As of this morning, the SKA site owner has posted an "ask" soliciting comments and submissions from people who have met me in real life.
I don't feel like I can do this anymore.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to the friends I've been neglecting because I've been dealing with all this exacerbating my depression and because I can't work up the energy to respond to emails half the time and because I don't like being that person who only has depressing things to report and talk about and so I say nothing at all rather than bring everyone down.
I'm sorry to the readers who have been wanting more Twilight or Narnia or Ross or Xanth or whatever and I've not been scratching that itch. I've been in your seat before, watching a blogger go through stuff, and I know that feeling of helplessness when something you like or care about or read for self-care starts floundering and I know how awful it can be. One of my biggest sources of guilt these past few months is knowing that someone, statistically-speaking, has been using my posts as a source of depression-relief as I used to with the favorite blogs I used to read, and I feel genuinely awful for not being there for that reader.
I'm sorry also to the people who have been hurt by me or feel they have been hurt by me. I know that will come as a surprise to some of the people who have been following along, or that there will be claims that this apology is insincere (it's not) or insufficient (I hope that it's not, I don't know how to do more than this, but it's not my call to make). I am sorry that there are people who feel that I have bullied them or hurt them or attacked them or yelled at them; if it helps at all, it genuinely was never my intention to hurt anyone as a blogger or a moderator but intent is not a magical shield that prevents harm from happening and I know that and so I am sorry for any and all harm that I have caused.
I really am. I'm sorry. If I could go back and do everything differently, I would.
I have always known that I have made mistakes as a blogger and a moderator and a feminist and a person. I have hurt people with my privilege. I am deeply, heartily, thoroughly, completely sorry for those mistakes. I do not know how to address them at this point except to withdraw. I have asked Melissa to remove me as a contributor for Shakesville, and I am walking away from my site for a bit. I'm walking away from this blog for a while. I don't really know if or when I am coming back, and I don't want to promise to come back when I'm not sure if I can or will.
I'm sorry. I feel like I should say more than this, but I don't know what or how. So I'm just going to hit post and close the browser for awhile.
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Metapost: I'm Sorry |
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Xanth: Nothing Worth Gaining |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny, Whorephobia, Slavery, Violence]
OK, before we go any further, one of you wonderful people sent me a link to this and it is wonderful: Revisiting the sad, misogynistic fantasy of Xanth. (I'd credit the sender, but I don't know if you want to be credited, so let me know if you'd like and I will!) Update: Sent by the wonderful mcbender, who is okay with being credited. Thank you! :)
Now. We're halfway through the book and I'm cranky and sleep-deprived so let's see how far we can ride this train before we have to stop for peanuts. Or however that metaphor goes. Chapter 7 (Siege) is about an army of barbarian Mundanes besieging the Zombie Master's (ZM's) castle because there's a sexy girl inside and maybe also treasure.
The siege was serious. The Mundanes were reasonably apt at this sort of thing, since they were an army. Motivated by vengeance and greed and the knowledge that at least one measurelessly pretty girl was inside the castle, they knew no decent limits. They closed in about the castle and readied their assault.
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Metapost: Welp |
[Content Note: Harassment]
The next time someone asks why I don't just ignore the existence of sites that are dedicated to harassing me, the answer is that I try but apparently the people who want to harass me don't like me ignoring them. Imagine that.
(The above screenshot is dedicated to That One Guy From The Pharyngula Comment Thread who valiantly argued with all the nice Pharyngula moderators that I must be lying, mistaken, or delusional about harassers coming to my board specifically trying to direct me to the harassment tumblr.)
I do find it kinda amusing that in a post that is complaining that I banned someone after they kept emailing me after I asked them to STOP (and yes, posting about it a year later on a harassment site definitely makes me think that this person cared about my boundaries as much as they kept claiming they did), there are also complaints that I'm not posting enough content that THEY like (boo Xanth, more Twilight) and that I post too many metaposts.
Lots of metaposts in the last 6 months of 2012, you say? Would those be the six months that directly followed major back surgery and even more major depression? And I nearly got laid off? And my medication--the medication that I'm still daily on--was severely fucking with my head? Those six months?
Yeah, that's fair. I definitely deserve to be harassed for letting people know about that stuff. And I definitely deserve to be harassed for not posting more Twilight even after your site harasses me for talking about Twilight.
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Xanth: Inflatable Breasts and Manipulated Cocks |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny, Hatred of Sex Work and Sex Workers, Slut-Shaming]
Chapter 5 (Castle) lands us at the construction site of Castle Roogna, which is where Trent and Iris hang out in the main timeline and where Dor will live when he is king, so he's understandably curious about its construction. In this chapter we will also get to meet our protagonist and antagonist in the backdrop of war that occurs throughout this book.
Our protagonist is Roogna, whose Magician talent is that he can "adapt" magic into other forms of magic. So, for example, he can turn magic fruit trees into other magic fruit trees. Not a bad talent all things considered, but criminally underused in this book, in my opinion, presumably so that Dor can shine with his talent of talking to walls in the middle of a live war. (Uh-oh, I'm being uncharitable already. MOAR SPYMASTER FIXFIC, STAT.) Roogna is described as old and grandfatherly-looking and much like a working-class gardener. You are supposed to like him.
Our antagonist is Murphy, whose Magician talent is basically Murphy's Law, i.e., anything that can go wrong, will. His talent is entirely contrived for the plot of this book and I'm tempted to use it as a thwacking stick from here on out for every time a woman's talent is deemed non-Magician, because it is the most useless talent ever. Murphy can't control the outcome of what will go wrong or how it will go wrong, and the curse can be easily thwarted by non-Magicians like Jumper as long as they plan meticulously for failure. Murphy is more urbane and attractive than Roogna, and you can basically apply the Trent Template to him: he's "evil" but noble and attractive and good and possessed of understandable motives that he follows nobly, etc. You are supposed to like him.
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Xanth: Practical Jokes and Magical Warfare |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny]
Chapter 3 (Jumper) flings us into the action: Dor has time-leaped into the tapestry and is now occupying the body of an adult barbarian warrior from Mundania. (We never get an age for this body, but I get the impression that he's 30-ish.) Dor's child body has remained behind in Xanth and is being animated by the Brain Coral from the last book, as it was curious about humanity.
You will please note that all this is happening in parallel "real time", i.e., that the time Dor spends in the tapestry is the same amount of time that the Brain Coral animates his body. And you will also please note that everything Dor does in the past is really being done; later Millie will almost-not-quite remember him. This will be important later, in the sense that Millie and Irene will be blatantly lied to in order to cover up what Dor and the Brain Coral have been doing.
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Xanth: The Lot of Women |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny]
Chapter 2 (Tapestry) continues to hammer home how very awful Dor's life is, what with being the heir to the throne and expected to marry the princess (though only if he wants to, which is a level of choice which isn't really being extended to Irene in any real practical sense) and having the bestest talent for miles, etc. IT IS HARD BEING SPECIAL, YA'LL. And while I would normally be on board with that, I'm kinda being unforgiving here because this is all being used as a vehicle to dehumanize Millie and Irene into objects that Dor does and doesn't have access to, what a shame.
It was his general isolation from others that weighed on him, and his new awareness of Millie the ghost. What a difference there was between a brat like Irene and a woman like Millie! Yet Irene was the one Dor was expected to get along with. It wasn’t fair.
Please note that there is never any suggestion that Millie might not want to become romantically involved with the 12-year-old boy that she has raised since he was born--the book continues to insist that the only real obstacle in the way of Dor having Millie is his rival Jonathan plus some lip-service given to all those pesky adults who want him to hook up with Irene instead because of their political conveniences. The final chapter in this novel will be Dor convincing Millie that she's in love with him before backing away at the last second and throwing Jonathan at her as a distraction and it comes off as just being really really clear that he could have her if he wanted.
Let me reiterate: The narrative does not, for a moment, consider that Millie might have feelings about NOT sexing up her surrogate son that is less than half her age.
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Xanth: Where Manhood Equals Adulthood |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny]
So, haha, I was feeling so bad during all the Source of Magic stuff because every so often someone would mention that Castle Roogna isn't that bad and I was, like, lolsobbing and rocking myself because haha I TOO THOUGHT THE SAME THING but it turns out my memories were lies made out of candyfloss and unwillingness to remember really awful things.
Like, just for instance? The cover to the left of this text? The one that has the barbarian and the spider meeting the nice centaur? An adorable little subplot in this book is about the centaur deciding (with the help of our protagonist) to rape his wife. HAHA!
So now that I've tantalized you with that little fact (omg one of the three people on the cover of this book is a rapist and we're supposed to find that hilarious and sympathetic) let me back up and give you a plot summary: Heir-Apparent Dor is the 12-year-old son of Bink and Chameleon and his magician-level talent is making inanimate objects talk. He's sad because his mom and dad have spent basically his entire life avoiding him, only it turns out that they've really been avoiding Millie because Bink doesn't trust himself around her sex appeal talent.
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Xanth: White Male Tears |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny, Love Springs]
Okay! When we last left our heroes, they had basically forced Jewel into coming with them on their quest to find their missing friends because, uhhmm, they might find a potion to fix Bink after or during that quest, and Jewel needs to be with him so that he can fall out of love with her, and this is definitely Jewel's problem to help solve because, uhhmm.
Anyway! It's all okay, because Jewel is well on the way to falling deeply in love with the guy she's known for two days.
Then the worm lurched, striking a different type of rock, and Bink was thrown forward against the nymph. “Uh, sorry,” he said, righting himself, though indeed he was not very sorry. “I, uh—”
“Yes, I know,” Jewel said. “Maybe you’d better put your arms about my waist, to steady yourself. It does get bumpy on occasion.”
“I … think I’d better not” Bink said.
“You’re sort of noble, in your fashion,” she observed. “A girl could get to like you.”
“I—I’m married,” Bink said miserably. “I—I need that antidote.”
“Yes, of course,” she agreed.
MANPAIN! And, you know, I kinda feel for Bink just a tiny, tiny bit because it is difficult falling out of love with a spouse and trying to work out what to do about that. But Bink either hasn't fallen out of love with Chameleon or (if he has) won't own it because it would hurt his self-image so there goes all my pity right off the bat because I'm not a fan of him being a disingenuous ass.
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Xanth: Love Springs and Doing Harm |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny]
[Extra Content Note: Ableism, conflation of illogical/unreasonable with mental illness, Sexual Assault]
Alrighty then. We finished Chapter 7 in the last post and there are 14 chapters total, so we're halfway to the end. Maybe we can actually finish out on this one and I can stop being distracted by the awful.
Chapter 8 (Mad Constellations) is about Bink and Co. being overwhelmed by the region of heavy magic because it messes with their powers of perception and their ability to act reasonably. They end up scaling a tree (yes, including the centaur) in an attempt to reach some living constellations and pick a fight with them and/or sex them up. I'll zip through most of this chapter as simply low-level awful rather than really-interesting awful, but will note a couple of Binkisms on his wife:
There were people too—men, children, and several fetching young women. That reminded Bink again of Chameleon. The longer he was away from her, the more he missed her. So what if she had her ugly phase? She also had her lovely phase—
More evidence that Bink doesn't really love variety or smart-Chameleon, since her smart phase is something to be endured and suffered through.
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Xanth: Sirens, Gorgons, Trolls, and Griffins |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny, Nasty Stereotypes about Wives/Marriage]
Okay! *cracks knuckles* Let's power through some more Source of Magic, if only because I am more than halfway through Castle Roogna and it is so much worse than I remembered. When we left our intrepid adventurers, they were crashing at an Ogre's house before continuing on for their search for the source of magic in the morning. Ta-da! The next day they find the source of magic... kinda.
What they actually find is a village where all the inhabitants are dedicated to shoveling magic dust from the place where it wells up naturally from the ground into the air currents to be scattered across Xanth. It's difficult and dangerous work, partly because they can't use magic in their village (because it basically goes supernova) and do please note that life without magic conveniences is considered, in Xanth, to be the lowest depths of barbarism.
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Xanth: Ogres, Demons, and Cheating Girlfriends |
[Xanth Content Note: Rape, Misogyny, Nasty Stereotypes about Wives/Marriage, "Love Springs"]
Let's continue with Source of Magic. First post here. And you're gonna want to check that first post out, because I don't want to waste everyone's time recapping the plot again here. Instead I'll let the narrative summarize the plot so far as we head cheerfully into Chapter 3:
In the morning they commenced the mission: three males with woman-problems. All professed to be glad to get away from their situations and into adventure.
Just to clarify, their "woman-problems" is that Bink knocked up Chameleon against her consent and she's still a little pissed about that; Cherie had a foal and Chester is annoyed at not being the center of her world anymore; and Crombie hates Sabrina but doesn't know how to break up with a woman.