cribbing off of someone like Nesbit and forgetting that his established characters are going to react to things a great deal differently than new characters would.

   Shortly after the last apple had been eaten, Susan went out to the well to get another drink. When she came back she was carrying something in her hand.
   "Look," she said in a rather choking kind of voice. "I found it by the well." She handed it to Peter and sat down. The others thought she looked and sounded as if she might be going to cry. Edmund and Lucy eagerly bent forward to see what was in Peter's hand -- a little, bright thing that gleamed in the firelight. [...]
   All now saw what it was -- a little chess-knight, ordinary in size but extraordinarily heavy because it was made of pure gold; and the eyes in the horse's head were two tiny little rubies -- or rather one was, for the other had been knocked out.
   "Why!" said Lucy, "it's exactly like one of the golden chessmen we used to play with when we were Kings and Queens at Cair Paravel."
   "Cheer up, Su," said Peter to his other sister.
   "I can't help it," said Susan. "It brought back -- oh, such lovely times. And I remembered playing chess with fauns and good giants, and the mer-people singing in the sea, and my beautiful horse -- and -- and -- "

Susan, it will be noted, is the only one to be moved to tears by this discovery. Peter goes from flummoxed to barely comforting to logician in three sentences total. Edmund argues eloquently with Peter, while the two of them have a genial battle of wits. Lucy hangs on every word and interjects with excitement and barely restrained glee as she literally claps her hands at Peter's description of "that funny old [mole]" who planted their orchard for them. Susan alone is the sad one.

Susan is the one who knelt on the ground and ran her hands through the dirt and weeds and grass by the freshly-cleared well to find the chess-piece. Susan is the one who is moved to tears by the memories of the things she has lost. Susan is the one, out of all the Pevensie children, who really truly mourns the Narnia that she can never return to -- the one where she was a happy queen surrounded by the people she loved.

It should also be noted that the Pevensie monarchs were so rich and so cossetted that they apparently thought nothing of playing chess with solid gold pieces set with precious gemstones. Hey, you know what some of that wealth could have been invested in? Defenses against foreign invaders, for a start. I'm pretty sure that the folks in Archenland and Calormen and wherever else could have been convinced to work up some nice gates, walls, signal towers, and so forth in exchange for some chess-pieces. I guess that shows a lack of faith in Aslan, though.

   "Now," said Peter in a quite different voice, "it's about time we four started using our brains."
   "What about?" asked Edmund.
   "Have none of you guessed where we are?" said Peter.
   "Go on, go on," said Lucy. "I've felt for hours that there was some wonderful mystery hanging over this place."

There isn't a cut there, by the way -- Peter's interjection comes right after Susan's last line. Either he interrupted her or she was too overcome by emotion to continue speaking. In either case, this means that her siblings are effectively ignoring her for the next two dozen paragraphs (literally! I counted!) while she either cries or struggles to keep from crying.

I don't think this is meant to show Peter, Edmund, and Lucy as callous. I think that if we're to notice this at all, we're to see it as them discreetly letting Susan pull herself together while they attend to important business. I think that, if we're to notice at all, the crying is to be seen as understandable but slightly shameful -- a natural body function that shouldn't be indulged in public.

Of course, it's more likely that we're not to notice. This is a children's book of adventure, not an adult's book of the emotional ramifications of losing one's entire life and complete identity. To dwell on Susan's sorrow would be to point out the elephant in the Narnian wardrobe: that a series of such adventures would probably be deeply traumatic for at least some children. And that if children are being herded or pulled in without consideration for that fact, someone is eventually going to lose the Narnian emotional-breakdown lottery.

And yet, it's here. We have this strange, teasing presentation of emotion without being shown the full extent of it. Susan isn't joyous and happy and excited like Lucy, nor is she logical and rational and thoughtful like Edmund and Peter. These are characters in a novel, whose actions and personalities are defined by the author; Susan very easily could have been just as joyous and logical as her siblings. But she wasn't. (Narrative consistency has been trod upon so thoroughly at this point that I can't imagine making Susan as cheerful as Lucy would muddle the narrative any further.)

So why not? Why make Susan deeply and emotionally affected by her memories of her lost life and then immediately yank the focus away? What is the narrative gain, the character development, the lesson to be imparted? Doesn't this just make the narrative more muddled (what do they remember, and when, and how?), the characterization more confusing (why aren't the others as emotional as Susan, and why do they not comfort her?), and the lessons imparted more upsetting (how can Susan possibly be blamed for leaving behind a place that causes her so much emotional pain?)? I honestly don't understand the authorial choices here.

   "There's one thing," said Lucy. "If this is Cair Paravel there ought to be a door at this end of the dais. In fact we ought to be sitting with our backs against it at this moment. You know -- the door that led down to the treasure chamber."
   "I suppose there isn't a door," said Peter, getting up.
   The wall behind them was a mass of ivy. [...]
   "We must clear this ivy away," said Peter.
   "Oh, do let's leave it alone," said Susan. "We can try it in the morning. If we've got to spend the night here I don't want an open door at my back and a great big black hole that anything might come out of, besides the draft and the damp. And it'll soon be dark."
   "Susan! How can you?" said Lucy with a reproachful glance. But both the boys were too much excited to take any notice of Susan's advice.

And it is interesting that Lucy is chosen to be the one to put Susan in her place. Lucy the also-female, Lucy the female Pevensie who is younger and more favored in Narnia than her sister. And I can't help but come back to how often the two girls are positioned as rivals as the books.

Lucy is the discoverer of Narnia, and the one allowed to come back the most times. Lucy is the specially beloved of Aslan, though both girls were present at his death. Lucy is the younger sister, less pretty and sophisticated than Susan, for Lucy is jealous of Susan's beauty in "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and even as early as LWW, Adult!Susan is the one sought by ardent kings while Adult!Lucy is merely sought by playful princes. Lucy, the Valiant, is "as good as a man, or at any rate as good as a boy", but Susan, the Gentle, is a "lady" in Narnia and "interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations" and "being grown-up" in England.

But though the girls are positioned against each other as eager tomboy and vapid teenybopper in the dialogue and narrative, it's astonishing how much of what we're actually shown conflicts with those descriptions. Lucy, the valiant one who rides into war as a worthwhile man-boy-girl, is the one who is most excitable, most easily distracted, most willing to turn her head to a new adventure despite the costs she might inflict on others. In VDT, Lucy was willing to work dark magic in order to be prettier than Susan, and only the magical appearance of the growling face of Aslan changed her mind -- who here is the one more vapid and shallow? Susan, the gentle lady who is unduly interested in being grown-up, is the one who wisely counseled against continuing past the lamppost, the one who is pierced deeply enough by the loss of Narnia to weep, and is the best archer among all the children, though she dutifully obeys the commands of He Who Gave Her The Bow and stays out of war. And, once again, we see that Susan is damned and sneered at despite her following the rules.

And this is why Twilight is so insidiously misogynistic and yet grudgingly feminist at the same time: Bella wins at Patriarchy by following the rules better than anyone else. It's misogynistic because it props up the Patriarchy and insists that those rules can and should and must be followed. It's feminist (or, depending on how charitable you want to be, a Bait-and-Switch misrepresentation) because she is, ultimately, able to win by virtue of her own steadfast willpower. In the real world, in Susan's world, following the rules doesn't damn you any less than not following the rules. The only factor in winning is whether or not those in control let you win.

   It took them longer than they expected and, before they had done, the great hall had grown dusky and the first star or two had come out overhead. Susan was not the only one who felt a slight shudder as the boys stood above the pile of splintered wood, rubbing the dirt off their hands and staring into the cold, dark opening they had made.
   "Now for a torch," said Peter.
   "Oh, what is the good?" said Susan. "And as Edmund said -- "
   "I'm not saying it now," Edmund interrupted. "I still don't understand, but we can settle that later. I suppose you're coming down, Peter?"
   "We must," said Peter. "Cheer up, Susan. It's no good behaving like kids now that we are back in Narnia. You're a Queen here. And anyway no one could go to sleep with a mystery like this on their minds."

It's hard to escape the impression that Susan doesn't want this to be Cair Paravel, and it's interesting that none of the other children share her view. I think it's meant to look insular and willfully ignorant for Susan to try to avoid the truth, but this is a truth that is going to be incredibly painful.

When the children left Narnia, they left without any means of ever knowing what was happening there. That could almost certainly be stressful and worrisome, but it could also be freeing to a certain extent. If you couldn't get back to your kingdom, it might be easier not knowing what was happening there. Then you could at least imagine that things were going well. You would have still suffered a great personal loss, but you could believe that your kingdom was flourishing in spite of your absence.

If Peter can prove to the others that this is Cair Paravel, then that comforting fantasy is shattered. Something has almost certainly gone horribly wrong for Cair Paravel to be abandoned in this way -- war, famine, plague, or maybe the Emperor just woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day, but whatever has caused the castle and the surrounding country to be abandoned and left to rot cannot possibly be a good thing. Then, too, the current state of the castle implies a tremendous amount of time passing since their exodus, as Edmund has already noted. That means that if this is Cair Paravel, Susan and the others have to grapple with the fact that everyone they ever loved in Narnia is now dead. They have to say goodbye forever, and give up the fantasy that they'll ever see their friends and loved ones again.

Small wonder that Susan doesn't want to test this hypothesis further.

   For now all knew that it was indeed the ancient treasure chamber of Cair Paravel where they had once reigned as Kings and Queens of Narnia. There was a kind of path up the middle (as it might be in a greenhouse), and along each side at intervals stood rich suits of armor, like knights guarding the treasures. In between the suits of armor, and on each side of the path, were shelves covered with precious things -- necklaces and arm rings and finger rings and golden bowls and dishes and long tusks of ivory, brooches and coronets and chains of gold, and heaps of unset stones lying piled anyhow as if they were marbles or potatoes -- diamonds, rubies, carbuncles, emeralds, topazes, and amethysts. Under the shelves stood great chests of oak strengthened with iron bars and heavily padlocked. [...]
   Then, of course, they began walking about and picking things up to look at. It was like meeting very old friends. If you had been there you would have heard them saying things like, "Oh look! Our coronation rings -- do you remember first wearing this? -- Why, this is the little brooch we all thought was lost -- I say, isn't that the armor you wore in the great tournament in the Lone Islands? -- do you remember the dwarf making that for me? -- do you remember drinking out of that horn? -- do you remember, do you remember?"

Now I'm wondering why the Pevensie monarchs needed huge oak chests with massive padlocks on them. Apparently they didn't trust their courtiers. And this whole thing makes them seem like greedy, irresponsible hoarders: their treasure room is hidden in a locked room behind their thrones and they've installed even heavier locks within to make absolutely sure that their thieving subjects don't make off with the gold that is rightfully theirs by accident of birth. Ah, yes, these were clearly True Kings and Queens fit to nurture the land and its people.

Occupy Cair Paravel!

And given that the later kings and queens of Narnia apparently didn't take much (or possibly anything!) away from the treasury, despite the war that surely must have needed at least some financing to fight and lose, one wonders if anyone even knew about this treasury other than the Pevensies.

   "We must take the gifts," said Peter. For long ago at a Christmas in Narnia he and Susan and Lucy had been given certain presents which they valued more than their whole kingdom. Edmund had had no gift because he was not with them at the time. (This was his own fault, and you can read about it in the other book.)

ARGH. DO NOT DO THIS THING.

Anything that reminds your reader that they are reading a book necessarily hurls them out of the immersive experience and makes them hate you. Don't do it!

   They all agreed with Peter and walked up the path to the wall at the far end of the treasure chamber, and there, sure enough, the gifts were still hanging. Lucy's was the smallest for it was only a little bottle. But the bottle was made of diamond instead of glass, and it was still more than half full of the magical cordial which would heal almost every wound and every illness. Lucy said nothing and looked very solemn as she took her gift down from its place and slung the belt over her shoulder and once more felt the bottle at her side where it used to hang in the old days. Susan's gift had been a bow and arrows and a horn. The bow was still there, and the ivory quiver, full of well-feathered arrows, but -- Oh, Susan," said Lucy. "Where's the horn?"
   "Oh bother, bother, bother," said Susan after she had thought for a moment. "I remember now. I took it with me the last day of all, the day we went hunting the White Stag. It must have got lost when we blundered back into that other place -- England, I mean."

A very major issue I've always had, even as a child, with the Super Rare Healing Potion is that it seems like such a horrible gift to inflict on a child. I was the sort of child who was deathly afraid of using things up and not having them anymore, and I still fight hoarding tendencies to this day. (One of my first memories of dating Husband was him gazing in awe at the boxes and cans of non-perishable food I'd carefully stacked in my garage after a trip to the bulk grocery warehouse and him saying that he'd know who to hole up with in case of terrorist attack or zombie apocalypse. I took this as the very great compliment that it was.)

Lucy has received a finite gift, unlike Peter and Susan. Peter's sword will never rust or break; Susan's bowstring does not rot with the passage of time. But Lucy's knife is without any value, and her diamond vial is only as valuable as what it contains. And what it contains is a new lease on life for anyone dying of any wound or illness.

How do you cope with that? How do you deal with the knowledge that you're not constantly touring the kingdom, healing the sick and wounded and tending to their needs? How do you reconcile the fact that you were told to use the cordial wisely and you have the impression that it's meant to be used on Main Characters and at Plot Relevant moments, so you can't "waste" it or you'll be in trouble, yet at the same time there are people dying and you could help them and you're not.

As a child, reading these books, I couldn't deal with that. It made me so anxious and upset and unhappy. I seriously wished Lucy would just use up the dang vial, or that Aslan would bring the flowers over in a pot and the forest-people could set up a whole production line, or something. It seriously bothered me. It still does. I don't know what to do with it, but I'm frustrated that the books never even acknowledge the problem. The Pevensies treat health exactly like they treat wealth: something to hoard for themselves and their subjects be damned.

Another interesting thing here is that Susan calls England "that other place", which supports my theory that they have their English memories when in England and their Narnian memories when in Narnia, but there's something else here too: Susan doesn't call England "home". And it's worth pointing out once again that Susan embraced Narnia as her home at least as much, if not more, than any of her siblings.

   "Never mind," said Susan, "I've still got the bow." And she took it.
   "Won't the string be perished, Su?" said Peter.
   But whether by some magic in the air of the treasure chamber or not, the bow was still in working order. Archery and swimming were the things Susan was good at. In a moment she had bent the bow and then she gave one little pluck to the string. It twanged: a chirruping twang that vibrated through the whole room. And that one small noise brought back the old days to the children's minds more than anything that had happened yet. All the battles and hunts and feasts came rushing into their heads together.
   Then she unstrung the bow again and slung the quiver at her side.

Narratively, Susan had to lose the horn so that it could be found and used to call them into Narnia, and she had to keep the bow so that she can prove that she's Queen Susan the Renowned Archer and not some random kid. And yet it seems strange that she'd take a horn on a hunt against a single stag and yet leave her bow at home. ('Course, they weren't looking to kill the stag, but what were they going to catch it with? Harsh language? And what were they hunting and eating on the way there and back?)

Couple more things before we move on: Susan is good at archery and swimming. They're not "some" of the things she is good at; they are "the" things she is good at. Not embroidery or dance or clothes-making or your standard shorthand for Frivolous Girly Pursuits. And yet Susan doesn't go into war -- we have that for a fact from one of her contemporaries in "The Horse and His Boy". She hunts for pleasure and she swims for pleasure; neither of these things are used in service to her kingdom. And I feel a certain pang for this girl who enjoys tomboyish things and yet has taken to heart the warning from Father Christmas that she's not to be useful with them.

And so deeply has she taken this advice to heart that though they are in a strange and abandoned place with night upon them and possibly enemies all round, she hastily unstrings her bow before they go back upstairs and emerge into the dangerous night. This despite the fact that bows should (apparently) only be unstrung during periods of long non-use, the only benefit is to lengthen the bow and string lifespan (which at this point have both been demonstrated to be magically preserved), and restringing the bow takes both time and forces the archer to recalibrate the bow for accuracy.

So basically Susan has just taken a perfectly working, magically preserved bow and rendered it completely useless as a weapon even though she is in a potentially extremely dangerous situation for no reason whatsoever despite being one of the most skilled archers in Narnia and thus presumably knowing the implications of her actions. That's how committed she is to never using the bow for anything other than pleasure hunts.

   Next, Peter took down his gift -- the shield with the great red lion on it, and the royal sword. He blew, and rapped them on the floor, to get off the dust. He fitted the shield on his arm and slung the sword by his side. He was afraid at first that it might be rusty and stick to the sheath. But it was not so. With one swift motion he drew it and held it up, shining in the torchlight.
   "It is my sword Rhindon," he said; "with it I killed the Wolf." There was a new tone in his voice, and the others all felt that he was really Peter the High King again. [...]
   They climbed the stair again and made up a good fire and lay down close together for warmth. The ground was very hard and uncomfortable, but they fell asleep in the end.

...and then Peter unscrewed the blade from the hilt and unhooked the shield strap from the metal bit and stuck the strap in his pocket for safe keeping.

Haha, just kidding!

Review: Cafe Nippon

2012-05-07T09:00:00.001-05:00

Cafe Nippon
by Kairosoft

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It really should not come as a surprise to me how much I love this game, since I love pretty much all the Kairosoft time-sink games and I love restaurant management simulation games so, so much, but good-grief-on-a-gravy-roll I love this game. I can't stop playing it.

As far as this review goes, it's going to be a slim one. The game is your usual time-sink Kairosoft fare with lots of cute cartoony graphics, more stats than you can shake a stick at, never quite enough money to go around, perfect pacing that keeps you on your toes without being overwhelming, and -- if you're like me -- it brings out your inner MinMaxer and you find yourself save scumming until you manage to recruit, yes, Minnie Max. Oh, Kairosoft, you know me too well.

Cafeteria Nipponica

So since I have very little of value to say in the form of a review, here instead is a BIG HONKING FAQ because I am just nerdy enough to write one and I could never find a comprehensive one in English that wasn't on the registered-users-only Kairosoft forums, so it might as well be me. Here are some tips, in no particular order.

1. Financing. Don't spend any money between Month 1 and Month 4. In Month 4, you pay your staff and it is always more than you expect it to be, and you do not want to be in debt and have to forgo your Month 4 ingredient gathering trip.

2. Staffing. If you can afford the $300 recruiting fee, hire someone every time "Recruit Staff" comes available and stuff them in the Break Room. There's a finite number of people in the game and you will need all of them eventually. (Some of them are far superior to others, though, so if you don't mind Save Scumming at the beginning of the game, try for Jim Maxwell, Iggy Hop, Yan Fields, Cat Kidman, Minnie Max, and Manford Cups.)

3. Staff Stats. Floor servers need speed and Walk Fast. Kitchen cooks need cooking and Cooking Up and Research Up. Specializing based on dish type (Chinese, Japanese, Western, Snacks, Dessert) never really seemed worth it to me.

4. Staff Feeding. For the love of donuts, do not feed meals to your staff unless you have 3+ of the meal in question. Counter intuitively, a meal can either be slotted at your restaurants (of which you will have three) or fed to the staff, but not both: once that meal is consumed, you don't have it any more to slot. Apparently a meal is stored at a store location and pieces of it are served to the customers, with the Parent Meal regenerating in the freezer overnight. If a staff member eats the mothership, it's gone forever.

5. Menu Planning. Where you can gather ingredients depends on where you have open stores. Dairy and grain products are largely confined to the early areas you will later abandon (you can only have 3 stores and there are 5 locations). Seafood absolutely dominates the second half of the game, so it's a good idea to organize your menu around that. (Much to my personal sorrow.)

6. Dish Maxing. Pick a dish that you can level up early on in order to get the cash coming in as quickly as possible. Note that all dishes have caps on their taste and appeal, so you can't just pick whatever you personally like and level it to kingdom come. (See spreadsheet!)

7. Celebrity Chefs. I won't touch 'em. They're obscenely expensive to hire and maintain, and I never once needed them. At end game (Year 15, when you score the game and enter sandbox mode), I had Jim Maxwell at 714 cooking skill and 61 research points and I had my Top Class Sushi dish at $55, 847 taste, and 860 appeal. (And Iggy Pop starts out stronger than many of the celebrity chefs do!)

8. Orange Crates. Orange Crate tables (Veggie Market) are ugly. They're also $100, which means that when you spend your last thousand opening a new restaurant, you can still stuff it to the brim with tables without having to break the bank.

And now some spreadsheets! LINK! And in less-tabular, more web-friendly form:

Exploration
Local Woods
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Udon, Recipe: Yaki Onigiri
Treasure 2 -- Recipe: Fried Rice, Table: Popular Table
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Salad, Money: 5K

Steep Hills
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Toast, Equipment: Bookshelf
Treasure 2 -- Recipe: Spaghetti, Table: Chinese Table
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Rice Omelette
Treasure 4 -- Equipment: Toy Corner

Local Farm
Treasure 1 -- Table: Pop Table
Treasure 2 -- Table: Oak Cask
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Karaage
Treasure 4 -- Recipe: Seafood Soup
Treasure 5 -- Equipment: Audio Set

Green Pasture
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Ice Cream, Table: Chinese Counter
Treasure 2 -- Dish: Omelette
Treasure 3 -- Equipment: Public Phone
Treasure 4 -- Dish: Stew, Money: 10K

Fishery
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Sauteed Chicken, Table: Standard Sofa
Treasure 2 -- Table: Red Table
Treasure 3 -- Equipment: Vending Machine, Unlocks Local Farm Treasure 3
Treasure 4 -- Table: Simple Room

Veggie Market
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Karaage, Table: Luxury Set
Treasure 2 -- Table: Orange Crate
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Bird's Nest Soup

Fish Market
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Salad, Table: Simple Counter
Treasure 2 -- Dish: Shumai
Treasure 3 -- Table: Relaxing Sofa
Treasure 4 -- Dish: Salad
Treasure 5 -- Table: Bench

Craggy Rocks
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Grilled Fish, Recipe: Chocolate Parfait
Treasure 2 -- Table: Western Sofa
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Kid's Lunch
Treasure 4 -- Table: Dining Sofa

Fisher's House
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Grilled Fish
Treasure 2 -- Table: Arcade Game
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Steak
Treasure 4 -- Table: White Sofa

Contract Farmer
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Toast
Treasure 2 -- Equipment: Aquarium
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Tempura
Treasure 4 -- Table: Simple Sofa

Top Fish Market
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Shumai
Treasure 2 -- Table: Student Set
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Meat Stir Fry
Treasure 4 -- Table: Luxury Sofa
Treasure 5 -- Table: Japanese Set, Dish: Tuna Bowl, Money: 10 K

Associated Store
Treasure 1 -- Recipe: Nimono
Treasure 2 -- Table: Luxury Counter
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Top Grade Sushi
Treasure 4 -- Recipe: Berry Parfait

Dept. Store
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Miso Soup
Treasure 2 -- Table: Office Set
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Ikizukuri
Treasure 4 -- Dish: Corn Chowder

NY Market
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Toast
Treasure 2 -- Table: Luxury Room
Treasure 3 -- Dish: Hamburger
Treasure 4 -- Dish: Pasta Carbonara

Kairo Island
Treasure 1 -- Dish: Ice Cream
Treasure 2 -- Table: Relaxing Room
Treasure 3 -- Recipe: Gratin
Treasure 4 -- Equipment: Grand Piano
Treasure 5 -- Table: Floor Cushion Set
Treasure 6 -- Equipment: Gold Kairobot

Recipes

Recipe	Base Recipe	Ingredient 1	Ingredient 2	Category	Taste	Appeal
Ankake Yakisoba	Yakisoba	Tasty Fish
BBQ Pork Ramen	Ramen	Top Class Pork	Garlic	Chinese	480	380
Beef Curry	Curry and Rice	Marbled Beef		Western	580	600
Beef Stew	Stew	Tomato	Marbled Beef	Western	420	380
Berry Parfait	Parfait	Strawberry		Dessert	320	220
Bird's Nest Soup	Shark Fin Soup	Caviar	Foie Gras	Chinese	999	999
Caesar Salad	Salad	Lettuce	Aged Cheese	Western	250	240
Champon	Udon	Chinese Cabbage		Japanese	250	120
Chicken Bowl	Rice	Boned Chicken		Japanese	180	120
Chilled Noodles	Ramen	Mild Vinegar	Hot Spices	Chinese	220	120
Chocolate Parfait	Parfait	Chocolate		Dessert	250	280
Combo Ramen	Ramen	Soy Sauce	Fresh Eggs	Chinese	250	220
Corn Chowder	Seafood Soup	Sweet Corn		Western	180	100
Crab Fried Rice	Fried Rice	King Crab	Mild Vinegar	Chinese	360	350
Croquette	Karaage	Top Class Pork	Northern Potato	Western	280	280
Curry and Rice	Fried Rice	Hot Spice		Western	100	100
Doughnut	Ice Cream	Flour		Dessert	280	280
Eel Bowl	Chicken Bowl	Tasty Fish	Secret Sauce	Japanese	380	450
French Fries	Toast	Northern Potato		Snacks	100	100
Fried Rice	Rice	Carrot		Chinese	120	80
Fried Udon	Udon	Soy Sauce	Sweet Corn	Japanese	160	100
Gold Ice Cream	Ice Cream	Gold Flakes		Dessert	999	999
Gratin	Croquette	Thick Butter	Fresh Milk	Western	420	480
Grilled Fish	- Craggy Rocks -			Japanese	100	100
Gyoza	Shumai	Green Onion	Ginger	Chinese	250	280
Hamburger	Toast	Marbled Beef		Snacks	250	150
Hamburger Steak	Sauteed Chicken	Marbled Beef	Carrot	Western	520	500
Hayashi Rice	Curry and Rice	Tomato		Western	280	240
Hot Pot	Seafood Soup	Chinese Cabbage	Boned Chicken	Japanese	320	220
Ice Cream	- Green Pasture -			Dessert	100	100
Ikizukuri	Sashimi	Sea Bream	Squid	Japanese	999	999
Indian Curry	Curry and Rice	Flour	Herbs	Western	400	320
Japanese Pasta	Spaghetti	Mushroom	Spinach	Western	280	240
Kaiseki Cuisine	Sashimi	Tasty Fish	Matsutake	Japanese	999	999
Karaage	Toast	Boned Chicken		Snacks	190	75
Kid's Lunch	Hamburger Steak	Marbled Beef	Secret Sauce	Western	999	999
Meat Gyoza	Gyoza	Top Class Pork		Chinese	210	150
Meat Sauce Pasta	Spaghetti	Top Class Pork	Tomato	Western	380	420
Meat Stir Fry	Veggie Stir Fry	Top Class Pork	Kikurage	Chinese	320	220
Minestrone Soup	Corn Chowder	Tomato	Onion	Western	480	480
Miso Ramen	Ramen	Special Miso	Sweet Corn	Chinese	237	280
Miso Soup	Seafood Soup	Tofu		Japanese	100	100
Nimono	Veggie Stir Fry	Pumpkin	Daikon Radish	Japanese	250	240
Okonomiyaki	Shumai	Flour	Secret Sauce	Japanese	320	220
Omelette	Rice	Fresh Eggs		Western	100	80
Onigiri	Rice	Dried Seaweed		Snacks	100	100
Parfait	Ice Cream	Cherry		Dessert	250	100
Pasta Carbonara	Spaghetti	Fresh Milk	Fresh Eggs	Western	250	220
Pizza	Toast	Aged Cheese	Top Class Pork	Western	280	220
Pizza Toast	Toast	Tomato		Snacks	200	150
Pork Bowl	Chicken Bowl	Top Class Pork	Onion	Japanese	200	160
Pork Bun	Shumai	Top Class Pork		Snacks	380	320
Pork Cutlet	Karaage	Top Class Pork	Cabbage	Japanese	250	220
Pudding	Ice Cream	Fresh Eggs		Dessert	220	120
Ramen	Udon	Boned Chicken		Chinese	100	100
Rice				Snacks	60	150
Rice Omelette	Omelette	Organic Rice		Western	200	150
Rice Porridge	Hot Pot	Organic Rice		Japanese	150	120
Salad	Toast	Lettuce		Western	120	55
Sashimi	Grilled Fish	Tasty Fish	Soy Sauce	Japanese	480	410
Sauteed Chicken				Western	100	100
Seafood Gyoza	Gyoza	Top Class Shrimp	Cabbage	Chinese	402	350
Seafood Salad	Salad	Octopus		Western	220	120
Seafood Soup	Udon	Secret Sauce		Japanese	80	60
Shark Fin Soup	Seafood Soup	Tasty Fish	Secret Sauce	Chinese	420	420
Shumai	Rice	Top Class Pork		Chinese	65	100
Soba	- Received from Hina upon eating Crab Fried Rice (?) -				100	100
Spaghetti	Udon	Herbs		Western	180	80
Steak	Sauteed Chicken	Boned Chicken	Green Onion	Western	330	300
Stew	Corn Chowder	Boned Chicken	Northern Potato	Western	250	280
Sumo Stew	Hot Pot	Top Class Pork	Prize Mushroom	Japanese	480	350
Takoyaki	Pork Bun	Flour	Octopus	Snacks	280	280
Tempura	Croquette	Top Class Shrimp	Tasty Fish	Japanese	450	450
Toast	Rice	Flour		Snacks	100	65
Top Grade Sushi	Sashimi	Organic Rice	Soy Sauce	Japanese	999	999
Tuna Bowl	Rice	Tasty Fish	Soy Sauce	Japanese	420	420
Udon	- Local Woods -			Japanese	110	100
Veggie Stir Fry	Salad	Carrot	Cabbage	Chinese	250	120
Yaki Onigiri	Onigiri	Soy Sauce		Snacks	100	100
Yakiniku	Hot Pot	Marbled Beef	Secret Sauce	Japanese	800	800
Yakisoba	Soba	Cabbage			131	65
Yakitori	Hamburger Steak	Top Class Shrimp	Organic Rice	Japanese	480	350

Self-Promotion: Print-On-Demand Version

2012-05-06T21:00:00.001-05:00

Greetings and salutations! For the half a dozen of you who wanted a print version of Pulchritude, this is now a thing that exists! (And I am inordinately flattered!)

The bad news upfront: it's not as cheap as I'd like it to be, and I can't afford to give away free copies because CreateSpace does charge me for my own copies. So I'm sorry about that. And I encourage you to read for free before you buy! You can download the ePUB/mobi version or read online on GoodReads!

The print-on-demand price is $7.99. It's a 6x9 trade paperback, so taller and thinner than the mass market paperbacks you may or may not be more used to. For those who are curious, the royalty rate susses out differently depending on vendor:

What that means is that the base price just to print the book is $6.69. The royalties on CreateSpace sales are $2.38 and the royalties on Amazon are $0.78 because the Amazon Cookie Monster likes a higher quality macadamia nut than your work-a-day sugar-cookie-scarfing CreateSpace Cookie Monster. (In comparison, I make about twice that 78 cents on Amazon Kindle sales for my $2.99 eBook.)

The links to the book are here:

Recommends: Atheist Day

2012-05-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

This is going to seem a little late to you all in The Future!, but in case you missed this, I enjoyed this peace by Cary: An Atheist's Proposal.

I'm not an atheist, but I was touched by Cary's opening paragraph about hymns. Though I'm not a Christian anymore and I actively avoid churches for all kinds of near-triggery reasons, I still find myself singing "Wonderful Grace of Jesus" and "In My Heart There Rings a Melody", because even though I don't believe the words, I love the melody. And it makes me sad that my chosen religion doesn't really have anything quite like that, though I'll admit that the Mercedes Lackey filk songs tear me up something fierce.

And now I've gone and derailed myself already. Anyway. Link! I liked the post and you may too. Also: space related holidays for the win!

RECOMMENDS! What have you been reading/writing/thinking lately?

Open Thread: A Genuine Question

2012-05-06T08:10:00.001-05:00

You people who watch "Game of Thrones", how do you do it? o.O

Husband bought the series and I've been trying to watch with him. Two episodes in and it's like ALL THE NICE THINGS have been taken away forever from me. It's not grim or dark or gritty so far, it's just been really awful people doing really awful things, and so far only to women, children, and a single highly traumatized man.

Is there a coping mechanism to get through this that I don't know about?

Twilight Themes: Venn Allies Behave Badly

2012-05-05T09:00:00.003-05:00

Content Note: Misogyny, Misogynistic Terms, Fat Hatred, Sex Work Hatred

In November 2011, when we were still undergoing the labor of love that was the 12-post deconstruction on Chapter 5, mmy was kind enough to send me a link to this Cracked article. And as much as I wanted to smile and laugh and nod, I found myself frowning and sighing and frustrated. Which was, of course, why mmy was kind enough to send the link in the first place: it cries out for a deconstruction post. And I've thought about this post literally every week between then and now. So now I want to take a moment and talk about Twilight and Allies and Misogyny and oh so many other things.

I don't like Twilight. I don't like it for its pacing and idiosyncratic writing style, including some of the more confusing (for me) shifts from past and present tense. I don't like it for its narrative, being a largely tension-free (for me) story about two people I don't care about getting together and staying in a relationship whilst beset on all sides by almost no resistance at all. And I don't like it for a lot of its problematic content, most notably the racism and racial appropriation within, but also for the misogyny on the page.

And I do think that Twilight, as a novel, has misogynistic aspects. I don't think they were intended as such, and I do think a reader can interpret them differently than I do, but I still see the FedEx arrows. I see misogyny in the interactions between Bella and Charlie, as her father tries to tightly control her virginity and blames Bella for her own sexual assault at the hands of Jacob, even offering to arrest his own daughter for defending herself. I see misogyny in the interactions between Bella and Edward, as her boyfriend tries to tightly control her virginity and continually behaves in violent, abusive ways toward her, even going so far as to sabotage her car to keep her where he wants her. I see misogyny in the interactions between Bella and the text, as the narrative continually portrays her as childish, worthless, and infantile for asserting her own feelings of protest at these bad behaviors. Twilight has serious, serious problems on the misogyny scale.

Which is ironic, because in some ways a bestselling novel written by a woman author and with a largely female readership can in some ways be seen to contain some elements of feminism. It's already been pointed out here several times that if you live in a highly oppressive Patriarchy, Bella's story has elements of feminism in the "best I can hope for" sense. Bella doesn't get a rewarding career and become president of the United States, but if she must have a teen marriage and a patriarchal family structure and a child, she at least gets eternal beauty, a gorgeous-and-rich-and-utterly-enthralled husband, and she gets a baby that has the decency to grow into a cute toddler in a matter of days and can communicate her wishes magically without having to bawl all the time. And that may not be feminism in the traditional sense, but it can be seen as containing a seed of subversion. Maybe. If you squint at it just right and hold your tongue just so.

And all this makes deconstructing Twilight an utterly interesting and totally unique experience! Because the culture it's coming from and in turn both subverting and reinforcing is so tricky to analyze! It's so very, very complicated. And I find it interesting and thought-provoking and rewarding. And I hope you do too.

But there's something I've noticed since starting on this Twilight journey and it's this: Not everyone who also doesn't like Twilight is necessarily my ally. And I've broken out this little chart to demonstrate.

Now we come back to the Cracked article. And I feel like the Cracked article wants to be my ally. The author seems to be aware that feminism exists, and they seem to understand that misogyny is something that feminists care about. I mean, they've got the word "misogynistic" right there in the article:

[Edward] So, the next generation of young women are currently flocking to see a female lead starring in a movie by a female director based on a bestselling book by a female author, and in this movie the main character wants to become completely submissive and self-sacrificing for a male.

[Bella] I love you. Put a baby in me.

[Edward] At least the other three books can't possibly be more misogynistic and depressing.

See? Right there in that last line they mention misogyny. And I really think they're trying to understand what that word means, and not just use it as a red flag to try to co-opt the term and look Really Truly Feminist. Though if I were going to enumerate all the reasons why Twilight is misogynistic, I frankly wouldn't start with self-sacrifice and submission which I consider to be largely neutral concepts that can be applied for great good or great evil depending on the author. But my point is that I feel like the author was trying, and I want to hand out cookies for that.

But I can't.

I can't give out cookies for this article, nor for about a quadzillion other online articles on Twilight, because no mater how feminist an author thinks they're being, they're not a feminist ally if they think this is something useful and valid to sink into an article:

[Bella] Wow. I guess this is what it looks like when the unpopular fat girl's pathetic daydreams get written down and published into a bestselling book.

...

[Edward] Sounds like textbook daddy issues, you fat cow.

[Bella] (swoon)

[Edward] You have a bright career as a stripper ahead of you.

...

[Edward] Holy shit, you're a clingy psychotic bitch. Maybe we have a realistic high school relationship after all.

Whooooooops! Haha, that is not actually how feminism and good-allyship works!

The strangest thing about disliking Twilight is not that I'm not alone: as bestselling as the books are, there are plenty of people both online and in real life who dislike the books. (I've actually found that it's safer to volunteer a dislike of Twilight in a crowd than a like of it. At least in the crowds I travel in.) No, the strangest thing about disliking Twilight is that when I look around at the people in this varied and complex group of Dislikers of Twilight, I see people who make me uncomfortable.

Twilight is a franchise written by a woman to a perceived audience of women. It's permeated with a female gaze: the female protagonist goes almost wholly undescribed in terms of her physical body (itself a possibly subversive act of writing, given how often female characters -- as written by male authors -- are expected to be constantly aware of the size, shape, movement, and current condition of their breasts), but the male love interest is lovingly described, page after page, with ever-increasing superlative praise and adoration. It's not a book that cares to cater to the heterosexual male gaze, and seems perfectly happy to exclude that audience entirely.

A good many women are accustomed to being excluded from popular franchises, but it would seem that a good many men are not. And some of those men -- not as many as one might fear, but far more than one might expect -- react with astonishing and almost personal aggression to the Twilight franchise, its fans, and its author in the face of that deliberate exclusion. There is a great deal of difference between pointing out valid criticisms with a series, and using those criticisms as a jumping off point for spewing misogyny at women who dare to create things (yes, even problematic things) for the enjoyment of other women.

It's a valid criticism of Twilight that the warm reception for Bella at the Forks High School subverts usual literary expectations of tension; it is not valid criticism to use that to cast body judgment on an author or her fan base. It's valid criticism of Twilight that Bella's pursuit of Edward despite his violent and abusive tendencies is unhealthy and not something that should be presented as desirable behavior; it is not valid criticism to use that to subject the author or her fan base to dismissive armchair psychology or to rudely reinforce the stereotype that exotic dancers don't choose their careers based on preference or monetary needs but because there is something psychologically different about them. It's valid criticism of Twilight that Bella's insistence on being with Edward in total disregard for her own safety is behavior that would be recklessly dangerous were the book anything other than a fantasy; it is not valid criticism to take that as an opportunity to throw around a sexism term nor to imply that typical high school girls are mentally ill and unworthy of respect.

I don't feel like this should be hard to see and yet... apparently for some people it is. I feel like it would be self-evident that if one is going to address misogyny in an artistic work, one should make an attempt to keep misogyny out of the rebuttal. No one is perfect, of course, but surely this? Should not be hard to see. The language is so obvious and over-the-top offensive that it's difficult for me to believe that the author simply couldn't see it.

And I find myself wondering. Because there seems to be a certain breed of "ally" who simply isn't. They know the words, and sometimes it feels like they understand the concepts, but then you have this huge gaping hole of fail where, for example, an article that calls out a series for misogyny revels in the excuse to throw around terms like "fat cow" and "psychotic bitch". And then when I give the article a Stern Look, I can almost hear it saying back to me: What? It's not like Cracked is endorsing those terms! That's just what Bella and Edward are saying, if Twilight was really honest! It's practically Stephenie Meyer's fault that this Cracked article really exists! Not ours, certainly. Now go away and let us say "psychotic bitch" again. *snerk*

This isn't allyship. Maybe it could be, I don't know. I want to feel like half the battle is done -- the author knows that misogyny exists and even sort of gives lip-service to the concept -- but the other half, the setting down the Privilege and actually listening to why one's behavior is offensive, and then being willing to make the effort to change that behavior simply because it's uncool to be a jackwagon who goes around perpetuating hurtful patriarchal norms and hurting people's feelings? That part is hard. And as long as someone is dancing around feeling like a good ally for the easy stuff (i.e., shooting the problematic fish in the barrel that is Twilight) while giggling gleefully at the latest excuse to ignore the hard stuff (i.e., not using sexist slurs to refer to a woman author and her fan base), I'm not sure there's a lot of time left for self-reflection on why all that righteous anger being leveled at the Twilight franchise might be better invested sometime at looking into one's own writing.

Because I want this author, and others like him, to be my ally. Really. But I can't consider them that until they stop talking about misogyny in others and start addressing it in their own selves.