#beastess

something i’ve noticed lately which is truly disheartening is that any retellings of medusa in which it is a direct classical retelling (i.e. she was raped and then transformed into a gorgon) always end with her murder. i have genuinely not once read a retelling that deals with those two themes and allows her to survive. i’ve read a review today of the natalie haynes medusa novel which comes out this month i believe and medusa apparently dies in her book too. what does that mean? what does it mean that authors cannot conceive of an ugly traumatized angry powerful woman who LIVES? women have only been allowed to be beasts if they A: are the villains or B: die tragically. is there a single female monster who isn’t sexy and isn’t palatable and isn’t male-catered, who survives? 

i think one of the biggest problems i’ve noticed while editing is that my first draft is way too corny. or, to be kinder to myself, too earnest. i think i use the word tenderness way too much. eleven times, which in a 90k text seems not so bad but it’s one of those words imo that needs to be used sparingly so it packs more punch. editing this is going to be difficult 

“In this way, writing avenging fiction feels like protecting oneself with a quiver of crooked arrows, or a satchel of boomerangs. Grievance gathers in my body, and I write toward it, even as my own words flay me. I keep on writing toward what hurts or angers me, trying to get at something I can’t seem to express in any other way.

having a lot of thoughts about monstrosity as physical manifestations of internal trauma, esp with medusa: trauma lives in the body but so too does power