Excellent Intentions; Unbeatable Excuses

I want Knives Out

I want Scooby doo

I want Columbo

Thank you!

Women at sea being my current obsession, I'm delighted to talk about it.

So, the main popular clichés are:

The ship was the only 'she' at sea

The sea was a masculine space, etc. Everyone knows it. Except that Rose's story shows that not only was the crew aware of her presence when she stowed away, but she successfully inserted herself into the ship's life.

The passage where she meets the English captain and his seagoing wife is very telling. The wife lives on a frigate after all! This calls back to the British tradition of bringing women to sea, which lasted from the 17th century to roughly the middle of the 19th century (in 1879, Queen Victoria did a crackdown on women at sea).

The idea that there were no women at sea has been popularized by works of fiction, especially maritime adventures set during the Napoleonic wars (Master and Commander, Hornblower and others).

And that's without discussing the captains' wives on merchant vessels and whalers (in 1850, one sixth of whalers had the captain's wife on board).

2. A woman on board brings bad luck

Once again, works of fiction show sailors panicking/being angry/all freaked out because there is one woman on board.

In the Terror, there's a scene where Sir John comments on the fact that his wife gifted him a female monkey to bring along during the expedition.

The scene seems surreal compared to reality. These men wouldn't have lasted long in the real world.

In England, you had warships with 9 to 13 women on board. Some testimonies hint that there could have been more. We will sadly never know how many seagoing wives there were because they weren't entered in the ships' muster books, and therefore had no official existence.

Seagoing wives didn't break any taboos. They were after all devoting themselves to their husbands and being faithful helpmates. It was customary for the wives of warrant officers to go to sea. Occasionally, experienced seamen and petty officers brought their wives too. Add to that the captain's wife if she was there, and well, the number of women on board rises up very quickly.

With Rose's story, we see that she wasn't merely tolerated by the crew. After all, she was the captain's wife so they had no say in the matter. However, she won their admiration and affection. It once again helped that Rose fitted into the 'devoted wife' pattern.

I will stop here, even though I have many more things to say.

May I humbly suggest my own fanfictions? All chapters come with biographies and historical facts about women at sea. I try to depict the diversity of their experiences during the age of sail.

I have compiled a bibliography about women at sea. If you want, I would gladly share it.

Some resources if you want to start:

-Female Tars by Suzanne J. Stark is an excellent introduction. It discusses both seagoing wives and women disguised as men.

I shared an extract here: https://city-of-ladies.tumblr.com/post/819686443326799872/british-women-served-at-the-same-guns-with-their

These online articles will provide you with essential information:

-https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Naval-Wives-18th-19th-Century/

Sarcasm alert. Everything I've heard about this movie sounds like it was created specifically to annoy me, so I'm going to try to ignore it and just talk about my pet peeve, which is this pop culture myth that the medieval period was particularly filthy, brutal, misogynistic and lawless. 

Which is simply not the truth, and here's a true story from 1348 that shows the real Middle Ages.

We know this story because it's a very important moment in the development of common law - that is, the facts and the conclusion of the story were written down and became the basis for how similar cases would be decided long into the future. This 1348 judicial decision (citation: I de S et Uxor v W de S (1348) yb 22 edw iii f 99) is still read by law students today when studying the tort (or wrong) of assault. That's nearly seven hundred years of judges and lawyers looking back at a medieval judicial decision and saying, "Yes! That was a good and just decision!"

To set the stage, it's the 1300s - a century famous for the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Peasants' Revolt, and the Babylonian Captivity of the Church that saw the papacy moved to the French town of Avignon as puppets of the French monarchcy. But that's not the only thing that happens in the 1300s. This century also sees the publication of Dante's Divine Comedy; the Clockwork Revolution in which intricately designed clocks tracked everything from the hours of the day (which were measured in variable lengths) to the phases of the moon and the Sun's path through the zodiac; the creation of gorgeous books of hours and tapestries; the career of Christine de Pizan, the first woman known to have made a living from her pen; the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer and the radical social and religious reforms proposed by John Wyclif and his followers.

About the middle of this century a man known to history as W de S came in the night to the house of I de S and M, his wife, looking to buy some wine. The door to the taven was closed, so W pounded on the door with a hatchet, which he had in his hand. At this, M, the tavern-keeper's wife, put her head out the window and told him to stop. W responded by throwing the hatchet at M, narrowly missing her.

The tavern-keeper and his wife, contrary to what pop culture will tell you, responded exactly the way a couple of pub owners might respond today: they took the offender to court and argued that W had made an assault on M. W argued, in response, that he had committed no crime because the hatchet had not in fact struck M.

You might now be thinking that of course W would have won the case, since no actual physical harm was done to the woman he'd attacked. But you would be wrong! The judge in the case declared that the assault itself was harmful, and that W was liable to pay compensation for the fright he had caused M. 

"Ever since then," states my old Torts textbook, "the tort of assault has extended protection to a person's right to be free of emotional disturbance brought about by intentional threats of physical violence."

Law did exist in the middle ages. Women, as well as men, could expect to be protected by the law from assault. And not only physical, but even emotional damages could be awarded for assault...all the way back in 1348.

a) Veronica never "bullies" or "abandons" Betty Finn (as far as we know), but Veronica is still a bully, who has become repentant just prior to the beginning of the movie. But we don't know for that sure, of course. We do know that she didn't go to Betty's birthday party, which is rude, and we do know that they stopped being friends and Veronica doesn't really associate with her much (she had to convince Heather to let her talk to Betty, who was visibly annoyed with her the whole time). But we know she does participate in bullying other kids (like she did with Martha), and that she "used to have a sense of humor" about it. This is to say: While it doesn't show her outright bullying Betty Finn, there is no reason to assume Veronica has never bullied Betty Finn. This is sort of a non-point, but it will be important again when talking about Heather Chandler.

b) In the movie, it is implied that Heather McNamara knows she is not being fully forthcoming about the double date with Kurt and Ram.

The cut away shot is so we know we immediately know that was Heather McNamara had promised her is not going to be true. And of course she knew that: Kurt and Ram only see the girls as sex objects, and their literal first lines are about how much they'd like to fuck Veronica (and Heather Chandler), so obviously, them wanting to bring Veronica along can only mean one thing, despite what Heather McNamara assures her. It's a mirror to the scenario at the Remington Party with Heather Chandler in many ways: Heather McNamara is doing this because it's what expected, and she expects Veronica to go along with it, too. Just like how Heather Chandler expects her to sleep with Brad, even when Veronica doesn't want to.

(Also, the almost rape scenes are so different - both in set up and resolution - that they are hardly worth comparing, beyond pointing out they are different. The characters have deviated so much from the original intent of that scene that is no longer the same scene, and those are no longer really the same characters.)

c) Heather Chandler does not think she is helping Veronica at any point. I think this is the most Musical (TM) opinion shown, but the fact is that, in the movie, Veronica does not have a Nerdy to Hot transformation, and she is never implied to have done it. All we know is that she wanted to be friends with the Heathers at some unidentified point prior to the movie, and while there isn't any reason to assume she could never have had that Nerdy to Hot transformation, there's also no reason to assume that's what happened. She is a popular girl who is gaining self awareness about how people see her, but she is a popular girl. That is, in fact, the basic premise of the film, as it was originally concieved of: A sadistic popular girl kills her peers. It went through a lot of transformations to get to the final product, but what never changed is that Veronica is not meant to be a nerdy underdog in the movie, because it is a parody of 80s teen movies, where the main characters are always nerdy underdogs. Heather Chandler isn't helping Veronica and 'giving her life advice' or whatever; she is an equal, and not a protegee.

Now, I assume OP was also referring to this:

In which case: This is Heather's justification for how she treats everyone in school. This is her justifcation for how she treats Heather Duke, Martha Dunnstock, Betty Finn, Country Club Courtney, The Geek Squad, etc etc etc She does not actually believe she's helping anybody - it's just her excuse for mistreating people. She's basically saying, "Life's not fair"/"This is how things happen in the real world" to justify whatever inane bullshit she does to her peers. But she does not genuinely believe she is helping anybody, least of all, Veronica.

d) For some reason, OP thinks Heather Chandler only threatened to ruin Veronica's life in the musical?

They are the same lines. In fact, I think the musical abridged her tirade, because it references things that don't happen in it originally. And in the musical, Heather Chandler is not threatening to ruin her life because Veronica didn't want to have sex with a creepy college guy! I guess Heather puts hands on her in the musical. Perhaps that part is what's makes it worse.

e) Heather Duke is made worse in the musical in some aspects, since they also wanted to make Heather McNamara "The Nice One," but it's really just...not that different? I guess we expressly see that Heather Duke is the person going around telling people Veronica's a slut (which, by the way, is basically just a manifestation of what Heather Chandler threatened to do to her; and, in the movie, though we don't see it, we can assume Heather McNamara and Heather Duke are both doing it, because they are all mean girls). Actually, the thing about Heather Duke is, we're just supposed to realize she is acting like how Heather Chandler would be acting - so if you don't think Heather Chandler is acting that badly, but Heather Duke is... You have some weird biases.

And, in conclusion, I know they are worse friends and more irredeemable in the movie because they are never meant to be redeemed. Veronica doesn't remake the school's hierarchy to be a kinder, more gentler one - she realizes the fact that there is a hierarchy that people at the top can effect, but none on the bottom can, is bad, and "commits (social) suicide" by abandoning her old friends and befriending the "social Siberia" that is Martha Dunnstock. (And this is, of course, a grafted on ending, whereas in the original, Veronica would defeat JD, and as she's walking through the school with the detonator, realize her classmates weren't worth saving, and blow it up anyway. Which is...certainly a choice.)

In the musical, Veronica realizes that they can still change and things can be different, and that the people in her life are worth empathizing with and caring about. "The real love story is between her and the school," as the playwrights said. That's why the final song is the reprise of a love song? And they all hug and hold hands? The end of the musical is really the polar opposite: She is an outsider who joins the collective, rather than an insider who has become disillusioned by the abuses of society, and ultimately chooses to reject it entirely.

I'm not saying one is a better message than the other, because I don't care, but the musical gives every character a personality face lift (with the exception of Heather Duke) and makes everyone as 'good' as they can be in their circumstances (even when it makes the story...weird...in some parts). The musical is idealistic; the movie is pessimistic and cynical.

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

jeynsa2026 — day one: childhood

“in the sweet little world she had shared with her friend jeyne poole.”

She deserves better than a butcher