welcome to my lighthouse

about 90% of fanfiction takes place in a utopia where men are thoughtful and unsure of their place in the world

submissive in the way a livestock guardian dog is submissive to the sheep it kills wolves for

i'm literally the priest's favorite sacrificial lamb because i am so docile and sweet and i hold very still when they put the rope around my neck and i trot along so happily while they lead me to the altar and they do not even have to tie me down because i lie so very still and only bleat once or twice in my lovely lamb voice and when the knife comes down it cuts through me like butter and i offer no resistance and i bleed so prettily all over my new white wool and my guts all unspool like the most beautiful shining yarn and my eyes are animal and dumb and hold no accusation and every time i die i come right back as another little lamb because the priest loves me so so much and he always chooses me for the sacrifice every time and he always places one hand on my small and twitching nose to calm me while he lifts the knife and he doesn't do it for the other lambs only me because i'm his favorite

revealing of many things perhaps that the ‘you don’t know what you married’ fairytale trope contains such marked thematic differences between male and female protagonists… the selkie, animal wife/swan maiden, and lamia motifs being associated with the heteropatriarchal terror of perceived-feminine interiority; that if you don’t materially force your wife to stay, she might one day be gone, that there are things about her you don’t know and may not be able to understand. while female-focused versions of the structure—bluebeard, the robber bridegroom, fitcher’s bird, mr. fox, and so on—encapsulate the very real danger of abuse without recourse to anything but one’s own cleverness: the common fear that the person you marry and know might turn out to be a stranger after all, or that you may be forced to marry without even superficial knowledge or choice.

this makes me think about how i always consdered jane austen’s books to be a lot creepier than ppl give them credit for. they’re cozy favorites of mine, but they’re not without their own horror (all my cozy favorites are a little frightening, a little sad). this feeling of pervasive inescapable imprisonment is part of it, but also most of austen’s happy endings are tinged with a reminder of something horrific. i remember watching the 95 movie adaptation of sense & sensibility with my mom and how we talked about the ending being really horrific, even if it’s a happy one – watching 16 year old marianne learn to love and settle with 50 year old alan rickman and be grateful about it! and knowing that this is indeed her best choice, just like darcy did indeed help lydia by paying for her marriage to wickham, despite what we know her life will be like. austen’s commitment to realism can be very terrifying, especially because she never lets you forget about women’s dependency on men, or all the other social shackles placed on her privileged heroines and their happy endings.

It’s not real power. it’s just a reward for compliance. Power is not needing to comply.