Mass Hysteria & Dark Academia Connections

Hysteria & Women have a long and tense relationship (not going to dive deep here - if you just type those words into a search engine you will see *so many* results). However, there's plenty of interesting commentary on the power behind or because of mass hsyteria.

The Salem Witch trials are a popular proving ground for this in American media. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is the tip of the iceberg here. I want to point out two recent works of media that home in on the intersection of mass hysteria and the academia - specifically high school girls and who gets believes/who gets to speak up in the public arena.

Conversion by Katherine Howe is a 2015 dark academia YA novel with a dual narrative. One takes place in a 21st century intense all-girls college prep school, St Joans while the other takes the same story from Miller's The Crucible and alters the narrative perspective. These two narratives weave back and forth on each other with the main narrator in the 21st century even reading and analyzing The Crucible to form her own conclusions on what is going on with the girls at her school. Howe was inspired to write the novel when 16 girls in nearby LeRoy, NY all ended up experiencing a slew of similar physical symptoms. The book takes a deep look at what controls the lives of young women and what power these girls hold over their own lives and voices in both the modern day and earlier in American history. I can't say it is a favorite book of mine, but what Howe has done is fascinating! If you have any interest in public perception of hysteria I'd adore hearing what you think of the book.

Now onto the film - The Falling is a 2014 British mystery film starring Maisie Williams (oh, and introducing Florence Pugh so it looks a little star-studded in retrospect). It is an unsettling film that is, similarly to the 21st century timeline of Conversion, set at an all-girls school. It follows two best friends, a growing obsession, and power and control regarding sexuality. Then death and mysterious fainting spells increase resulting in psychiatric wards and the shutdown of the school. Sex, power, death, friendship, and yes, hysteria, all feature on screen here.

Together it is fascinating to lump together and connect the thread (and the mental thought is perhaps stirred as I also just read Mary Beard's Women & Power about who gets to speak in the works of the classical Western literary canon) of The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Conversion by Katherine Howe, and The Falling directed by Carol Morley. Perception, belief, hysteria, and female power concoct some fascinating discussion about voices in today's world.

the thing is that red robin & bg2009 are pretty interesting to me as sibling series where red robin is the story of a man whose life is seemingly falling apart but he is an extremely reliable narrator about it and bg2009 is the story of a woman whose life is seemingly coming together but she is an unreliable narrator about it but i know this is not the intended read of them at all lmao because the problem with reborn era is that all the stories are ultimately so isolated from each other i don't think character arcs were intended to mirror each other at all

A possessed bird

This tie was doing nothing for me. Come here.

The middle aged mens are having a girls night! 💗

Normally I’m a huge fan of people leaving reviews and comments on things. Really I am!

HOWEVER. If you are listening to an audiobook narrated by a feminine voice or has a female main somewhere, I am BEGGING you. If your comment is “omg I loved the main male MC but the female mc is SO ANNOYING” or “great plot but the narrators voice is SO SHRILL AND ANNOYING” honestly? Don’t post that. Please examine your internalized misogyny. I certainly had to when I was younger and I still have spots that come up.

And if you must comment negatively, consider helpful reviews such as: “the narrator mumbles and is hard to understand” or “their attempt at a British accent is not very good” or “the sound quality is horrible and the plosives blow my ears out. This sounds unedited”.

Specificity of experience is what makes reviews valuable. Saying “people with feminine voices are shrill and annoying” just makes you sound like misogynistic chihuahua.

The world has trained us to loathe feminine voices. Don’t let it win, especially not against the marathon runners of VA—or you.

Thinking about the Chevalier interlude, specifically the inaugural team of Wards. Like in universe, they sell it to this first group of kids (and presumably the rest of the world) as a place for second chances, to find friends and mentors who understand what youre going through, where you can learn to use your powers safely while making good memories. The kids broadly seem to believe in these noble intentions of course, but what really gets me is that I've seen readers buy into it!

"Oh, it's such a tragedy that the Wards program became this awful thing that traumatizes kids even more, and expects them to die for the sake of civilians! It's fallen so short of what it was originally supposed to be!"

No it has not??? The fact that the triumvirate and Hero are saying it has this noble goal doesn't make it true. The Wards was pretty clearly always a way to increase the amount of bodies the prt could throw at threats, and we know this because it was started by the fucking Triumvirate as a part of the Protectorate! Alexandria literally came up with the idea of the Protectorate to legitimize the power of capes, and have a consistent source of heroes Cauldron could throw at problems. That is the whole reason for the PRT/Protectorate existing. So when we have this group of children brought in a subsidiary, there are 2 real options.

1). Cauldron and Alexandria decided they would be really niceys and created this program with no intentions other than helping these kids out.

Or 2). As things got worse, they realized the Protectorate didn't have enough manpower to do what they needed, and so they expanded it to include children (the demographic most prone to triggering). That way, they greatly increase the number of capes who they can send to fight and die as needed, and the ones who do survive their tenure in the Wards will be better trained when it comes time to join the actual Protectorate.

At the risk of sounding conceited, I think the second one is far more likely based on everything we know about Cauldron. Maybe it was originally a little nobler, and the goal was just to create more well trained heroes and cut back on young villains, but there's no way Alexandria, Doc Mom, and Contessa didn't factor in the ability to sacrifice the kid heroes if it improved their chances of success. That was absolutely a perk at minimum.

That's the real tragedy of the inaugural Wards. The kids were lured in with promises of safety, comraderie, and second chances like lambs to the slaughter. All the while, Alexandria and Cauldron knew that many (if not most) of these children would suffer abuse by the prt (like in the case of Reed), die, or face a fate worse than death like poor Mouse Protector. It's horrifying! The idea that they didn't know the danger these kids would be in is literally inconceivable. Especially when one of you is also the head of the prt! They knew, and they didn't care. It improved their chances at the end of the world, and so they did it no matter the cost.

If I were a girl in a book this would all be so easy.

Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head /// Atonement (2007), dir. Joe Wright /// Benedict Smith, I Wish I Wrote The Way I Thought /// Mitski, A Burning Hill /// Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), dir. Céline Sciamma /// Fiona Apple, Paper Bag /// Anne with an E, Your Will Shall Decide Your Destiny (1x01) /// Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar /// Little Women (2019), dir. Greta Gerwig

ryoko kuis weird mystification and Not Like Other Fantasy Authors reputation on this site DESPERATELY needs to end btw. you guys keep doing this to asian women whose art gets popular on here and it's fucking gross. i still see people saying the exact same bizarre parasocial/deifying/subtly infantilizing shit about mitski. did you know that both of them are intelligent artists working within established mediums and that their work comes from particular contexts, especially social/cultural contexts, that are worth looking into!!!!!!

What a plot twist you were. [x]

Just saw a post where someone said that Buffy is an unreliable narrator because of all the times she said she doesn't love Sp*ke, since the one (1) line in season 7 "why does everyone in this house think I'm still in love with Sp*ke?" makes it indisputably canon that she has loved him since maybe season 5, definitely season 6, and this is clearly her finally admitting it after having lied to herself about it for seasons....

Honestly, the level of delusion it takes to get to this conclusion is truly impressive, because not only was that not even the original line/intention from the script (the original being "why does everyone in this house think I'm in love with Sp*ke?") but the way some people will watch the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer for 6.5 seasons where this woman has repeatedly and consistently and violently said that she DOES NOT love Sp*ke's crusty ass, and then dismiss all of that based of of one line that wasn't even meant to have that one extra word that has fuelled rabid delusions for 20+ years in this cursed fandom.

and then to make matters even funnier, these same people will turn around and twist the line "I loved him more than I will ever love anything in this life" (Buffy re: Angel in S7) into "she meant before, she doesn't love him now, it's so out of character.", ignoring the part where she says "MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THIS LIFE", which means more than she's ever, has ever and will ever love anything in her life, something she has repeated at least once a season for 7 seasons straight..........like, not only are you all delusion, but you also apparently have extremely poor reading comprehension skills.

i'm watching the ravening war (for the plot)

As I've previously said here, Shouto probably wasn't popular with many of the other UA students because of his earlyroki behavior. Bakugou is one thing because he's Bakugou, but Ojiro seems to want to avoid spending 15 minutes with Shouto as well.

Also, I don't understand why Bakugou didn't just switch with Izuku and choose to go alone considering how disagreeable he is and that Izuku is friends with Shouto...unless Bakugou was more scared of some pranks than he let on

Curators new design :)

Happy International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month to The Shifting Mound and all of her various vessels.

Hey if you don’t mind sharing what’s the name of the t Muir short story where the woman kills a dragon and she and her love interest go into business together as professional monsters? It sounds great!

it's called princess floralinda and the forty-flight tower! I recommend it