Jyvur Entropy's Blog, page 17

Stop Using Human Beings as Props to Prove Your Own Virtue

I recently read Shadows on the Grass by Isak Dinesen. (The shadows are the African people btw)

Why am I about to call out such an old book for racism? Why bother picking apart the noble savage/white savior themes prevalent throughout this book?

1) Because this is a massively influential book. Dinesen’s books have been widely recognized as “literary.” although do we maybe think that’s because she was born into a noble family that, as the bio at the back of the book says, had a “tradition of making contributions to Danish literature.” Like maybe it’s not objectively good. Maybe certain people of a certain class with particular connections have their worked judged “literary” simply because it’s expected to be literary. I mean, has it ever struck anyone else as weird that all the most well-known poets/novelists of the romantic era hung out together. Literally just basically one clique of rich white kids. Anyhow, earned or not, Dinesen is regarded as one of those “important” and “literary” writers, because all the right people said so, and of course the literary world wouldn’t be influenced by money or status, right?

2) Because you should call out evil shit when you see it. Not to punish people (because hello, lady is dead) but because a society needs a shared value system, at least to some degree.
Also, people be giving Dinesen a pass because “it was a different time” and then calling out male colonizers who said or did awful shit.
The leeway given to people of the past for racism is not applied consistently. I see a clear gender bias and I’m not having it.
If we’re calling out past racist shit, we’re calling out past racist shit.
And this book is some racist shit.

But mostly…

3) There is too much of this white savior/noble savage shit still prevalent today. Social justice warriors/ “allies and advocates”/whatever the hell you’re calling yourselves now: I am looking at you. All the “poor widdle black people” shit y’all do is gross and reeks of this very insidious, but just as deeply evil, white supremacy. I saw a lot of it during the George Floyd riots. A lot of proud left-wingers declaring that people of color were reacting with violence due to the trauma of racism, and that they saw no other way to make their voices heard. Anyone who thinks black people are basically children, so low-functioning that the only way they can communicate is with violence and property destruction, IS A FUCKING RACIST. And when I say things like “anti-racism is actually really fucking racist”-that’s the kind of nonsense I mean. You can do all the mental gymnastics you want. If you think black people need white people to save them, OR you go around trying to prove what a good woke white person you are-using BIPOC individuals (or gay people or trans people or whatever group of people) as a PROP to prove your own virtue, if you can not discuss a particular group without bringing their oppression and pain into it and fetishizing the hell out of said pain, you are perpetuating the noble savage/white savior dichotomy (or some other variation of oppressor/subaltern dichotomy) and it’s gross. And you should be ashamed.

All you gotta do in this world is be decent and treat people with dignity and respect.

Treating other humans as props to prove your own virtue is not decent.

And we get a LOT of it in this book. It’s an old book. but since this “look at me saving these poor widdle people” shit is still prevalent today, we’ve gotta call it out. Too many Isak Dinesesn white ladies in this world still.

This entire book is her bragging about everything she did for the African people and how much they loved her. Like I’m glad she sent Abdullahi to school and bought him a typewriter. I’m glad he went on to become a judge, and yes, she probably had a hand in that. She sure jerked herself the hell off over it. She also spent a massive percentage of the word count telling us about how she protected the native people from the government, how she advocated and fought for them, how she drove them to the hospital when they were injured or sick.

This lady is a literal colonizer. She actually says that Kenya had a climate “in which white people could not take on manual labor.” These people injure themselves working on HER coffee plantation. She doesn’t mention that though. She just gives herself a nice long handjob over how she doctored them when injured. And yes, not ALL their injuries were work-induced. As she says, they often slept around open fires, so this was not the result of working her farm. I’m still quite a bit put off by her not mentioning that they workers are injured working HER farm.

Maybe it’s just the fact that she is farming African land with African bodies and reaping the rewards of it (I know her farm went under, but with World War 2 just on the horizon, business and trade was bound to be bad for many industries-that doesn’t mean she didn’t reap colonizer rewards for a good long time). She pilfers African soil with African bodies all while crowing about what a good person she is.

I think my problem is this: everybody stop crowing about what a good person you are. Everybody stop focusing so much on intrinsic traits. Everybody I meet who is this focused on intrinsic traits ends up being a massive asshole using the pain of others as a prop to prove their own goodness.
Everybody stop trying to prove how good you are. You’re not good. Nobody is good. Everybody is a selfish asshole, but you can at least be decent. You can at least treat people with dignity. “I’m a good woke white person saving all the poor widdle black people” is absolutely, decidedly not decent.

And I’ll end my rant with some of the crowning jewels of this incredibly racist book that strays from white savior shit into actual Eugenics several times.

“The dark nations of Africa, strikingly precocious as young children, seemed to come to a standstill in their mental growth at different ages. The Kikuyu, Kawirondo and Wakamba, the people who worked for me on the farm, in early childhood were far ahead of white children of the same age, but they stopped quite suddenly at a stage corresponding to that of a European child of nine.”

-That passage definitely reminds me of the flavor of progressives who claim it’s racist to grade for grammar (apparently black people can’t learn grammar-and that…….is anti-racism! Ta-da!). This is that bigotry of low expectations shit. It wears the facade of love and togetherness (Dinesen talks a good game about Unity and how much she adores the African people) but really….it’s gross. And the people who do it today in the name of “anti-racism” are also gross.

In another passage, she compares the blood on the King’s letter, blood left by her African patients, to the blood on a handkercheif from King Christian IV. She writes, “The blood on my sheet of paper is not proud or eddifying. It is the blood of a dumb nation.”

In talking about a precocious African child, she writes, “He was a small, slightly built child with a sudden, wild, flying gracefulness in all his movements and a corresponding, incalculable, crazy imagination of a kind which I have not met in any other Native child, and which maybe will have been due to that mixture of blood.”-So again with the Eugenics shit.

In writing about the ability of African people to sneak up on her, she writes, “The Africans have got this to them-they will make their presence known by other means than eyesight, hearing, or smell…Wild animals have got the same quality, but our domestic animals have lost it.”

This book reeks of the white savior narrative. It’s the same shit we still see in the popular zeitgeist. Not much has changed since Pocahontas and Avatar. We are still writing stories with magical, closer-to-nature, peaceful and placid “noble savages” who have yet to be tainted by civilization. They are spoken about as if they are an endangered species to be protected. Preserved by the oh-so-caring “good white people.”

In narratives such as these, the BIPOC individuals are fetishized, commodified for the consumption of white people who seek to grab hold of their pain-their very being-as a tool to bolster their own egos. To build up their own sense of self.

It is the worst sort of objectification and do all the mental gymnastics you want, it is NOT anti-racist.

Chapter Five: A Lot of Firsts

Wearing his brand new blue shirt, Cole stood with his one carry-on bag in hand, listening for his boarding call. Only ten minutes until his flight. His mother sat nearby, anxiously glancing from Cole to her watch to the flight attendants milling about by the gate. She kept looking at him like she wanted to say something, but in the full forty minutes they’d been waiting, she hadn’t said anything yet. Cole supposed she’d already said everything in the days leading up to this one. As they’d shopped for the new shirt she insisted he buy, as they sat down to dinner every night, she kept trying to talk him out of it. She wasn’t ever going to understand, so Cole had decided to stop trying to explain it to her. She thought he should be happy working fast food and living the rest of his life as a known wannabe mass murderer.

His mother sighed and reached into her purse, digging through to find a piece of gum. She couldn’t sit for more than a few minutes without a piece of gum in her mouth. She’d been trying to quit because of her periodontal disease and all of the issues that came with it, but she was struggling. Cole supposed this time travel business probably didn’t help.

Stuffing his hands into his pockets and jiggling his leg, Cole looked out across the bustle Newark airport. People puttered about, many of them disheveled and carrying numerous bags. Here and there, business professionals strode through the airport in crisp suits and ties, marching through with an easy elegance, like they hadn’t just spent several hours on a plane. Cole’s pupils dilated as his eyes caught on a young woman with dark brown hair and bangs. She walked his way, a briefcase in hand, wearing a knee-length pencil skirt and cream-colored blouse. He continued to watch her as she came closer, her face fixed in a neutral position. She swung her briefcase gently at her side, and passed Cole by with a clacking of her heels against the linoleum floor.

He gripped the strap of his backpack tighter and swallowed as he watched her slender form disappear into the crowd. Something about a woman in business clothes and heels. He could feel himself start to harden and willed his thoughts away from the brunette. He didn’t want to get a boner in the middle of Newark airport, especially not with his mother three feet away.

He drug his thoughts back to the matter at hand. He would be arriving in Boston around six-thirty in the evening. Someone from Speculative Science would be meeting him at the gate and taking him back to the office. He’d be meeting the team and having dinner with them and the other candidate. This was important, because if they were both chosen, they’d be time traveling together. Cole wondered what the other guy would be like, if he’d be older or younger than him.

He hoped the guy was loud and energetic like Clay. Cole had always gotten on with Clay, because Clay was the talker. Clay was the crazy, loud, outgoing one. With Clay, Cole had the space to hang back and observe. That’s what he liked to do best. He usually didn’t get on with other quiet dudes like him. Two quiet guys didn’t make for a great time.

“Flight 213 for Boston is now boarding,” a flight attendant’s deep voice crackled over the speakers. “Please have your boarding pass ready. Priority boarding will line up at the gate now. For all other ticket types, please form a line behind the yellow line.”

Mom rose shakily to her feet and stepped forward, wrapping him in a hug.

“Okay, Ma, that’s good. You’re gonna make me miss my flight.”

She pulled away and smiled at him, her eyes shimmering. “Don’t be upset if you don’t get it, Coley.”

“I won’t.”

“I mean it, I know how you get.”

“Ah what are you on about? I don’t get like nothing.”

“I see it. You’re already all set on this idea. If they don’t pick you, you’ve gotta move on from it.”

“I will. Hey, they’re lining up. I gotta go now.”

Cole moved to take his place in line, but a small hand clamping down on his upper arm caused him to pause mid-step. He sighed, turning around. “What?”

His mother gave a tight smile. “I love you, Coley. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

And with that, Cole took his place in line with the other passengers, and five minutes later he was seated in the center of the plane.

He’d never taken a plane before.

His first flight. His first visit to Boston.

A lot of firsts.

He might be the first to ever time travel.

As the plane took off, jolting into the air, Cole gripped the arms of the seat and closed his eyes. His head spun from sudden lightheadedness and his gut shifted dangerously.

He should’ve known he’d have this reaction. He’d always been so sensitive to motion sickness.

Chapter Four: Women in STEM

“I literally can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Uh-huh.”

“This is crazy, right? Time travel. Just…literally…wow…”

“Yeah, it’s a lot.”

Ingrid had asked Tiffany for a ride to the airport thinking it would be more bearable than enduring a forty minute ride with her parents and all of their horrible questions. In all honesty, it was better, but Tiffany’s unending questions and enthusiasm were starting to prick at her nerves. She should have just taken an uber. Tiffany and Ingrid had spent a lot of time together back in college and somehow Tiffany’s gossipy and underhanded nature hadn’t bothered her so much back then. Probably because Ingrid had spent most of their time together plastered. Now that Ingrid was in AA, and six months sober, Tiffany was probably about the most irritating human on the planet.

Looking down at her phone, Ingrid swiped aimlessly through Instagram. It wasn’t her official Instagram, of course. She didn’t have one of those anymore. She’d deleted all of her accounts almost a year ago when her life had exploded in her face.

“You’re only bringing four bags?” Tiffany asked, her eyes flitting the backseat of the tattered old hatchback she’d been driving since high school. “Do you get to bring all of that back with you? To whatever time they send you to?”

Ingrid shifted and watched the rain trail over the windshield. The wipers swished furiously over the glass. The traffic crawled to a halt. Ingrid found herself glad that Tiffany had showed up early for once. They still had more than enough time to make Ingrid’s flight.

Tiffany sat beside her, wearing yoga pants with cowboy boots, her blonde dreadlocks piled on top of her head in a messy bun-type style. She wore no make-up. Like Ingrid, she believed that all a woman needed was a great skincare routine. Make-up was a sexist institution, one that kept women slaves to the male gaze, and so many sheepish women were complicit in their own subjugation. Very few self-proclaimed ‘feminists’ were actually feminist likeTiffany was. Women like Tiffany were so rare, and that was why Ingrid never cut her off, was never truly done with her, no matter how many fights they had, or how often Tiffany talked about her behind her back.

Before Ingrid could conjure a response to any of Tiffany’s rapid fire questions, another was produced. “What did your parents say about all of this?”

“Nothing,” Ingrid muttered.

“Nothing? They said nothing about you going back in time? Do you have any idea when the time travel is gonna happen?”

“You have a lot of questions.”

“Um, duh? You’re doing something weird.”

Ingrid shook her head, sucking her bottom lip in a bit and then releasing it. She shouldn’t have been so eager to tell Tiffany she’d been accepted. She really just should have used uber, since asking her family for a ride to the airport wasn’t an option. She wasn’t about to tell her mom what she was doing. She didn’t want to hear about it. Her dad would chime in too, and she definitely didn’t want to hear that. Her older sister would be the worst though. Astrid would laugh at her, tell her she was being too impulsive, look at her with those sharp, judgmental eyes. Ingrid couldn’t take that. And so, she’d decided to tell Tiffany. But everything with Tiffany felt like a competition and Ingrid couldn’t resist the impulse to exaggerate how far along she was in the selection process. See, you gossipy cunt? It’s not over for me. I still have exciting things going on. You should still be jealous of me.

“Tiff,” Ingrid sighed. “They still have to run some tests. I might not be accepted after all.”

“Tests?”

“Something like that.”

Tiffany’s eyes darted over to her, and her thin eyebrows arched.

“Well,” Ingrid pressed. “If they don’t pick me, can you get me from the airport in a few days?”

The traffic started to move, and Tiffany popped her gum, accelerating her clunker of a vehicle from a crawl to a clip. “Sure,” Tiffany said after a moment. “But I have a question.”

“Which is?”

Tiffany gave a cheeky smirk. “Still don’t get how you’re only bringing four bags. You reusing outfits? Or are you pulling a Manhattan again?”

Ingrid snorted. That trip they’d taken to Manhattan had been a wreck and Ingrid’s disorganization and poor planning skills had been on full display. Her friends had made jokes about it for months after. “No,” Ingrid scoffed. “I remembered to pack underwear this time.”

“And deodorant?” Tiffany smirked, poising her light brown lips so that they puckered ever-so-slightly.

Ingrid groaned and shook her head.

“Will I see you again if they pick you?” Tiffany asked. Her tone was curious and only a little sad.

Ingrid shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“We’re friends.”

“You won’t miss me, and I won’t miss you. We’re friends, but it’s not like that with us.”

Tiffany frowned, her eyes crinkling, and for a moment, she looked especially sad. But then the moment passed, and her face shifted back to neutral. “I guess that’s true.”

“It is.”

The car sped along down the highway, the traffic now clear, and they arrived at LAX with over an hour to spare.

“Should I park and wait with you for your flight?”

“No, you can drop me at my gate.”

Tiffany maneuvered the car through the busy airport parking lot, and parked at the curb, behind several idling yellow taxis.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to park here,” Ingrid said. “You better hurry up and get out of here before they ticket you.”

“Then get your shit and get out of my car,” Tiffany quipped with a smile.

Ingrid got out of the car and opened the back door, pulling out her one suitcase and three stuffed bags.

Before she could shut the door, Tiffany reached back and grabbed her hand. “Good luck, Ingrid. I’m cheering you on.”

“Thanks, Tiff.”

“You’ll get it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because,” Tiffany said with a knowing smile and a perpetually-arched eyebrow. “We need more women in STEM.”

Chapter Three: A Good Impression

“Cole, Eat your dinner. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Ma, this is a huge chance I’ve got. I gotta take it.”

Across the gleaming mahogany dining table, his mother shook her head, her rounded face drawn tightly into a frown. Ever since Cole had first brought up the decision to apply for the time travel experiment, she’d expertly avoided a real discussion about it. She would change the subject or tell him to eat his food anytime he mentioned it. And if Cole didn’t have any food in front of him, she would insist he was hungry and rush off to prepare him something. Cole had to admire the strategy; he couldn’t talk if his face was stuffed with lasagna or antipasto.

Beside her sat Cole’s father, a surly man with a head full of premature gray hairs and light brown eyes that nearly always glinted with irritation. Cole had never understood how his parents fit together. His ma was so sweet, always wanting to take care of everyone. She was the one he would miss…His father was perpetually angry, always snapping and throwing his weight around. His dad was tall and the times they’d gotten into arguments, he towered over Cole, shouting down at him like he was goading Cole into a fight that Cole would never be able to win. His brother Jason smirked from the far end of the table, tipping his chair back until the dining table chair pressed into the corduroy armchair of the living room. Tall and broad-shouldered, Jason took after their dad in size and looks. Cole had gotten his mom’s short stature and thick mop of hair.

Their house was a small ranch, one of those dwellings where none of the common areas had any real separation. The dining area was only an L-shaped section of the living room that Cole’s parents had positioned an armchair in front of to provide a sense of separation and give it as much of a ‘formal dining room’ ambiance as could be mustered in such a small house.

Behind the side of the table where Cole’s parents sat, avoiding his eyes and ignoring the mention of Speculative Science Enterprises, there was the synthetic counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area. The kitchen was blue and white and covered in ducks. Every room that Cole’s mother touched became covered in ducks, except for her bedroom which was where she hid the obsession deemed too tacky for the rest of the house, even by her. Mickey and Minnie Mouse stuffed animals, toys, clocks, blankets, and figurines covered every wall and every surface. Cole couldn’t stand the absolute kitsch sometimes. He couldn’t stand how cute and senseless everything was.

Maybe that was why his own bedroom was an homage to anime and conspiracy theories. He needed a reprieve from the ducklings and flowers and Disney characters that crept stealthily from every corner, poking into his brain.

He hadn’t missed this house while he was in prison. He’d missed his mom, but not the house itself. His mom had always had his back, visiting him in prison over those six long years. While his dad had wanted to disown him over it, his mom had convinced herself that Clay had tricked Cole somehow, and that he was the innocent bystander.

‘Sure, Ma,’ Cole had thought during the trial, when his mother had given her character witness testimony. ‘I cooked up a whole batch of napalm on my own, and yeah, it didn’t work, but I still made it. But I’m the innocent one. All Clay. Better for you to believe that it’s all Clay.’

He’d been released before Clay because everyone could see Clay was the leader. Cole hadn’t noticed it at the time. Cole had never thought he was the follower. The beta of the alpha-beta duo. That was what his defense attorney had called him. Beta. As humiliating as that was, at least it had helped him out with sentencing, and while the world remained viciously angry at him, while the hate-mail still came, his mom kept on believing that he’d never really been a part of it. She understood that his angry, teenage self wasn’t his true self, that he’d only gotten caught up in the thrill of the plan, the dream of it all, because he was someone with power and influence in that dark and twisted dream, and that was all he’d wanted back then.

Still he wanted it, in a way. He wanted to be important. He wanted to make a mark on the world, but not an ugly one. He wanted to do something good. This time travel experiment could be his chance to do something good and real and important. He wanted to undo the damage of his past, and the only way to do that was to go to the past.

“Ma, we gotta talk about this,” Cole tried again. “They want me to go to Boston next week.”

His father snorted. “Don’t you have work next week?”

Mom darted a hand forward, fussing with the lasagna and doling another heaping spoonful until Cole’s plate.

Cole rolled his eyes. At least Dad was acknowledging what he’d said. “I do have work next week, but I work at McDonald’s. It don’t matter. Besides, Speculative Science is paying for the trip.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” his mother murmured.

“There is no later. I gotta call the lady back and tell ’em if they should book my ticket or not.”

“Boston,” Jason interjected. “Ain’t that like six hours away? Where’s that? In Maine?”

“For Chrissakes,” Cole muttered. “Do us all a favor and stay in school.”

“What happens if they pick you?” Dad asked. The older man’s eyes narrowed, focusing on Cole with a new level of scrutiny.

“If they choose me, I’ll be a part of their experiment. They’ll send me back in time.”

“To when? What year?”

Shrugging, Cole fought through the sea of nerves swirling through him. He didn’t want a yelling match with his dad. Well….less of a match and more his dad shouting while Cole looked down at his lap and waited for the verbal assault to end. He always wanted to stand up for himself, but in the moment, could never summon the nerve. “Haven’t you been watching them on the news and all?” Cole asked with a forced carelessness. “They have to work it out with the volunteers. Something about it won’t work unless the volunteers really want to go. But they did say it’s gotta be sometime after 1950. They need us to show back up at the office and show ’em it worked.”

“Why can’t you do that if you go back before 1950?” Jason asked.

“Because we’ll be dead if we go back any earlier than that. It’s 2016, and I’m twenty-four. If I go back to 1950 then I’ll be ninety-one by the time it’s 2016 again.”

“But 1950 to now isn’t ninety years.”

“I give up,” Cole sighed.

“I don’t like any of this,” Mom muttered. “I don’t like it at all. You’re going to just show up again as an old man?”

“Exactly.”

“Why? For what?”

Cole stared at her. “For a new life. For a new chance.”

“You have lots of chances here. Things could have turned out much worse for you.”

“Call them and tell them you aren’t interested,” his father instructed. The way he said it, like he’d just decided this was what Cole would do and he fully expected Cole to do as he said. It filled Cole with a frenetic anger, like stew brought to a boil too soon, popping and splattering without warning.

“I am going,” Cole announced.

His father looked up from his plate. His mouth was tight, thin lips pursed. He stared at Cole like he didn’t quite recognize him.

Propelled onward by some inertia, some force that Cole couldn’t name, he kept foing. He projected his voice, forcing into his words a confidence that he didn’t feel. “I am going, and if they take me, then I’m going to time travel.” His heart hammered as he stared at his father, waiting for a reaction, waiting for an explosion. He wasn’t backing down. He wasn’t.

His father frowned. Something shifted in his eyes and he looked for a moment like he might say something more, but then he only ate another mouthful of lasagna and nodded. The anger left his eyes. Cole realized the old guy was probably relieved to be rid of Cole.

Cole’s heart slowed and the tension left his joints. What settled into him in its absence was something hollow and aching.

Dad had never treated Cole the same as Jason. They’d never had any real kind of connection. Cole knew that his father resented him for being small and unathletic and weird. On more than one occasion in middle school, his dad had ransacked his room, throwing away all of his mangas and anime dvds. He’d bought them with his own birthday money and dad had just chucked them. ‘You’re gonna grow up to be some kind of freak.’ And Cole knew that he’d done exactly that, in his dad’s eyes at least.

At the end of the table, Jason shook his head, smiling as he enjoyed the show.

“That’s all there is to it,” Cole murmured, staring down at the lacy white tablecloth. “I want to get out of here. Go back to before I ruined it all.”

A silence fell over the table. The four of them ate, while the duck clock ticked loudly on the wall by the sliding back door.

His mother was the first to speak again, rising to clear the table and clearing her throat, she said, “We’d better go to the store tomorrow, Coley.”

“For what?”

She turned away, shimmying around the counter and through the small entry to the kitchen. Dumping the food scraps into the garbage disposal, she kept her back turned to Cole as she spoke. “You need some new shirts. You want to look good for your interview.”

Look good for his interview? Was she really supporting him in this?

“I think you should get a blue shirt,” she continued. “A nice dark blue shirt will make a good impression.”

A good impression.

Cole really hoped so.

~I love this book and it’s almost ready to be published, but not quite. I’m proofreading and making minor changes right now, so I thought eh, why not serialize it here on wordpress for a bit? I used to serialize another book here on this blog (which we will all just never talk about ever again) and mixing blogging with fiction serialization was super fun. Anyway, here is the romance novel that I wrote during the period of my life when I was literally the most horny I have ever fucking been. I wrote it the summer I turned 30 and holy hell, nobody told me my sex drive was gonna go crazy like that. Anyway, here’s a thing I wrote to keep myself from going insane as my body felt on the verge on constant implosion for about 6 months straight (marginally better now). Okay, that’s it. Bye!~

Chapter Two: Had It Coming

What people didn’t understand about Ingrid was that she was only protecting her relationship. They didn’t understand that Tatiana’d had it coming. She had. And nobody understood that Ingrid wasn’t this terrible, mean person just because she’d hacked into some b-list celebrity’s phone. One who definitely had it coming.

Okay, fine. She wasn’t b-list. Tatiana Tiara was probably the hottest rising pop star on the planet. But that’s exactly why she had it coming! Coming into Ingrid’s work and flirting with every man she saw. Oh, she had to flirt with Nick didn’t she? And right in front of Ingrid. She was famous, gorgeous, and rich. That was why the self-absorbed diva thought she could have any man she wanted.

Ingrid had spent that entire week, giving the pop star dirty looks and making pointed comments about how she and Nick had been seeing each other for the past few months. What was she supposed to do when Tatiana kept flirting it up with him?

Hacking into Tatiana’s phone had been easy. Tatiana was such a ditz; she put her code into the phone with Ingrid right next to her. And of course, the dumb blonde forgot her phone constantly. The entire week she spent at Mattel, she was always leaving her phone in one room and wandering off to another.

Ingrid had just waited for her to absentmindedly leave it askew on the conference room table, and the second the diva was out of the room, Ingrid had the phone in her palm. Straight to instagram and she uploaded every single photo in the phone. There was one especially juicy one of a wart. A close-up photo of inflamed, bulbous skin. After posting all the photos, Ingrid had gone through her text messages. Oh and had there been a good one. A text to a friend, with the picture of the wart attached. Tatiana’s text message read, ‘Please tell me this isn’t herpes….does this look like herpes? It’s right next to my vag.’

There had been a moment, somewhere between snapping a screenshot and posting it to Tatiana’s twitter, when Ingrid felt a flicker of apprehension, a low sense of guilt kindling in her core. But her anger was greater than either of those other emotions. Attention-whore skank. Ingrid posted those private text messages to teach Tatiana a lesson. Women should have each other’s backs. They shouldn’t go around backstabbing each other and stealing each other’s guys. Tatiana was the type of selfish, awful woman who would throw another woman under the bus. Ingrid had told Tatiana that Nick was her boyfriend! Tatiana deserved it. Whatever happened.

She’d truly felt that way when she posted it exactly one year ago. And now she felt…well, she wasn’t sorry. She was only sorry that she’d been caught.

The angry mobs of twitter had descended on her. Youtubers had made countless videos about her, plastering her photo on their awful thumbnails. She was called a bad feminist, a misogynist, every awful name in the book. And of course, her prestigious job with Mattel had been lost. She used her position to hack into a celebrity’s phone and post private info. She wasn’t even put on a PIP. Fired immediately.

She supposed she’d known that would happen. A part of her always knew when she was about to blow her life up. She did it periodically: sabotaged everything good in her life. No matter how great things were, she always found a way to be unhappy.

While she’d always found a way to bounce back from her self-destructive meltdowns, this time she seemed to have really blown her life up for good. The damage felt beyond repair. She’d been out of work for over a year now. All of friends had abandoned her. She had exactly been close to any of them, yet still…Nick had dumped her. Tiffany was the only one who still came around and Ingrid suspected that she did it more to get gossip to bring back to the rest of their friend group than out of any actual desire to keep in contact with her.

Ingrid’s parents were fed up with her. She’d given up job searching. All it took was one google search and her application was thrown out the window. She’d had to delete all of her social media accounts. All she did now was lay unshowered in bed, inhaling ice cream and binging The Real Housewives. Her long days of unemployment had finally gotten her to test the waters of reality television and now she was hooked on it. Maybe she’d thrown away her amazing career and all that went with it, for nothing. She had nothing now.

Then the email came. She’d applied for the time travel experiment on a whim, because she didn’t know what else to do with herself.

She opened the email in a fog, her head heavy from having slept too long and her mouth stale from having gone too long without brushing.

She had to read the email twice before she truly understood it.

Smiling, she curled her toes into the fluffy pink carpet.

She fired off a text to Tiffany, not caring that Tiffany would run right to Snapchat to tell everyone else they knew.

‘I’m going to Boston next week. Speculative Science accepted me.’

And no, they hadn’t actually accepted her yet. They said they wanted to talk to her and conduct some screenings. But it wasn’t enough to say that. It wasn’t dramatic enough. She wanted all of her old friends to think of her again, and know that her life was once again exciting.

The reply from Tiffany appeared within seconds. ‘Congrats, girl! Hope they send you to the thirties. You’d look too cute in a flapper dress.’

Ingrid didn’t even bother to correct Tiffany, tell her that flappers were from the 20s.

She hummed a Pink song and showered for the first time all week.

It was all turning around for her.

If they chose her, she’d be leaving all of this behind.

She’d leave all of her mistakes behind.

Chapter One: No Redemption

What people never understood about Cole was that he never would have gone through with it.

He would never have blown up the school with Clay. He would never have shot the place up. Maybe it looked that way from all of the bombs they made. Maybe it looked that way from all of their notes to each other. Maybe it looked that way from all of the diagrams they’d drawn, figuring out exactly where to put the bombs to cause the most damage.

Maybe it looked that way, but it wasn’t that way. He never never would have done it.

At least…he didn’t think so.

Cole didn’t really want to hurt anyone. He never had. He’d only liked to plan it. Thinking about it was kind of fun. When he imagined it, nobody died. They only ran scared, staring at Cole and Clay with wide eyes filled with a newfound respect. Because fear brought respect in a way that nothing else did, and that was all that Cole had really wanted back then.

His ninth-grade life had been hell. The girls who laughed at him and made fun of his height. The asshole jocks who called him a fag and threw bottles at him in the cafeteria while the teachers pretended not to notice. His parents who always said Cole could talk to them about anything, but when Cole told them about how sad he was feeling, how he couldn’t see the point in anything, they became irritated with him, saying he was only fifteen and had no business being depressed. It all clashed together, clamoring at Cole’s psyche until he found himself agreeing with Clay. Yes, humans were assholes. Yes, being alive was pointless. Yes, they could make a statement.

Cole had never thought it was real. Only to Clay it had been real, and when Cole had realized that…

Katie snitching was the best possible outcome. It was probably why Cole had told Katie about the bombs in the first place. He’d wanted her to snitch. Katie had always been the good kid, the straight and narrow type. She didn’t break rules. She didn’t color outside of the lines. When they were arrested, despite the fear and anger and total devastation, Cole had been relieved. He didn’t have to find a way to back out of it now. Katie had taken him off that awful path and set him onto a new one. She’d saved him from becoming a murder, becoming the most violent, perverse version of himself.

In another world, in some other version of reality, Cole would have simply done his time in prison, been released, and gone on with his life. The domestic terrorism charges had been dropped after all, and the only charges he and Clay had been slammed with were conspiracy to commit murder and a handful of illegal weapons charges. Cole got ten years, but was out in six. Good behavior and all. Clay got ten, but was paroled at eight. Their records were sealed. They were only fifteen when they’d done it. The world should have forgotten it.

The world would never forget. The Basement Tapes. Those fucking tapes made sure the world would remember, keep making memes, keep his name linked in the zeitgeist with failed mass shooters. The tapes had been Clay’s idea. If they were gonna take inspiration from Columbine, they ought to take time to pay homage to the tapes. Cole had thought they looked really cool at the time. But no. They hadn’t. At all. And now he was a meme. Tumblr had done some really creative stuff with the screenshots, making good use of Pumped Up Kicks, of course. A lot of the memes captured the cringiest of Cole’s facial expressions.

It wasn’t just embarrassing; it was a death sentence. It killed the possibility of any sort of future. Cole had been out of jail for four years now, and he still didn’t have a life. He couldn’t get a decent job. He couldn’t get accepted into college. No administration wanted him on campus. He was twenty-four years old, working fast food, with nothing to look forward to, no redemption in sight.

He’d never have a career. He’d never have a good life. Never have a house and family. Never be important. He had wanted so badly to do something noteworthy, to be important.

He’d spent his life feeling small and insignificant. Shy. His shyness was like a cage. The real him was stuck inside. It was so difficult for him to talk to people, to look them in the eye. How would he ever do anything really important when he was such a pussy he couldn’t make eye contact? Then Clay had come along and put all those ideas in his head. ‘We could be infamous. They’d talk about us forever. Like Klebold and Harris.’

And Cole knew now that being remembered like Klebold and Harris was worse than never being known at all. Because everyone knew him now. But he hadn’t done anything important. He’d done something evil, and while back then he’d wanted infamy so badly, now he’d give anything for obscurity. He wanted to disappear.

That was why he applied for the time travel experiment. The opportunity came from the same lab that had introduced super powers to the world two years ago, selling off the power to fly and make fire and read minds to anyone who had enough money. Now they were working on time travel. They said they’d found the link between consciousness and the physical world. It had something to do with quantum mechanics. Something to do with spooky action, the way a particle on one side of the universe somehow affected particles on the opposite side.

They’d been searching for people to test their time machine for over a year now. It was because of that link between consciousness and the physical world, a person had to truly want to go back in time in order for it to work. So far, nobody had wanted it badly enough.

The company wasn’t selling time travel the way they’d sold the superpowers. Instead they were searching for volunteers. Cole was an ex-con. Cole was an infamous failed mass murderer. He didn’t think he’d be chosen, but when they kept looking, when they kept appearing on news outlets saying they had to find people with no qualms at all about leaving their life behind, he started to think he might have a chance.

And three weeks after submitting his application, he received the email he’d been waiting for.

Still covered in grease and grit from his shift at McDonald’s, Cole stomped through the house, ignoring his mother’s probing questions about his day. He kicked his bedroom door shut and sat down at his desk.

The day was hot, but his bedroom was cool, the blackout shades keeping the room at a comfortable temperature. He fired up the computer and pulled the McDonald’s hat from his head, tossing it onto the floor where it became part of the mosaic of debris, mixing in with all of the crushed cans of seltzer, dirty underwear, and tattered mangas that traversed the small space.

Cole had been checking his emails every day since putting in his application. In a new time, he could be a new man. He could leave his life behind. He’d never have to see that look of recognition, and then disgust, and then fear that flickered over the faces of nearly everyone he met. He’d never have to watch his mom throw out unread hate mail. He’d never have to stumble across a meme of his own face, paired with a caption that cut too deep, that struck him as far too true.

He checked his email every day, but didn’t seriously expect to find a response from the scientists. Maybe there would be a notification from Reddit. Maybe there would be a message from Clay, who sometimes reached out to him discreetly, despite their strict no-contact order. These were the things Cole expected to see in his inbox.

No…there it was…an actual response from Speculative Science Enterprises.

There it was.

Staring at the screen, he blinked rapidly, his heart thrumming. Somewhere in the distance, a lawnmower roared. Out in the kitchen, his mother hummed lightly and a drawer slammed shut with a clattering of silverware.

He took the mouse in hand, but paused, finding himself unable to click.

Right now, time travel, a new life, a new beginning, it was all possible. It was still a hope he had. Once he opened this email, that hope could be gone, and what would he have once that hope was gone? For now, he still had it. He lived in a world where he had been both accepted and rejected, either one was equally possible.

Cole grit his teeth together.

“Coley, you want some lasagna?” his mother called.

His tension mounted. His lungs tightened. “Coming, Ma! Gimme a minute.”

He steeled himself. He prepared for rejection, already feeling the fires of anger smoldering deep in his belly.

He clicked.

Dear Mr. Velardi,

After reviewing your application for the position of Time Travel Volunteer, we have determined that you may be a candidate for a successful Time Travel experiment. We would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to talk further about the possibility and conduct some preliminary screenings to determine if this would be a good match.

Are you available to meet in our Boston office the week of July 16th? We are hoping to screen yourself and one other candidate over the span of three or four days.

Should you be interested in meeting with our team, travel and accommodations will be taken care of by the Speculative Science Team.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

-Judy Tramil

Project Lead and Anomaly Coordinator

Speculative Science Enterprises

Cole stared hard at the email, his body rigid as the words on the screen sunk in.

And then he jumped from the folding chair and started to whoop.

My Wedding Dress

It’s not a huge deal or anything. I bought the outfit at Marshalls. We’re only going to the courthouse.

Several years back I started calling my partner “my husband” because it made people take us more seriously and I got hit on a lot less. People don’t really respect “boyfriend” but you get more space and your relationship is treated as more official if you say “husband.”

People get so up in arms over this phrase, but it really is just a piece of paper. It doesn’t magically do anything to the relationship if you get married. It’s a big old nothingburger. What tangible thing really changes if you get married? Nothin. Divorce is a thing. Marriage isn’t some important till-death-do-us-part thing anymore. Your daily life and relationship are the same.

So I never got the point of doing it.

I had an aunt once get so snotty when she realized I’d been fibbing about being married. I tried to laugh her off and said something like “Well, we live together and at this point in time, we both plan to live together until one us dies. That’s the same as being married.”

And the old cunt screwed her face up gave me a weird look and said “ooookkkayy” in that snotty, superior ‘I think you’re full of bullshit’ way that only women without a valid argument can say ‘okay.’

That old bitch was on her second marriage.

So fuck her.

Marriage is meaningless.

Every day you choose to be with the person or not. An official legal ceremony does fuck all to make your relationship stronger or make it impossible for either party to throw in the towel, cheat, check out emotionally, whatever.

But in this marriage-obsessed culture, at some point I started saying “married” as a way to get busybodies to shut the fuck up and horny dudes to shoot their shots elsewhere.

Yet, here I am, admitting defeat.

My dude wants to impregnate me, yet refuses to do so until I’m on his company health insurance. So he’s gotta make an honest woman out of me in order to get on his insurance.

Well, truth be told, my drying up ovaries seized control of my brain about a year ago and I never wanted kids before, and now that’s all I can think about.

So I guess, if I don’t have an empty egg carton, I’ll have a kid or two, and that should be a nice distraction until I die in 30 or 40 years. It’s probably good that I’m this controlled by my biology. I wasn’t doing anything else super important with my life. I have no career. My books have never really taken off, and as much as I keep trying to write something really important, I don’t think I’ve ever really even gotten close to that. I thought the book that was booted off wattpad was going to be my big important book. My book that really said something about the human condition, that really moved people. Before that one, I worked so hard on “Time Storms” but looking at it now, it just seems like a long piece of fluff that misses the mark.

I don’t know why human life expectancy is this long….I’m 32, so I have at least as much as all the life I ALREADY did left to go. That sounds horrible. Jesus how am I only at the halfway point.

But I think that’s why people get married and have kids. I think just existing is too awful. We need ceremony and procreation to keep us from thinking too hard about everything.

Maybe that’s what hustle culture is all about too. It’s a way to keep your brain occupied so that you can’t think too hard about anything.

Cuz like you start thinking too hard about everything and it’s like what the fuck is the point in all of this? To be remembered? Eventually all of humanity will be gone, the entire universe will implode, so ideas of legacy and impact are an illusion. To enjoy it? Why? What does that do? Writing books has always been the best way to make me feel like I’m here for something. But that’s just me lying to myself. I’m not some big important writer. I’m not saying anything about the human condition. I’m not moving people. And I don’t know what else to do with myself if it’s not writing books that really move people. The more books I write, the more I think I just don’t have the capacity to really move people. I’m a basic bitch with nothing original or insightful to say.

So yeah, might as well have kids and trad wife. I’m literally angsty over fucking nothing and just miserable for no reason, but I think with a couple of kids maybe I’ll be too damn tired or distracted to be this fucking emotional over nothing.

Plus I keep having dreams that I’m pregnant and then I wake up and I’m not and feel this crushing sadness.

Anyway, here is the dress I’ll get married in at the courthouse this tuesday

WWW Weds: Bear Shifters? Unicorn Firefighters? Hippogriffs!

A weekly meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

It’s been a pretty hectic few weeks for me. For one, the dude I’ve been calling my husband for like…8? years now, well we’re finally getting really married. Why did we put it off? Because it literally doesn’t matter. It’s not like divorces aren’t a thing. Getting married doesn’t make your relationship more official in some magical way.

I just started calling him my husband years ago, because I got sick of people asking me when we were going to get married. And when people find out I’ve been fibbing they get so snotty about it. If people weren’t so retarded about the idea of marriage, I wouldn’t have started fibbing to get people to shut up.

Look, I hate parties, I hate attention (well….it’s complicated….look….I know, okay, I know). I hate being around my awful family. Everything about a wedding has always sounded pretty fucking terrible to me.

But my dude’s new company won’t let him put a common-law partner on his health insurance. His previous two jobs let us do that.

So to the courthouse we go!

It’s going to be a small thing, but still required some degree of planning.

We’re just going to the city courthouse with his parents and sister. I didn’t invite any of my family members, not even my grandma, because I didn’t want to deal with the awkwardness of explaining why my mom wasn’t invited, and I didn’t want my well-meaning but boundary-crossing grandma to show up with my mom.

So just his parents and sister. Then afterwords, my dude and I are going on a sort of honeymoon/sort of family vacation with his parents, his sister, and his sister’s boyfriend. It’s nothing fancy. Just a trip to a beach town a few hours away.

In addition to that, I’m working on a post-colonial academic piece that I hope to have published (so I can continue my quest to get hired as an adjunct professor), I recently released a co-written erotic furry short with my buddy Nik as a promo piece for the furry visual novel he’s been working on, and I’ve started working on a digital writer’s convention with a team of awesome people (I promise more info to come on that very soon!).

So, lots going on over here! Despite that, I’ve managed to get a good deal of reading done.

What Did You Recently Finish Reading?

This was a cute, short sexy read. I picked it up after meeting the author in a Kindle discord. It’s demon paranormal romance, which is outside of my usual reading tastes, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. Very consensual and it has a light steam factor. Nothing too hot and heavy, but a perfectly serviceable erotica.

I hated this book. I hated it so much that I went on a livestream rant about it. Just the absolute, utter misogyny. So often in the romance genre, there’s a “slutty” character who wears too much make-up and cares too much about her appearance, and she goes after the same dude that the main character likes. I fucking hate it. Like, women really talk out both sides of their mouth when it comes to sluts. Everybody is so sex-positive, then you go to the romance genre and sexually-forward women who ain’t afraid to let a dude know she’s feeling him, are almost always the catty self-absorbed villain. It’s easy to see how these romance novelists (and the women who buy the books) actually feel about sluts.

This is a wattpad book that I read about half of before deciding to DNF. The story was interesting. It was very fun to read. What I didn’t like about the book was how every single character sounded exactly the same and had the exact same sense of humor. Instead of writing three-dimensional characters who are all different than each other, the writer used his characters as mouthpieces to show off his own sense of humor.

Despite that I probably would have kept reading, except I think this author and I have different ideas of how you should respond to people who share their opinion in your comment section. I’m not saying he was rude. I’m just saying I don’t like to be bothered with a lot of interaction when I leave a throwaway comment or two. I definitely don’t want a whole explanation in my DMs or a breakdown of which peices of advice the author will take or won’t. Like…don’t care.

I share my opinion on books because I enjoy it. I do it for me. I enjoy identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a book. It distracts me from the pain of prolonging myself out of weakness. I hate being alive and literary criticism is one of the few activities that makes me forget that for a second. I don’t believe in authorial intent, so there’s no reason for me to care why an author made a certain choice….so don’t get in my DMs and tell me.

Lastly I read the first three installments of the Tux/Edo series by CaptainCzar on furaffinity. It’s a really cute contemporary M/M romance between a tabby cat and a dog who are an established couple. They have great chemistry. They’re very sweet together, always asking for consent and checking in with each other. Plus there’s some fun exhibitionsim kinkiness with a quarantine/WFH twist.

Basically, I started reading shorts on furaffinity because Nik and I released our erotic short on furaffinity. I’m trying to get more involved in that community and learn a little more about the furry smut genre.

What Are You Currently Reading?

I know I said I hated the first book in the series. Hear me out: I bought this at the same time as the stupid bear book.

But also….Zoe Chant is REALLY on some other shit, and I might just have to keep reading her books because they are so damn weird.

Look at these:

A unicorn and a firefighter? What a Chad.

Seriously, this woman has a whole series of books where muscle-ripped firefighter men can also turn into mythical animals and it’s so fucking weird I just can’t.

And she crams some of them into the Christmas romance subgenre. I’m really not even mad at it. This is marketing brilliance.

I swear to god this is real. Look, click here if you don’t believe me.

I don’t appreciate the way Chant’s books always denigrate women who are sexually assertive and care about their appearance. I think it’s hella fucked up.

But I also can NOT get enough of the way she crams together all these subgenres. I swear she’d letting a drunk hamster choose them by knocking over a hat and falling on them.

Also, her shifter stuff is weird because it VERY MUCH has the vibe of the cozy genres (cozy romance and cozy Christmas specifically). While most shifter romance has the urban fantasy paranormal vibe, these fluffy books are more like reading one of the Icicle Falls books.

To give you an example of what I mean, let me show off another shifter book that I’m currently reading.

This is a romance between a lupine shifter and a polar bear shifter that I picked up from the library. (Eep! My library is open again!)

This book is absolutely full of lore and backstory. The stakes are high. The magic is complex. There’s even a chosen one. She has been chosen by the Goddess to become the Guardian, the shifter responsible for freeing a dying shifter’s soul from earth, otherwise their soul could be claimed as a weapon of the high fae.

Then you got Zoe Chant like….“Gertie down at Gran’s Grits and protecting the family farms and sometimes people turn into bears or hawks and ain’t that a hoot” and it’s like….kay….weird tonal choice, but I sort of dig it (Now lose the misogyny Chant and I’ll REALLY dig it).

Lastly, I’m reading ‘Shadows on the Grass’ by Isak Dinesen.

Remember the post-colonial academic piece I mentioned? Yeah, it’s for that. And I can already hear the criticism. Oh yeah yeah, woman born in the 1880s was sort of racist: Surprised Pikachu.

Except it isn’t really Dinesen I’m criticizing, but the academic response to her. And using her novels (and other ‘African Farm’ novels written by white women) I’m going to be discussing the perceived intersection of privilege of marginalization that is unique to white women, and working within a psychoanalytical framework, I’ll be explaining how this intersection creates a unique “otherness” that makes white women crave the full subjugation of the POC experience (hence Rachael Dolezal as one uncommon example and the noble savage/white savior dichotomy as a VERY common one).

Basically white women have just enough victimhood (or think they do) to feel empathetize with BIPOC individuals, but they want to shed the privileged side of their identity. Casting themselves into the role of white savior-and by extension stereotyping and dehumanizing BIPOC individuals-is one way in which they seek to do this.

Isak Dinesen lived in Africa in the 1930s. She isn’t the problem. The problem is that attitudes like hers are still pervasive today. The problem is that critical reception of her work has failed to address her racism, which borders on Eugenics at times. Still, feminist criticism positions Dinesen’s own “otherness” as the focus of inquiry.

What Do You Think You Will Read Next?

I’ve only read the first two chapters of this one. It’s another shifter romance. The lore and worldbuilding is incredibly impressive and it includes the star-crossed lovers trope, which is one of my favorite romance tropes

I also plan to do some beta reading for the amazing contemporary bdsm and paranormal romance author Pixie Stormcrow.

Romance is the Most Misogynistic Genre: A Rant Review

I recently read my very first bear shifter romance. I was intrigued by the fact that this is an entire (very popular) subgenre. Zoe Chant’s ‘Green Valley Shifters’ series is very popular and the covers are gorgeous. I took a dive into the bear shifter subgenre with the novella ‘Dancing Bearfoot.’

This book crams itself into a number of subgenres: bear shifter, Curvy woman/BBW, and single dad romance.

The third act twist is that he’s also a billionaire, so…..joy. Another reminder that women need money to fall in love. This is doing wonders for my self-image as a human of the female variety.

The romance itself is pretty cute. It’s like a Hallmark movie. Cute scenes with a precocious toddler, a snowball fight, dancing in the empty dining room. It was all very sweet.

So, why did I hate it?

Harriet. The absolute abysmal treatment of Harriet.

Basically, I think the romance genre is THE most misogynistic genre. Mainstream liberal feminism does a lot of blaming men for misogyny. Nah. It is not systemic. It is not patriarchy. But misogyny does exist and most of it comes from women. Misogyny comes from women policing the gender performance of other women.

If you want to learn about women, what they really think, how they really feel, the romance genre, a genre that is pure fantasy, pure female wish fulfillment is a great place to start. The majority of women today are anti-slut shaming, pro sexual liberation, etc.
Yet, if you want to see how women really feel about sluts, take a look at the romance genre.

One character trope that we see pop up all the time in romance is the slutty, tawdry, caring FAR too much about her appearance (because women should care but not TOO much), and sexually assertive female competition character. This character is sometimes the waitress, or the real estate agent, or a coworker. Harriet is the ‘performing femininity all wrong’ female competition character in this book.

Harriet wears what she wants, drives what she wants, goes after the men that she is attracted to. She’s a single mother who makes time to be involved in her son’s preschool (letting Patricia know what foods and activities are not acceptable for her child) while also buying and selling real estate. Like a bad ass BOSS BITCH. I fucking stan Harriet. Fuck Lee and Patricia and their slut-shaming, purple car-hating ways. Y’all wish you had enough confidence to wear teased 1980s hair and drive a purple car. Fuck off, Lee. Who gave you the right to decide how reasonably shiny a purple car can be? A woman makes her own money, is self-made, and not afraid to let a man know she’s feeling him? Go off, queen. Have as shiny a purple car as you fucking want.

There is a long tradition in media, particularly media produced by and geared at women, of demonizing hyper-femininity. Women who like clothes and fashion are “silly.” Women who buy designer purses are the villains.

This is always the character compared to the main character to show us, the readers, what the “right” way of performing femininity is.

A friend of Lee’s says that all women wear silly shoes (like the “silly” heels Harriet was wearing in snow-a decision that affects fucking nobody-yet these judgy main characters be tearing her down) and Lee thinks about Patrica in snow boots and says “not all women.”

Patricia can cook and is nurturing, but she isn’t too prissy or vain.

Women are judged by their appearance constantly, but god forbid a women actually likes looking good.
Women are conditioned to view success as material items-yet God forbid a woman makes her own money and wants to show off the luxury she has fucking earned, with a “silly” designer handbag.

The way both of the main characters judged poor Harriet made me detest them.

Harriet is the fucking hero of the story.

Patricia talks about how nobody in the town has much money. It’s a shithole town with a dying economy. Harriet up in here making money moves and trying to bring some life and industry to the town. She’s not the villain for buying “family farms.” A sale of property is something that both parties have to agree to. She isn’t the government. She doesn’t have eminent domain. If both parties agree to the sale, then how is Harriet the bad guy? If they agreed to sell, I have to imagine the farm wasn’t doing super well and probably would have gone under eventually anyway, leaving them with nothing. Harriet saved them from destitution.

Also, farms are so fucking useless most of the time. The U.S is just not an agricultural nation anymore. That’s why the U.S government subsidizes corn. Taxpayer dollars pay farmers to grow more corn then could ever possibly be used (although they sure as hell try and that’s why corn syrup is in everything) and then the excess corn is fucking burned every year.

Farms are useless. In the U.S at least. And if you can NOT find a way to make a profit from your farm, then you shouldn’t keep it. Why you taking up land growing food nobody fucking wants?

Such anti-capitalist nonsense in this book. Harriet did nothing wrong.

And you could say, “Jyvur, it ain’t that deep.”

I do think the values that are spread via fiction are deep. The repeated use of particular character archetypes belies societal values. Not only that, but by continuing to use these tropes without subversion, writers ensure they will be incorporated into the value systems of the next generation.

The misogyny that permeates the romance genre and belies the insidious gender policing of women BY WOMEN-not men (men would fuck us if we walked around in potato sacks-they ain’t the problem) it is wrong. It is ugly. It is a demonization of any woman who is sexually assertive (really “vultures”?? How many nasty words were used in this book to describe any woman who DARE show her interest in a man). It is a demonization of any woman who is “too feminine”-whatever in the fuck that is supposed to mean.

And then the demonization of entrepreneurial grit was just an extra little dose of bullshit. Common in fiction, but not exclusively the romance genre.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, what did I like about the book?

The chemistry between Lee and Patricia was cute and if they weren’t both fucking misogynists hating on Harriet for no reason, I probably would have really enjoyed their cute romance and sweet chemistry. The snowball fight was adorable and the sex scenes were nothing special, but serviceable enough.

This has been an episode of Jyvur rant reviewing amazon fluff.

Don’t You Love When Erotica is Consensual? Consent is Sexy. Rape is Not.

I will never stop being amazed that the same women who criticize “rape culture” defend erotica and romance books that glorify and fetishize rape. Eroticizing rape is-apparently- fine when it’s done for the female gaze.

If we want to talk about rape culture, we’ve gotta take a look at the romance and erotica genres.

For whatever reason, rape is a huge part of female fantasy. Of course, every time I talk about this, people have to pipe up to say that it’s actually a VERY small number of women who get wet to the idea of being raped.

Numerous studies show that at least a third of all women fantasize about being raped.

So since I have experienced violence in my life, including sexual violence, I find this pretty gross.

And to be perfectly upfront, when I hear women talk about fear of being raped in feminist discourse, I get this…vibe. They often sensationalize mundane situations (complaining about men approaching them in a Starbucks full of people in the middle of the day because muh rape). They often talk about their own small stature. Gotta make sure everyone knows what a smol bean they are (honestly, petite women jerk themselves off over how tiny they are all the time-it’s weird, people). There is a muted tone of eroticization in the way their fear and vulnerability is described.

Look, I get a vibe, y’all, and that’s all I’m saying.

I think many women are aroused by their own vulnerability to rape.

I don’t think they actually want to be raped. It’s still disgusting. It is still abhorrent. I’m still going to kink shame and throw hella shade.

Okay, now the “just a fantasy” people. I’m waiting. I know you got shit to say in the comments. You always do.

The argument is “It’s just a fantasy. It doesn’t hurt anyone.”

I think in order to make that an effective argument, you would have to be able to prove that the media we consume has absolutely no influence on our values and perceptions. Like….are you kidding? Of course the stories we consume shape us. But “just a fantasy” people, come at me with some actual proof that we are in no way influenced by the media we consume and I might take you a little more seriously.

No, I don’t think women who enjoy rape fantasies actually want to be raped.

But I do think they want to be dominated. I do think they probably select men with anti-social tendencies (and again, numerous studies show that men with anti-social behaviors and dark triad traits are more likely to be sexually selected by women). And then these same women cry about how horribly they are treated by men.

And now here’s the part where people say “you’re victim-blaming.”

I feel bad for anyone who ends up in a relationship where they are mistreated. I’ve been there. I was there when I was young and had even less self-esteem than I have now and if a dude was nice to me like one time I’d follow him around forever basically and let him treat me any kind of way he wanted (I have the opposite problem now-I never really connect with anyone and am so emotionally disconnected that I prefer parasocial bonds to real ones). I’m very glad I snapped out of my doormat ways. I want other women to snap out of it. The Beauty and The Beast monomyth that dominates Western romantic fiction really got women on some other shit. ‘Bad man becomes good man because good woman’ is the foundation of more stories than I could possibly name. Yet, we want to pretend this idea has in no way permeated our collective consciousness. we consume the idea again and again and again, but women somehow don’t internalize the idea that good pussy fixes poor male behavior?

I definitely don’t view it as cruel to point out to people the ways in which their own choices could lead to unfortunate situations. THAT is why I’m so critical of the romance genre. This generation of women is teaching the next that troubled broken men are the ones to go after.

And I’m absolutely not sorry for saying “Hey, fetishizing male violence might lead to women having a fucked view of what a good partner looks like and could lead to women-and the children they produce via partnerships with anti-social men-being harmed.”

The reason “victim blaming” has become such a popular mantra is because if modern feminism has a core tenet, it is this: Female behavior can never ever be criticized.

And that’s the real tea on why nobody is coming for the romance genre.

So, because there is way too much force/coercion/alpha male bullshit in the romance genre, I’m just always delighted when I find something in the erotica or erotic romance genre that is nice and consensual.

I don’t normally read in the demon subgenre of paranormal romance. Demons just aren’t my thing.

But after meeting this writer in a discord server and talking about some marketing techniques for amazon erotica, I decided to give her book a read.

The premise is this: Devon is an incubus who needs to have sex with women as a fuel source. He sees Lessa, a curvy woman, and is immediately attracted to her. They have a tryst and he leaves her a contract explaining that he is an incubus.

The one thing about the story that sort of threw me was the Lessa just believes he is a demon right away. She had this amazing hookup with a guy, knows nothing about him, and wakes up to a contract basically saying, “Yo, I’m a demon. I need sex with human ladies to sustain me. Want to bang it out for a while?”

I didn’t get why she didn’t laugh this off, assume the guy was messing with her, or think about the possibility of mental health issues. He never does anything to prove he’s a demon.

We as the readers are privy to all the magical demon stuff. We even get a fun scene of Devon at the offices of the Better Demon Bureau. The worldbuilding here was great. The offices are like a dark, damp dungeon, complete with a troll and a green-skinned demon working the “claims” counter.

The thing is, Lessa can’t see any of this. So it confused me why she’d believe Devon right away.

Despite that, it was still a 5 star read for me for one reason: the consent!

Informed consent! This demon is out here looking for informed consent!

My gosh, YES to all of this. The guy checking in to see if she wants to keep going. The way she feels safe, knowing she can pump the brakes on the whole thing at any time.

This is what I need more of in the romance genre.

And if you really need some rape fantasy to get off, could you at least make it consensual non-consent? That would be a hell of a step up from the eroticization of actual rape in fiction. By eroticizing rape, we make it appear appealing. We make it appear less heinous.

Gotta tell you, I’m just not okay with anything making rape appear less heinous.

Even if you could prove to me that fiction in no way shapes our attitudes or behavior (I don’t believe that for a second), I’d still say it’s unethical to present rape as something erotic, something excusable (because the narrative ALWAYS finds a way to excuse the rape when it’s the hero of a romance novel), or even something romantic…yech.

It’s unethical to view something violent as good or excusable.

Look, I know a lot of people have entire mental acrobatic routines that they do to justify or glorify violence, and that’s both on the right and left side of the political spectrum.

Not me.

Violence is wrong. It should be avoided whenever possible. Violence committed when you are NOT defending yourself or someone else from a threat is wrong. It is absolutely evil.

Making an evil thing appear less evil is unethical.

Nobody in this world will ever convince me otherwise.

If you are writing rape in erotica or romance, your behavior is unethical.