Nefelibata in albis

Disability benefits: "I mean, sure, there are probably some sad sacks who are gaming the system, there always are, but hell, with the amount of taxes we pay, the government can afford a few freeloaders, right? I'd rather pay for a couple people who don't really need it than not have the system at all for if I need it, or my kids do, or whatever. I mean shit happens. What if some asshole drunk driver puts me in the hospital and it takes me a year to get back on my feet? Or Heaven forbid something permanent happens. I'll sure be glad that I can get disability then, won't I?"

UBI: "I dunno, the kind of guy who'll just sit on the couch playing Call of Duty all day if he doesn't have to work, I kinda don't want him on my job site anyway. That type is just taking up a place that you could fill with someone who'll actually get the job done, you know? You end up short-handed even though you technically have enough people because everyone else has to pick up his slack. And it'd mean that if your boss is a dick you can tell him to shove it and not worry your kids are gonna go hungry while you find a better place. We can sure as hell afford it."

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

And a thing that's missed, while kid's abridged adaptations miss out on the rest of the point, is that the Ugly Duckling decides he can't live like this and leaves the farmyard; he goes into the wild himself. In the various passages in which people try to keep him as a pet, or a duck, it's hammered home again and again that this does not make a good pet. there is nothing in him that suits being a domestic animal.

one of the particular parts that makes you go "sweet jesus, hans christian andersen" is where the wild geese rock up and are nice to the young swan, not quite recognising him as a swan but saying they're pretty into whatever weird vibe he has (is this a sort of queer recognition thing? we are told, explicitly, that the wild geese are both male, and they definitely say "you're so ugly it's hot - come with us" - given HCA, it might be) and then they're, you know, instantly shot dead. Because that's what happens to wild geese. They like your vibe and try to take you with them, and even offer to teach you how to flirt - and then you see exactly what happens to them. And then every encounter from there, from the old woman who attempts to keep him - a very satirical and funny passage - to the young family who genuinely attempt to save his life (but he's too fundamentally panicked and awkward to reciprocate their kindness, and explodes out of their house in a social catastrophe) the story hammers in: not only are you a terrible duck, but you just aren't MEANT to live with people. You're closer to the things they kill than the things they keep.

but yeah, adaptations miss this often: you have to go out into the wild to save your own life. you may die in the wild, and you WILL die where you are. nobody comes to save you - and nobody really could have, when you were younger - but ultimately, mate, you just aren't a very good pet. Of the list of "attributes of a domestic animal" you really suck, in detail, at all of them.

so it's very telling to me that the good ending is the one where he is a wild animal - but more importantly, a WILD SWAN.

Not killed. (like a wild goose).

Not kept. (like a duck).

but a secret third thing, that swans - of few creatures - get. they get admired and they get paid and they get LEFT ALONE. they have a position in relation to humanity, and it is BEING A LOVELY SWAN OVER THERE.

The Ugly Duckling isn't a "fairy tale" or a fable. It didn't emerge from the collective unconscious - it didn't come from nowhere. It's an original work. Andersen wrote it in 1843. It didn't exist before he came up with it. the translation I linked above was translated in 1930.

like many HCA stories (The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen) it's out of copyright and has pretty images, so it gets mined frequently as a free text - you can always republish a cheap Ugly Duckling, and don't have to pay an author. So people tend to just read and remember the various abridged versions. as a result, they think about it like a fairy tale - a sort of ambiguous, detached, floating thing that belongs to everyone and can mean everything. fairy tales - loose cultural fragments - can be hammered to suit any moral, or handwaved to be about anything, and then when you get bored of them, you can "twist" them a different way. Maybe it's about this. maybe it's about that. I read it as being about beauty. I read it as being about me. I don't like the politics. Today King Arthur is going to be Roman. Tomorrow Sleeping Beauty will wake up by herself. it doesn't really matter. And that's grand! that's what fairy tales have become - they are the people's mental property - they're to be played with.

But The Ugly Duckling isn't a fairy tale. it's a single sad, weird queer guy from a while ago, trying to tell you something personal about himself. maybe he isn't communicating clearly, maybe he's too weird, maybe you don't like it, maybe it annoys you - but <TheUglyDuckling> DOES have meaning and intention.

Have you drank water recently? Eaten a proper meal (yes this one is an epic tier quest these days, We know)? Do you need to stretch? Are you avoiding a task?

Okay, this is really, really hard to explain. Except that I think everyone else is wrong. I am going to give you an answer, but it is not going to be a complete or adequate one.

He is her god. She is his priestess. She calls herself his latris, his servant. She is devoted to him. He has also hurt her immensely, he has also caused her unbearable suffering.

She wears his garlands, carries his sacred staff. She calls him her philtatos, her dearest, her beloved. She also calls him her destroyer. She addresses him constantly; he is always with her, she can always feel his presence.

She was trying to consent to him, and could not. ξυναινέσασα Λοξίαν ἐψευσάμην, “In consenting to Loxias I lied.” The consent and the deception happen at the same moment; she does not make a promise and renege on it, it’s nothing so simple as that. Consenting to a god is difficult; sex with a god is unlike sex with a mortal. He overwhelms her with his sheer physical presence, with the intensity of his divinity, breathing charis upon her body. She cannot accept him. It is like a test she failed. He punishes for it, and this is a terrible cruelty, it is a disrespect against her own bodily autonomy. It shows that he believes there is no part of herself she should hold back from him.

It is cruel, but he is a god, and the cruelty of the gods is unlike human cruelty. They rarely respect mortals’ autonomy, their right to control their own bodies and their own fates. His cruelty is to be expected.

The text makes it difficult to tell whether he rapes her, or whether, at her refusal he steps back and leaves her body alone. I don’t know. It could be either.

One critic says that her rejection of him is about a refusal to bear his child in her body, arguing that she is one of the few women desired by a god who does not bear a divine child.

Even if she denies him access to her physical body, he is always within her. That is what prophecy means, this is what it means to be his priestess. This is its own, unique type of intimacy. He gives her visions which are agony. And she also experiences the joy and glory which is his presence.