🚫🐦I'm a ball of feels 🚫🐦

Nigel is convinced that Stede is weak and stupid, and even insists that his memories of Stede as a child supersede Stede's own.

Izzy is convinced that he's indispensable, a pinnacle of white masculinity, strength, and ability, and when events do not fit his personal narrative, he lies about them. Whenever he is told no, he ignores it.

Jack rewrites his personal narrative multiple times with himself centralized as the victim. When Stede suggests that he may know Ed better than Jack, Jack refuses to accept this and escalates his behavior in retaliation. When Ed himself protests that he's changed, Jack laughs in his face. Jack being the only one with the right to define Ed is fundamental to his own sense of self.

Chauncey throws a fit, claims that the world has turned upside down, and then gets raging drunk when events go against him - the rule of law that he is claiming to obey is supposed to work for him, and he has a breakdown when it works against him.

Ricky rewrites the narrative of his mutilation as an attack by pirates - something in which he has no culpability - and then later declares himself the greatest pirate because he's bested other pirates.

All of the white male antagonists obey codes and rules as long as these codes and rules are working for them, then declare the rules null if they allow others to win instead. They rewrite narratives in which they are in the right, avoiding responsibility and undermining the possibility that they're wrong. They are incapable of growth because they do not see themselves as people who should grow. If they fail, it is because the rest of the world is unfairly against them and it has to be put right; if they succeed, it is because they naturally gifted and this is part of the natural order.

And much of the blame for their personal failings are placed on Ed and Stede - an exceptional brown man and a femme one. The anger and blame directed at them is because of their audacity at being exceptional, fortunate, loved, or supported.

hi sorry uh. incredible miscommunication on my part lmfao.

There's a bone in the shoulder I've been noticing on celebrities. It sits where my muscle does--and her muscle does, presumably--but her muscle has made work of unbuilding itself from view. For the bone's sake. The bone eats shadows and gargles them before it's done with them. The red carpet loves shadows. The red carpet loves bones. The red carpet loves tired women.

There is a Chewy box outside. I heft it in a grip slightly awkward and jump it up 3 flights of stairs. My hold is somewhat awkward, I think, as I set it down beside the cat who more than happily minds this box. I tear the packaging with key-teeth and note before the flap inverts that the box is marked 49lbs. It didn't feel 49lbs. I use my shoulder muscle and chicken-wing grip to jaunt the full cat litter one-handed to its place while my cat licks the unopened food bag. The motion is easy.

Those who make velvet marks of their high-heeled toes on the red carpet and those who heft Chewy boxes up triple-decker walk-ups are mutually exclusive groups. I imagine anyway the celebrity with all the fuck-you money in the world, and all the access to gyms and personal trainers and nutritionists and fitness plans, squatting heels-flat and grip-cupped to my Chewy box. I think that shoulder bone would writhe under taut skin like my cat shoving her hopeless face against the tiny opening from inside her cat carrier. I think the muscles would strain and the bones would hush them. I think the Chewy box would never move.