the zodiarchy

What I’m describing is a critical phenomenon wherein people will approach (usually canonical) horror texts which reify hegemony by ‘identifying’ with the monster who is generally figured in terms of alterity in some capacity; by extricating, for example, a queer narrative out of what is in fact a homophobic one, and treating this as something of a ‘reclamatory’ practice in which one ‘relates’ to that which the text figures as monstrous. The most common instance of this which I see is people’s discussion of Carmilla as an erotic lesbian romance; other examples include Dracula, or Frankenstein, or the socially currency invested in the idea of a ‘madwoman in the attic’ (ie. Jane Eyre).  

I don’t think this is like, a practice that we need to do away with entirely, lol – but I do think that a) there are marginalised writers + filmmakers who are making horror with actual teeth, with actual radical edge, and we don’t need to keep pretending like this approach of reclamation-through-identification with a monster in a v normative work is all we have available to us when politically subversive horror does very much exist, and b) this critical practice is often vvv limited in its discursive scope, and tends to lack the kind of materialist analysis that I would consider necessary in talking about literatures of alterity/marginality/violence.

When I talked about stymieing our ability to describe the textual violences necessary to the discursive constructions of that normativity in the first place, I meant that overfocusing on these texts as “reclaimed” articulations of an essentially queer (or otherwise ‘othered’) imaginary can inhibit our ability, as critics, to describe how those texts in fact do not think of their monstrous figures as worthy of a sympathetic or appreciative narrative. I mentioned Carmilla above – we can talk about Carmilla as erotically lesbian, sure, but how far down the line in talking about it as a Queer Narrative do we lose track of the fact that the text itself asserts the sexual norms of white Christian hegemony to necessarily succeed over the perversion of the corruptive, predatory lesbian, or as an Anglo-Irish work positing Carmilla as an Irish woman (and thus a contaminant threat to Anglo-Irish society)? At what point in adulating Dracula as articulating a particular form of queer, effeminate Jewishness destabilising and threatening Jonathan and Mina’s persistent heterosexuality do we lose track of Dracula as having grown out of the fear that the new waves of Jewish immigration in London’s East End were vampiric sources of contagion, or its possible relationship to the antisemitic smears that grew out of the Jack the Ripper murders? Or like, taking Bertha Mason (or ‘the madwoman in the attic,’ because truly, v few people using this phrase are actually thinking about Bertha Mason lol) as a kind of feminist paragon – at what point do we begin to overlook the fact that Jane Eyre is a v racist text?

I've been doing a lot of work recently that's focused on imposter syndrome and the feeling that no matter how well or how much I do, I'm not good enough. That I'm somehow tricking everyone into thinking my work is actually good.

Some days it's a minor niggle in my head that I can gentle and soothe with logic and affirmations. Or smother, depending on the mood. Other times it's loud and all-consuming and the mental anguish it causes me is so real I can feel it twitching in my muscles. This desperate fight-or-flight instinct with nowhere to go and nothing to fight but myself.

Anyway, because I'm several types of Mentally Unwell™, I was switching between workshop sheets ahead of next week. Filling in different forms. (Trying to get a good grade in therapy) And I got my "recognize your harmful ADHD coping mechanisms" worksheet mixed in with the "you're not actually lying to people, you just feel like you are because your brain is full of weasels" worksheet, and seeing them side by side made something go topsy turvy in my head, and I just had to sit and breathe for a couple of minutes until the urge to scream passed. Because it clicked, it all suddenly clicked.

The reason the imposter syndrome workshops and therapy sessions aren't sticking was because I do routinely trick people into thinking I'm someone I'm not.

Because I'm masking my ADHD for their convenience.

I've always known there was something wrong with me. My neurotypical peers made it abundantly clear I didn't fit in or was failing in some way I couldn't see nor remedy, no matter how hard I tried.

So I compressed myself into a workaholic box of hyper-competence in the hopes they'd stop noticing the flaws and exploit like me instead. And then subsequently lived with the daily fear that if they looked too close, they'd realize I'm a monumental fuck up with enough personal backage to block the Suez Canal.

If you ever need someone to burn themselves to ashes for your comfort and convenience, I'm your gal.

Or I used to. Until I had a bit of a breakdown, and the rubber band holding my brain together snapped and pinged off into the stratosphere, never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, the trauma of living like that didn't also fuck off and instead left a gaping maw where my personality ought to be, so now I get to deal with that aftermath.

And it's that aftermath that's affecting the imposter syndrome shit. Because yes, I am hyper-competent and good at what I do-- but it doesn't feel real because that is how I mask.

And the truly frustrating thing is I am good at what I do. I am not pretending. I worked hard to be good at this. It just feels like I'm dicking around because 90% of my personality turns out to be trauma masquerading as humor in a trenchcoat, and having people genuinely like something weird I'm doing is so foreign my brain has decided it's just another form of masking.

I'm pretending to be a good author so people will think I'm a good author, and my brain thinks we are in Danger of being found out. We are in Danger, and writing is Dangerous because then people will know I'm Weird and not whatever palatable version I've presented myself as for their NT sensibilities.

Like the neurotic vampire with a raging praise kink wasn't an obvious giveaway.

Anyway. I got nothing else. Thanks for listening.

Are you surprised? Fandoms have become notorious anti-writer spaces. Studios love you guys. They can cut the budgets, cut the number of writers, cut the wages of the writers, and you guys always blame the writers. “The writers ruined the show!” It’s never “the studios ruined the show.”

I hate to break it to you: more than half the shows you complain were “ruined by the writers”, were ruined by the studios. Studios cut the scenes and arcs you were excited for. Studios cut the budget of the show, or even raise the budget of the show and force a “bigger, louder, bolder” tone on shows that were unexpected hits (this is where we get “the Netflix look” on every show post-Stranger Things and Queen’s Gambit).

You guys do not do your research. Half your fanfics are tagged with bad faith digs at the writers, when a few searches would reveal how strapped that show was and how poorly the writers were treated. Writers are being given a single week to write each episode—I’m not kidding, one-week-per-episode is one of the reasons for the strike. How are good arcs and scenes supposed to happen under that time limit, with a max of only four writers?

Tumblr, the self-proclaimed “pro-union, pro-worker, pro-artist” site is also a major fandom site. You guys rarely practice good faith consumer etiquette for television and film writers, because your fandom salt always turns you against writers. And studios love you for it.

Yeah, individual writers do create bad writing from time to time. But so do painters, chefs, and musicians. Directors and actors sometimes refuse to film certain scenes or follow a show’s projected style and arc, and the writers always get the crap for a bad performance or a poorly directed episode. This isn’t to blame actors or directors; it’s to point out that you guys have one villain, and it’s always the writers. You guys never give writers the same grace you give animators, designers, directors, actors, composers, and editors.

only listen to official WGA affiliated social media accounts about strikes, boycotts, etc

Hi, this is a great question, because it allows me to write about the difference between honoring a picket line and a boycott. (This is reminding me of the labor history podcast project that's lain fallow in my drafts folder for some time now...) In its simplest formulation, the difference between a picket line and a boycott is that a picket line targets an employer at the point of production (which involves us as workers), whereas a boycott targets an employer at the point of consumption (which involves us as consumers).

So in the case of the WGA strike, this means that at any company that is being struck by the WGA - I've seen Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, Warner Brothers Discovery, NBC, Paramount, and Sony mentioned, but there may be more (check the WGA website and social media for a comprehensive list) - you do not cross a picket line, whether physical or virtual. This means you do not take a meeting with them, even if its a pre-existing project, you do not take phone calls or texts or emails or Slacks from their executives, you do not pitch them on a spec script you've written, and most of all you do not answer any job application.

Because if this strike is like any strike since the dawn of time, you will see the employers put out ads for short-term contracts that will be very lucrative, generally above union scale - because what they're paying for in addition to your labor is you breaking the picket and damaging the strike - to anyone willing to scab against their fellow workers. GIven that one of the main issues of the WGA are the proliferation of short-term "mini rooms" whereby employers are hiring teams of writers to work overtime for a very short period, to the point where they can only really do the basics (a series outline, some "broken stories," and some scripts) and then have the showrunner redo everything on their lonesome, while not paying writers long-term pay and benefits, I would imagine we're going to see a lot of scab contracts being offered for these mini rooms.

But for most of us, unless we're actively working as writers in Hollywood, most that isn't going to be particularly relevant to our day-to-day working lives. If you're not a professional or aspiring Hollywood writer, the important thing to remember honoring the picket line doesn't mean the same thing as a boycott. WGA West hasn't called on anyone to stop going to the movies or watching tv/steeaming or to cancel their streaming subscriptions or anything like that. If and when that happens, WGA will go to some lengths to publicize that ask - and you should absolutely honor it if you can - so there will be little in the way of ambiguity as to what's going on.

That being said, one of the things that has happened in the past in other strikes is that well-intentioned people get it into their heads to essentially declare wildcat (i.e, unofficial and unsanctioned) boycotts. This kind of stuff comes from a good place, someone wanting to do more to support the case and wanting to avoid morally contaminating themselves by associating with a struck company, but it can have negative effects on the workers and their unions. Wildcat boycotts can harm workers by reducing back-end pay and benefits they get from shows if that stuff is tied to the show's performance, and wildcat boycotts can hurt unions by damaging negotiations with employers that may or may not be going on.

Actually, my revelation came from the game the Long dark I have been playing religiously over the winter. Especially from this specific poem, which can be found as a collectible from the big, empty map, where the player has to survive alone against the Canadian winter.

(Sorry for the terrific photo. I looked for ages for an actual screenshot, but couldn't find one)

The poem reminds me a lot about Ratonhnhaké:ton's dialogue in the epilogue of Forsaken, which was cut off the game for whatever reason, which still drives me mad (the book sucks otherwise. Not even sorry).

"Mother, Father, I am sorry. I have failed you both.

I made a promise to protect our people. I thought, I thought if I could stop the Templars. If I could keep the Revolution free from their infulence, that those I supported would do what was right, they did, I suppose, do what was right, what was right for them.

As for you Father, I thought I might unite us, that we would forget the past and forge a better future. In time I believe you could be made to see the world as I did, to understand. But it was just a dream. This to I should have known.

Were we not meant to live in Peace then? Is that it? Are we born to argue, to fight? So many voices, each demanding something else. It has been hard at times but never harder than today. To see all I worked for preverted, discarded, forgotten. You would say I would have described the whole of history Father. Are you smiling then? Hoping I might speak the words you long to hear, to validate you, to say all along you were right. I will not. Even now, faced as I am with the truth of your cold words, I refuse. Because I believe things can still change. I may never succeed. The Assassins may struggle another thousand years in vain, but we will not stop.

Compromise, that is what everyone has insisted upon. And so I have learned it, but differently than most I think. I realize now that it will take time. That the road ahead is long and shrouded in darkness. It is a road that will not always take me where I wish to go. And I doubt I will live to see its end, but I will travel down it none the less. For at my side walks hope, in the face of all that insists I turn back, I carry on. This, this is my compromise. "

Both the poem and the epilogue both have this strange, melancholic kind of hope, for a better future, one, that you might not live to see, but which is still worth the trouble, since even if you might not be there, someone, your children and children's children will.

Ratonhnhaké:ton's story is about hope, and it is about kindness. He is a rare character in a way that even after everything that happens, everything he does, each time other people use him for their own gain, he refuses to lose his way. At the end he is still defined by his kindness, one he was ridiculed throughout the game, but which he hung on to. He has grown and matured, less naive, but he is still willing to fight for the world and a better tomorrow, however far that might be. He wasn't beaten into submission, but he saw the bad and the evil, and he decided not to let it change him.

The ending is also the beginning of Ratohnhaké:ton's healing. I truly love, how the game ends with him completing his ultimate quest, and moving on. There is no more Assassin's creeding: there is the rest of the world, his life, the future.

AC3 is a game that teaches, that people and the world will wrong you, the older generation isn't always right, your parents can be wrong. Blood doesn't make a family. You are allowed to hold on to your anger, but don't let it change you. Face the world and decide that it is good enough to fight for. There is always room for dreamers, for the ones chasing butterflies and building castles in the sky.