kali

This has clearly been a poor time to not be on the internets! But alas. While I was otherwise occupied, it seems amazon has been, well, having epic fail. Which sucks, for many, many reasons but is also hugely irritating because I FUCKING LOVE BUYING BOOKS FROM AMAZON. And is also sad, because okay, evil, corporate, whateverthefuck, fine. I'm used to it. We're all freaking used to it, aren't we? But aside from being bigoted, it's also insane. Because it is not good business practice to try not to sell books if you're, you know, a book shop. And sex has been selling for a long time, my friends. And teh gay? ALSO DOING PRETTY WELL, especially of late. Also, James Baldwin? Come on.

And another thing, glaring incompetance at handling the internet from an internet company. This is web 2.0, folks. Did you think that if you just ignored it, people were just going to shut up and go away??? Um, no. This is the internet; being outraged is its hobby. Ditto writers, critics, fans, etc... and all of them have access to keys, and big, loud, cybervoices. Snuggling under easter eggs and hoping problem vanishes = no good. Sigh. Anyway, y'all have heard this already from a myriad of places that are not me, so I will stfu. But yeah. You know the drill, write email, sign the petition. Speak up!

Summing up my thoughts pretty successfully are the salon broadsheet and bodlon's post, where he also discusses the bias implicit in the way queer stuff is considered more "adult" than equivalently explicit straight material.

In other news: my dad is bad-tempered, tired and discomposed by various bodily functions not quite operating via standard parameters. I'll just leave it at that.

Last weekend, we had the cousin-brother invasion. God, so many of my boys in one wee nyc apartment. It was insane, oldest + wife, another one + boyfriend, and the second to youngest. Plus me and D. of course. All the boys put to work moving sofas, dressers, chairs etc. D. was an enormous hit, as he is immensely handy, and also I think they all have little boy crushes on him. Some more platonic than others. The one with the boyfriend, the boyfriend and I did a fair amount of non-platonic heckling at any rate. Fun times.

My dad, of course, decided he wanted to also move things. And mop the floor. I became afraid he was going to have to be physically restrained, but instead after a few minutes of exertion, he simply fell asleep.

I tried to help with the moving of things, but was held back by a horrid pinched nerve or something in my back, which has been going on for a week now in what I can only describe as fluctuating between excruciating agony and bearable pain. I have an appointment with a chiropractor today. I've never been to one before, and am terribly nervous.

Last night I couldn't sleep and watched Bright Young Things. David Tennant plays unsympathetic really well, it's amazing. (I also am beginning to think that the Doctor is the sanest of his many roles. Frightening thought.) Anyway, it's a fun time, this flick, even with the too-hollywood romantic ending. And the actors! Spectacular, one and all.

Then I had terrible nightmares about byzantine intrigue and magical plots and wormholes surrounded by green and blue rubber bands. If the bands were cut: apocalypse. My father had the scissors, and cut them as I begged and pleaded with him not to.

My subconscious is terribly boring these days, don't you think?

A few days ago I read something - can't quite remember what, as it was a day filled and fueled by procrastination, so this was one in a long line of clicks- which said something like the following: Did there ever exist at any time, any girl for whom Jo was not their favorite character? The reference, which I apologize for mangling and vaguing and ungrammaticalling - went on to suggest that surely any red blooded girl, certainly one who wanted to be a writer, of course wanted to be Jo, and had no time for any of the other girls - housewifely, prim Meg, saintly Beth, and spoilt, vain, petulant Amy.  Naturally Jo, who wanted to be a boy, and was boisterous and adventurous and daring was the one to emulate.

I liked Jo fine, but I didn't want to be her. I liked Amy best. I cheered when Amy and Laurie got together; I thought they made a great couple. And in many ways I thought Amy's story far more tragic than any of the other girls. How terrible to desire greatness, and then graciously resign yourself to your own mediocrity. I thought she was great. Not pretty, perhaps - but none of the girls were really supposed to be, except Meg. Her juno-esque figure, her blonde hair, her blue eyes never made me crave them. But I liked her. I thought she was clever and funny and I adored her method of catching flies with honey, and her sharp tongue, and her aplomb.

It's odd because normally, I never like best the character that the author wants you to. I almost always root for the bad guy. Because if the author is God - and God loves you the most, you'll always be a little more blessed. The book will always give you the benefit of the doubt. That's why they need me, those bad guys. They don't have God on their side, so instead - they get me. I'm a firm believer in toppling the Kingdom of Heaven and forming a republic.

But - for books like Little Women, and Little House on the Prairie (both incidentally based on the authors' real families), this didn't happen. I liked Amy best, and I loved older sister, prissy Mary who always wanted to be reading and sewing, and WHO WENT BLIND and then could do neither (until college, but even then it wasn't the same...). And in both these books, I'm convinced both independent Louisa and adventuresome Laura wanted me to. These writers were writing about sisters whom they adored. Surely they wanted us to love and know them as they did. If they hadn't; if they gave their own fictional counterparts the god-dispensed "benefit of the doubt" that other, completely fictional characters often get, the books would have read like the worst kind of Mary Sue fic! But they don't.

So why are readers who happily go along with the author's judgement in other cases, so unwilling to do so [and even unwilling to believe that anyone else might do so] here? The Kingdom may have fallen, but Cromwell's already formed his parliamentary dictatorship. You're supposed to like the author-projection best, say generations of readers! Because? Well...They are tomboyish and devil-may-care! They have agency! They are rapscallions!

It reminds me of nothing more than the whole school of feminism which states that women have to be as man-like as possible in order to be treated equally, and any woman who does not follow this law should be ejected from the sisterhood. Or the kind of queer community that thinks there's not room in one lesbian relationship for two femmes - 'cause we all know the only way to do it, is to reproduce heteronormative norms as closely as possible. Or the kind of s/m folks who look down on submissives because they think they are weak (and not in a fun way).

There's nothing wrong with being a tomboy. I was never one, but I knew them, and thought they they were fun, and admired them (and probably thought they were hot.) I wasn't particularly successful at being a girly-girl either (too lazy and uninformed and self loathing).

But I reject utterly the idea that you have to be one to be worthwhile.

Amy/Laurie OTP!!!