Off to see the Wizard

DID YOU PUT GOOGLY EYES ON IT

2. yes

SPOON: My friends, I have some news to share with thee

About the state of my own health of late!

Discoveries most vexing I have made

Of spores of mold a-lurking in my bed,

So hidden that I cannot rightly know

How long it is that they have shared my rest

And haunted slumber with their poison'd breath.

VOID: Egad! Dear friend! A prayér for your health!

That you might rally swiftly 'gainst this foe!

I beg of thee, resist the madden'd song

Of ideologies most vile and wrong!

I hope you will not follow on the path

Of that transphobic witch whom we despise!

SPOON: Worry not, dear heart; be reassured,

I do not share that dread affliction's curse

The spore that I have found inside my home

Is colour'd white and grey, you see, not black.

[Enter ACCIDENTAL OCCIDENTAL and KISFOR KEROSENE]

OCCIDENTAL: What is this I hear upon the breeze?

My friend the Spoon sleeps 'pon a bed of mold?

SPOON: My bed is fine! My sausage is what ails!

KEROSENE: Excuse me?!

SPOON: Wait, I could have phrased that better!

That is to say, the sausage that I keep

Upon my pillow while at night I sleep

Has grown itself a coat of winter fur.

I must confess, I am myself surprised

That such a spreading growth occurred so quick

Despite this item's place within my sight.

KEROSENE: This answer does not set my heart at ease!

Thou keepst a sausage on thy pillow? Why?!

VOID: 'Tis not so strange to sleep in such a way!

Myself, I slept beside a hefty stone

And felt no ill for seven years or more.

All the same, I ask of thee, dear Spoon,

Is if you kept your sausage in its case?

SPOON: Of course I did! Do I appear a fool?

'Twas of a kind of sausage bought in summer

Wrapped in plastic, safe against the world.

VOID: I would ask three questions:

SPOON: Fire away!

VOID: Firstly, did the sausage have a name?

Second, was its form anointed thus

With googled-eyed adornment 'pon its face?

Finally, and most important: why?!

SPOON: Three questions asked, three answers I shall give:

A-no; a-yes; and out of idle mirth.

VOID: Do you intend to eat the sausage now?

Food is food, and want is born from waste.

SPOON: I cannot in good conscience eat this thing!

Even if it were not once my friend,

And even if its poison plagued me not,

I have no love for food of fungal ilk.

VOID: Again, I must declare that food is food!

A little mold has never done much harm!

I myself have never fallen ill

From eating of the rotten fruit of life!

KEROSENE: Both of you are mad beyond repair!

SPOON: Though true, this is not relevant right now!

[There is a sound of a FLUSHING TOILET. VEXILLOLOGY ISENJOYABLE exits one of the ignored BATHROOM STALLS. All are awkwardly silent for a long moment as they wash their hands.]

VEXILLOLOGY: Shocking that such discourse has occurred in naught but seven minutes by my watch! I am reminded of the fabled plays where fools were taught to boil a cup of tea! I have no doubt that others will enjoy the tale of madness that I witnessed here!

[Exit VEXILLOLOGY ISENJOYABLE]

SPOON: DO NOT SPREAD THIS TALE YOU WRETCHED FIEND!

THE BARDS MUST NEVER KNOW OF THIS DISCUSSION!

[Exit OMEGA SPOON, chasing VEXILLOLOGY ISENJOYABLE]

22

of these magnificent ancient creatures still alive on this world. and I was aware of this at that age because nearly half of them were in a very secretive building on a hilltop near my house, in a last ditch effort by conservation scientists to breed and raise babies.

fifteen. Just born. this season. I cry tears of joy.

They take him home. They give him the Hebrew name Kal-El and the American name Clark so he will fit in. They know what it is to be different. There is no Hebrew school in Smallville so they teach him at home, and study Torah together. When he shows special abilities, they wonder to each other if he is the Moshiach. Not for the strength of his body, but for the strength of his kindness. He always seems to be helping others, delivering them from harm, as he was delivered to them. They never tell him this, but they teach him about the obligations without measure. He's a natural.

At school, he is side-eyed for being different. When he displays eccentricities, the villagers shrug and say "maybe it's a Jewish thing." The Kents make sure he values his education, and is always home for Shabbas dinner.

His is bar-mitzva'd at the nearest shul, a few towns over. They didn't know his birthday, so they chose one near Parshat Shemot. Now they worry that was too on-the-nose, but he gives a moving d'var about the obligation to speak truth to power.

As he comes into his own and tries to be a hero, he hides his identity from the public, not out of shame, but to keep his adopted parents safe. They've been persecuted enough.

When he moves to the big city for a job at a newspaper, Pa is so proud he cries. Clark uses his journalistic skills to expose corruption, give voice to the neglected and oppressed, and research his own origins. When he learns the truth about Krypton and his birth parents' desperate bid to send him to safety, Ma and Pa are not at all surprised that they were right.

When Clark brings Lois home, he assures his parents she is a nice Jewish girl, but they're just glad she's a mensch. They step on a glass to remember the destruction of Krypton, and stand under a chuppah quilted by Ma.

A white billionaire spews lies about him, trying to spread fear of the stranger in their midst. He comes out in public and says "There's nothing more American than being an immigrant."

When the government turns against immigrants, he stands on the side of the protestors and protects. Tear gass does nothing to him. He makes himself a shield. He writes article after article in the Daily Planet, making sure the public knows what their government is doing, that immigrants know their rights, that the powerful are put on notice. When they start rounding people up, he says "Never again."

They were! Superman was created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish boys, sons of immigrants.

a close up to just... light shining through those waves, makes me feel faint with exhilaration every time

sam thinks shes a trans woman who's transitioning in the modern era. super reasonable assumption based on what he knows ("captain america" is a man in all the history textbooks, but stevie actively makes an effort to get gendered right off the clock). he fumbles on pronouns like twice while figuring it out and then becomes Steve's Biggest Ally TM and never finds out he is aiding a cis woman with her gender dysphoria and not a trans woman. cool bro move regardless thanks man she needed that

natasha thinks steve is nonbinary and the gender role switching comes from that, because natasha has an insane relationship with her own body+gender and its connection to work. like her role as the femme fatale means she views being a woman as part of her job obligation/title; she views steve's gender situation as similar. she thinks steve is for real actually a man on the job and for real actually a woman off it and this makes so much sense to her.

tony thinks steve & bucky are gay men and refuses to delve into this because he is very worried steve fucked howard and he does not want the details. he makes a lot of mildly homophobic quips that he views as a status of him being progressively accepting (think the "no son of mine wears a skirt........that doesn't match his top!" jokes people made in the 2010s) which steve either totally misses or just views as sexist jokes that she ignores.

And so much love to that poster, because it stuck with me, and really made me think about why I find Kel so compelling. And, in thinking about it, I've come to understand that the truth is that Kel doesn't get chosen. She chooses herself.

When Kel touches the door at the beginning of Squire, Neal tells her never to do it again, because the Chamber might kill her. And Kel proceeds to touch that fucking door every fucking year, to the point that the Chamber knows her, and remembers her, and is like, "Girl, you again??" And she's like, "Yep, it's me! Please torture me some more." She keeps coming back because she is afraid that she won't pass the Ordeal, and she keeps touching the door because when Kel can't do something, she works at it until she can. And so, she builds a relationship with the Chamber the way she does with everyone else in her story: by showing up, by being reliable, by having integrity, and by being the best version of herself she can be, every day.

I tend to believe that the purpose of the Ordeal is that the Chamber forces you to change--to realize something about yourself that needs to be faced so that you can become a better person--and that the Ordeal only ends once you've internalized that change. (This is why Joren dies).

Kel's Ordeal ends when she changes the way she thinks about the Chamber: "I thought you would be grand and terrible" she says "I thought you would make us grow up... This is just mean." She had put her faith in the Chamber to show her that she was worthy, but she was worthy from the start. This is what changes about her: she no longer seeks external validation from the Chamber; she no longer has anything to prove. She realizes was always worthy.

And the Chamber doesn't go on and on about how she's special, or the chosen one, or whatever. It just says: "You'll do."

When Blayce starts defying the laws of life and death, there is only one class of knights that the Chamber has access to, and Kel is the last candidate to enter the Chamber that year. She is the Chamber's last chance to enact any sort of will on the world outside its little room. And Kel walks in, and it knows her. She is the one who has been testing herself against it for years, and she comes back and gives it the metaphorical finger and tells it to fuck off. The entity in the Chamber is already searching for someone to do this important thing, but Kel doesn't need some elemental demi-god who exists outside of time to approve of her. She does that for herself. She chooses herself.

The Chamber didn't pick her in advance; it wasn't some mystical prophecy. It was holding a job interview, and Kel showed up and said, "It's me. I'll do it. (Also, go fuck yourself.)"

And the Chamber says: "Yeah, all right. (Thank fuck you showed up)."

What I love about Kel is that she embodies the kind of heroism that is possible for all of us. She is dedicated. She is kind. She is hard-working. She commits herself to the service of others. None of those things are superhuman. They are possible for each of us to achieve.

At the end of the day, being a hero isn't about being blessed or prophesized or having super-powers. It's about showing up every day and saying:

"In the middle of a "forcing party" where friends and I are forcing one another to do the things that we've been avoiding.

So far: [bullet list] A passport has been filed for; An inbox has been zero'd; A personal website has been created; & more.

As I'm sure you all know, Andy Weir has written some other books; feel free to give them a shot. But there's a lot of lovely "two people inspiring one another to do great things", cross cultural connections with aliens, people working together to save the world with SCIENCE, etc books out there, so here are some to consider:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

One of the greats. Two people inspiring one another to live (often out of spite), with flashbacks for backstory, on a roadtrip to kill the emperor.

The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

I hype this book a lot. It's got cooperation, cultural studies, resettlement politics, sociology, and a little bit of magi-science.

Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold

Another one of the greats. Space welding technician gets sent to teach space welding to a zero-g native group of four-armed people and they all work towards liberation and independence together. Engineering! Family! Space! The Evils of Capitalism!

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson

Professional translator for psychic alien ends up investigating a locked-room murder mystery. Aliens! Linguistics!

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

What if there was a disaster on earth and humans had to start planning to go to the stars in the 1950s? There's space, teamwork, pushing back on dumb policies and forward on smart ones and more science!

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Something strange has landed in Lagos' lagoon. Science! Human-alien interaction! Suspense!

My Enemy, My Ally & The Romulan Way by Diane Duane & Peter Morwood (and the other books in their Rhiannsu series)

yes, these are Star Trek novels, but they're really just awesome sci-fi about cross-cultural cooperation and understanding. 100/10.

To Be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers

SCIENCE! It might be a crisis back on earth, but we're focused on the science and teamwork and what life might look like on other planets.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (and the rest of the trilogy)

Tbh these are on my tbr pile, but I've heard great things. Science! Space! Politics!

If you're looking for something with even more politics, philosophy, economics, etc, consider:

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

If you're interested in graphic novels, try:

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer

I recently learned an old French euphemism for bisexuality. It means to be powered "by sail and steam," and it absolutely comes from a specific flavor of 19th-century ship.

HMS Terror and Erebus were bisexual, you heard it here first.

At the same time, that rate of production is high enough that a household which found itself bereft of (male) farmers (for instance due to a draft or military mortality) might well be able to patch the temporary hole in the family finances by dropping its textile consumption down to that minimum and selling or trading away the excess, for which there seems to have always been demand. ...Consequently, the line between women spinning for their own household and women spinning for the market often must have been merely a function of the financial situation of the family and the balance of clothing requirements to spinners in the household unit (much the same way agricultural surplus functioned).

Moreover, spinning absolutely dominates production time (again, around 85% of all of the labor-time, a ratio that the spinning wheel and the horizontal loom together don’t really change). This is actually quite handy, in a way, as we’ll see, because spinning (at least with a distaff) could be a mobile activity; a spinner could carry their spindle and distaff with them and set up almost anywhere, making use of small scraps of time here or there.

On the flip side, the labor demands here are high enough prior to the advent of better spinning and weaving technology in the Late Middle Ages (read: the spinning wheel, which is the truly revolutionary labor-saving device here) that most women would be spinning functionally all of the time, a constant background activity begun and carried out whenever they weren’t required to be actively moving around in order to fulfill a very real subsistence need for clothing in climates that humans are not particularly well adapted to naturally. The work of the spinner was every bit as important for maintaining the household as the work of the farmer and frankly students of history ought to see the two jobs as necessary and equal mirrors of each other.

At the same time, just as all farmers were not free, so all spinners were not free. It is abundantly clear that among the many tasks assigned to enslaved women within ancient households. Xenophon lists training the enslaved women of the household in wool-working as one of the duties of a good wife (Xen. Oik. 7.41). ...Columella also emphasizes that the vilica ought to be continually rotating between the spinners, weavers, cooks, cowsheds, pens and sickrooms, making use of the mobility that the distaff offered while her enslaved husband was out in the fields supervising the agricultural labor (of course, as with the bit of Xenophon above, the same sort of behavior would have been expected of the free wife as mistress of her own household).

...Consequently spinning and weaving were tasks that might be shared between both relatively elite women and far poorer and even enslaved women, though we should be sure not to take this too far. Doubtless it was a rather more pleasant experience to be the wealthy woman supervising enslaved or hired hands working wool in a large household than it was to be one of those enslaved women, or the wife of a very poor farmer desperately spinning to keep the farm afloat and the family fed. The poor woman spinner – who spins because she lacks a male wage-earner to support her – is a fixture of late medieval and early modern European society and (as J.S. Lee’s wage data makes clear; spinners were not paid well) must have also had quite a rough time of things.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of household textile production in the shaping of pre-modern gender roles. It infiltrates our language even today; a matrilineal line in a family is sometimes called a ‘distaff line,’ the female half of a male-female gendered pair is sometimes the ‘distaff counterpart’ for the same reason. Women who do not marry are sometimes still called ‘spinsters’ on the assumption that an unmarried woman would have to support herself by spinning and selling yarn (I’m not endorsing these usages, merely noting they exist).

E.W. Barber (Women’s Work, 29-41) suggests that this division of labor, which holds across a wide variety of societies was a product of the demands of the one necessarily gendered task in pre-modern societies: child-rearing. Barber notes that tasks compatible with the demands of keeping track of small children are those which do not require total attention (at least when full proficiency is reached; spinning is not exactly an easy task, but a skilled spinner can very easily spin while watching someone else and talking to a third person), can easily be interrupted, is not dangerous, can be easily moved, but do not require travel far from home; as Barber is quick to note, producing textiles (and spinning in particular) fill all of these requirements perfectly and that “the only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food” which of course was also a female-gendered activity in most ancient societies. Barber thus essentially argues that it was the close coincidence of the demands of textile-production and child-rearing which led to the dominant paradigm where this work was ‘women’s work’ as per her title.

(There is some irony that while the men of patriarchal societies of antiquity – which is to say effectively all of the societies of antiquity – tended to see the gendered division of labor as a consequence of male superiority, it is in fact male incapability, particularly the male inability to nurse an infant, which structured the gendered division of labor in pre-modern societies, until the steady march of technology rendered the division itself obsolete. Also, and Barber points this out, citing Judith Brown, we should see this is a question about ability rather than reliance, just as some men did spin, weave and sew (again, often in a commercial capacity), so too did some women farm, gather or hunt. It is only the very rare and quite stupid person who will starve or freeze merely to adhere to gender roles and even then gender roles were often much more plastic in practice than stereotypes make them seem.)

Spinning became a central motif in many societies for ideal womanhood. Of course one foot of the fundament of Greek literature stands on the Odyssey, where Penelope’s defining act of arete is the clever weaving and unweaving of a burial shroud to deceive the suitors, but examples do not stop there. Lucretia, one of the key figures in the Roman legends concerning the foundation of the Republic, is marked out as outstanding among women because, when a group of aristocrats sneak home to try to settle a bet over who has the best wife, she is patiently spinning late into the night (with the enslaved women of her house working around her; often they get translated as ‘maids’ in a bit of bowdlerization. Any time you see ‘maids’ in the translation of a Greek or Roman text referring to household workers, it is usually quite safe to assume they are enslaved women) while the other women are out drinking (Liv. 1.57). This display of virtue causes the prince Sextus Tarquinius to form designs on Lucretia (which, being virtuous, she refuses), setting in motion the chain of crime and vengeance which will overthrow Rome’s monarchy. The purpose of Lucretia’s wool-working in the story is to establish her supreme virtue as the perfect aristocratic wife.

...For myself, I find that students can fairly readily understand the centrality of farming in everyday life in the pre-modern world, but are slower to grasp spinning and weaving (often tacitly assuming that women were effectively idle, or generically ‘homemaking’ in ways that precluded production). And students cannot be faulted for this – they generally aren’t confronted with this reality in classes or in popular culture. ...Even more than farming or blacksmithing, this is an economic and household activity that is rendered invisible in the popular imagination of the past, even as (as you can see from the artwork in this post) it was a dominant visual motif for representing the work of women for centuries.”

In the lead up to the American Revolution, you see newspapers talking about women – many if not most of whom had never spun a day in their lives, either because they were wealthy and didn't have to or because they were poor but didn't have time to among all of the other things they had to do for their families or their jobs, and professional spinster's existed, so why would they? -Getting together "spinning bees" to try and make homespun thread for homespun fabric so they could boycott textiles coming from England. These women were hailed as paragons of patriotic womanhood (never mind the fact that we have no evidence they ever produced scalable amounts of textiles, or even like… High-quality anything. Most of these bees seem to have been one-off events that were almost more about performing femininity and patriotism than actually producing threads/fabric)

And moving into the 19th century, the image of the spinning wheel became ubiquitous here in the US when talking about women in earlier American history. Longfellow's poem about his Mayflower ancestors features the female protagonist at her spinning wheel, even though textile production wasn't really a thing in the new colony at the time when the events he wrote about took place. Popular illustrations showed colonial women spinning at home. In the early 20th century, an art photographer named Wallace Nutting and his wife Mariet Griswold staged images of imaginary colonial interiors that almost always involved some type of antique spinning wheel as set dressing (to the great annoyance of later museum workers, who are forever having to debunk his photos in various ways)