I think we gotta start recognizing that "things accepted online/in leftist spaces" and "things accepted by the general public in the real world" are two very different things. like no actually gnc men are Not suddenly seen as okay because there are drag queens on tiktok. men are still beaten and harassed and ostracized and Killed for being feminine. in the us. in my very liberal city full of ppl with blue hair and pronouns I am made to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome for being a gnc guy. the tiktok comments on videos of men wearing make up are not indicative of the beliefs of most people

Synopsis from IMDB:

The Abaddon Hotel will once again be open to the public. Russell Wynn has taken his audience-interactive show, Insomnia, into the abandoned hotel that is rumored to be haunted.

My review

Good wrap up for a trilogy. They hired some minorities, which is great. But the sexist talk, although mild, wasn’t in the others. I get the heaven and hell aspect, but still a tad iffy on the ending. Overall, it was a good found footage film. Good, not great. If you’d watched the other two, you’d probably want to finish the set. If not, you’re not going to miss anything by skipping it.

Rating : 6/10

How does it treat…

Women? A few sexist remarks that I could have done without, but it was only like 3 or 4 of them.

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Yes, kind of. The interview asks the cast some questions, but nothing I’d call meaningful dialog.

How long till a woman speaks? 1 minute 42 seconds. Not the first line like the other movies.

LGBTQia+? Felt like one guy was a borderline stereotype.

Minorities? Yes. For a change and it was more than one.

So, it hasn’t worked as a haunted house, and multiple people have died here…so let’s put on a play here? 

Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, you have to believe in murders and people disappearing. Why would you set foot in that place?

“Two people played a tree better than you.” As Kelso would say, “Burned!”

And the clown mannequins are back. That would be the first thing out the door, and into a burn pile.

Wasn’t this play brought down from New York? Why is she questioning the motivation now? Is this a new cast? The play’s opening in ten days. You should be a little further along.

A bon fire with alcohol at the creepy murder hotel. What could go wrong?

And the song is back.

The white robed mannequins are following her around like weeping angels.

I knew that head would be turned, but it freaked me out all the same.

Don’t wait for the clown to catch up.  Run!

If you are that adamant about no one being in the house after dark, maybe post a guard or two.

Russel’s paying them a lot. Explains why people stay.

The reporter’s reasons for staying are valid. 

Woman says something creepy and then vanishes. Probably the best possible outcome.

Rich people having enablers? The most realistic thing in this entire movie.

Russel doesn’t want her to come to the show supposedly because he doesn’t want her to get hurt. So the cast and crew are expendable because you paid them double? What about the people watching the play?

So she broke the story about him giving away his money without reaching out to him or the CEO for a comment?

Dude gorging an actor’s eyes out…running is the correct response.

Some are just strolling along. No sense of urgency.

Please tell me the robed men were on heelies and that’s how they glide.

The death scenes in the bar have been better.

Now they’re attacking people in the parking lot too?

They’re killing everyone in the bar, why not the reporter? She’s not even hiding at this point.

Russel goes back up the attic to retrieve his mystery box from the church. If you knew all of this was about to go down, wouldn’t you have it on you?

So all these people will have the traumatic memory of dying and watching those around them get slaughtered as well. Will a therapist believe them? Do you have to make your own support group?

Russel was an angel? Odd behavior for an angel. I need to save humanity and close the door to hell. But first, let’s make some wine and put on a play. Really?

The OG crew is free-ish. Not tortured anymore or made to be a pawn, but they are also trapped. Bittersweet.

Alex helped open the gate, so I get why he has to stay with Russel. But why the rest of them?

8 Anti LO Asks

1. It doesn’t really make sense for a long term comic such as LO to have such a drastic change in the artstyle, and even more you can’t really call it an improvement when all the interesting parts of the art style are now gone and all that it is now it’s just some basic same-face and body art style with barely any backgrounds. RS is incredibly talented for illustrative artwork and it’s really a shame she’s not doing that anymore and instead has left it to her team, with leaving them very messy sketches. The artstyle in the beginning had life and glamour and now it’s just very dull and boring. That’s not an improvement

2. I genuinely can’t think of any man in LO that’s even half way decent. Poseidon maybe? Hephaestus? Those are the only two I can manage, meanwhile the rest are either Rachel purposely ruining them because of her own biases (Zeus, Apollo, Thanatos to an extent) or are “good” men who are just creeps who disrespect all the women around them and are super creepy and obsessed over a literal teenager who acts like a child (Hades, Ares, Hermee, Eros, etc). The women aren’t much better either. 

3. About Perse making Hades childish: (this is no way defending him, just some speculation, and tbh I doubt that RS has thought this through haha) I wonder if he becomes a horny teenager around her because she’s a goddess of fertility? Would that have any affect on him? Doesn’t excuse his creepy ass behavior, but could explain it a bit, I guess?

4. Okay so I'll be honest I dont really see any reason to 'simp' over Any of the LO characters?

Also, not to start sh*t, but - I think part of the reason why some of the LO fandom does not like Zeus (and perhaps gives Hera more leeway - at least in terms of cheating) is because:

Mythologically Zeus is a known cheater / rapist (Io for example, or Semele)

They see Hera cheating a Zeus as okay (its not) because he's been known to cheat on her in the past / fans see Hera cheating on Zeus with Hades as 'justified revenge' for what he's (Zeus) put her through

I'll be honest I dont really see Zeus (or Hades for that matter) as good rulers because

Despite other deities (like Eros) doing 'acts of wrath' - they get away with it because they often have someone to back them up (like Aphrodite offering to sleep with Zeus to get her son out of trouble) - but the one time Persephone does something wrong (an act of wrath) - Zeus wants to give her the Prometheus treatment - mainly so he can feel like an in control king whos subjects respect him

The reason this sound so odd is because of RS writing choices. Zeus is a grade A d*ck who is willing to destroy a 'young girls promising career' because she made 1 mistake that one time. But at the same time the act of wrath is framed oddly because Demeter doesn't want her daughter to get in trouble so she covers it up (its like the equivalent of hiding a murder from the cops).

Zeus wanting to Prometheus Kore seems overly harsh because she is a Child. (Well a teenager) - so it adds to the "Zeus is a d*ck" card, because she doesnt have the life experience to "get away with" stuff like the other deities because she is young AND sheltered.

Like again, the whole concept of Human Laws applying to Gods is so confusing:

Would Zeus have been this harsh if Demeter had simply come forward in the first place about Persephone's murder rampage? Why did she blackmail / get other deities involved to cover it up? Is Zeus THAT much of a d*ck in Demeters eyes that she knows he would harshly punish a child for something "she didnt mean to do" (killed mortals based on a feeling?)

Why is there a motherf*cking trial in the first place? Do All the other deities get the right to a fair trial or is this a special case? (Like can any deity just offer to sleep with Zeus and he'll let them off the hook?). If the other deities had commited the same crime would the trial / punishment be the same or does Zeus just have a rage boner because he was lied to? If thats the case then why are the other deities taking Persephones side during the trial? (Ares I can maybe understand cause hes the God of War and stuff but everyone else is taking Perse's side because their either her personal friend or family member (Hecate, Hermes, Demeter, Hades etc).

Why are there certain laws like "Zeus cant get to Persephone because she has clemency in the underworld" but other deities - including Leto, Demeter and others (like Perse's nymph family) can just stroll into Hades house? Why is Hermes still on house arrest? Why are Hades + Persephone throwing a house party when shes on trial for scythe crimes??!!!

Why are the gods bound by such petty squabbles?

The way RS set up the governing "laws" in universe just doesnt make a whole lotta sense. Also, sorry this got ramblely.  

5. Tbh i don’t think that Hades acting differently when he’s with Persephone is a bad thing, as a concept. But there are many issues with this such as the fact that Persephone is barely legal and Hades act like an actual child around her. Obviously when you’re with someone they are going to act different than they do when they are at work. The problem is that Hades essentially goes from the “cold-scary king” to a 17 year old hormonal boy when he’s with Persephone. And him making out with her in a middle of a store or them golfing with diamonds or him making out with Persephone again in front of his workplace is not exactly acceptable behaviour from a king. If Hades acts all lovey-dovey with Persephone when their at their home together it’s different, but when they’re at a public place they can’t really do that. I would say that he has to keep a status about him but from what we’ve seen all the citizens of the underworld hate him and don’t respect him at all, from yelling at him to actually fighting with him, so idk how much status there is actually attached to him 

6. I swear, the majority of the “cute” HxP moments in LO just seem like a single father dealing with his hyperactive 8 year old over the supposed future intimidating rulers who Rachel is obsessed about talking and drawing their sex life. Is it really that hard to depict Persephone even acting like a smart teenager at the very least, as opposed to an airhead grade schooler? It doesn’t scream cute to me, it seems more like a father/daughter relationship. It’s just weird. 

7. i mean, i have a LO oc who's persephone's brother (fertility god) between demeter and zeus. dude got thrown into tartyrus to cover up the affair and now serves cronus. he was the god of summer, and my reasoning was demeter's seasons/harvest + summer thunderstorms. wrote a whole minific i will never post about him and persephone realizing everyone around them are assholes and healing together. so the mistress-of-zeus oc isnt that weird.

8. I’m not a Zeus stan by any means, but I do find him one of the most interesting characters, and one that RS has, in her attempts to make him be the worst ever to make Hades look better, actually way more interesting and compelling than the majority of the cast. He doesn’t lie or whine to the audience he’s some good person like Hades when he’s not, he owns that he’s a dick and doesn’t bullshit the audience into thinking he’s someone he’s not. RS tries to show us he’s a “bad” king, yet we see no proof it beyond what, he wants to uphold the law P broke and doesnt kiss Hades’ butt? That’s not a bad king, it’s a good one that he doesn’t let family ties or lust cloud his judgement, unlike Hades or Hera, for example. I don’t condone his cheating either, but it’s not fair to hate him for it, but love it that Hades cheated on Minthe so he could get into a teenager’s skirt and praise Hera for sleeping with her brother in law while punishing Zeus’ mistresses because she’s being a fake “loyal” wife. Just because he’s a deeply flawed, even a bad person doesn’t make him a bad character. Hades and Hera and even Persephone are awful people who do worse than Zeus, yet they’re loved and praised for it, all while being written with the depth of a puddle. 

A thought about meaningful change

I don’t want to distract from the most recent thing Benn did. I’m going to be talking about several different things, and some might seem smaller than others: I know. I’m not saying that the newest thing isn’t important enough on its own or that everything’s on the same level. But I think patterns can be useful.

(I have also made myself sick with nerves a couple times so I’m posting this as is: sorry for typos, and while I’ll stand behind my ideas there may be some sentences that are a little long or awkwardly worded).

Back in 2015, Jame Benn and Tyler Seguin were doing a radio interview.

Some of you might be thinking, “You want to talk about THIS, AGAIN?” Yes. More of you are probably thinking, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Yeah, that’s what I want to talk about.

cw for discussions of sexual harassment, incest, homophobia, bullying, misogyny and transmisogyny, transphobia

So during this interview, one of the radio hosts asked Benn if he and his brother were ever road roommates. Benn said no, and the host commented that Henrik and Daniel Sedin probably roomed together.

“Well yeah…that’s the Sedins,” Seguin said.

“Who knows what else they do together?" Benn said. Everyone laughed.

“Seriously,” Seguin said.

"Dude, it's creepy," the radio hosts said, "In fact, it's a good example to future brothers in the NHL on how not to do things." Then they reassured Benn, “In no way am I implying that you have a Sedin-type vibe going about you.”

Benn and Seguin laughed. The conversation continued, calling the Sedins creepy for wearing similar facial hair, leaving nearby and spending too much time together.

When asked pointblank, “Are the Sedins weird?” Benn answered, “I don’t know. I can’t say.”

To finish the sentence he didn’t: he was implying that the Sedin brothers fuck each other.

Now, these were shock jockeys. They were almost certainly hoping Benn and Seguin would say something homophobic. That said, even shock jockeys pre-screen an interview. They’re not going to invite just anyone on the air and try this with them, because all it takes is someone saying, “I don’t know what you mean,” or “No, I actually respect Dan and Henke a lot as my colleagues” to ruin that set up. If a shock jockey thinks you’re a mark, you’ve probably said something off-air that made them think you’re a mark. And if they dug a pit in front of him, Benn is still the one who decided to stick his dick in it and make things overtly sexual.

After, the Stars stated that Benn had “reached out” the Sedins to apologize. Seguin did not reach out but was “included” in whatever Benn wrote or said. Neither of them gave a public explanation or apology. As far as I can tell the Sedins never commented on whether they received that message, what sort of apology it was, or whether they accepted it. Henrik Sedin’s only comment was, “I think it says more about them than it does about us.”

Ways that homophobia is working here:

-the idea that two men having any degree of physical or emotional closeness, even family members, is suspicious.

-Benn roomed with his brother. Course he did. The hosts spell out what he was afraid of: that the other men in the room might think he had the wrong vibe. He was so afraid of them thinking he had unmanly vulnerabilities like liking his own brother that he misrepresented the situation and pushed someone else forward.

-the idea that a man having any relationship to another man’s physical body or appearance, is suspicious.

Dressing or looking too similar to another man—which means you’ve paid attention to how another man’s body looks in order to copy him, like you’re trying to take ownership of his body, which = fucking him—is a really common accusation. Gay men are seen as lusting after and trying to copy other men’s real masculinity for themselves (but of course never quite succeeding). A man thinking that another man who he knows or suspects to be gay looks too similar to him, and so must have been watching and ‘copying’ him, is a common spark for homophobic attacks.

-the idea that any of this could have been a joke depends on the idea that two men having sex is wacky and unrealistic. Imagine if that happened, wouldn’t that be weird.

Now, someone might say, “It’s not that gay sex is wacky, it’s that the incest that is!” First, incest accounts for a lot of childhood sexual abuse, so I wouldn’t say it’s wacky either. And while it’s true that people can say awful things to different gender twins as well out of a combination of gender prejudices, in this case there were also homophobic ideas about men and masculinity at play.

Ways that power is working here:

-People forgot this fast. It was treated as settled because the Stars said it was settled. People gave “kudos” to Benn “doing the right thing” afterward, or for seeming to realize what was happening and not saying yes to the final question.

 I would argue that “I don’t know, I can’t say” is somehow a worse answer to a yes-or-no question, because it means that either you want to say yes but you’re scared of the consequences, or you sincerely don’t know what to say. All he had to do was say “No.” After he said “I don’t know,” Seguin continued and said, “They are weird.” If Benn had said, “No, actually they’ve been professional when I’ve worked with them and I won’t comment any more on their personal life,” Sequin might have noticed, and Benn might have encouraged him to change his behavior. Not saying “no” was a direct, demonstrable failure to show any kind of leadership.

-This counts as workplace sexual harassment. I’m not saying a case should have been pursued: that should have been at least partly up to the Sedins (although there should also be workplace rules about what is and isn’t acceptable without the victims having to ask for it). But that’s a word we can use for this, this could have been counted as that. Sexual harassment are actions based on a person’s gender, assigned sex, sexual activity, or other qualities related to sex, not just sexual attraction. I worry that often, conflicted feelings about putting people into the category of “Sexual Harasser” lead people to think that actions “aren’t bad enough” to be sexual harassment when they definitionally can be. In other lines of work, if you talk about your coworkers fucking their twins in the office, there are rules about that: at the very least, you’ll be getting a bunch of trainings and be moved to a part of the office where you won’t see them again.

In the NHL, it seems frighteningly clear that people don’t have recourse for sexual harassment. This was discussed and handled as a “childish insult”, not harassment against two coworkers/employees. Often, there’s a logic that something is just an insult, not a ‘real’ threat, because the person who did it couldn’t possibly be sexually attracted to the person they did it to.

-In 2015 Eric and Jordan Staal were living in identical houses outside Raleigh and ‘playing’ together every night. Seems super suspicious. Unless beefy Canadian boys’ behavior is normal, and European masculinity always has to be questioned as being softer-spoken, slimmer, more intellectual, scared of heavy hitting. There are a lot of reasons you might not call Eric Staal gay—maybe you know he’s bigger than you, more successful on Team Canada than you, more popular with the other Team Canada guys than you. Or maybe you just don’t look at him and think he could be gay. Or both. Eric is positioned so you’d have to punch up at him: Benn tried to position himself closer to that kind of social standing, by pushing someone else who already doesn’t quite fit in further out. This isn’t directly in the words, so I’m not all-out accusing them of xenophobia: what I mean is that it’s always worth asking if and how and why feminization is applied to Those Other People.

There’s the eating out thing. Which he sent to teammate Jason Demers, commenting “I feel like your (sic) the kind of guy who would”.

How misogyny is working here:

-the idea that this could have been funny or interesting or worth saying at all depends on the idea that vulvas are weird. Imagine if someone willing touched a cis woman with anything but their dick. Gosh.

-There’s no good explanation for what ‘the kind of guy who would’ was meant to mean. No one says, ‘Hey, do you do this widely mocked sex act? I don’t, but I think you would, and that’s cool and doesn’t affect your masculinity at all, bro, life is a rich tapestry.’

How power is working here:

-This counts as sexual harassment again. Even if asking a coworker (or really more like someone you shift-manage or who reports to you) ‘how do you fuck your partner?’ wasn’t, saying ‘you seem like you would do ___’ is. Again, I’m not saying that Demers has to feel that way about it, but he should have had options.

-Demers was also in a new relationship at the time, so this could be harassment to both him and his partner, who had no recourse when someone her partner has to work with/for comments on her body.

-I don’t think it was intended as sexual harassment. But there’s not really a nice explanation of what he meant to say. It seems like it was intended as an insult or a ‘warning’: ‘this is the way men are allowed and no allowed to be in our group, do you know your place?’

Around that time, the Stars shared a video of Benn, Seguin, and Valeri Nichushkin. Each were supposed to say a couple lines, including their name. Valeri pronounced his nickname ‘Vall’, with a native Russian accent, more like “Wall” in English. Each time Benn and Seguin laughed and questions him and the producer cut. After a couple takes Benn said, “I thought your name was ‘Val.’” 

Sequin physically turned away from Nichushkin and laughed. Nichushkin, not understanding the comment, and not laughing, turned to Benn for an explanation, but Benn only turned toward Seguin, both continuing to laugh.

It was part of a pattern of comments from observers: “If Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn are having a laugh in the locker room, Nichushkin can only guess what’s so funny.” They themselves commented on how “His English is really not good at all…A lot of times we find him just sitting there.” “(In) normal conversations, he doesn’t really know what’s going on.”

I’ll give them credit—they said they felt pity and “try to help” too. I just can’t find any examples of them doing it, compared to teammates like Sharp or Spezza who can more concretely describe spending time with him.

Nichushkin chose to burn contract time in the KHL rather than Dallas before being bought out, expressing that he no longer felt like he “belonged in the NHL.” He felt that the Stars didn’t “trust” in him, was “nervous” in the locker room, and said his family worried for his mental health because of the culture.

“There is a bit of it because I want to be part of the conversation when someone says something,” Nichushkin said. “But I don’t have enough words I know so I can join in.”

-Is it the worst xenophobia in the world? Nah. It’s not free from xenophobia, when the only joke is that someone speaks differently than you. It’s not Benn joking about his own misunderstanding to invite Nichushkin in. I often point to Tripp Tracy, who asks players to teach him words in their language and then sets up jokes about his accent so they can deliver the punchline and laugh with him.

-Is it bullying? It kind of came off like it, to make a joke about someone you know can’t understand. At least it was unnecessary, and unkind. It’s just reminding someone they don’t belong.

-It’s unimpressive. It’s deflecting. Oh, he doesn’t know what’s going on? What did you do to tell to him? My family communicate through a mix of finger-signing, Scrabble tiles, and interpretive dance: I guarantee you, if you can’t communicate concepts like “we’re going to get dinner now, you’re welcome here, we’re having fun!”, you’re not trying. Which is fine, I guess, you don’t have to talk to people, unless it’s like, your job to work with your teammates.

Wanting to ban trans*feminine athletes from competition is based on a complete misunderstanding of math, medicine, and athletics; it’s unnecessary, unethical, and unkind.

It’s an unsurprising continuation of the ideas that there’s a line between men and women and transgressing it is suspicious, that women are gross, that people who are different are shocking and funny, that social pressure can and should be used to remind people who are different that they don’t belong.

It’s a fascist use of power, which I don’t say to mean that “He is A Fascist in every sense,” but that those beliesf express a desire and a comfort with using power to control other people’s bodies, and which bodies have access to certain spaces, to maintain “purity”.

I’m not saying that anyone should have looked at any of these things and easily decided in that moment, “That’s it, he’s shouldn’t have a platform or power over other players, he’s irredeemable.” You might look at a couple of them and think, “That’s not even a problem at all.” I’ll agree to disagree on some of them, but my point is about a pattern of how this dude uses the power he’s given.

I have a phrase, or more a series of words I sometimes yell when I’m talking about subjects like this—“STRUCK A TIM HORTONS.” I shout this in commemoration of the time that Ryan O’Reilly got drunk and drove his pickup into the wall of a small town Ontario Timmies.

“Struck a Tim Hortons” is a very good phrase to read in a police report. And, also, I’m an ACoA. I’ve experienced impaired driving, I’m terrified to shaking of it, and I know that other people have experienced much worse consequences. This isn’t a perfect metaphor (it’s not an example of prejudice or violence against a class of people, etc) but my point is that I try to hold it in my heart because that’s one case where I know what it’s like to really, really want something to just be NBD. Where part of me wants to just think it was a funny mistake so I don’t have to really think about the serious implications of it, and part of me super doesn’t. I have an instinct to resolve those feelings, to come down and decide that it’s either insignificant enough that I don’t have to think about it, or significant enough that I can hate him and then also stop thinking about it, and then I can have the relief of feeling just one feeling at a time.

I don’t think it’s bad to feel conflicted learning something about someone. I think it’s important.

But the problem is that if one thing isn’t significant enough, and we decide to keep thinking someone is fundamentally Good, we often toss that thing out. So when another thing happens, we only look at the new thing, trying to decide: is this enough? And that next thing might not be enough either. So we can go on and on, until you add up to a lot of things that have each done some harm, but none of them have been enough to change how we see and talk about someone.

Now I, personally, decided that the Timmies wasn’t so bad that ROR couldn’t ever make it up to me. But I didn’t decide to feel fine about it: I tried to just put a pin in how conflicted I felt. It’s been years, and over the years I think his actions have showed meaningful change. He hasn’t struck a Starbucks, a Dunkin, or even a Caribou. There’s a pattern.

I think a lot of people who don’t really like the things Benn says or does or believes have given him a lot of chances to make up for them, because they don’t want him to really mean those things. By which I really mean that I know there are a lot of women and queer fans who liked the guy. I get it (I don’t actually get it get it, but I mean I can try to understand people coming from a very different place than I do about him). 

I’ve read a lot of ways that people who are themselves vulnerable in our society try to empathize with him by imagining him as vulnerable too--he’s also experienced fatphobia, homophobia, he wasn’t expected to succeed, etc! I think that’s a wonderfully human instinct. But often I think people have more empathy for those experiences than he expresses for himself--he agrees that it was Bad to be fat and he’s Worked Hard to fit into the masculine norm, he agrees that it’s Bad to be close with another man and works to avoid it--and certainly more than he has showed in his actions toward others. If you’re going to say I hate him for saying that, I don’t--I want him and everyone in our society not to feel and do this shit!

I see a lot of people starting from the idea he is a good leader trying really hard to spin his choices as a smart strategy when he plays dumb with media, when he doesn’t give specific action plans or give public statements or apologies. (I actually agree with the first one, I think it is a strategy for him to avoid transparency and not do a part of his job that he doesn’t want to do.) It just…it seems like a lot of work to reach a pre-determined goal. It’s okay to like someone and for them to still not be good at their jobs! When I say I think a guy’s not a good leader, that’s not always the same as saying he’s a bad person. And if we keep on promoting a guy as a good leader because we like them regardless of their demonstrated leadership skills…that’s how we end up with a lot of shitty policies in the NHL.

Over the years he has consistently avoided stepping up to his captaincy and using his personal power to say things like, “No,” “Tyler, cut it out,” “This is what I’m going to do to fix a problem,” or “I believe in…” anything, really. 

I really, really want to ask people to be mad as hell and advocate for the NHL to improve its code of conduct and harassment processes. I do. But I’m also tired. I don’t think, if I did ask you that, it would work. I don’t have an argument for why you should be mad at someone who’s mad at my existence. I’m not trying. I just want to encourage you, if you’re feeling the tug of feelings and just want to be able to simplify someone’s behavior and love them in simple terms, to put a pin in the more complicated parts, and remember them the next time, and look for patterns.

attractiveness and morality - or how people think with their metaphorical dicks instead of their brains

people are fucking horny over the villain characters in bleach, i mean specifically the male ones because as we know the female villains are nonexistent lol. but it’s not hard to see how attractive the male characters are even though i just refuse to acknowledge men unless i have too.

however, there is an issue with how we perceive the characters based on how attractive they actually are, more along the lines of how people will excuse any offensive behavior based on physical attractiveness

the convicts oops i mean examples

there are a few examples i can name like popular male villains that people lose their shit over.

aizen is the big one, where despite the crimes he has committed, such as emotional manipulation, attempting to wipe out a whole town, murders, and hollowfying his colleagues and getting away with it. yet, he is sympathized, especially over Tousen who tends to be more villainized by the fandom or at least held in a less favorable regard.

Gin is in the same boat, with the emotional manipulation and general emotional harm inflicted on multiple people but is sympathizes because uwu he loves rangiku even though he did cause her harm, simply because he betrayed her and hurt her friends and colleagues.

Ulquiorra is another very notable one, since he also has that whole manipulation thing although not as blatant as aizen. he did kidnap a minor and abuse her (isolating her, threatens her and her friends, and it is used to control her/keep her in captivity).

Grimmjow is another example, and its especially notable because he’s just very very violent. And he never apologizes or feels remorse for it, despite generally terrorizing Ichigo and co.

Nn*itra is especially reprehensible, he is overtly sexist, as most of his violent acts are targeted at women and uh. actively saying he hates women. creepy (implied sexual) behavior towards a minor as well.

Szayel as well, he has no regard for his minions, and then theres whatever he did to nemu what the fuck that was so fucked what the fuck.

notably, these men are also wildly popular among the fandom. they will have the most fanart, most discussion, most fics i guess. 

why do horny fucks sympathize with them

people empathize with people they see as attractive, and i mean conventional attractiveness. note how none of this empathy extends to people who do not fall in the category as attractive (often pale side eyes) hunk/twink. does zommari get that attention? yammy? why are they not held to the same standard as say szayel/gin or grimmjow. yammy is also angry and prone to violence, much like grimmjow.

what sets them apart is that they are not deemed sexually attractive so therefore, their flaws become easier to ignore and they arent sympathized as much. of course, kubo probably did inadvertently create this problem, seeing as theres a discrepancy in creating a complex character. another example of this is the comparison between byakuya and omaeda. of course, they are obviously different characters, byakuya has more development and screentime. however they are similar in that they are wealthy, in high positions of power, and look down on people they deem inferior for a variety of reasons. byakuya, however, is conventionally attractive and also has screentime. that being said there is an underlying issue of fatphobia as well in reducing omaeda to a comic relief character.

people empathize with attractive people or at least favor them. “People more strongly desire to form or maintain bonds with physically attractive partners relative to unattractive partners—an attractiveness-based affiliation effect (Path B). In turn, through projection, attractive partners are perceived to possess attributes that are compatible with these goals, which largely center on their reciprocation of interest in establishing or maintaining close relationships (Path C).”  this is indicated by the halo effect, “the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas“ which also applies to beauty and how attractiveness impacts how one recognizes a person. for example, an attractive person will often be associated with positive traits such as compassion, intelligence, and other desirable traits. it could be things like how appearing well groomed heightens others perception of you, how you will appear responsible and capable.

and this does extend to the villains. aizen is viewed as a tragic villain who fights for injustice or something like that. gin is a tragic antihero i think that did everything for his true love tm. ulquiorra is a tragic villain who does not understand love. grimmjow is grimmjow. nn*itra is somehow tragic with an inferiority complex lmao take that fucking L bug boyyy loser. and szayel... exists. see how fanon interprets these characters despite none of them having any remorse for what they have done. the fandom leaps to provide a justification or rational for their actions no matter how abhorrent they are. yammy and zommari are still held as villains, yet they are not sympathized with in the slightest nor are beloved to that extent. compare the sexualization of these men and the amount of sympathy garnered from the fandom. 

why this matters

its no secret that in online spaces especially, offenders are romanticized or at least sympathized. take the true crime community for example, in which case male serial killers were romanticized despite the atrocities they have committed. and this is linked to the “bad boy” trope that is prevalent in romance novels, where a troubled or dangerous man seems like a desirable partner despite stalking their love interest among other crimes. of course, this also gets a bad rep from wattpad ya books and just ya books in general.

there are examples of this trope. i have vaguely alluded to edward from twilight. there is also the cause of that white guy from 50 shades of gray, which is most known for romanticizing abuse but the audience cannot help but be allured by his white guyness or something/ there is the netflix film “you” where a man stalks a women but it is seen as romantic and people find themselves attracted to joe despite his violence. literally this type of behavior:

there’s ted bundy film and how people raved about how hot he was despite him being an absolute monster and having real victims whos family have to live with the fact that people find their family member’s killer hot. it is this in its absolute extreme, where people are fully aware of their crimes but still find sympathy or attraction towards a criminal. in this case it is the gradual romanticization of violence that may creep up. i cannot assuredly claim that there is a strong correlation between finding villains attractive and romanticizing violence but there can be some indication of this.

and this view of how attractiveness can bleed into criminal court. of course, there are other factors such as gender, sexuality, age of judges and the inherent corruption within the legal system. here is a list of studies about this topic because christ i am not copy and pasting all of that go read it yourself.  but the main takeway is that in mock jurors and other public opinion, the more attractive defendants accused of crimes have less severe sentences or even less sentences (however this is not seen as frequently in judges). it shows that there is a level of sympathy, leniency, or more compassion towards attractive people. 

Conclusion

the point being made here is that attractiveness affects how one sees a person. yes, it is possible to find villains attractive, however the bias of physical attractiveness and actual character can potentially be dangerous if left unchecked. this is not exactly a call to action or a psa because a) i am fully aware that this fandom is horny to the point of brainrot and that it is incurable and b) this is just an analysis on behavior in the fandom. and i am aware that the studies are cishet in nature and are not indicative of the fandom as a whole seeing as there are a fair amount of lgbt people in this fandom. that being said, my point still stands.

Contextual ads can save media

The mainstay of online advertising is "behavioral advertising" in which ads are placed based on dossiers of your activity and preferences that have been compiled by Big Tech giants and shadowy data-brokers. The cornerstone of behavioral advertising is "real-time auctions": when you request a web-page, its publisher fetches your cookie, correlates that with your identity in multiple databases, then offers the chance to advertise to you to several (dozens, sometimes more) brokers. That's how you end up with creepy, "retargeted" ads that follow you around the web after you search for a specific kind of information, say, on erectile dysfunction: you get a tag called "person interested in boners" and that attracts bids from boner-pill vendors. All of that is reasonably well-known, as are the surveillance consequences of it. But what's less well-known, and just as important, is what happens to the LOSERS of the realtime auctions when you visit a site. Say you visit the Washington Post. Dozens of brokers bid on the chance to advertise to you. All but one of them loses the auction. But every one of those losers gets to add a tag to its dossier on you: "Washington Post reader." Advertising on the Washington Post is expensive. "Washington Post reader" is a valuable category unto itself: a lot of blue-chip firms will draw up marketing plans that say, "Make sure we tell Washington Post readers about this product!" Here's the thing: the companies want to advertise to Washington Post READERS, but they don't care about advertising IN THE WASHINGTON POST. And now there are dozens of auction "losers" who can sell the right to advertise to you, as a Post reader, when you visit cheaper sites. When you click through one of those dreadful "Here's 22 reasons to put a rubber band on your hotel room's door handle" websites, every one of those 22 pages can be sold to advertisers who want to reach Post readers, at a fraction of what the Post charges. Every website that includes behavioral advertising realtime auctions is slowly eroding its own rate-card, making it possible to target its readers somewhere else. When we talk about the death of "display advertising" (where, say, Ford buys a month of banners on a site), we correctly blame behavioral ads, but the story we tell about those ads is wrong. It usually goes, "Ford has figured out how to target car-shoppers without paying top dollar to prestige venues like the Washington Post." But what's ALSO happening is "Ford has figured out how to advertise to Washington Post readers without paying Washington Post rates." Behavioral ads grew up with Big Tech and its mass surveillance. Data-brokers make crazy claims for how well their targeting works in "conversions" - that is, turning ads into sales. But these are obviously self-serving claims. The ad industry's core competency isn't selling advertisers' products to consumers: it's selling advertising services to advertisers. Moving product is a good way to do that, but so is bullshitting in ways that drive up payments. Meanwhile, there is another method for placing ads, one that is decidedly technologically enabled, unique to the digital world, with fewer middle-men skimming the cream and no erosion of your rate-card: Contextual advertising. That's when publishers sell off the right to advertise to you based on the subject of the article you're reading, your location (based on your IP address) and other metadata, like which browser and OS you're using. Contextual advertising converts at very nearly the same rate as behavioral advertising, and just as well as behavioral ads for some categories of goods and services: https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/WEIS_2019_paper_38.pdf And - once again - any short-term losses from contextual ads are more than offset by averting the  long-term death-spiral of by behavioral ads, in which parasites chase the cheapest possible content, earning ad revenues by targeting readers of better publications. Contextual ads are gaining ground, thanks, in part, to laws like the GDPR, which have simultaneously made it harder to do behavioral advertising, AND imposed compliance burdens that wiped out most of Europe's smaller ad-tech firms, leaving US tech giants in control. Last year, the New York Times ditched most of its programmatic behavioral ads: https://www.adexchanger.com/publishers/new-york-times-will-pull-programmatic-ads-from-mobile-app-next-year/ Now, the Netherlands's public broadcaster NPO has done the same, ditching Google Ad Manager for a new custom contextual ad system it commissioned from the Dutch company Ortec. https://www.wired.com/story/can-killing-cookies-save-journalism/ They've since experimented with major advertisers like Amex and found little to no difference between context ads and behavioral ads when it comes to conversions. And, thanks to the GDPR (which requires affirmative opt-in for behvioral ads), these context ads reach far more readers. The result is a massive increase in revenues: up 62% in Jan and 79% in Feb, year-on-year. And they're keeping that money, rather than giving a 50% vig to useless, creepy, spying ad-tech middlemen. Ads often pay the bills of the people who make the things you love. But ad-tech? That pays the bills of the people who are destroying the things you love. Technologies like EFF's Privacy Badger block trackers (protecting your privacy and publications' rate-cards), but not ads (provided they don't track). Ultimately, this needs systemic, not individual solutions (a US federal privacy bill with a private right of action!). But while we're waiting for a systemic solution, Privacy Badger and other tracker-blockers can help weight the scales in favor of context ads instead of behavioral ones.

this post is for any swiftie who is on the fence about this, or anyone who has heard about kaylor for the first time. please allow me a few minutes of your time.. pretty please with a cherry on top? i see you. ready to scroll past this. please. in this moment. please. give it a read. two years ago i was right where you were. please look this time. it is so important to what is going on now and taylor needs you to understand fully about scooter.

we are at a turning point. taylor’s life’s work was just bought up by scooter braun and it is important for everyone to read this perspective because as swifties we have to understand the full gravity of the situation in order to best defend taylor against her worst nightmare. you may think the kimye situation is terrible enough, but add to it this:

Scooter has been a manager for a one joshua kushner for the better part of this decade. as in, the brother of the guy who is running major arms of our whitehouse without qualification. scooter’s job is to improve his client’s image as it relates to securing foreign investments as josh is a uh.... ‘venture capitalist’ in charge of investing his family’s assets. if you’ve been looking into scooter, go ahead and look into him too.

josh started being seen with then 19 year old (think about that) rising star karlie kloss. considering the amount of push in tabloids that this otherwise nobody started getting, these two are easily identifiable as a PR relationship. he does work with many overseas investors, and karlie helps bring them in where josh alone cannot (please take the time to look up about PR relationships and how common they are. also look up ‘bearding’ and how common it is to set up a PR relationship so that a manager can better mask who a client loves, should that be problematic to a target demographic)

taylor and karlie were formally introduced to one another at the end of 2013. they became best best friends. inseparable. seen together everywhere. anytime they are together their happiness is palpable.

did you know there was a slice of pavement in new york city by where karlie lives with the initials TS♡KK engraved? they were thick as thieves!

i am not going to ask you to believe taylor and karlie dated one another. and if you believe that, i’m not going to ask you to believe they are still together. as for the first point, well, the visual history between them (and between taylor and other women integral to her life story) is overwhelming and if you would like to look at what i feel are the most straightforward stuff browse my blog @kaylorwelcomecenter and beyond.

but i digress. let’s assume taylor and karlie were just best best friends, then

...well, okay, they got caught kissing (we think that’s what Dancing With Our Hands Tied is about). but let’s say they were drunk? regardless, the smiles don’t lie—i think it goes without saying that taylor and karlie were important to one another. karlie influenced taylor to stay in new york, for example, instead of moving to london. karlie changed the trajectory of taylor’s life.

and you know they meant the world to one another because of songs with specific lyrics pointing to that like You Are In Love (taylor had an instagram post of her and karlie road tripping at big sur with the caption ‘on the way home’), and on reputation with songs like King Of My Heart (‘drinking beer out of plastic cups’ ... google “taylor swift beer” and see what photos come up), and Dress (watch her perform it with karlie watching, as she sings “i don’t want you like a best friend”).

karlie signed with scooter and in 2016 trump assumed office. jared kushner suddenly represents our nation. from then til now karlie has grown further and further distant from taylor as her relationship with jared’s brother continues.

that pavement? construction happened and the TS was mysteriously cut out and replaced with a J along with the freshly laid concrete.

rep tour starts and includes the song “don’t take the money” by jack antonoff in the preshow playlist. please listen to that song.

karlie announces her engagement to josh and the very next concert taylor sings Curious with hayley kiyoko and is in charge of the line “calling me up so late at night are we just friends? say you wanted me but you’re sleeping with him.”

the only time they are seen in public is at the nashville concert in august, and there is a photo of karlie celebrating her bachelorette with her sisters. strange that the same ambience of the photo down to the curly pink straw was replicated in You Need To Calm Down. karlie’s straw says ‘bride’ while taylor chose the word ‘lover’

after passing through karlie’s hometown, taylor sang “Speak Now” and was shaking with electricity in her delivery.

taylor comes out as a democrat. says something compelled her in the past two years to start speaking out.

karlie and josh suddenly hold a surprise wedding (coordinated by scooter’s team) while taylor is en route to australia. i say surprise because it came out of nowhere, (wouldn’t you say it took taylor by surprise?) had close to nobody documented in attendance, and the tabloid articles pushed it constantly during the bad press the kushners were getting in conjunction to ... world events involving a us citizen that was a member of the press...

taylor lands in oceania and sings I Knew You Were Trouble and slips in a firey “and the saddest fear comes creeping in that she never loved me”

on the very last night of the rep tour, a kaylor sign (representing the pavement mark) gets put up on the big screen as taylor sings “you belong with me” and bows in front of it.

in between then and the lover announcement, taylor all but confirms that half of one of the reputation concept photos is a collage of her and karlie’s eyes. ...i mean, she even encircled which eye is hers on the lover album cover 😂

because their first wedding was such a drag, karlie and josh held a ‘bigger reception,’ also coordinated by scooter’s team, and they had the audacity to give out shots of patrón as party favors 😡 taylor is not in attendance.

now scooter buys her music??

not only is this guy responsible for bad behavior surrounding kimye, he also has orchestrated the obliteration of one of the foundational relationships of taylor’s life. whether it was platonic or more than that, i don’t want to waste my time convincing you because either way, hearing scooter’s name makes taylor cry. and i am a thousand three hundred percent positive that it isn’t just about bullying surrounding kimye.

think about that. think on it.

we need to support taylor (and god am i worried about karlie in her own right!) and it goes beyond the kimye drama because this man and his client are predatory and downright creepy. and given the political connection? dangerous. they ruined her reputation and took away her best friend. literally took her name out of the pavement and ‘married’ her friend off in the eyes of the public. this goes far f*ing beyond bad management practices. this is so unforgivable.

and i cannot stand for people jumping in the comments telling us we are all delusional. honest to god i thought this was all ‘a reach’ two years ago. i was there. but i gave things the benefit of the doubt and i looked into it. i did my research on the music industry, and on hollywood and PR relationships. taylor wanted us to get political, right? please take this a step further if you already haven’t and look into the structures that control our society. taylor is dropping easter eggs for us, right? we need to look for clues. taylor is drawing attention to LGBT issues, right? look at the intersection of that and the music industry, suspend disbelief for one instant and imagine if taylor herself was gay, what her relationship with karlie may have meant to her, and how it was torn apart, at the very hands of the men who took over her music.

i am being serious. people calling us delusional might like to tout themselves as being sane or more in touch with the world, but they are literally sticking their heads in the sand on this one and turning a blind eye on something that is so cutting for taylor... now and over the course of her whole career. and each and every one of them best get off anon and stick a name to their words and proudly stick a pin to their comments, and @ taylor (i am dead serious. at your words to @taylorswift) if they are oh so confident, because when this blows open they’ll be on the wrong side of history on this one and i want them to know it and own it and learn from it. because this a huge life lesson and we are poised to take what we learn and give back to our idol by defending her in full force and it’s harder to fight when you’re sitting on your hands.. what role are you going to play? please... make the jump.

Valid paranoia

**Disclaimer: I am not stereotyping or putting down autistic people or those with other mental conditions at all, I am only giving examples of some struggles I’ve had with certain individuals.**

I’m not going to pretend that I’m totally stable or better than anyone else, but I have had this blog for 10 years now with almost 900 followers. Because it is a public display of my writings and photography, I cannot control who views it. And unfortunately I have been stalked.

The first instance was in real life with cops and courts involved and I have never been able to hide my blog from that person for the aforementioned reasons. So that is reason enough for paranoia, but then there’s these people online that have repeatedly messaged me on dating sites, including one guy that saw me in person and confronted me. My best friends have said “why though, you’re not that great?” and I am NOT offended by them saying that because it’s true. I’m not a celebrity I’m an average hick with a rather grubby history. But another friend I had said it’s because I’m “confident” and then one of the digital stalkers said my “confidence” made him obsessed with me. His obsession going far beyond demanding dates on every new profile he makes but also threats of physical harm and calling me a c*nt.

So, yes, I am a ball of arrogance (confidence) but no means no and these people fixate on others largely due to mental illness it seems. Throughout life I have had unpleasant run-ins with people diagnosed with bipolar disorder for instance. One coworker would want to hug you one day and the next she would glare at you with hate for no reason. It’s scary. And I would never judge anyone for being mentally ill but when you become predatory and violent I will judge your actions.

A huge part of the problem is people with serious mental disorders refuse to take meds and accept their behavior as normal to them or being “okay.” This ranges from energetic mania where they obsessively do art or whatnot to smashing their car into a wall, no exaggeration. I had a neighbor that did that due to some issue he had. The guy babbled really really fast and eventually ended up hospitalized. It’s sad. Again, I got my own head shit, but if I started to do reckless things and endanger myself and others, that’s where the line is drawn.

Anyway, most of these people have made multiple new profiles to harass me on dating sites, and yes, my blog here. That is why I rarely respond to private messages, I’m cautious of people making too many attention-seeking comments, and blogs with no image of the user creep me out. On top of the fact that I want nothing to do with these predators, any form of attention gratifies them, even threatening to call the police. That is why I am paranoid. This morning I just blocked the 2nd account of a person pretending to be Morgan Wallen. I think I mentioned being a fan of his music a while back, before he got in trouble for saying the N-word which I obviously do not condone. I think I last mentioned that artist last year? So last week I get added by a fan blog based around him and the person messaged me, saying they were him. I said “okay, sure, send me a selfie holding the peace sign” and he said he was too good for that. I laughed and blocked him (or her). Today, same shit.

People that obsess with celebrities or impersonate them have mental problems obviously, so is this some random that just seeks attention, or one of the creepos I’ve blocked dozens of times? The fact that it’s based on Morgan Wallen who is currently being boycotted makes me think it was designed for me, but if others are being added by “Morgan Wallen Official” or whatever, please report and block.

It’s not just manic disorders, or whatever you want to label them, but I’ve struggled with the socially inept (stunted upbringings?) and those with autism. The last autistic person I was around worked, drove, and appeared mostly normal but would break down into a humming, rocking, crying, and yelling mess in a split second. Like are you okay? Are you going to calm down? Or are you going to smack me and not even know you’re doing it? :(

I was friends with a guy online for years; all of my online friends are platonic unless otherwise mentioned (such as an ex). He had seemingly mild autism and worked, drank, and paid his bills. I opened up to him about my life and valued our friendship but one night I lost some meds, they had rolled under my bed. I freaked out because you can’t easily replace prescriptions, especially since I was paying out of pocket at the time. I told him I was freaked the fuck out and he said “I love you.”

Well that freaked me out even more, but I just said I did not share those feelings, sorry. I tried to put that aside but things felt creepy after that because I think I was one of his only friends despite being an online person he’d never met.

Shortly after that I posted on my FaceBook page that it was my birthday, was some 18 year old going to eat my ass out? On my private FB I often post crude things because it’s people I know that get my sense of humor. Sadly on my blog here and other formats I can’t make sexual jokes or men assume I’ll sleep with anybody (yay for shaming women for their sexuality). The autistic guy messaged me later saying “I’d eat your ass out.” I told him I was through and blocked him on all formats. He had already started being too attentive and that comment was the end for me. That shit literally makes me cringe. WHEN SOMEONE DOESN’T WANT YOU, ACCEPT IT.

Since then, which was like 3 years ago, he’s messaged me on a dating site and then another place where he said “I know you hate me” and asked me to talk. I don’t hate him, I think a better word would be “fear.” I think he may stalk my blog here as well, but like I said, boundaries have to be drawn, we can’t just feel sorry for someone because they have a mental condition. I have the right to feel uncomfortable around someone and I have the right to cut them off.

Stay safe my people.

This is not going to be the end of MeToo

A dream is floating around the heads of Dirtbag Leftists. A beautiful, wonderful dream… A Biden nomination, and especially a Biden presidency, has shown the MeToo movement for what it really is: a collection of amoral careerists cynically, arbitrarily exploiting sexual assault claims to raise their own professional status and settle personal scores. The movement is ideologically bankrupt, monstrously hypocritical, and utterly unconcerned with helping vulnerable people. Everyone paying attention must now admit to this, and, once admitted to, the hags and scolds will no longer wield so much power, and will lose their ability to wreck actual leftist movements with specious accusations regarding finger wags and epigenetic trauma.

Oh lord, how lovely this would be.

Take this quote from Felix Biederman of Chapo Trap House, who says that a Biden presidency

would eviscerate the liberal media identity politics industrial complex. Because Biden-World has no use for those people. Like, Democrats just spent a week going “Don’t call it the Chinese virus.” Then Joe comes out there and he’s like “we’re gonna send them back, Jack.” [ . . . ] Someone was saying this entire primary was a referendum against Bernie and his ideas, (and depending on how much of a fucking loser you are [a referendum] on a podcast you don’t like). If that’s true, isn’t also true that this is a referendum on everything the liberal media has lectured everyone about since 2014? Doesn’t this prove that no one cares about that shit? Biden’s a complete refutation of all of that.

Biederman is one of the funniest and most astute political observers of our time. His observations here are correct from a moral standpoint. He is also correct from a “describing reality” standpoint. But he is not taking into account the degree that MeToo is and has always been propelled by cynical careerism.

The general consensus is that the arbitrary weaponization of MeToo is now so plainly obvious that anyone sharper than, say, Sady Doyle must recognize that and will have to account for it. For this to happen, however, we have to assume the MeToo’s purveyors are at all concerned with not coming across as amoral hypocrites. And let me tell you—I know a lot of these people, I have sat with them in classes, I have gone to their conferences, I am deeply immersed in their culture. They have no capacity for shame and even less for self-awareness. They don’t care if the entire world thinks them to be hypocrites—if anything, the scorn of outsiders only increases their self-certainty.

This has all been obvious since day one, and not just to cranks like myself. Call it the Law of Zero Tolerance: the more draconian a policy is, the more arbitrarily it’s going to be enforced. More conscientious writers are now insisting that MeToo has always been a humble call for authorities to be less skeptical toward sexual assault accusations, and for men on the whole to be more aware of how their behaviors can harm women. This is very reasonable-seeming. It’s also absolutely not how MeToo was handled. The hashtag was #BelieveWomen. It wasn’t #BeLessSkeptical. The formal line—stated explicitly, as clear as could be—is that men needed to be punished, that false or incorrect accusations were absolutely fine, that any and all allegations were abject and absolute proof of guilt, and that no matter how implausible or trivial or even physically impossible an accusation was, the accused always—always—deserved punishment.

Such a terrifying dynamic obviously could not be fully enforced—society would collapse. It has instead only gained traction in arenas that were already relatively equalitarian and liberal-minded: education, academe, media, and left-liberal politics. It was not intended to make these spaces more equitable; it was instead a means for women of gaining leverage within these spaces. That’s it. And because it’s always solely been an attempt to shift power dynamics, criticism has always been met with vicious resistance. As I’ve said: lots and lots of people have been aware of the movement’s cynicism since the beginning. Men and women have talked to me in private about it for over a half decade now. But they keep their mouths shut in public spaces because they realize that every neurotic shitty woman around them has now been gifted the power of the creepy kid from the old Twlight Zone episode who could wish bad people into the corn field. All they have to do is declare you a very bad man (or a very bad ally) and that’s it, your career is fucked.

No matter how mild, respectful, or thorough a person’s criticism may be, uttering a single word against MeToo renders one persona non grata within liberal spaces. Trust me, plenty of people have wanted to push back, but they kept their mouths shut because they valued their jobs. More people will want to push back now, probably, but the dynamic is still in place: shitheads have a new means of achieving power and prominence, and now that they’ve achieved success they have no reasons to suddenly start being decent.

Our society is designed to reward cynical liars. The less principles you have, the more shameless you are, the easier it is for you to succeed. The shitheads who have floated to the top of the MeToo heap are now even more insulated from scrutiny than they were before. And, trust me, none of them are going to give up a hint of power. They’re not gonna admit they were wrong or dishonest, that’s for damn sure. Instead, as the stakes have gotten higher and the landscape is growing even more austere, they’re going to double down. Bad faith will rule us all until the final collapse hits.

The winter of 1969...

There came a knock at the attic door, and all three brides--Priscilla, Emily, and Constance--looked up from what they were doing. (Needle point, reading, and solitaire, respectively.) The trio of women glanced at one another in silent debate. It was finally the eldest, Priscilla, who got up to answer it.

Priscilla was one of the key reasons people feared the attic. With her gaunt, skeletal form, she looked more corpse than spirit. Emily and Constance had yet to make their appearances public, at least on the guest tours.

"If it isn't my favorite bevy of brides! Good evening, ladies," Dorian Gracey greeted. "May I come in?"

Priscilla turned to the others. They shrugged, so she stepped aside.

"Thank you, m'dear." He slipped in, giving a grateful bob of his head as he did so.

Over the last few months since the Haunted Mansion's opening, the young master of the house was slowly becoming less of an enigma. It was no secret he wasn't overly fond of the mortals "traipsing about his ancestral home," but he was becoming used to the idea. He'd appointed himself an ambassador, not only around the Mansion, but with the other denizens of Disneyland as well.

Emily stood up, putting aside her novel. "What brings you here, Master Gracey?"

"Dorian, please," he corrected with a smile. Then he reached into his jacket, pulled out some envelopes, and began to hand them out. "I'm inviting everyone to The Haunted Mansion's first Solstice Shindig! I know it's been a rough start these last few months, putting on a show for people, sharing a home with so... so many ... complete, utter strangers, and... ugh. Anyway! I thought this would be a great way to get to know one another. We'll have party games, dancing, story telling..."

Trailing off, he watched Constance, who was reading her invitation with a frown.

"I'm... I'm actually wanted?" she asked. She knew her reputation around the house. Most had heard of her murderous past, or caught the whispers of hearsay. The Ghost Host was adamant she not be visible to guests, and she was to be on her best behavior, lest she be given the boot.

"Of course, m'dear. You're a member of this household, after all." His smile twitched. "Um, I wasn't sure about them, though..." He gestured to a quintet of wedding photos, all of which were of her and her various grooms. "I mean, I wasn't sure if they're actually here, or if those are just photographs..."

A groom turned his face to look at him.

"Oh, hi." Dorian waggled a finger gun at him and clicked his tongue. "How's it going?"

As the other two brides giggled and started planning their night, Constance sat back down on her trunk, staring at the invitation, chin in her hand, and debated going.

She didn't like leaving the attic, cramped as it was; too much judgment to be found downstairs. She got along well enough with the other two women, she supposed. If anything, there was a quiet tolerance, but there wasn't a strong sense of friendship. Maybe she would have fun, and make a friend or two.

A new year to make a new start.

One of her former husbands was sticking his tongue out at her. She put his picture face down.

***

The ballroom was full of ghosts laughing and dancing and conversing. No one was talking to her, though, but she'd expected that. So she sat at the table, empty seats on either side of her. There weren't many spirits like her in the mansion, none with such a checkered past, save for maybe Bluebeard and Captain Gore. No one had ever seen them, however, and she wouldn't engage women-hating pirates in a conversation, anyway.

She gazed down into her glass of punch, still not drinking any after twenty minutes of holding it. A piece of lemon was bobbing on the surface, like a dismembered appendage in a pool of blood...

See, this is why no one talks to you! Psychopath!

She shook her head, mind made up she'd retire early, when someone plopped down next to her. Constance turned to see big, blue eyes, and an even bigger smile. They were framed by loosely wound buns, one on each side of the woman's oval face and one on top of her head. An... interesting hairstyle, to say the least.

"Hi! I haven't seen you around." She held out a gloved hand to shake. Constance hesitantly took it. Her grip was stronger than it seemed.

"I'm Sarah Slater, but everyone calls me Sally."

"Constance... Hatchaway."

"Nice to meet you, Miss Hatchaway!'

"You can... You can call me Connie." Her cheeks burned. No one called her "Connie." She'd never once suggested it before. Maybe it was Sally's melodic southern twang, or that pretty smile, but she wanted this conversation to keep going. "I stay up in the attic. With the other brides." She ventured a sip of her punch. It wasn't bad.

"Oh. I know how that is. I'm in the portrait gallery, the little round one..." She deepened her voice. "With no windows and no doors, ha ha ha!" In her normal voice, she added, "I'm usually..." She struck a pose, lips tight, eyelids drooped, and hands held as if she clutched something, (a parasol, Constance quickly realized). "All day, in my painting. Just me and Nathaniel."

Constance tried to hide the twinge of disappointment she suddenly felt. "Nathaniel?"

"He's my pet alligator. I didn't bring him tonight. Scares the others too much."

Constance let out a tiny sigh of relief. "They're just cowards. Not everyone can have a dog, you know."

Sally giggled at that. "And especially not a dog that ate them. He didn't mean it, though. I shouldn't have set up that flimsy rope over his pond."

Chatter and cheers caused both women to turn and look at the center of the ballroom. There stood Dorian with a spotlight shining on him. On top of his head, he was balancing a pyramid of three full martini glasses. A row of a half-dozen lined each arm from shoulder to wrist, and he was trying to sip out of one while not spilling any of the others.

Sally rolled her eyes. "To think I was once engaged to that."

"Ew," Constance teased. "Why?"

Sally gave her shoulder a playful push with her fingertips. "It was this... sham thing we agreed upon, to keep our families from bothering us. You know how it was back then."

Constance nodded. Forced courtships, arranged marriages, not knowing what kind of man your husband was until the honeymoon... It was part and parcel to being a woman, especially in those days. She tried not to ponder how much the mortal world had changed since her death. Maybe if she were alive now, she wouldn't have done what she did...

"He's a sweetheart, really," Sally continued.

They were interrupted by applause and saw that not only had he finished his drink, he was going to try to down the others.

"But lordy is he an idiot." The two shared a laugh at that.

Suddenly, the spotlight-- its origins still supernatural and unknown-- was on Sally.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen," the Ghost Host's voice flowed through the ballroom, "our own bewitching ballerina, Miss Sally Slater, will dazzle us with a dance from 'The Nutcracker Suite.'"

"Oop, I'm up." Sally sprang from her chair. "Wish me luck, darlin'!"

Constance gave a tiny wave. "Break a leg."

The music started, courtesy of the graveyard minstrels and the organist. Sally was practically glowing, not only from the reflections of sparkling tinsel and candles, but an inner joy that poured outward from her as she twirled and leapt and twisted.

Being what and who they were, it was still a macabre presentation, but an eerily beautiful one. Her torso, which had been separated from her hips at death, spun independently, so her top half went clockwise while her legs went counter. Arms could spin all the way around at the shoulder, as if she really were a windup toy princess.

Constance didn't want to take her eyes off her. It was the most gorgeous display she'd ever seen.

Gorgeous... Dismembered parts. What is wrong with you?!

Shoving herself up out of her chair, she excused herself and bolted past the applauding ghosts. She didn't catch the whispered, "Connie?" as she raced past the bowing Sally.

Tears blurred her vision. Not knowing where she was going, she went down one hall and then the next.

"Constance!"

Ignore it. Keep going.

When she finally stopped, she found herself surrounded by towering, wooden walls. And above...

Above was that mesmerizing ballerina, her face solemn as she held her parasol aloft.

She's a princess. And I'm a monster.

"Connie!"

Constance turned to see Sally come through the wall towards her. She froze, too ashamed to run.

"What happened?" Sally put a hand on her arm. "You took off like you had a wasp in your veil."

Shaking her head, Constance struggled to say something coherent. Her thoughts were racing. "I'm... I'm not... You're--"

Sally's eyes locked onto hers. "Just breathe, darlin'."

"I don't belong here!"

"What? Now why on earth would you say that?"

"I don't! I-- I'm a monster! I murdered men, and you... you're a graceful, innocent... beautiful woman. They won't even trust me to be part of the tours."

Sally blinked, but only paused for a beat to digest this. "Well, you wouldn't hurt anyone now, would you?"

"No. I mean, why would I? I'm dead. I can't buy anything anymore. I can't get married anymore. My collection is nice to look at, but all it can do is collect dust."

Sally took Constance's hands in hers. "We can't change our pasts, we can only fix the now to make a better future. And call me sentimental, but I think we're all here in this weird, creepy place for a reason. You'll get your chance to prove yourself."

"I wish I could do that now."

At that moment, Sally happened to catch a sprig of green above them. Dangling from a gargoyle sconce's foot was mistletoe. She blushed and started to giggle, causing Constance to roll her eyes upwards to see it, too.

Her own face tinted pink, she quickly kissed Sally's cheek.

"If that was, um, unwanted, I'm... I probably shouldn't have--"

She was interrupted with a soft kiss on the lips. Wrapping their arms around one around, they held each other in the deepening kiss, not caring about the party continuing without them.

This would be a new beginning after all.

A Suspension of Judgment

Please, if you read, read it all before commenting. I make several points, dependent on one another.

*Something on Morality* 

I’m just curious as to what kinds of relationships those of you who react so extremely have had. Yes, believe victims of abuse. Now, what is abuse for you? My definition of it doesn’t exactly come close to what Arryn’s definition is. I don’t deny this was undeniably the worst for her, and that Bob and Eliza, if this is true, even if only part of it is true, have some apologizing and reckoning to do with their own guilt. But in relationships, if I look at my and my friends, people sometimes yell, sometimes cheat, sometimes say things they regret. Don’t you know anyone whose relationship started as cheating? Because I know several, and while it’s never a good or moral thing to do, it’s out there. People recognize they’re in love with someone else, or they’d be better fit with someone else, and it hurts and it’s hard, but it’s really common, you all. I feel like most of the responses I see don’t make a difference between all the things. You’re ready to cancel two people completely because they cheated and it got ugly? 

I understand that you have to make the distinction between fantasy and what’s fiction and what isn’t, but I ask you to consider how many fanfic you’ve read where Bellarke cheat on their significant other with each other, and that was fine, because of some higher love or soulmate stuff. It’s possible - it perhaps looks this way - that Bob and Arryn had a good relationship but ultimately were not good for each other. They probably had good moments, excellent ones, and then poor ones, the ones she has chosen to describe, because she posted this as a reaction to abuse she got from fans, STILL, and also because she’s rightfully upset at Bob and Eliza. Perhaps she was completely blameless in everything, perhaps she wasn’t perfect either. I’m not saying she deserved it. To me, the abuse she received at the hand of the so-called Bellarke fans is way worse than the abuse she claims she received by her boyfriend at the time. Let me explain. It is horrendous that people did all these things. I don’t know to what extent Bob - with PR expectations from the show binding him, probably - could have really stopped that shit with the “fans”, but it was never ok and these were a bunch of childish assholes. It was constant when they were together, and it was still horrible when they broke things off. Many of them, I’m sure, will now be cancelling Bob and Eliza like they had no part in abusing this woman. The abuse one receives in a relationship, in my opinion, unless it’s really extreme, matters for others (=non-friends and family) to know only if it’s physical violence. The definition of emotional and verbal abuse is really blurry, and I’m certainly not going to cancel someone because they fought with their significant other. It would matter how constant this was, how bad the verbal abuse was. Don’t forget, I did say Bob probably has some serious apologizing to do. But does that make him a terrible man? Not for me. It makes him a flawed one (we knew that already), perhaps one that wants to do better. I know plenty of them, and believe me, there are many others who are terrible enough for all of them. 

 *Educating Men (sadly)*

I don’t think all of what she describes is “abuse”, and it’s my judgment call: there seems to be a good deal of her accepting things and realizing later she’d rather not be with someone like that. I don’t call that abuse. We all grow and realize things after the relationship is done. It’s good she realized all the choices she made to accommodate him. Bob was probably most of the time not like this, or she wouldn’t have stayed with him, and I don’t believe in burning someone at the stake because they’ve had bad days. Yes, I said bad days. Much studies on gender and how society engrains some things in us will tell you cis-men have more tendencies toward anger and toward expressing that anger explicitly than cis-women, because of the way we are treated differently as children. This is something cis-men who recognize that fact have to unlearn, and it is as difficult as unlearning anything. Unfortunately, it falls on some of us to educate these cis-men in a slow, painful process. Perhaps Eliza will be reaping the rewards of what went badly with Arryn. Don’t you know other relationships where that happened? I know several.

I find this situation similar to the Aziz Ansari case. Did he sound like a bit of a creepy man who you wouldn’t go on a second date with, who wasn’t a good listener and who took advantage of his fame to try and get dates with women? Definitely. Is he a disgusting pervert doubled with a serial sexual harasser and assaulter who should be cancelled like Weinstein? I don’t think so. If he’s learning now, if he’ll be better, then that’s fine by me. I’m sorry for the women who have to educate these cis-men. Fuck that noise, but it’s the life of post me too and post mainstream feminism. Not a bland “believe all victims, cancel all the accused”. 

*What could be public in all this*

The biphobia is bad. People start off in life with prejudices, as you know. I’m a person who learned and grew from prejudices and right wing upbringing to become what would be qualified here as radical left. Perhaps Bob learned after a few years. (Perhap he didn’t) The world is not the same now as it was even 5 years ago, in cultural, social terms, especially in LGBTQ terms. We all have to unlearn prejudices. I’d like to see Bob apologize for that at least, or address it in some way. The calling her pathetic is bad, I guess, but I’ve been called names too during fights, and I don’t consider myself abused. Perhaps she does, and I don’t blame her for that. I do blame anyone who’ll make this all in all private matter very public, and ruin lives for this. I’m sure the damage done to Arryn would have been much less if the fans had behaved like normal persons in the first place. It would just have been some deplorable drama that happens in life sometimes. She’ll find someone better for her. She’ll have boundaries that she didn’t before, about what she won’t or will do for or because of a partner. The gaslighting is bad, but nothing I haven’t heard of before when relationships go astray. Denying feelings (not ready to accept them, not wanting to lose her, who the hell knows why, for sure not us), meeting up in secret. Perhaps Bob and Arryn had both decided to move while he was in Vancouver so yes, she did everything like *women often do*, but perhaps he hadn’t decided to leave her yet, perhaps he wasn’t sure where this was going. People make mistakes, sometimes repeatedly. But for the love of ***, what is private and what is public??

It’s good for all of you to expect perfection of yourselves and of your partners. Sounds like you have great relationships (sometimes they become less good, too, none of what Arryn writes explains whether this was bad from the start or became bad): I’m just empathic of what goes on behind the scenes, and compassionate as to what brings people to do the things they do. It’s not our call to excuse or condemn anyone. If Arryn were my friend and she told me about all this, I’d support her 100% and call the guy an asshole, which would be deserved. As it is, she is not my friend, and i’m sick of this culture where this has to mean immediate cancellation for the persons involved just because they’re “celebrities”. You’re not a pervert or an evil person because you cheat. You’ve chosen to hurt someone and you deal with the private consequences of that (guilt, losing friends, etc) I’ve had friends (and I suspect a parent) who have cheated, and some who have been cheated on. I still think Bob is neither a bad nor a great person. So is Eliza, probably. They’d need to do way more for me to condemn them (like, politically, or, like I said before, an accusation of domestic violence or of actual gaslighting). As it is, it looks like a private matter taken public (again, only because fans have gotten involved in the very first place in HORRIBLE and ABUSIVE ways). I’m not mixing everything up. Arryn is not my friend and Bob and Eliza are not my friends; I don’t know these people. I don’t feel worse about them than I did before this came out, and I hope Arryn finds a way to heal from this. If it helps her to call his behavior abusive, and what Eliza and him did gaslighting, very well. But what followed seems a bit intense and out of proportion for me. I hope some of you agree. Let’s not forget: there are two sides to a story, there are many ways to live, there are many things to learn. 

Thanks for reading. 

So while everyone is stuck at home, I've decided to make a recommendations list of things I've watched on Netflix (U.S), Hulu and Disney+! But this list just had Netflix and Hulu, part 2 will be Disney+!

Netflix: US

The Politician (TV show)

Rating: TV-14

Summary: Payton Hobart, a student from Santa Barbara, has known since age seven that he's going to be President of the United States. But first he'll have to navigate the most treacherous political landscape of all: Saint Sebastian High School.

Seasons: season 1 on Netflix, season 2 Summer of 2020

My opinions: this show is so dark. Dark enough that I think it should be rated MA. But it's funny, it has Ben Platt singing multiple times, it's sad, it's dark and it's only 8 episodes. I binge watched all of it in two days.

Roswell: New Mexico (TV show)

Rating: TV-14

Summary: Centers on a town where aliens with unearthly abilities live undercover among humans. But when a violent attack points to a greater alien presence, the politics of fear and hatred threaten to expose them.

Seasons: season 1 on Netflix, season 2 airs March 16th, 2020,

Why should you watch it: it's a show about a woman trying to figure out the mystery behind her sister's death, and it's current, it's crime, there's aliens. What's not to love?

Victorious (TV show)

Rating: TV-G

Summary: Aspiring singer Tori Vega navigates life while attending a performing arts high school called Hollywood Arts.

Seasons: 1-3 on Netflix

Why should you watch it: chances are, you were either a Disney kid or a Nick kid. I was a Disney kid, but a friend of mine insisted I watched it when it got on Netflix, and I don't regret it. It's so funny.

Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated

Rating: TV-Y7

Summary: Scooby-Doo and the gang attempt to solve creepy mysteries in the town of Crystal Cove, a place with a history of eerie supernatural events.

Seasons:1-2 on Netflix

Why should you watch it: it's Scooby Doo (the best Scooby Doo in my opinion) and it gets really dark at the end of the show, plus in almost every episode, there are clues leading to the big mystery at the end.

New Girl (TV Show)

Rating: TV-14

Summary: After a bad break-up, Jess, an offbeat young woman, moves into an apartment loft with three single men. Although they find her behavior very unusual, the men support her - most of the time.

Seasons: 1-7 on Netflix

Why should you watch it: this show talks about sex a lot, especially in season 1, so if that makes you uncomfortable, I wouldn't recommend. But it's so funny, and Jess and Nick are so cute.

Parks and Recreation (TV show)

Rating: TV-14

Summary: The absurd antics of an Indiana town's public officials as they pursue sundry projects to make their city a better place.

Seasons: 1-7 on Netflix

Why should you watch it: it has Chris Pratt in it and it's extremely funny, even though it's very political.

To All The Boys I've Loved Before (movie)

Rating: TV-14

Summary: A teenage girl's secret love letters are exposed and wreak havoc on her love life.

Why should you watch it: this is a comfort movie I discovered after my sister insisted I watch it. I haven't seen the sequel, but I plan on doing so soon.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (movie)

Rating: PG-13

Summary: During an adventure into the criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his future co-pilot Chewbacca and encounters Lando Calrissian years before joining the Rebellion.

Why should you watch it: I don't like Star Wars that much, but Han Solo is my favorite character, and this is my favorite Star Wars movie, hands down.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (movie)

Rating: PG

Summary: Teen Miles Morales becomes Spider-Man of his reality, crossing his path with five counterparts from other dimensions to stop a threat for all realities.

Why should you watch it: it's the best Spider-Man movie and John Mulany plays a pig version of Spider-Man. It also has Nicholas Cage, Jack Johnson and Hallie Steinfeld.

After (2019) (movie)

Rating: PG-13

Summary: A young woman falls for a guy with a dark secret and the two embark on a rocky relationship. Based on the novel by Anna Todd.

Why should you watch it: gotta be honest, it's a bit boring. Me and my sister who loves it watched it, and if you love romance drama, you'll probably like it as well. I mostly made fun of it the whole time.

Spy Kids (movie)

Rating: PG

Sunmary: The children of secret-agent parents must save them from danger.

Why should you watch it: this is one of my favorite childhood movies, and it's so funny. Also, secret agent kids.

Earth to Echo (movie)

Rating: PG

Summary: After receiving a bizarre series of encrypted messages, a group of kids embark on an adventure with an alien who needs their help.

Why should you watch it: it deals with some important issues for it being aimed at a younger demographic, and Echo is the cutest little alien ever.

Hulu

Keeping up with the Kardashians (TV show)

Rating: TV-14

Summary: A peek inside the exploits and privileged private lives of the blended Kardashian-Jenner family, including sisters Kim, Kourtney, Khloé, Kendall and Kylie.

Seasons: all seasons on Hulu

Why should you watch it: you shouldn't unless you like trashy reality TV. Or if you genuinely like the Kardashians.

Looking for Alaska (mini series)

Rating: TV-MA

Summary: A new arrival at a boarding school falls in love with a beguiling female student

Seasons: all episodes on Hulu

Why should you watch it: I am a huge John Green fan. I've only watched the first episode, but it's so good so far and I love it.

Part 2 with Disney+ recs coming soon!

Tagging some people so they can reblog for others: @willelbyers @clover-roseee @blondsak @seek-rest @canary-warrior

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

are you hetero-/homo-/bi-sexual?: I’m an asexual lesbian have you gotten your first kiss?: of course

what form of birth control do/would you use?: homosexuality lmfao would/did you have sex before marriage?: I did  is there a difference between a crush and being in love?: there is

do you believe in love at first sight?: no, that’s lust or crush can long-distance relationships work?: yep have you ever had a long-distance relationship?: most of them were long-distance what of online relationships?: same have you ever been divorced?: I wasn’t married so... have you fallen in love in the past and regretted it?: yup how old were you when you had sex for the first time?: 28 have you ever been molested or raped?: kinda have you ever been jealous of a friend for their boy/girlfriend?: I was a tiny bit jealous of them being liked by someone but I knew their so called relationship won’t last so... but when it comes to being into my friend’s gf? nah have you ever been jealous of your boy/girlfriend’s “close” friend(s)?: sorta have you ever been jealous of your boy/girlfriend’s ex?: could say so have you ever gotten back together with an ex?: yeah

do you enjoy french-kissing?: dunno do you keep a picture of your significant other somewhere?: on pendrive, fb and her ID pic in my room on my shelf have/would you ever use whipped cream in a sexual act?: I don’t like whipped cream... or sex  do cherries or strawberries have any sexual meaning for you?: not really have you ever dumped someone?: I have have you ever been dumped?: wouldn’t say so are you (honestly) afraid of commitment?: it’s complicated do you have stuff from a previous relationship?: I only had few things (from S) and I trashed them or gave them away, I also no longer own a sheep I wanted to give for Karo but I kept a cheap ring I bought for her and the mug for May is my dad’s now, I won’t count bunch of trinkets I got in a letter from Wiktoria because we never been together - I was just crushing on her and she didn’t like me back, does the camp marriage certificate counts tho? hahaha 

When days go by, do you cross them off on the calendar? nope Are you currently counting down to something? If so, what? I am, hospital mostly Ever got injured at work? What happened? -

What color is your roof? silver, wish it was red

Last time you sharpened a pencil? I sharpened colorful pencils few months ago if that counts List all the people in your phone under T: dad  Do you pay rent to your parents? I would contribute if I had a job (or move out) How many icons are on your desktop? I cleaned my desktop recently :3 What’s your definition of a slut? I don’t use this word but - someone who has sex with many ppl that they don’t even know and spread STDs as they don’t use protection then have multiple abortions calling their pregnancy accidents

If you use the word “slut”, do you apply it to men who do the same thing as what you listed above? most of men are like that but would probably use a different word for their behavior as it’s more feminine - still it’s equally bad to act this way no matter of the gender Do you dye eggs for Easter? used to but I think it’s worthless What color hair did the last person you kissed have? last time we kissed she had very dark brown hair, she was changing colors so often in those past days... Do you like your eye color? I don’t care much about it Pens or pencils? pens Last skirt you wore and why? my gf asked me to wear her plaid skirt for a moment  What was the last magazine article you read about? not sure which was last How old is your brother’s best friend? ... If you’re old enough, do you have a credit card? If you’re not old enough, do you want one when you’re older? I don’t, I prefer cash What’s the minimum age you think someone should have a cell phone at? if kid doesn’t have to ride alone to school then older than 12 I believe? Would you ever work night crew? why not? How old is the last person you texted? 28

Does it make you nervous when someone does something dangerous showing off? very, I hate that

Have you ever had to take a pee test? shitload of times

Have you ever had to supply someone with clean pee? don’t do that

Are you in charge of cleaning anything in your household? not always

Ever carved/written anything on a park bench? also don’t do that

Have you ever had anything tailored? my mom sew 

Do you keep your eyebrows more thick or thin? natural

What color is your bedroom door? mostly white with glass in the middle

Have you ever been hunting? no way

Your take on one-night stands? Are they okay? I’m not into them 

Do you always wear a bra? basically never 

Do you have a wrist watch? nope

Do you usually jog or go for walks? walk

Do you own a pair of Dr. Martens? had two but my my red ones ripped :(

Do you like wine? disgusting

Do you scrapbook? not really

Would you feel bad about breaking up with someone on their birthday? absolutely

Have you ever sung anyone the happy birthday song? who haven’t?  How many followers do you have on Twitter? I no longer use twitter 

Do you like Hello Kitty? it’s evil

Have you ever won on one of those grabber machine things? tried but failed 

Is there an actual word for those? claw machine, ufo catcher

Have you ever been horseback-riding? I want to someday

Have you ever seen your naked back? in a mirror

Would you agree that wedding cake is so much better than any other cake? it’s not that good

Do you feel awkward with strangers in elevators? I’m glad I’m not the only one like this

Would you rather cheat and tell your other about it or be cheated on? be cheated on because I won’t cheat, that would be my decision - a mistake - that I would never forgive myself no matter of the reasons I’d have for doing that to someone I’m dating

Do you own a pair of shorts that could be mistaken for underwear? I don’t own any shorts at all

Do you have a beauty mark? like Marilyn Monroe and not only this one

Have you ever been in a shrubbery maze? as a kid

Do you think you’re the best thing that’s happened to someone? r u kidding? I might be the worst...

Is the best thing that’s ever happened to you a person? one of best

How many songs do you think you know all of the lyrics do? zero 

What’s the most emotionally painful thing you’ve ever been through? there would be a long list, too many to name

ever been kissed under fireworks? that didn’t happen

can you live a day without TV? 100% are you a bad influence? who knows night out or night in? in who was the last person you visited in the hospital? besides being there myself - my father do you hate anyone? majority of society

wanna have grandkids before you’re 50? I don’t plan to have kids so also won’t have grandkids

do you hang out with your siblings friends? they don’t like me

have you seen the movie “avatar” yet? if so, did you like it? if not do you think you will? I won’t, I heard people get suicidal because of it 

if you didn’t have to, would you ever grow up? not until my parents’ death 

do you often receive calls from random people at random times? luckily not

do you know the exact temperature right now? I know it’s hot and I suppose it’s like 30 Celsius or smth 

*it’s almost 30

what’s the worst place you ever dropped your phone? I don’t recall dropping my phone 

have you ever fainted from the heat or dehydration? never fainted at all

what is a food that you’d hate to be allergic to?: I hate allergies in general >.<

what color was the last towel you used?: pink, I don’t like it

would you prefer to date someone taller, shorter, or the same height as you? always been into shorter people and now I’m dating taller girl 

when was the last time your nose bled? not even when it was broken?

how old are you turning this year?: turned 28

who would you allow to read your thoughts for one day? thx but no

name your last reason for using a camera? fun

seven days from now, will you be in a relationship? mhm

have you ever kissed anyone with a name that starts with j or m? M

do you think you’ll be married in 10 years? if ever

could you go out in public looking like you do now? I might

is it easy for others to make you feel intimidated? hmm...

have you ever kissed someone whose name starts with an r? I have not

are you easily confused? maybe so

do you think you would make a good wife/husband? me? pfft

do you like summer? I consider it my fav season for now

where were you at 8am this morning? sleeping again, I woke up at 5 am choking and got really scared but then I went back to bed and didn’t get up until like 10 am 

what color nail polish is on your toes? my toes ain’t painted, only time I was painting them was in middle school when I was attending self defence classes and thought that my feet are fugly so adding some red color will make them look better somehow - idiotic

what are your biggest turn offs? personal

is there a baby in the room with you right now? not now but my niece is visiting so she can be here any moment now 

what is the way to your heart? with a knife - jk

what do you smell like? sweat and shampoo?

what’s in your pocket? no pockets!

anything in your mouth? saliva, teeth, tongue - the usual

ever jumped/fallen/been pushed in a pool with your clothes on? bless that NO

are you wearing any clothes that you wore yesterday? ... yes

what can you hear right now? voices outside

are you close to your siblings? *rolling my eyes*

do you bite your nails? I cut them

do you like your feet? yuk, they’re not the worst but feet are just creepy 

do you sleep well at night? not enough?

The Handmaid's Tale: Unfit (3x08)

Um. Well, that happened. That certainly was... something.

Cons:

Can we talk for a second about the utterly clumsy way this show deals with race? It makes me cringe every time. For the most part, they try to pretend this is a totally post-racial society, but obviously they can't pull that off. And then they have some casual moment where Aunt Lydia tells some other aunts that a certain couple doesn't want a "handmaid of color," so clearly casual racism is not only present here, but also condoned by the elite. Because, duh. Gender politics cannot exist separate from racial politics. And yet this show is not willing to grapple with what that means.

Especially considering June, who is the Whitest of White Feminists in this episode, and honestly, throughout the whole show. Her plot armor is seriously becoming a problem for me. June and the other Handmaids are open and unsubtle in their shunning of Ofmatthew, because they are all furious with her for turning in the Martha who was helping June. What happened to the first season, when the rebellion was deep, deep in the shadows? Now the majority of the Handmaids are allowed to be insolent. And then June is even more insolent, right to Aunt Lydia's face. She seems to think that her usefulness as publicity in the hunt for Nichole will protect her, and... that seems to be true, for some reason. But why? June could be flogged, or she could be castrated, or any other number of horrible things that would be invisible to a camera. June's cocky self-assured attitude is only made more frustrating by the fact that she seems to be right about being weirdly untouchable.

There were some things in this episode that I liked as individual pieces, but I'm still frustrated with these aspects as I look at the episode as a whole. For example, the idea of Ofmatthew cracking under the strain of her public shaming, in conjunction with her fear for her pregnancy, is a totally reasonable avenue to explore. But since we haven't spent any real time getting to know Ofmatthew, it feels instead like this big blow-out at the end of the episode is all just a part of June's story, instead of the story of a woman with her own story to tell. There was potential here, and there were moments that came close to tapping in to that potential, but the reality fell short. There are also two other reasons that the ending of this episode, particularly Ofmatthew's death, annoys me, and they are the two reasons discussed in earlier paragraphs.

1) We're seriously going to end two episodes in a row with the death of a black woman while June looks on, untouched by the physical consequences of her own actions? Yeesh. 2) She's pregnant. I give the show props for making me gasp when Ofmatthew got shot, because even as I critique this episode, I will acknowledge that I have very much bought in to the universe they've created. I was shocked that a pregnant Handmaid would be shot, because... it's shocking, and despite that moment of adrenaline, it's ultimately a stupid call for the writers to have made. Aunt Lydia is not as valuable as a pregnant Handmaid. Part of the visceral horror of Season One was the idea that the Handmaids would be punished physically and psychologically, but they never had to fear for their lives, because their bodies were far too valuable. There was something twisted and creative in how the system worked to break these women without ever being able to directly threaten them with death. And now, apparently we're just shooting pregnant Handmaids in the grocery store? That actually really broke me out of the moment.

Let's turn to the flashbacks for a moment. This is another instance where as a stand-alone thing, I quite liked learning about Aunt Lydia's past. I get the sense from other reviews that I'm in the minority on this, but I think Ann Dowd is so talented, and the story worked for me on the level of examining the early symptoms of Gilead, even before things had started in earnest. But on a macro level, these flashbacks still bothered me for a couple of reasons. For one, the themes explored in the flashbacks did not connect with the story in the present-day, other than that both were centered around Lydia. The flash-backs are about a woman who genuinely wanted to help people, turned bitter in part by her evangelical beliefs and in part by her loneliness. The present-day story is about June turning more and more ruthless, and Ofmatthew losing her grip on her sanity. What am I meant to understand by learning a bit more about Lydia's former life? And that's the second problem, honestly - from just this episode, I might get a good-ish understanding of who Aunt Lydia is meant to be as a character, but if you combine these flashbacks with what we've seen of her character so far, it doesn't really track. Aunt Lydia's characterization is all over the place. She seems to slide on the scale of devotion to Gilead depending on what the plot needs from her at any given moment. For a long time, I've held out hope that we would come to some sort of emotional core for this character and finally understand what makes her tick. But if these flashbacks were meant to provide that clarity, in my opinion they failed.

Pros:

Let's talk about June. Because on the one hand, I'm annoyed about the plot armor, as discussed above. And it's tempting to be upset and frustrated by how unlikable June is becoming. Last week, I certainly felt that way. But I'm trying to take the long view. Turning June into something of a villain is... well, it's not a totally crap idea. Maybe the final consequence of the torture she's been through is that there is no coming back for her. Maybe she'll keep being cruel and single-handed, focused on saving Hannah and nothing else. Maybe she'll nod sagely as Handmaids hold guns on her, and maybe we'll be hearing more voice-overs indicating that June is not only willing to inflict suffering on others... she's starting to enjoy it. I can't really sense what the endgame would be here, short of killing June off and letting the story continue without her. But that might not be as crazy an idea as it first sounds. This universe that they've created has legs. There are so many stories to tell. I'd be okay with telling those stories in a world where June is no longer at the center of them. Maybe that's not where this is going. Maybe I'll have to eat my words and be frustrated in the next couple of episodes at the direction the show turns. But for now, the idea of villainous June is kind of interesting!

One thing this show always does well is showing the creepiness of Gilead through the ceremonies. We have the birthing ceremony that ends in tragedy, as another Handmaid's child is stillborn. And then we have the shaming ceremony. It might be ridiculous to me that June doesn't suffer harsher consequences, but I do like the way Aunt Lydia's role in this shaming ceremony echoes her past as a teacher. The Handmaids are her students, parroting her words and internalizing the harsh messages they are forced to repeat, again and again. It's chilling, and it's meant to be, and it's a good scene, even with the flaws in the larger setup.

As I said, Ofmatthew unraveling and breaking down was actually an interesting idea, in and of itself. The acting and the pacing in that final scene was truly superb. At least in the moment, when I wasn't questioning the larger writing decisions going on, I was totally gripped. I thought Aunt Lydia might be about to die. I even thought Ofmatthew might actually shoot June, although I wasn't thinking June would actually die from it. And then when the shots rang out and Ofmatthew dropped, I literally flinched. I wish this story-line had explored more of its potential, but I did think this high-intensity scene worked really well on its own.

And again, I did enjoy the flashbacks for their own sake. I think it's interesting that Lydia was turned towards a darker, more cynical path because of her attempts to find love again. I read in another review that it seemed stupid to make Lydia evil because she was rejected by a man, but that's not the way I read the moment at all. She breaks so many of the rules she had set for herself on that New Year's Eve. She drinks, and she lets herself be comfortable, and she indulges her desires. Suddenly, she realizes that she's slipped away from the righteous path, and she over-corrects in a big way. That's interesting to me, and I hope that we can get some more clarity on Aunt Lydia's characterization moving forward.

I also like all the hints of the changing world. It reminds me of some of the Season One flashbacks. We learn that Child Protective Services has been replaced with privatized organizations, ones that ask questions like "do they go to Church?" in order to determine if a home is fit for a child. We see how Lydia is uncomfortable and judgmental of Noelle's behavior, and at first it seems perfectly reasonable, because she is neglecting her child. But there's something more dangerous underneath that, as Lydia is judging not only Noelle's parenting style, but her wearing of makeup, and use of profanity, and relationships with men. It all bleeds together, so you can see the sinister creep of Gilead's power beginning in these moments.

So... yeah. This is a very long review, and unfortunately a lot of it is less than positive. There are elements that have promise, and I'm giving this show the benefit of the doubt, because I believe it deserves that. But I'm also starting to feel like the writers need to re-evaluate some aspects of the story, and figure out how they're going to keep moving forward with June as a protagonist.

6/10

Magnus Relisten Eps 5 and 6

Day three. Thrown Away and Squirm

Episode 5: Thrown Away Case #0092302 Statement of Keiran Woodward, regarding items recovered from the refuse of a house in Leytonstone, London.

I’m torn on this episode. On one hand, it features the first narrator with a well-researched, semi-obscure profession, and i always love when this show uses those. It also has a couple of good creepy moments, mostly with regard to both the reveal of the teeth and the reveal that they all match each other. On the other hand, a lot of the episode doesn’t do much for me. The doll heads are only mildly creepy, and the prayer did nothing for me at all. Most notably, though, I don’t really like the plot with Allan. His behaviors are tropey and predictable as far as horror goes, and his ambiguous fate isn’t... very scary? like oooh metal heart with a name on it? is that supposed to be unsettling? because it doesn’t do much for me.

I do like the narrator-of-the-week, though. The description of how much garbage men can tell about the people on their routes is an interesting perspective on something that most don’t often think about, and it seems very well researched or at least believable. I also like that they threw in a line about garbage collection being a dangerous job. Its an undervalued profession, and pointing these things out even in a small way is genuinely a good public service on behalf of the authors, i think. This one’s hard for me, but ill give it a 4/10. I think its fair to say that its my least favorite of the episodes we’ve gotten to so far, and while not necessarily a bad episode, its definitely below the show’s average. certainly theres a big gap between this one and any of the previous four episodes.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: So, this episode is interesting from a more meta-perspective, as until recently it was one of the few episodes that cant clearly be attributed to any of the entities. However, in the post-season 4 Q&A, Jonny went on record to state that this episode was, at time of writing, intended as the first appearance on the show of the Flesh. However, Jonny himself admits that it’s really more of a proto-Flesh, as his conceptions of what the Flesh was about and what Flesh episodes would look like changed significantly over the course of writing season one. As such, this episode feels very out of place for the flesh, with only the teeth really calling to mind the entity. I think its fair to say that regardless of Jonny’s statement of intent, from an in-universe perspective this can’t be a straight up Flesh manifestation. Jonny himself even offhandedly mentioned in the Q&A something about how “theres probably all kinds of things going on in this episode”. The dolls feel like the stranger, the burnt prayer possibly like the desolation, and the metal heart, while loosely fleshy, could even be the Extinction. In fact, one of my favorite fan theories about this episode pre-Q&A is that it is an early example of an extinction manifestation, centered around pollution in landfills. Anyways, one last note: if we do take this to be a Flesh episode, the lord’s prayer does have a notable role as the first of many references to christianity with regard to the Flesh. Keep an Eye out for that, going forward.

Episode 6: Squirm Case #0140912 Statement of Timothy Hodge, regarding a sexual encounter with Harriet Lee and her subsequent death.

Sex? in MY Magnus Archives? its more likely than you’d think. Anyways this is a good episode. The buildup is pretty well done, if a tad exposition heavy, and then the worm reveal is easily the most disgusting thing the Magnus Archives has done by this point. Which, if you ask me, is a very good thing. Disgusting stuff is a valid form of horror, and the Magnus Archives is very very good at it. I think you also have to give them credit for doing it so well over an auditory medium, with no actual sound effects. Some call gross-out horror cheap, but in this medium i don’t think you can really argue that. “sounded like an egg shattering against concrete” is such a chilling line on second listen, when you already know what happened to Harriet... ugh. The fact that Jon considers Jane Prentiss to be a serious threat adds to it, though i found the discrepancies between the content of the statement and the post-statement declaration that the house wasn’t actually burned was more confusing and vague than anything.

I don’t know how to feel about this narrator, like... I know Harriet was clearly interested in the sex, and when you’re drunk and horny that can be hard to resist, so i don’t want to hate on this guy... but on the other hand... she was so obviously nervous like to the point of nearly panicking the entire night, this did not at all seem like the time? especially because she was clearly sick, you don’t want to catch a stranger’s disease. especially when that disease is Worm Flood. Idk, i probably would have changed gears at some point in the night. Not that it would have mattered, it seems that poor Harriet was a dead woman walking from as early as her encounter with Jane Prentiss.

Anyways this episode is great, not the best ever on the show but an easy 8/10. It’d be higher, but keep in mind that I know this show can get even better.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Not really much to say on this one. Our first corruption episode, and our first mention of arc-villain Jane Prentiss. Other than establishing that Prentiss is something to watch out for, though, this episode is mostly just an effective standalone horror piece. I suppose I should note that the confusing post-statement discrepancies are even more confusing when you learn that every statement given on the show is 100% true. Does anyone have any theories on this? maybe being infected by the worms warped his mind in some way, we get that a bit with other victims of the corruption who develop OCD-like symptoms. Though I’d expect those symptoms to make him more likely to burn down his house for real, not make him imagine he did it. Also, I believe that this statement giver re-appears in MAG 26: A Distortion, but i don’t remember the details all too well, so I’ll discuss that more when we get to that episode.

aheavenlyrush replied to your post “I’ve been on tumblr since 2012 and I was even a John Green fan for a...”

i checked and it happened in 2015

aheavenlyrush replied to your post “I’ve been on tumblr since 2012 and I was even a John Green fan for a...”

i saw that jg post on my feed and i had no energy to comment on it but truly when i saw that you had i felt such relief!! i remember making that one post about stiefvater defending him and telling teenage girls to be quiet and the response to it still fucking haunts me i swear

Oy, was it really that recently? The last three years have taken 900 years. And yeah... Maggie Stiefvater’s post about it was a Really Bad Look, and iirc that was the environment that spawned the beginning of the batshit “Keep YA Kind”* concern-trolling thing (yep, also 2015) that was mainly used to silence girls and women and people of color whenever the four white cishet men in YA fucked up between 2015 and 2018, when it finally publicly came out that most of them were, yk, fucking up because they’re legitimately horrible people and maybe the people calling them out should have been taken seriously.

* The other notable “why the fuck is this happening???? why is HE the one getting the sympathy here?????” events from “Keep YA Kind,” which, listen, I would bet you anything that it was very very nearly called “Keep Kidlit Kind” until the only person involved with 1/4 of a braincell managed to realize the acronym on their Twitter handle looked REALL BAD:

Andrew Smith, a straight white adult man, says out loud with his human adult man mouth, that he knows he can’t write female characters well and relies on fetishization and stereotypes because he never really met a girl until his daughter (??? SO WHAT IS YOUR WIFE, ANDREW? CHOPPED LIVER?) and, being as that is Bullshit and also his books were also being lauded as though they were Infinite fucking Jest Jr. even though the interview in question was for a book in which mutant grasshoppers take over the earth and a teenage boy gets trapped in a bunker with a teenage girl who eventually has to git to birthin’ babies she doesn’t want and isn’t medically prepared to have safely For The Good Of Humanity, he’s called out.

He’s called out mostly on a technical, writing level at first, even! Like, “Here’s how to write a female character: you write a fully considered, well-rounded character. They’re a girl.” And Andrew Smith FLIPS HIS SHIT, does some op-ed about how his mother used to beat him so he can’t see girls as people, and makes his twitter private. The “Keep YA Kind” sycophants support him HARD.

And then this happens to pop up on a mysterious Twitter that just HAPPENS to start while HIS twitter’s offline...

NOTE: Jay Asher, author of 13 Reasons Why, was literally dropped from his publisher and SCWBI for being a sexual predator. So like, I don’t think he was bullied, I think his predation was being remarked upon. Like, idk, maybe that he was being called creepy or sth idk idk idk

And then when A.S. decided to unsockpuppet to promote his next book, The Alex Crow, which is about mutant crows and a bunker or whatever:

The “asshole” in specific that Andrew Smith was calling an asshole was delightful human being and fellow author Kate Messner, who, coincidentally, was one of the victims to come out against Lemony Snicket’s sexual harrassment, so she’s had a BULLSHIT time just trying to do her JOB of being an author while female.

Which leads to Tommy Wallach! All-around fucknut! Whose major interest seems to be being That Guy In Philosophy 101 Who Always Has To Be Devil’s Advocate, Even Though No One Asked, and has a deeply vested interest in making sure that teenage girl readers -- who are his target audience, because he chose to write YA, as an adult man who made a choice in what he wrote and chose to make it YA, and not, like, any of the hundreds of genres that AREN’T largely written about and for teenage girls, yk -- know that teenage girls are Dumb. Victoria Schwab actually wrote an essay for YA Books Central about the incessant problem that IS/WAS Tommy Wallach called “We Need To Talk About Tommy” back in -- you guessed it! -- 2016, but it’s offline now and I’m not going to go Wayback it rn.

I’m just going to copypasta YAinterrobang’s Wallach timeline because he’s exhausting, he reminds me of undergrad.

Wallach’s continual pattern of behavior is worth discussing, especially in the context of sexism in YA and the continual marginalization of “diverse” voices in the community despite the efforts of the We Need Diverse Books movement.

Wallach’s problematic behavior runs back over a year, starting with a defense of Andrew Smith where he ignores the opinions of author and advocate Tessa Gratton in favor of a dictionary definition of sexism. (Andrew Smith’s behavior and the fallout around his statements have, of course, already been documented on YA Interrobang in “The Curious Case of Andrew Smith, Twitter & sexism.”) Wallach postures that women are inherently “other” from men, accuses Gratton of “gin[ning]up the controversy” and explains that he is a feminist because he was “raised by a single working mother and she’s still my best friend in the world.”

[View Wallach’s defense of Smith and attack on Gratton as a .pdf.]

Fast forward to later that year. Author Justina Ireland takes to Twitter to discuss a book where she feels the black character is self-hating. Ireland, being black herself, is asked about the book in question; she says that it’s Wallach’s debut novel We All Looked Up. Though Wallach is not tagged, he swoops into the conversation and demands Ireland provide proof that his character Anita is self-hating before claiming that author Dhonielle Clayton, who is also black, is friends with him and “engaged” with him on the issues in the book.

Clayton later stated publicly that she had not done any sensitivity reading on We All Looked Up.

What brought Wallach’s behavior to the attention of the YA world as a whole came this past November in the wake of the horrifying terrorist attacks in Paris. When the hashtag #prayforparis went viral, Wallach responded with multiple social media posts and a blog post about how atheism was the only belief that could make the world a better place. (Though Wallach argues that it is not, in fact, a belief: “The fact that we have a word for it makes it seem like it’s equivalent to other belief systems, but it’s not. The absence of something is not equivalent to the thing itself.”)

[View Wallach’s comments on atheism as a .pdf.]

After Wallach Tweeted that he was a “a rabid atheist, and the world would be a better place if more folk were” – a Tweet he subsequently deleted before deleting his account in its entirety – he doubled down in a block post that outlined all the way religions failed and all the reasons atheism was awesome.

Those who tried to explain to him why this behavior was – to say the least – problematic found themselves quickly blocked or shut down; at once point, Wallach tried to explain anti-Semitism to Jewish author Hannah Moskowitz before claiming that “if [her]parents are atheists and [his]dad is Jewish, [he’s] as much Jewish as [her].”

(For those wondering, Wallach blocked me during this incident despite being friendly with me and having taken my advice previously; while he did believe me in regards to his behavior towards Justina Ireland, which you can see in Tweets above, my snarky comment to him about “the only good people are the people who are exactly like me” was, apparently, too much for him to take. As Wallach’s account has since been deleted and I purged my social media account in January, that interaction is no longer publicly available.)

Take this behavior in comparison to author LJ Silverman, who recently received a sea of anti-Semitic hate mail – including crude manipulated images of her in an oven – for Tweeting that she was worried about the upcoming election in the context of history. Wallach painted himself to be the victim, somebody “attacked” for insulting all of the religious folks in the YA community, while Silverman, who simply shared a worry plaguing her, became a victim of virulent trolls.

While Wallach deleted his social media accounts after this, there were no public consequences to his actions despite ill-will from the YA community at large. If another member of the YA community had spoken out – one of our Catholic or Islamic or Jewish or Mormon authors, for instance – the backlash would have been substantially worse, possibly career-ruining.

Wallach’s career, however, was not ruined; he recently landed a six-figure deal for a book trilogy centered around a “holy war.”

And thus, we return to Wallach’s dismissive comments on suicide – which, it turned out, were neither new or original. In a blog post deleted after it came to light during this discussion, Wallach rated “the top ten literary suicides (organized by emo-ness)” which included all of the characters of HBO’s Girls – “It’s really just a fantasy of mine.” – and, ranking at number one, Sylvia Plath – who is not a character but a real person who suffered from depression before taking her own life at a young age.

[View Wallach’s post on suicide as a .pdf.]

“I’m only going to talk about the fact that a successful YA author found it appropriate to glorify, romanticize, and mock what for many of his readers is among the highest causes of death,” wrote Schwab in her “We Need To Talk About Tommy” post. “That this author could be so very careless and flippant and insensitive about such a very serious issue is abhorrent. That two years after penning this post he still sees suicide as something to be made light of, to be used as a marketing tool.”

Simon & Schuster made no public comment about any of Wallach’s comments. His career, save for making enemies of some fellow authors, seems relatively unscathed by his callous actions.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, like, if you wanna read books by straight white dudes, go for it, but check them out from the library. Spend your book-buying money on books by women, nonbinary/other folks, and dudes who aren’t straight and/or white. Straight white men, PARTICULARLY in categories of literature that are largely targeted towards girls and women, and largely written by girls and women -- but published, edited, and marketed by other straight white men -- are lauded FAR above what they’re actually worth, as like, storytellers or human people go.

The Glass Escalator is a one-way trip to wonderland, but YA is a skyscraper that was built by women and I PROMISE you, whatever book by one of these dudes you’re considering reading, there’s a better version by a woman and/or person of color on the shelves nearby that just didn’t get 1/10th of the marketing money.

And of course there should be an effort to be kind on social media, but “keep YA kind”... to whom? To the people who were being silenced when they were pointing out legitimate problems with the behaviors of men in social power? (And one of whom, in the case of Jay Asher, was LITERALLY DANGEROUS BC HE IS A SEXUAL PREDATOR.) Like, really? There had to be a hashtag campaign to silence dozens of people with legitimate, not-bullying-just-pointing-out-problems-that-are-problems-with-stuff-you-did-dude problems, to make social media feel more comfortable for four middle-aged straight white men?

As though the outside world isn’t comfortable enough for middle-aged straight white men????