Ranter gonna rant

Someone linked me this beautiful poster, and I'm just really impressed.

My contribution:

For those wondering - Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 #338 (Hobgoblin sprays Spider-man with poison) and #339 (Doc Ock reveals the poison only becomes lethal when combined with cocaine).

And then there's a bit right at the end of the story as the wife and the husband are walking out of court:

Jill turned abruptly. "What is your name? Your real name."

The man's gray eyes flickered. He smiled a little, kind, gentle smile. "I'm afraid you would not be able to pronounce it. The sounds cannot be formed..."

Jill was silent as they walked along, deep in thought. The city lights were coming on all around them. Bright yellow spots in the gloom. "What are you thinking?" the man asked.

"I was thinking perhaps I will still call you Lester," Jill said. "If you don't mind."

"I don't mind," the man said. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. "Anything you wish. Whatever will make you happy."

And I. God. There's something there. A soupcon of monsterfuckery. To tell your partner in a moment of intimacy that yes, you're something so inhuman that the lips you're stealing can't speak your actual name. You're a parasite that not only had the ability to burrow under this man's skin and take over his life, but you were so desperate to escape a dead, dry, blasted planet that you did.

It's a good thing for people to escape bad marriages, and a good thing to cut bad people out of your life.

But the difference between this and Stepford Wives is that in Stepford Wives there's a conspiracy to get spouses replaced with different, "better" versions of themselves, while here it just happens and the wife doesn't bear the guilt.

I explicitly mentioned that there's no conspiracy in Philip K. Dick's story, and I think that's a major reason why people like it more. To be clear, I like the main character a lot more for it, because she didn't try to make anything of this sort happen, nor did she wish for it; it just happened, and it worked out.

But as part of the audience, I am uncomfortable, because I recognize that this is a very similar story to Stepford Wives - except that it becomes acceptable by removing guilt. Just like "rape" is used in older romances to allow a character to have sex without explicitly wishing for it (she didn't want to, but he was just so forceful that she had no choice, uwu), it's pushing a good outcome while removing most of the issues related to that outcome. It's meant to make the audience feel good about a fantasy without confronting the thornier sides of the issue.

Probably also the reason why I'm uncomfortable now, you're right: we know women can leave.

From a story perspective, I like OP's take the best: "a soupcon of monsterfuckery", someone falling in love with you despite knowing you are something inhuman and murderous. I like fucked up stories! And this is fucked up!

It's the "whatever makes you happy" line, and the feeling of something like righteousness you get when you know she got out of a bad marriage and into a good one that made me pause and rethink it.

It's not about whether the woman in the story was right. It's about what we, in the present moment, feel. There is a side of us that wants to bask in righteous punishment (and I get it), but I can't applaud Dick's story unreservedly today, and I can't fully live the fantasy. I can't help but think that what was needed was easy divorce, and stories like that are ironically circling back to "but a husband should be good" instead, preserving the same status quo as a romance; also, I keep thinking that there's a tendency to delight in violence, which we sometimes make palatable by thinking it's against acceptable targets.

Combine this with a replacement story and I'm brought back to the same question I had when reading Stepford Wives and seeing the women's children being very happy with their new mothers: how many people would prefer a copy to the original, as long as that copy would be more convenient to them?

do...do people not know being star-crossed is bad?

Step 2: some playwright from an obscure island kingdom uses the phrase "star-crossed lovers" to refer to a pair of doomed lovers

Step 3: the phrase "star-crossed lovers" becomes widely quoted and referenced, still specifically in the context of doomed love

And then there's a bit right at the end of the story as the wife and the husband are walking out of court:

Jill turned abruptly. "What is your name? Your real name."

The man's gray eyes flickered. He smiled a little, kind, gentle smile. "I'm afraid you would not be able to pronounce it. The sounds cannot be formed..."

Jill was silent as they walked along, deep in thought. The city lights were coming on all around them. Bright yellow spots in the gloom. "What are you thinking?" the man asked.

"I was thinking perhaps I will still call you Lester," Jill said. "If you don't mind."

"I don't mind," the man said. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. "Anything you wish. Whatever will make you happy."

And I. God. There's something there. A soupcon of monsterfuckery. To tell your partner in a moment of intimacy that yes, you're something so inhuman that the lips you're stealing can't speak your actual name. You're a parasite that not only had the ability to burrow under this man's skin and take over his life, but you were so desperate to escape a dead, dry, blasted planet that you did.

It's a good thing for people to escape bad marriages, and a good thing to cut bad people out of your life.

But the difference between this and Stepford Wives is that in Stepford Wives there's a conspiracy to get spouses replaced with different, "better" versions of themselves, while here it just happens and the wife doesn't bear the guilt.

I explicitly mentioned that there's no conspiracy in Philip K. Dick's story, and I think that's a major reason why people like it more. To be clear, I like the main character a lot more for it, because she didn't try to make anything of this sort happen, nor did she wish for it; it just happened, and it worked out.

But as part of the audience, I am uncomfortable, because I recognize that this is a very similar story to Stepford Wives - except that it becomes acceptable by removing guilt. Just like "rape" is used in older romances to allow a character to have sex without explicitly wishing for it (she didn't want to, but he was just so forceful that she had no choice, uwu), it's pushing a good outcome while removing most of the issues related to that outcome. It's meant to make the audience feel good about a fantasy without confronting the thornier sides of the issue.

And then there's a bit right at the end of the story as the wife and the husband are walking out of court:

Jill turned abruptly. "What is your name? Your real name."

The man's gray eyes flickered. He smiled a little, kind, gentle smile. "I'm afraid you would not be able to pronounce it. The sounds cannot be formed..."

Jill was silent as they walked along, deep in thought. The city lights were coming on all around them. Bright yellow spots in the gloom. "What are you thinking?" the man asked.

"I was thinking perhaps I will still call you Lester," Jill said. "If you don't mind."

"I don't mind," the man said. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. "Anything you wish. Whatever will make you happy."

And I. God. There's something there. A soupcon of monsterfuckery. To tell your partner in a moment of intimacy that yes, you're something so inhuman that the lips you're stealing can't speak your actual name. You're a parasite that not only had the ability to burrow under this man's skin and take over his life, but you were so desperate to escape a dead, dry, blasted planet that you did.

It's a good thing for people to escape bad marriages, and a good thing to cut bad people out of your life.

But the difference between this and Stepford Wives is that in Stepford Wives there's a conspiracy to get spouses replaced with different, "better" versions of themselves, while here it just happens and the wife doesn't bear the guilt.

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

Kayabuki-no-sato

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.