Gabriella’s Lestrap

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach brought forward a litany of anti-trans witnesses familiar from litigation defending these bans. Among them was James Cantor, a Toronto psychologist who has built a career testifying for states defending care bans despite no clinical experience treating transgender minors—and who was once quietly dropped from a Florida Board of Medicine hearing after it emerged he had served on the advisory council of the Prostasia Foundation, a group that has worked to destigmatize pedophilia. Folsom wrote that Cantor "has not conducted any original scientific research on the efficacy or safety of gender dysphoria treatments," and noted he is not licensed to treat anyone under 16 and has never diagnosed a minor with gender dysphoria. [...] "The Court gives Dr. Cantor's testimony little weight," Folsom concluded. The judge turned next to Farr Curlin, a Duke University doctor and theologian who was an author of the Trump administration's HHS report on pediatric gender dysphoria ... By his own admission, Folsom noted, Curlin's views are "radically counter to current medical orthodoxy." The judge found his opinions "appear motivated by his personal views as opposed to a methodology applicable in the field of medical ethics," and gave his testimony "little-to-no weight." ...

And then there was Jamie Reed, the self-styled "whistleblower" who built a national profile on lurid, largely unsubstantiated accusations against a St. Louis gender clinic and who has gone on Fox News to describe being transgender as a delusion. Reed also did not testify and could not be cross-examined. Folsom gave her affidavit "little weight,” and had scathing remarks towards her lack of expertise: “The Court gives thus Jamie Reed’s affidavit little weight, given that she is not a medical provider or mental-health professional. In addition, her affidavit primarily addresses her experiences with a clinic operating outside of Kansas—thus, it does not rebut or refute the credible, uncontroverted testimony about clinical practice within the state of Kansas,” read the order.

This decision is 117 pages long, and if you want to actually feel good about something a judge has had to say recently about trans rights, this is legitimately a good read. (I understand that some people do not read legal decisions for fun. You should still try reading this one. It's really good.)

Bartholomew

Dolores

Norman

Harold

Magnolia

Names that are normal for babies but weird when you're old:

Maddison

Tanner

Skylar

Mckenzie

Logan

Names that are normal for old people and normal for babies:

Elizabeth

Mary

Michael

Finnegan

Peter

Names that are weird when you're a baby and weird when you're old:

Radish

Kerosene

Australopithecus

Anthill

Hegemony

Names that are weird when you're normal:

Balthazar

Romulus

Clandestia

Persephone

Kremulon

Names that are normal when you're weird:

based on my own post:

Lestat has the capacity for this massive amount of compassion and feeling for the people who have wronged him the most. he sees the souls of the evil doers he drains and kills, and he learns to love them in their final moments. in the same way that he grieves for Magnus, feels for him even after Magnus has done nothing but torture him, he loves his family. or at least he feels for them. he can hate them and pity them and still feel bound to them, which is part of what makes him so interesting and frustrating and sad.

and I don’t find him and Gabrielle killing them cathartic either. it’s so much effort and grotesque cruelty wasted on people that they have only ever wanted to be away from. Gabrielle, maybe I could see her wanting to do this, but even then, in the book she is literally the one who diverts Lestat from his messed up fantasy of going from room to room and slaughtering his father and brothers. she gives him the means of escaping Auvergne and going with Nicki to Paris because she doesn’t want to see him take on the burden of the madness of their family. he doesn’t need to become a cabbage! 😭

I don’t see killing them as cathartic. it’s kind of pathetic and sad, to bother going all the way back to Auvergne to torment these miserable people who are ultimately going to suffer and die in the French Revolution anyway 😭 and maybe that is potentially the point? I could see them exploring the weird tragedy of this decision, because there is something so grotesque about Lestat taking revenge on his blind, dying father, who is so old and ill that he can’t even fully understand why this is happening to him, and leaving the aftermath of that for his innocent nieces and nephews to come home to.

it’s disturbing in a similar way to Lestat taunting and berating his father on his death bed. it’s justified, considering what his father has done to Lestat, but it’s also so so sad. like the opposite of cathartic. this elderly, demented, blind man tormented in his last moments by the son he abused and beat all his life, pleading for forgiveness and denied the resolution that honestly neither of them fully deserve. it’s ugly and tragic and unresolved, not some triumphant revenge fantasy.