Mordred's Crown

carrie is almost explicitly about the cycles of abuse. it is almost explicitly about how women and girls are taught to reproduce the patriarchy. it cannot be isolated from either message.

it shows cruel teenagers not as a random whacky plot point but instead to highlight that we are taught to mock other girls for not being fuckable; lest we ourselves be considered not-fuckable. we will eat our own kind to survive. nobody helps her because to help carrie would be to turn against the patriarchy.

carrie's mother has experienced abuse at the hands of her husband and religion not as a "sad backstory" but instead because it lampshades her behavior when she then turns and abuses her daughter while citing that same religion. we are forced to ask the question: what is the difference between the patriarchy and religion? aren't they both systems of control? we often see mothers as being the "ultimate" in innocence and kindness - but this book challenges that narrative. abusive mothers exist, and and always have. abusive women exist and always have. white women, after all, love voting for donald trump.

men are almost absent from the book, but their presence lingers. it feels almost like the red mark made after a slap - the men do not have to be there; the women will continue to abide by the rules without question. it is a devastating, haunting condemnation of the notion of feminine fragility. it accurately asserts that women are cruel, are capable, are power-hungry - and often are hiding behind perceived innocence to mask that cruelty. the abuse carrie experiences rests in a doubled betrayal: it is because of another woman. the supposed "sisterhood" is revealed to be thin, a guise of equanimity that is only offered to the "right" type of girl/woman.

many of us were not the right type of girl.

to go back on these main and obvious themes of the book - to rewrite the mother as some caring and sad creature is... a curious choice. i can't explain it, but it feels almost like censorship to me. it refuses a deeper meaning of the book (and one that questions the patriarchy) in favor of the incredibly thin plot of "what if scary girl had scary powers." i literally don't even know what level of misogyny it is that we have to defang everyone around her in order to tell her story. i'm baffled by it.

in the era of trad wives endlessly posting abusive content of their children online - the adaptation had plenty of meat to modernize her mother. in the era of AI and revenge porn and social media - there's a huge amount of space for a competent writer to play around in. after all, if the abuse is recorded and posted to media - and as the audience we're watching it without interfering - the story is now about us. it asks us who we are comfortable bullying.

it's okay if you feel like you don't have the writing chops to talk about how many religions are abusive and tacitly enable domestic violence. it's okay if you feel like you couldn't write a believable teenage bully. it's okay if you're just interested in "scary girl has scary powers."

and better

i haven't seen anything about this on my dashboard, so i wanted to share. ICE gestapo killed another human being on tuesday. he leaves behind three sons and his wife, who he has spent the last 35 years building a life with

there is a gofundme supported by the league of united latin american citizens set up to help with funeral costs, legal fees, and supporting his family moving forward.

Hit a bit of a health setback over the last few weeks, just when I thought I was back to a place of relative stability too!

The path to recovery is a long one, but it seems I am over the worst of this particular hump in the road, and I am trying to get back ontop of my daily drawings.

Thank you again for all of the sharing of my posts and support for my gofundme.

It's been the difference between being able to keep my head above water as I continue to try and get back to good enough health that I can return to work.

Cheers everyone,

Had a few poor health days, which has made consistent drawing difficult, so here are some older doodles that I still quite like. Just to keep things going while my health improves.

New drawings soon!

Thank you for the ongoing support. Nearly at the 70% funded milestone.

Thank you to everyone spreading the word. Your hellp means the world to me!

-Alex

(thank you @hrafnaun for encouraging me)

All this from a dork with no background in visual art.

Cracking it Open with a Classic. The design upon which all future ones are based. I can't give this a ranking so to speak because it's the Standard. It would be like giving rankings on versions of The Cross and declaring the literal wooden one carried by Jesus to be Mid. I ain't about that. We salute our foundational documents here. Thank you Primo and Ghouls for bearing the standard. One of the metrics I'll be judging them on is how much it is still recognizably this symbol.

part of kayapó’s speech during this event

also! she’s still alive! that sort of thing is always worth pointing out to show that we really aren’t too far removed from events like this! here’s a 2019 photo of her:

They said Cass Elliot died choking on a ham sandwich. That lie spread around the world, and the truth couldn’t catch up for decades.

On July 29, 1974, in London, Cass Elliot—"Mama Cass" to millions—was found dead in a borrowed flat. She was only 32 years old. She had just finished two weeks of sold-out shows at the London Palladium, a career milestone most singers only dream of. A friend found her in bed, looking peaceful. A half-eaten sandwich sat on a nearby nightstand.

By the next morning, the rumor was everywhere. But it wasn't true. The coroner confirmed the cause immediately: heart failure. There was no choking and no food involved. The sandwich was irrelevant, but the story was too "perfect" for a cruel world to let go. It became a punchline that a woman of her size wasn't allowed to escape, even in death. For forty years, late-night comedians made jokes and newspapers repeated the myth without checking. It became "common knowledge" because, apparently, if you are a woman who doesn't fit the mold, the world will find a way to make you the joke.

Before the lie and the tragedy, Ellen Naomi Cohen was a force of nature. Born in Baltimore, she was smart, magnetic, and gifted. By the 1960s, she was the anchor of The Mamas & The Papas. Think of "California Dreamin'." That warm, iconic harmony wraps around you like summer, but Cass’s voice is what holds it together. It was rich, pure, and unmistakable. Musicians knew that when Cass sang, you stopped to listen.

Yet, the industry didn’t know how to handle her. She was brilliant, but she wasn't thin. Executives told her to lose weight to be a star; TV producers worried her appearance would be a "distraction." While male rock stars could be disheveled or overweight and be called "authentic," Cass was constantly scrutinized. She faced fat jokes on talk shows and was expected to laugh along.

Cass did what many women feel forced to do: she tried to "fix" herself. She endured years of crash diets and extreme weight loss cycles. She would lose 50 pounds, then gain it back, caught in a loop because the industry’s hunger for thinness was bottomless. Offstage, she was a dedicated single mother to her daughter, Owen, and a famously generous friend. She was "Mama Cass" because she took care of everyone. But the world still wouldn't let her be great without an asterisk. Even at the height of her solo success with "Dream a Little Dream of Me," reviews prioritized her dress size over her talent.

When her heart finally stopped at 32, the autopsy revealed heart muscle damage (myocardial degeneration). This is often linked to the physical strain of extreme yo-yo dieting and malnutrition—the very "solutions" the world demanded of her. The industry that told her she needed to change is likely what killed her. And when she died, the world turned that tragedy into a joke about a sandwich.

Her daughter, Owen, now 57, has spent her life defending her mother’s memory. She once noted that perhaps if the world had just let her mother be, her heart wouldn't have been under such impossible strain. We are still doing this today—reducing women to their measurements and making thinness a prerequisite for respect. But Cass Elliot’s voice is still here. It’s in the coffee shops, the movies, and the airwaves.

Hey, can you hear that? You know... the sound of a bell tolling. No? Ah okay so it is just me...