Past Imperfect

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."

Also there's no such thing as "boy ADHD" and "girl ADHD" but there is absolutely a certain kind of cis man with ADHD whose problems aren't actually solely attributable to having ADHD — but are at least partly his unexamined reinforcement of gender roles and gendered expectations of the women in his life.

AI exposure may lead to occupational restructuring rather than job loss

I think this metaphor was part of a feminism course, but its wider resonance has never left me. Its relevance to life often applies. Here and now, in the eyes of the doctor, I am just neurotic and self-obsessed. The more I do to be listened to as a human being, the more I strengthen my role as neurotic and self-obsessed. The less she listens to me the more I tell or show her that I'm suffering. The more I tell or show her I’m suffering the more she thinks I am neurotic and self-obsessed. Each time, my role is reinforced and my role overrides my humanity. I become less human in her eyes. I am a type. I annoy her and waste her time […].

No part of me wants to go to the doctor. I’ve come to dread it, to feel in it an absolute humiliation. I see her about insomnia as seldom as I can and when I go it is always for something specific; a prescription or, as before, a blood test. […] I wondered if it would be possible to have another blood test, I say. Everything I read about insomnia says you should rule out any underlying medical cause, and that hasn’t been done. I know it’s a long shot, but it would help me. Just to eliminate other causes would help me.

She turns to her computer and is silent. Finally, without any eye contact, she says, This is not a shop. […]

Rage and exhaustion are much the same sensation, I discover, a flame struggling out of the same dead fire. Anger is alive, energetic, object-oriented, but rage is what’s left, eating itself alive. Rage and exhaustion eat me alive. […] A lifetime of courting favours and having manners and asking nicely and never minding, never minding if the answer is no. »

even if you're an absolute source material loyalist who's like "armand and lestat never slept together armand was lying" the way armand describes their relationship is still relevant to armand's character- if you think it's a fantasy, how does he build that fantasy?? it's clearly very important to armand that lestat recognized him as his master before they began their affair, even though we know armand could already throw lestat around like a ragdoll and lestat was no physical threat to him. the formality of the coven dynamic still matters.

and with louis in paris, you can clearly see in s2ep2 and the first half of s2ep3 that louis is attracted to armand and making extremely unsubtle advances- i want to highlight their riverside scene in particular where louis smiles at armand, steps forward to kiss him, and armand turns his head and says "if we were the only vampires in paris". his obligations as the coven master are his shield not to reciprocate (even though there's no "the coven master shall not fuck outside the coven" 6th vampire law and he's not exactly celibate now that they left the children of darkness)

but armand changes his mind about entering a relationship with louis literally as claudia's coven initiation is taking place and armand's weighing whether to kill louis during the ceremony- armand's coven obligations haven't disappeared, they're as present as ever, and louis is on even shakier ground with the coven than he was before. the main thing that's changed materially is that claudia is under armand's power now, and armand knows louis cares about claudia more than anything (also from s2ep3 when louis realizes armand knows the secret and when he thinks he's gonna die in the tunnels- "what does this mean for claudia??" "take care of claudia...don't give up on her. tell her she's beautiful. tell her that every morning")

and we see the reversal in their dynamic- while in the riverside scene louis was the one stepping forward to kiss armand, smiling and at ease, here louis is still and concerned, and armand steps forward to kiss him. louis fully knows armand holds both his and claudia's lives in his hands at this point, and it's only under those conditions that armand feels comfortable enough being with louis.

even the maitre/arun dynamic doesn't change the material power structure here- louis might be "maitre in the bedroom, maitre when it's hot or convenient" but it's only when claudia decides to leave paris with madeleine, leaving the coven and leaving armand's area of authority, that armand decides his relationship with louis is too unreliable and agrees to direct the trial.

and there's a possible argument- i'd def have to chew on this more- that part of the reason for armand's escalating control and gaslighting over the course of his relationship with louis (other than the primary reason of antiblackness and seeing louis more like an object than a person- let's not get it twisted) is that after the trial, with no formal power structures to secure louis' companionship, armand resorts to undermining louis' autonomy and selfhood. there's no coven and no claudia, but if louis literally thinks armand "protects (his) happiness", that armand knows what's best for him and he's a danger to himself and others without armand to care for him- and ofc as long as he keeps believing the lies around the trial- then he'd have no reason to ever leave.

In early July, Meta rolled out a new feature where anyone using its AI app could tag public Instagram accounts and generate images using their likenesses. Meta’s decision to turn the feature on by default, so that Instagram users had to actively opt out, was controversial.

Multiple Instagram creators posted viral videos explaining how to opt out and expressed frustration. After three days of outcry, Meta said in a statement that “this feature missed the mark” and rolled back Instagram tagging for its AI chatbot.

“They should have given you the option to opt in rather than opt out. But I am really getting tired of these companies pushing this AI stuff on us when we don’t want to use it,” said creator Sam Sooin Yang in an Instagram video with over 3 million views. As public sentiment has continued to sour on generative AI, Silicon Valley companies have leaned into enabling these features and related settings by default.

The public reaction to Instagram’s “opt-out” default for that AI feature was notable for its swiftness. “That was a clear and immediate pushback,” says Thorin Klosowski, a senior security and privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Honestly, it was great to see how quickly that happened.” Three days from lights on to lights off for a generative AI feature has to be some kind of record.