Be The Gay You Want to See in the World

you are in the medieval era and you have this role!

What's the first "big news story" you remember from when you were a kid?

It's something I love to ask mixed-aged groups sometimes because I think it's really interesting to see the responses. I've gotten answers from the Olympics of [whatever year] to Watergate to more recent stuff from my niblings.

I find Dr. Redfern very entertaining because he’s so different from all the other characters in the book.

He was rather dreadful and loud—and—and—dreadful. But there was something about him she liked.

He’s rich and has no taste and is utterly discordant with Valacy and Barney’s life in the woods, and has nothing in common with them personality-wise – but Valancy likes him because there’s no fakery in him interpersonally (despite his whole business being built on fakery). His emotions may not be deep but they’re real: he cares about his son, he likes Valancy, his behaviour is relaxed, and all this contrasts with Valancy’s rigid, repressed, artificial family. The sole point of connection is that he’s not a part of the conventional respectability that is the villain of the book.

Even with all of Valancy’s understandable hang-ups about self-worth, I find it unbelievable that learning that Barney spent $15,000 on her necklace doesn’t even budge her assumption that he doesn’t love her and is angry to learn she’s not terminally ill. That’s got to be hundreds of thousands, at least, or even over a million, in our day’s money (i.e. inflation-adjusted). Plus revealing his location after concealing it for six years! That’s not the kind of thing a man does for a woman he just feels sorry for and is happy to hang out with for a year.

A question for consideration: what would Dr. Redfern be if converted into the present day? It would need to be something where he’s very rich; not just his name but his image is familar to most people; and it’s not deeply wrong but is embarrassing. (I think fake patent medicines were very much unethical, but the book doesn’t care about them in that way.)

So demons (concubi in this case) and humans are different species right?

Well since the most consensual definition of specie states that if two creatures are able to reproduce with each other giving rise to fertile offspring, then they are of the same species.

Then how can cambions be fertile?

How did The Merlin create the unbalanced cambions know as merlins?

Are cambions like Valec and Zoey fertile or was it just Merlin?

If Sel hadn’t suspected and antagonized Bree, the entire Order would be in deep shit.

The only reason she identifies Rhaz-as-Evan before he attacks is because she hears his silent feet and remembers what Sel said, after she pointed out that her OWN feet make noise… which she only points out because he suspects her.

That was the first thing I noticed, but even more so…. The hellfoxes during the scavenger hunt.

I don’t know if it’s confirmed if they were drawn to either of them specifically or just to the nearest presence, but it’s entirely possible that, even without Sel there to chase her directly to them, Bree becomes their target. And I love her, but I doubt this untrained, inexperienced Bree manages to fend off two (three?) hellfoxes on her own, even with her root.

The Scion of Arthur DIES there, without anyone even knowing her heritage, and at that point the next-in-line is Awakened later that night, maybe on a different continent for all we know.

And these are just the two situations that jump out at me without having done a recent reread. There’s probably a couple more in which something Sel says/does while hunting Bree ends up saving her down the line.

Is Sel correct? No.

Is Sel right? No. (although he is absolutely justified in his belief)

But is Sel’s suspicion possibly the only reason Bree is alive right now?

Are you happy with it?

^^^^^^

https://wheelofnames.com/5k9-xsu

Something that jumped out to me on this read-through is that Valancy does not leave her wedding ring behind. If she really was intent on the divorce, would she not have left that behind with the pearls?

okay see i don't want to be a dick because i'm not saying you're entirely wrong- showing abusive relationships and clarifying that they're abusive in media does help people recognize abuse in real life. it's probably a really good thing to include in media aimed at kids or 'family viewing'. but that's not what my post is about and it's not the only reason to write abusive fucked up relationships, and acting like it is flattens stories in a way that is ultimately really bad. and you're completely misinterpreting my post if you think the point of it was sometimes we should include Bad Relationships so Kids At Home Will Know Its Bad.

my point was that sometimes it is interesting to read about or write about really weird unhealthy relationships. not educational.

I don't think an author should have to preface their gothic horror with "and of course, fucking a guy whos secretly your cousin and maybe killed your mom is bad and i disavow". i don't think every fanfic that decides to make the love interest a rapist should end with "and he goes to jail, because that was a Bad Thing to Do, and the victim of his behavior went to therapy and got help dealing with the ramifications".

It's fictional. It's not real. It's not a PSA. sometimes the point is to deconstruct the viewpoint of a rapist who doesn't know they're a rapist. sometimes it's exploring how codependent two characters can get if you put them in a jigsaw trap and tie their legs together. sometimes the point is the author thinks it's sexy to imagine getting fucked at knifepoint. sometimes its literally just this:

I feel like this chapter really illuminates why we have the millionaire-Barney twist: it’s to give the stark constrast between Valancy’s priorities and her family’s. Valancy’s family start to value her at the precise moment her self-worth is lowest, and do so not because of anything about herself, but because her husband – despised a minute ago – is found to be the son-in-law of a millionaire. It highlights how worthless the Stirlings’ regard and approval always was.

The revelation makes no impact whatever on either Valancy’s love of Barney or her desire to set him free. It creates a 180 in the Stirlings’ attitude – from Barney Snaith as a disreputable tramp whom Valancy should be shunned for marrying, to Bernard Redfern as a phenomenal ‘catch’ for whose sake Valancy much be treated with at least a modicum of respect.

Even Uncle Benjamin’s joke plays into this contrast:

He held the door open. As she went through he whispered, “What is the best way to keep a man’s love?”

Valancy smiled wanly. But she had come back to the old life—the old shackles. “What?” she asked as meekly as of yore.

“Not to return it,” said Uncle Benjamin with a chuckle.

The Stirlings live in a world where love and marriage are a battle-of-the-sexes game of advantage. Valancy has lived in the opposite way, in defiance of this dictum – she asked Barney to marry her, openly told him she loved him and that she did not expect to be loved and return. And we the readers know that he does love her! Uncle Benjamin is, may, I think, be hinting that he is not too worried about Valancy running away from Bernard Redfern, because it will only strengthen his interest. Valancy doesn’t even process this because she and Barney aren’t playing a game.

As a second observation, I love how the description of the house emphasizes return to it as a return to stagnation, after a year of stimulus and joy and love and change. The earlier chapter with their summary of seasons are even strengthened a little by this contrast. Everything in the Stirling home is unchanging. I think the best touches are the kitten that never grows up into a cat, and the clock that never goes. The house is timeless in the worst of ways, and it is a place of eternal immaturity, where Valancy can never be an adult with agency, volition, and respect.

It’s not surprising that Valancy is in a dissociative state after everything she’s been through and everything she expects to have to go through again. It breaks my heart, but it is not surprising, and Montgomery probably writes dissociation better than any other author I know. There’s a whole tangent I could go into there, but I’ll leave it for now to say…

That I find Barney once again risking his carefully kept secret to give Valancy his new book that wasn’t out yet very sweet and touching and beautiful. It’s such vulnerability, to share this carefully guarded part of him with her before anyone else. And it’s possible that his rationale was that she didn’t have much time left and he wanted her to have it while she still could, and that makes me want to cry again.

Hannah’s list of awesome books with queer characters: The Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray

On 23 October last year (2024) the New York Times published an interview with former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji who worked on organising and gathering data for OpenAI until 2022 when he begun thinking about the morality of it. He eventually came to the conclusion that what OpenAI is doing blatantly violates copyright law and decided to leave the company altogether in August 2024.

After he came out with this accusation he was set to appear in court to testify against OpenAI’s data-gathering practices, something which had the potential of being a complete disaster for the company and the generative AI industry as a whole.

That was until 26 November, just days before he was due to appear in court, when he suddenly and mysteriously was found dead inside his own apartment. Investigators concluded that the death was self-inflicted, something which his family has disputed.

There was also “sign of struggle in the bathroom and looks like someone hit him in the bathroom based on blood spots”, and his apartment showed signs of having been ransacked for evidence: “The pin drive is missing. His computer was messed up.”.

Overall it feels pretty clear-cut what happened, that is to say that OpenAI had him killed because he was a legitimate threat to their business, indicating that they are fully aware that the way they’re gathering data is completely illegal.

Sources:

Alys Davies, 14.12.2024, OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment. BBC News

Barney Davis, 16.1.2025, Suchir Balaji’s family demand outside investigation into OpenAI whistleblower’s death. The Independent