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In the past fifty years, fantasyâs greatest sin might be its creation of a bland, invariant, faux-Medieval European backdrop. The problem isnât that every fantasy novel is set in the same place: pick a given book, and it probably deviates somehow. The problem is that the texture of this place gets everywhere.
Whatâs texture, specifically? Exactly what Elliot says: material culture. Social space. The textiles people use, the jobs they perform, the crops they harvest, the seasons they expect, even the way they construct their names. Fantasy writing doesnât usually care much about these details, because it doesnât usually care much about the little people â laborers, full-time mothers, sharecroppers, so on. (The last two books of Earthsea represent LeGuinâs remarkable attack on this tendency in her own writing.) So the fantasy writer defaults â fills in the tough details with the easiest available solution, and moves back to the world-saving, vengeance-seeking, intrigue-knotting narrative. Availability heuristics kick in, and we get another world of feudal serfs hunting deer and eating grains, of Western name constructions and Western social assumptions. (Husband and wife is not the universal historical norm for family structure, for instance.)
Defaulting is the root of a great many evils. Defaulting happens when we donât think too much about something we write â a character description, a gender dynamic, a textile on display, the weave of the rug. Absent much thought, automaticity, the brainâs subsconscious autopilot, invokes the easiest available prototype â in the case of a gender dynamic, dad will read the paper, and mom will cut the protagonistâs hair. Or, in the case of worldbuilding, we default to the bland fantasy backdrop we know, and thereby reinforce it. Itâs not done out of malice, but itâs still done.
The only way to fight this is by thinking about the little stuff. So: I was quite wrong. You do need to worldbuild pretty hard. Worldbuild against the grain, and worldbuild to challenge. Think about the little stuff. You donât need to position every rain shadow and align every tectonic plate before you start your short story. But you do need to build a base of historical information that disrupts and overturns your implicit assumptions about how societies âordinarilyâ work, what they âordinarilyâ eat, who they âordinarilyâ sleep with. Remember that your slice of life experience is deeply atypical and selective, filtered through a particular culture with particular norms. If you stick to your easy automatic tendencies, youâll produce sexist, racist writing â because our culture still has sexist, racist tendencies, tendencies we internalize, tendencies we can now even measure and quantify in a laboratory. And youâll produce narrow writing, writing that generalizes a particular historical moment, its flavors and tongues, to a fantasy world that should be much broader and more varied. Donât assume that the world you see around you, its structures and systems, is inevitable.
please wear sunscreen!!! I've seen "fuck the beauty industrial complex" posts about complicated skincare regimens and am 100% with them except sometimes they mention sunscreen and no. no. absolutely not. sunscreen is a wonderful supportive friend who wants to keep you safe, and you should let her do it. throw out all your other cosmetics and skincare products if you want, but keep your sunscreen. and if you're not wearing sunscreen, start wearing it!!!! this is not about terror of aging, this is not about every tiny imperfection our fucked-up culture has made you feel insecure about, this is about protecting yourself from skin cancer. wear the damn sunscreen.
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âI would never tie you down, not even with garlands of roses. I donât want anything from you that doesnât come from your own impulse, like water from the springs.â
â Dulce MarĂa Loynaz, tr. James OâConnor, Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems; âXLVIâ
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She shouldnât have worn the heels.
Nestaâd known it the second sheâd stepped out onto the street, and by the second block, when the left one got caught in a gap between the cobblestones and sheâd lurched sideways, catching herself on a garden wall with both hands, she was certain this werenât heels but torture devices. Sheâd stood there for a moment in the dark, breathing through another wave of mild panic, before peeling herself off the stone and continuing, determined to make it home on her own.
By the third block, the back of her right heel had dug into her skin so viciously that she was sure sheâd find a blister of epic proportions once sheâd take it off. She walked through it, jaw set, because she was not going to add being stopped by a fucking blister to the eveningâs long list of humiliations.
The cold helped, at least. Edinburgh at eleven PM in October was a particular kind of cold, thorough and unrelenting, the kind that found every gap in her clothing without fault. It sobered her. She pulled her jacket tighter and walked faster, which was a mistake, because that definitely made the blister worse, but standing still was not an option. Standing still meant thinking, and she was not going to think.
She was not going to think about what happened on that sofa, or about the way his large hands felt on her body, guiding her to utter bliss, or the specific quality of his voice when heâd said her name like that. Low and rough at the edges, like sheâd taken all the air out of him instead of the other way around.
She walked faster instead.
The rain started around the time she arrived at Bruntsfield Place, without any type of warning, as if it had been waiting overhead for the most inconvenient possible moment just to spite her. Within thirty seconds, it had soaked through her jacket, her silk camisole starting to cling to her skin. Her hair was plastered against her face and her trousers were clinging to her legs, resulting in horrible chafing, and the heels were now an active war crime, water running into them.
She kept walking, her arms crossed tight over her chest. She crossed onto the Meadows path, which was worse, because the rain came in sideways here, off the open ground, pelting her face with some sort of personal vendetta. The trees were stripped back to their October bones overhead. She stepped into a puddle she hadnât seen and more cold water went directly into her heels, making her stop walking for a moment, her eyes closed, breathing in deeply through her nose.
Further update : they have been successfully lured into a conversation about books. they have also permitted me to mail them something from the "read this to understand me better" list
they are a (self-aware and upfront about it) terrible texter, so i got out the vintage stationery and sparkly fountain pen ink and will see if i can turn this into an exchange of letters instead
Oh look I finally remembered WIP Wednesday is a thing! Did somebody say viking!Cassian?
âI donât like it,â Nesta said, scowling.
Cassian only laughed, pressing a kiss to her brow, right where it furrowed. Against her will, it smoothed beneath his lips.
âNor I,â he said simply. âAnything that takes me from your bed irks me.â
âYour bed,â Nesta corrected.Â
He only shrugged. âMine. Yours. The end result is the same, no? Youâre in it, either way.â
Nesta rolled her eyes as he pulled away to tie a leather belt around the chainmail, a golden buckle gleaming at his waist. Such fineryâ even in battle, in the bloody and brutal game of war, there was finery. The buckle itself had been set with garnets and so much gold-work it seemed like it ought to be holding up the cloak of a king, not the sword belt of a solider.Â
And yetâ
This was no ordinary soldier.
Even amongst the Danes, he had a reputation. Nesta saw the way they looked at him, like he was one of their gods walking amongst them in a mortal shell. Like he was⌠Tyr, she thought, as the name rose to the forefront of her mind. The god of war.Â
And yet.
Tyr had lost a hand to a wolf, Nesta recalled. Cassian had told her the tale by the fireside, when the flames had gilded his face and ale had made his voice as smooth as honey. What would Cassian lose, as a man facing down death? A hand, too? Or something far more vital?Â
on tv people are always getting called by professional titles instead of names eg captain doctor detective what have you. wish this happened more in real life in general for your average person. I would like to simply be addressed by the element of my life that is relevant to the current situation, I mostly do not want people to know or use my name. hello patient, the doctor will see you now. dear applicant we are sorry to say that we think your resume is terrible and we hope you crumble into unseeing dust forever, goodbye. you there, shopper, please stop hiding under the clothing racks and leaping out to bite people. and so forth
I honestly would not hate if this was more of a thing! (I feel like it maybe is in some other languages?) Sorry, patients, you don't need to know my name. That's for people who know me as an individual. You can call me Ms. Receptionist and we will all know who you are talking about.
I also notice myself doing a version of this when I'm looking to avoid gendered language. Someone is not him or her or that lady or this gentleman, they're "this patient" or "the dancer to your right".
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She shouldnât have worn the heels.
Nestaâd known it the second sheâd stepped out onto the street, and by the second block, when the left one got caught in a gap between the cobblestones and sheâd lurched sideways, catching herself on a garden wall with both hands, she was certain this werenât heels but torture devices. Sheâd stood there for a moment in the dark, breathing through another wave of mild panic, before peeling herself off the stone and continuing, determined to make it home on her own.
By the third block, the back of her right heel had dug into her skin so viciously that she was sure sheâd find a blister of epic proportions once sheâd take it off. She walked through it, jaw set, because she was not going to add being stopped by a fucking blister to the eveningâs long list of humiliations.
The cold helped, at least. Edinburgh at eleven PM in October was a particular kind of cold, thorough and unrelenting, the kind that found every gap in her clothing without fault. It sobered her. She pulled her jacket tighter and walked faster, which was a mistake, because that definitely made the blister worse, but standing still was not an option. Standing still meant thinking, and she was not going to think.
She was not going to think about what happened on that sofa, or about the way his large hands felt on her body, guiding her to utter bliss, or the specific quality of his voice when heâd said her name like that. Low and rough at the edges, like sheâd taken all the air out of him instead of the other way around.
She walked faster instead.
The rain started around the time she arrived at Bruntsfield Place, without any type of warning, as if it had been waiting overhead for the most inconvenient possible moment just to spite her. Within thirty seconds, it had soaked through her jacket, her silk camisole starting to cling to her skin. Her hair was plastered against her face and her trousers were clinging to her legs, resulting in horrible chafing, and the heels were now an active war crime, water running into them.
She kept walking, her arms crossed tight over her chest. She crossed onto the Meadows path, which was worse, because the rain came in sideways here, off the open ground, pelting her face with some sort of personal vendetta. The trees were stripped back to their October bones overhead. She stepped into a puddle she hadnât seen and more cold water went directly into her heels, making her stop walking for a moment, her eyes closed, breathing in deeply through her nose.
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There's this thing I never realized I did when I was doing it that I like to think of as "Ownership of Space"
And it's that thing where you mentally place yourself as the second, auxiliary party to someone else that you consider to be "In Charge" of whatever space or occupation or responsibility you are assigned to
And when you are IN that mindset, it *feels* like you're being responsible. It *feels* like you're being respectful, and helpful, and contributing to the load.
But what you don't SEE- because it *feels* like deference- is that the other person who you're seeing as The Authority you report to- by being assigned that role, has also been assigned the invisible load of BEING YOUR MANAGER.
This is by FAR most commonly seen in husband-and-wife relationships, where the man says, "just tell me what I can do to HELP- you don't have to do it all by yourself, but it's like you won't even tell me when you NEED help. You just do everything and then get mad at me for not doing it first. I can help clean. I can help with the kids. I can help"
But I also see it- and am guilty myself of doing it- at work, at school, in public- that mental, "this is THEIR space, and i will be respectful and helpful to THEM"- without realizing that subservience in this manner isn't actually a good thing. That it actually shifts the burden of responsibility to the other person. That aspect was totally invisible to me.
I didn't understand that when I was told, "if you see something that needs to be done, just DO it", or, "take the initiative", what they ACTUALLY meant was, "I am not above you", or "you have equal say in what kind of environment you want to live or work in", or "I do not want full control over what happens here, I do not want to order you around, I do not want to be in charge, what I WANT is to co-command WITH you"
Being in The Assigned Authority position NOW, that is all so much clearer.
I am the senior member of my team at work, and now, every time I train a newbie, every time I finish catching them up to speed and giving them a list of everything that needs to be done, my next big hurdle seems to always be, "now take pride in the space when I'm not around". "Now don't assume I'll tell you when something is due or what orders to plan things in".
Now, having been on both sides of the struggle, I can appreciate the sticking points here
TO THE PERSON "IN CHARGE": The person deferring to you doesn't understand the invisible labor you're doing. They genuinely believe you know more, you WANT more, you see things they don't, and that they are being respectful and good by staying out of your way and waiting on your orders. THAT is the bit that's not clicking.
TO THE PERSON "WANTING TO HELP": "Help" implies that you are providing assistance to a problem that belongs to somebody else. Stop thinking like that. Understand that the problem belongs to BOTH of you equally, and consider what kind of shared space you BOTH want. What is your SHARED GOAL? Not THEIR goal, but a goal that belongs to you too. Own your space.
This is not a Commander-Lieutenant problem. This is a Partnership problem.
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She shouldnât have worn the heels.
Nestaâd known it the second sheâd stepped out onto the street, and by the second block, when the left one got caught in a gap between the cobblestones and sheâd lurched sideways, catching herself on a garden wall with both hands, she was certain this werenât heels but torture devices. Sheâd stood there for a moment in the dark, breathing through another wave of mild panic, before peeling herself off the stone and continuing, determined to make it home on her own.
By the third block, the back of her right heel had dug into her skin so viciously that she was sure sheâd find a blister of epic proportions once sheâd take it off. She walked through it, jaw set, because she was not going to add being stopped by a fucking blister to the eveningâs long list of humiliations.
The cold helped, at least. Edinburgh at eleven PM in October was a particular kind of cold, thorough and unrelenting, the kind that found every gap in her clothing without fault. It sobered her. She pulled her jacket tighter and walked faster, which was a mistake, because that definitely made the blister worse, but standing still was not an option. Standing still meant thinking, and she was not going to think.
She was not going to think about what happened on that sofa, or about the way his large hands felt on her body, guiding her to utter bliss, or the specific quality of his voice when heâd said her name like that. Low and rough at the edges, like sheâd taken all the air out of him instead of the other way around.
She walked faster instead.
The rain started around the time she arrived at Bruntsfield Place, without any type of warning, as if it had been waiting overhead for the most inconvenient possible moment just to spite her. Within thirty seconds, it had soaked through her jacket, her silk camisole starting to cling to her skin. Her hair was plastered against her face and her trousers were clinging to her legs, resulting in horrible chafing, and the heels were now an active war crime, water running into them.
She kept walking, her arms crossed tight over her chest. She crossed onto the Meadows path, which was worse, because the rain came in sideways here, off the open ground, pelting her face with some sort of personal vendetta. The trees were stripped back to their October bones overhead. She stepped into a puddle she hadnât seen and more cold water went directly into her heels, making her stop walking for a moment, her eyes closed, breathing in deeply through her nose.
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as âproblematicâ in class and our professor was like, âThatâs cool, but âproblematicâ doesnât really mean anything. It means that the thing youâre describing has a problem, and in and of itself thatâs not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else itâs not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like youâre trying to say that this is bad, but you donât want to say âbad.â Is that right?â
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the âbadâ thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, âIâm uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.â
Once we stopped calling things âproblematicâ and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, âthatâs racistâ or âthatâs misogynisticâ or âew capitalism grossâ out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, âUhhh... Iâm not sure whatâs so bad?â and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I canât help but think of this professor being like, âGood starting point, now letâs get specific.â I think when we have to commit to saying âthatâs ___â it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever weâre claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes itâs art, and it should be full of problems, because thatâs what art is.
You know what's so devastating to me about "God that I were a man"? It's the way that in this situation, Beatrice is not exceptional. In the first acts, she appears to be exempt from the gender roles that everyone around her complies with: she has avoided marriage so far, and she has license to playfully criticize and reject being "over-master'd with a piece of valiant dust" (2.2.55-56). She even suggests to Hero that she claim some agency over her engagement: "it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy, and say, 'father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say, 'father, as it please me'" (2.1.48-51). Beatrice has carved out an existence for herself that everyone else tolerates; her wit allows her to live outside of people's expectations of womanhood.
But Beatrice is not exempt from being a woman. When it actually matters, when Hero is disgraced by powerful men with no regard for her wellbeing or humanity, Beatrice can't do anything about it. And "God that I were a man" is so painful because it reminds us--and Benedick--that no matter how transcendent Beatrice appears to be, she is still constrained by her role in Messina's society. Back in act one and act two, the reason that she was allowed to poke fun at men wasn't that she couldn't be stopped; it was that it didn't matter. She has no actual power to change the order of things, and so her verbal sparring is not a threat.
(An aside: I think that Benedick is taken aback by "God that I were a man" because this has never really occurred to him. He sees Beatrice as his intellectual equal, and he has watched her carve out space for herself effectively (they know each other of old). In the 2011 production with David Tennant, the costuming and acting choices show how Benedick starts actively performing masculinity only when he accepts Beatrice's request to kill Claudio--when he has to "be a man for [Beatrice's] sake" (4.1.314). In the first acts, he wears tight clothes, a crop top, and a miniskirt. From the wedding on, he wears his military uniform and then a suit. His body language also changes; he abandons physical comedy, stands tall, and emotes less when he speaks to Claudio and Don Pedro. He wields his masculinity as a weapon because he now realizes it's a weapon that Beatrice cannot wield herself.)
The crashing realization of Beatrice's limits is so devastating to me because it's so familiar. I can only speak from experiences I've had, but as a queer woman I know that tolerance is different than empowerment. That having grown up evading dating and romance with made-up excuses to hide my queerness, having realized the extent of the misogyny in an organization I cared about and having grappled with how that misogyny prevented me from effecting change, being allowed to exist is not the same as being able to participate, to make things different. God, that I were a man. I would eat his heart in the marketplace.
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i canât get over how crazy much ado is sometimes. it feels like a deconstruction of shakespeareâs other comedies when you look at how quick and lovesick and beautiful hero and claudio are and how well they fit the script of just classic young lovers, things like how hero is one of the only characters to speak in verse, the way claudio praises her to all his friends etc. and then how in the middle of the play the script is completely flipped. now hero is in danger because of what claudio believes and no one can help her. and suddenly the love story shatters because the same willingness claudio has to fall in love with her at first sight is the same willingness he has to believe a baseless accusation and the love story starts to descend into horror because thereâs no legal course of action hero can appeal to her and her own father insults and disowns her at her wedding and sheâs quite literally left for dead fainting on the ground with her father saying let her die, what is it to me? itâs insane because like 30 minutes before itâs just a happy comedy love story but shakespeare shows a real darkness to the genre because claudio may think he loves her but when it comes down to it he will never trust her. her word isnât good enough. no one is going to listen to the woman
Because I like this play a normal amount, I have an extensively annotated commentary of the script with all my favorite bits from various different productions and how I would stage it if I were running one.
Everybody thinks of Much Ado as "the feminist Shakespeare", and it is, but IMO its feminism isn't solely, or even mostly, about the female characters! It's literally a commentary on toxic masculinity.
The sort of masculinity that doesn't want to fall in love because "women aren't trustworthy" (Early-play Benedick), and gives his friends shit for getting crushes (also Benedick). The sort that takes your friend's asshole brother's word rather than talking to your girlfriend (Claudio), and tries to impress his role models (like early-play Benedick) by making a big show of shaming an "untrustworthy woman" (also Claudio). The sort that backs the big show because it reflects badly on his status (the Prince). The sort that believes that status rather than his own daughter (Leonato).
THIS is what really gets me about "Oh that I were a man, I would eat his heart in the marketplace". Beatrice is not just saying that she wishes she could defend her cousin because she loves her cousin. That entire scene is a beautiful, merciless critique of how, while there are theoretically social structures by which men can hold eachother accountable for bad behavior, those social structures are only as good as the men who form them, and they have all systematically failed Hero in order to protect those men and their egos from any discomfort or consequences. INCLUDING BENEDICK!!
So my personal staging is that when Benedick finally agrees to challenge Claudio, it's not "for love of Beatrice". It's because she's made him see how he created this monster. How Claudio's public shaming of Hero was an attempt to live up to the (shitty but less destructive) example that Early-Play Benedick had set. How it is on him to hold any and all of his fellow men accountable, and Claudio in particular, because this might NEVER HAVE HAPPENED if Benedick had been more aware of the effects of his own behavior. Ans how he is gonna have to go fight his own best friend in order to set things right-- not (just) because he loves Beatrice, but because he sees how he's responsible.
(also they are maybe having a swordfight about it because I am a sucker for romantic swordfights).
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