Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 100

One more IF EVER I WOULD LEAVE YOU post

Since I didn’t roll it into the #MerlinClub post today (which was stupid because it was written completely by the #MerlinClub three), and since it’s now available in all formats on Smashwords, below the jump are the final buy links for If Ever I Would Leave You, and an excerpt from my story, A Choice Fit For A Queen.

To say that the Rose and Pig was off the beaten path would have been an understatement.

There were no streetlights. The street wasn’t even paved. It was barely more than a dirt two-track leading past the low stone fence that surrounded the field. At the end, a two-story wattle-and-daub house stood, chimney smoking. The light spilling from its windows promised warmth and a place to get dry. Though my feet ached and stung with raw blisters from jogging around airports all day, I practically sprinted the last leg of my journey. Mud splattered onto the legs of my jeans, and I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get inside, away from the hellish downpour. I reached the door, prepared to fling it open and launch myself into the warm embrace of a charming Welsh pub.

It was locked.

Visions of sleeping in the cold, shivering in the dark, wet, pneumonia-encouraging night put urgency into my arm as I pounded on the door. “Hello! Hey, is anybody inside? Can anyone help—“

A guy opened the door. A hot guy. An annoyed hot guy. One look at him and my heart jolted. I froze in shock, but managed to stutter out, “m-me?”

He was absolutely gorgeous. Flawless dark brown skin stretched over a face that made the words “aesthetically pleasing” an understatement. His cheeks were full, like he’d retained baby fat in the exact right places, and his lush lips spread in a smile that was half “let’s be friends” and half “let’s be friends with benefits” as he looked me over.

Unfortunately, the longer I stared at him, the more his smile faded. He leaned his shoulder against the door and slung a white bar towel over the other to cross his arms over his chest. “Let me guess. American white girl, thinking, ‘What do you mean, they have black people in Wales?’” He held up his hands in mock apology. “Sorry, we’re everywhere. Hope you’re not too disappointed.”

“N-no, I wasn’t—“ Explaining was not going to work if I couldn’t talk like a normal human. I had to glance down and push my wet hair from my face to concentrate and steel myself against his good looks when I raised my head again. When I did, I managed a smile. I hoped I didn’t look goofy. “I was actually thinking, ‘wow, the guys are a lot hotter here than at home.’”

His smile returned slowly. “Yeah, all right. You’re forgiven. Come on inside.”

His accent. Oh god.

The inside of the pub was exactly the way I imagined pubs would look. Lots of wood, not too much light, pictures of horses on the walls. Mr. Gorgeous moved behind the bar and took out his cell phone. “We’re closed, but I can give you a lift and someplace dry to wait, at least.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need a ride. My place is supposed to be—“ I pointed at the ceiling and whistled.

“Bill finally rented it? Huh.” The guy shrugged his shoulders, then reached across the bar to give me a clean towel. “Bill’s not in right now. You’re going to find that he’s not ‘in right now’ a lot of the time. Sorry about that.”

“Oh.” I looked around as I squeezed water from my long brown hair with the towel, for all the good it would do me. I had way more hair than towel. The building was old, but clean, though there were some cracks in the yellowed plaster walls. “Um… is there like a Holiday Inn around here or something?”

Hot guy pulled a carabiner from the belt loop of his jeans and jingled it at me. “Lucky for you, I’ve got a spare key.”

“You are a lifesaver—“ I paused, waiting for him to fill in the blank.

“Rhys.” He held out his hand. His big, warm palm swallowed mine, and I hoped he thought my skin was damp from rain and not nervous sweat.

“Madison.” Had I just giggled? I needed to get that on lock down.

Or not. Because Rhys held my hand just a heartbeat longer than necessary, and smiled wide in the moment it took him to respond. “Look, do you mind waiting while I finish up here? Just for a couple of minutes?”

“It’s fine. Better than sitting out in the rain, anyway.” I leaned an elbow on the bar and propped my face on my hand. “So… you work here alone? Isn’t that kind of dangerous?”

“It didn’t seem like it before, but now you’ve said that…” He gave me serious side-eye, as if he thought for a second I wasn’t really kidding.

“I don’t generally attack people,” I reassured him playfully. “I know I look super intimidating.”

“Yeah?” He grinned as he flicked off the lights that glowed above the shelves behind the bar. “All, what? Nine stone, soaking wet?”

“Well, I am soaking wet,” I laughed, and then I realized how incredibly wrong that sounded if taken in a different light.

Whatever. I was twenty. I was in a different country. Wasn’t the point of a trip abroad to sow some wild oats? Or whatever it was dad called it?

Knowing my dad, he meant actual oats, and was imagining a pastoral scene of farming the Welsh countryside.

“You know, it’s rude to ask a woman her weight,” I reminded him. “I thought people in England were supposed to be more polite.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not in England, and you better know the difference before you go saying something like that in front of the locals.” He grinned and gestured to the door. “Come on. I’ll let you in upstairs.”

The second floor apartment was accessible from a staircase at the back of the pub. The scarred wooden door at the top looked liked it could have been original to the house, but the knob and lock were brand new. Rhys slipped the key in and wrestled with it for a moment, which was an auspicious sign.

“Ah, there we go.” He held the door open for me, and I struggled my bag up the last remaining stairs.

“Let me get that,” he said, and when he leaned down, the side of his face grazed my chest. I took an audible, embarrassed gasp of air, and he straightened with an awkward laugh. “Yeah…sorry about that.”

Amazon • Smashwords

Merlin Club S02E12 “The Fires of Idirsholas” or “It’s all downhill from here, Morgana.”

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

So, here’s a quick rundown of episode eight: Morgause raises an army of supernatural warriors called the knights of Madea or something. I don’t know how it’s spelled. They’re not all middle-aged men in latex granny suits, though, which is good. She puts Morgana under a spell that’s kind of a reverse Sleeping Beauty deal; everyone in Camelot comes down with a sickness that puts them to sleep, except Morgana. Only Merlin and Arthur are left with the ability to fight for Camelot, and the Dragon tells Merlin that in order to stop the plague and save the kingdom, he has to kill Morgana. And for once, Merlin takes the dragon’s advice. He poisons Morgana, and Morgause rushes to aid her dying sister. She magics them both away, and though Camelot is saved, Morgana is gone. Merlin ends up finally setting the dragon free, which, judging by all the scenes of fire and carnage in the preview of the next episode, probably turns out fine.

If I had written this episode, I would have changed: This is where things start to go very wrong for me. Morgause loves her sister, right? So why did she put her under a spell that would make her a target? Merlin has to fight hard– and come up with some shoddy exposition– to get Arthur to believe that it’s a coincidence that Morgana didn’t fall ill. Morgause either didn’t think this one through, or she just doesn’t give a shit what happens to her sister.

I’m willing to bet it’s the latter, unfortunately, because when Morgana returns in the next season, I think she’s gone through the Dark Tower, a spell we see in season five. And I think this happens at the hands of her sister.

The thing I loved most about this episode: After all the shit we’ve seen him pull through the past two seasons, it’s nice to see Uther getting dragged around like a sack of flour. I hope they hit his head a bunch. Uther, I mean. Obviously I would never want anything bad to happen to Anthony Head. I don’t know why I even bothered to clarify that. Do you guys even know me at all?!

The thing I hated most about this episode: It’s a small nit to pick, but I’ve always hated how once Morgana is working with her sister, her makeup gets more dramatic. Morgana always looks basically bare-faced and dewy, but once she starts siding with Morgause, she’s got thicker eyeliner and darker lipstick. It’s part of a cultural equation of female beauty with evil that is bizarre and gross.

Something I never noticed before: How fucking pushy Merlin is with the poison. I remembered him giving Morgana the wineskin and being like, “here, have a drink,” but he keeps bringing it up when there are way more problems than thirst going on.

Another thing I noticed was Katie McGrath’s amazing acting in the scene where Arthur gives her a sword to guard the unconscious king. I used to think, “God, why doesn’t she just cut off his fucking head and be done with it?” Looking closer at the scene, I now realize that she considers it.

Favorite Costume: I’m so frustrated with my internet speed right now, because I can’t screencap it, but Morgause looks like such a fucking badass with her cape and armor, leading a legion of undead warriors into Camelot.

Here is proof of some random headcanon I created: My headcanon here concerns Morgana (I think we can safely say who my favorite character is, okay?). I feel like the spell that Morgause casts on her is the beginning of her inexplicable personality 180. Morgana before season three wants justice. She’s not fueled by hatred or greed until after Morgause takes her away, which also leads me to believe that Morgause pulled a Dark Tower on her.

What object would Bronwyn steal from this episode? Nothing I could get a picture of. Thanks, internet, for sucking exactly when it’s least convenient.

What Merthur moment did Jess have the naughtiest thoughts about? When Arthur is willing to risk his own life to save Merlin in the woods.

Check out Jessica Jarman’s take on the episode here

Check out Bronwyn Green’s take on the episode here

That’s it for this week. Join us on Monday as we watch S02E13, “The Last Dragonlord” at 8pm EST on the hashtag #MerlinClub.

 

Why are today’s disgusting bullies so unashamed of themselves?

TRIGGER WARNING: If you are currently recovering from or in treatment for an eating disorder, or if you are a survivor of an eating disorder who wishes to avoid triggering content, please don’t read the following post.

There’s a proverb that goes, “Do not speak unless you can improve upon the silence.” I think the same could be said about writing: Don’t waste people’s time when you don’t have anything of value to say.

Like, oh, just for an example here, let’s say you wrote an article praising people with deadly eating disorders as being “driven” and suggesting that having a child with anorexia is preferable to having a fat child.

I wouldn’t call Linda Kelsey’s piece for the Daily Mail an article, so much as an embarrassing online tirade targeting fat people with as much hatred as she was able to pack into her go-nowhere screed. In a nutshell, Kelsey feels that it should be socially acceptable to shame fat people… for the sake of their their health, of course.

Standing in the queue for airport security at Luton last week, en route to Malaga and my fortnight in the sun, I became transfixed by the three young women in front of me.

All in their early 20s, they were laughing and chatting, clearly looking forward to their hols on the Costa del Sol, excitedly planning their days on the beach and nights on the town.

They sounded – and looked – happy and carefree. But what mesmerised me most about this jolly trio was not their conversation, but their appearance: they were size 18 apiece, at least.

It isn’t enough to guess at their sizes. Allow Linda to describe them:

They were not chubby, but fat. They had bulging bellies and billowing pillows of back and shoulder stuffing, punctured by flabby arms and lardy legs that no amount of fake-tan could disguise.

And what struck me even more forcefully about these lumpen individuals (there were dozens more, equally large, in the queue behind me) was how obviously unconcerned they were about it.

Linda Kelsey is surrounded by fat people. There is no escape. And these people weren’t even appropriately somber. They were standing there, preparing to go on their vacations just like Linda was, and they were enjoying themselves presumably as much as Linda was enjoying herself. And somehow, they were doing this as though their body size didn’t inhibit their enjoyment of life. This isn’t fair. These woman were fat. They shouldn’t be allowed the same level of excitement or fun that lovely, slender Linda is entitled to as a thin person.

What’s worse, these girls were going on a holiday to southern Spain and they weren’t swaddled in winter coats. They were wearing stuff like shorts and tank tops, their rolls and cellulite on display for all to see. And they forced poor Linda to rake her offended gaze over every dimple and crease in their fat bodies. To top it all off, they were sharing a bag of chips!

I assume Linda was upset about them sharing the bag, rather than having one apiece, because she had to dial her scorn back a notch.

It occurred to me that if these girls hated their bodies and were racked with self-loathing, as we’re so often told that the majority of young women do and are, they were doing a grand job of projecting exactly the opposite impression.

Far from body hatred, what I witnessed was a let-it-all-hang-out faith in themselves and a don’t-give-a-damn attitude to their evident obesity.

Maybe I’m making a rash assumption here, but it sounds like Linda feels that all fat people should walk around in super-sized potato sacks, ringing a bell and crying, “Unthin! Unthin!” as they shuffle through the streets, and the fact that we don’t is proof that we face no derision or emotional upheaval from the culture that surrounds us.

Un-PC of me as it may be to criticise my sex for their size, when it comes to weight I’m not afraid to say it: I am unapologetically fattist. It’s unattractive, it’s unhealthy and, given the problems that being fat can cause, it should be as unacceptable as smoking.

The nice thing about being fat is that so many people care about your health. Your doctor, the media, hateful strangers in an airport who will compare your body to a cigarette… It’s always a fairly good indicator that someone is about to be unapologetically ignorant and offensive when they say something like “Un-PC.” The only people in this world who still bemoan polite language as being “politically correct” are the people who were outraged when the term came into use in the ’90′s to end their reign of verbal excrement, and haven’t gotten over the slight since.

Yet to judge by the moral panic over anorexia you would think our daughters are a generation of self-starving stick insects. That each and every one of them is dangerously striving for Keira Knightley’s razor-sharp scapula and fried egg breasts or Victoria Beckham’s hand-span thighs and knife-edge hips.

How silly of these people! It’s almost as though they see young girls, the friends of their daughters, the children they teach, the patients they struggle to help, and think that anorexia is somehow a disease worth panicking over.

If someone is too-thin by Linda’s standards, she has choice words to describe them, too. Kiera Knightley, arguably one of the most beautiful women in the film industry, has “fried egg” breasts. Victoria Beckham, the most glamorous of all the girls Spice, has “knife-edge hips.” In Linda’s worldview, no body seems to be at an acceptable weight.

I don’t deny that anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders are a pernicious problem, and I’ve witnessed at close hand the devastating effects of anorexia as young daughters of friends and acquaintances have succumbed to it.

What could the common denominator be in all of these cases of people you know having eating disorders? There has to be some underlying cause, some symptom in common. I just can’t put my finger on why someone who knew you would be stricken with a mental illness that causes people to starve and exercise themselves to death…

But in the cases I’ve come across, the psychological issues these girls were suffering from had far more to do with their driven personalities, their determination to be A*  students at any cost, as well as troubles with over-demanding parents, than simply emulating glossy magazine images of super-skinny models and stick-thin celebrities on the red carpet.

This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of Linda’s diatribe. The denial that thin-obsessed media culture has any link to the deadly rise of eating disorders is bad enough, but drawing a comparison between being anorexic and striving for excellence is unconscionable. Also, I’m not sure which class these girls were in that they had to die from an eating disorder to get good grades, but that school should definitely have their curriculum evaluated.

Far more attention and, dare I say it, opprobrium needs to be directed at young fatties who eat unhealthy diets and sit around watching TV and texting rather than going to the gym or even for a walk.

Doesn’t that just make the wording jump out at you more? “Fatties”– and by the way, Ms. Kelsey, only fat people are allowed to use that word to describe ourselves, so go wash your mouth out with low-calorie soap– have the audacity to “sit around” and be “unhealthy,” when they should be more “driven” and have the “determination” that seriously ill eating disorder patients display. As always in “health” related anti-fat arguments, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with being thin and sitting around watching TV while eating an unhealthy diet. The only marker of health is thinness.

While it’s well known that socio-economic factors have a bearing on weight – with those on lower incomes more likely to eat sugar and fat-laden diets, and less likely to exercise – there are other factors being ignored.

So, she’s going to go right on ahead and ignore that really important factor, the one where despite the abundance of wealth in first world countries, many people are chronically hungry and forced to make poor diet choices,  in order to focus on the more pressing issue. Mothers are encouraging their daughters to have self-esteem:

A generation of mothers seem to have swallowed a dangerously misguided message of body acceptance; making them terrified of telling their daughters they’re getting fat for fear they’ll stop eating altogether.

Mums are now so busy shoring up their daughters’ self-worth by telling them they’re lovely just the way they are, they’re becoming guilty of benign neglect instead.

Let me clarify her point: A generation of mothers finds it’s more important that their daughters live happy, mentally healthy lives, rather than encouraging them to crash diet and hate themselves. And that’s awful.

I don’t have a daughter, nor do I have a weight problem.

So what you’re saying here, Linda, is that you’re not at all qualified to be writing about how young girls should stop being so fat. You have literally no experience whatsoever with either raising a daughter or being fat in the world we live in. You know, I’ve never gone kayaking or farmed ostriches, but I’m fairly confident I can write an article about how to teach your ostrich to kayak. And the Daily Mail will probably pick it up, because they flat-out don’t care what nonsensical garbage they publish.

I love food, but even today, at 62, I am still very careful to cut back if I feel my jeans getting too tight. While I have sympathy for those with genuine metabolic conditions, the majority of today’s fatties seem simply too greedy, ill-disciplined and or ignorant to do the same.

I’m not sure what I find more laughable about this paragraph, the part about everyone being too greedy, ill-disciplined or ignorant to follow her pristine example, or the idea that a person as hateful, bitter, and self-centered as Linda Kelsey could experience any emotion that bears a passing relation to sympathy.

She goes on to cite figures about how much fat costs the NHS and how there are healthy alternatives to McDonald’s, and about how heart attacks, acid reflux, strokes, cancer and asthma can all be caused by fat, with no mention of how anorexia and bulimia are also linked to those same health concerns. Because, as I stated before, thinness is the only way to measure health.

We live in a society in which it has become OK to shame people for being skinny, but to come out and say ‘You’re fat. Not healthy, not a good look’ would be tantamount to a crime.

While I admit that there is a fair amount of thin-shaming going on in our culture and it’s totally not cool, it’s a bit dramatic to say it’s “tantamount to a crime” to call someone fat. It’s rude, and it makes you look like a huge a-hole, but so does writing an entire opinion piece about how mothers aren’t making their daughters hate themselves enough and eating disorders are no big deal because the sufferers are just “driven.” But it’s not a crime. Now, if you said that kind of thing to my daughter, there would definitely be a criminal charge involved, but it wouldn’t be you they’d be throwing in jail.

The problem with people like Linda Kelsey–aside from the fact that they’re rude, cruel, ignorant and self-important know-it-all bullies–is that they’ve convinced themselves that fat people want their approval. But we don’t. So it leaves them kicking and pounding like a toddler throwing a fit because they can’t make everyone as miserable as they are. Linda Kelsey doesn’t want fat people to hate themselves as much as she hates them. She wants fat people to hate themselves as much as she would hate herself for becoming fat. She wants mothers of daughters to make their girls hate themselves, so they never have the audacity to go to Spain and enjoy themselves. She’s fine with girls dying from anorexia because, hey, at least then they wouldn’t be fat. And she has a burning need to be able to shame the bodies of fat people and skinny, attractive actresses with “fried egg” breasts.

Linda Kelsey wants us to join her in a world where humanity and respect are only bestowed upon bodies she deems acceptable. Her body, for example. But it’s not out of vanity or self-importance. Linda Kelsey only encourages eating disorders for the sake of public health. In the end, isn’t that the noble motivation behind all those concern trolls who bully fat people for self-validation?

If Ever I Would Leave You IS OUT NOW!

Get your coat and grab your hat and stuff, because If Ever I Would Leave You: Arthurian Stories for a New Generation comes out tomorrow. Three all new stories inspired by Arthurian mythology, folks. That’s what we’ve been up to:

 Amazon • Smashwords

I’ll be adding the buy links when the book becomes available on Smashwords and Amazon tomorrow. In the meantime, Have some blurbs!

Surfacing

Bronwyn Green

A year after Tabby Nolan’s sister vanished from the Lake Michigan shore with her boyfriend, Liam, Tabby visits the spot where the two were last seen– and finds herself pulled into the crumbling world of Avalon.

Since his disappearance, Liam has been trapped in the mythical land, with no link to the world he knew. Now, their shared memories of Tabby’s missing sister are all they can cling to as Avalon dies around them.

But Tabby doesn’t want to be a replacement for her sister, and her growing attachment to Liam feels like a betrayal. As Avalon fades around them, Liam and Tabby must rely on each other– or be lost with the ancient kingdom forever.

Albion’s Circle: The Deepest Cut

Jessica Jarman

For nineteen years, Anna has been plagued by dreams of lives lived only in legend. Finally free from the family that believed her hopeless and worthless, she’s ready to start her life over—alone.

When Anna meets an enigmatic stranger claiming to be the legendary wizard Merlin, she is forced to question the very reality she’s struggled to accept. With the mythic figures from her dreams intruding on her waking life, Anna learns that she’s been reborn to fight an ancient evil alongside King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

Caught in an ages old conflict, Anna is the key to stopping a dark magic that will destroy the world—and Merlin wants to make sure that this time, Anna isn’t alone.

A Choice Fit For A Queen

Jenny Trout writing as Abigail Barnette

For perpetual overachiever Madison Lane, a summer studying Arthurian mythology in the Welsh countryside with professor Thomas Evans is a dream come true, and the adventure of a lifetime.

Of course, the enormous crush Madison developed on the professor after a semester of his lectures at U of M has absolutely nothing to do with her desire to learn more about the enduring legend of Camelot. At least, that’s what she’s telling her parents.

When Madison meets local hottie Rhys Crewe, sparks fly, throwing her plans for a wild fling with Professor Evans completely out of whack—as do her unexpectedly complicated feelings for Thomas. With tales of Arthur and Lancelot haunting her every waking moment, Madison has to make the most difficult choice of her life.

Wednesday Blogging: If I had super powers

So, I guess this week is about having superpowers. To be honest, I’m on the fence about superpowers. On the one hand, if I had, say, the ability to bi-locate, or teleportation, or even just some kind of flying power, that would be pretty rad. But I’m afraid of getting a shitty power, like on Misfits, where the one guy’s power was controlling milk. I mean, he used it to kill people. But I’m not sure murder by dairy is the best super power.

So, I guess if I were going to have a super power, mine would be:

THAT PILL FROM LIMITLESS.

I know that’s technically not a power, and also, I’ve never seen the movie, but in the preview dude writes a bestselling book and shit in a few hours, and get hot chicks, and something in there involved Robert De Niro. Like I said, I don’t know what exactly the plot was, because I was more concerned with the part where he became a super productive and successful novelist, but those movies where people make Faustian bargains always work out, right? There’s no chance of being addicted to super high-powered performance enhancing drugs isn’t going to be a positive for me, right?

“Do it, Jenny! What could go wrong?”

Failing that, I would love to have the ability to time travel. Although, I think for something like that you have to have an actual time machine, which is less a superpower and more a Time Lord thing. So forget I mentioned it.

For more talk about superpowers and what we would do with them, visit the other Wednesday bloggers:

 Gwendolyn Cease • Bronwyn Green • Jessica Jarman • Kris Norris • Kellie St. James

Leigh Jones

 

Watch me on the danggum internet TV, y’all

Hey there everybody! Quick heads up to let you know that I’ll be on HuffPost Live this afternoon. The show starts at 1:45pm EST, my segment will be around 1:50pm EST. Tune in if you can!

If you missed it, you can watch it here:

I’m on after the lady who’s being targeted by a bunch of douchebags trying to get her excommunicated from the Catholic church. By the way, I throw my support behind her 100%. If the church is not going to excommunicate cho-mo priests, they clearly don’t need to be excommunicating anyone else.

So, at least 100,000 people have seen me in my bathing suit.

I wanted to let everyone know that the photo that accompanies the Huffington Post article was taken by Bronwyn Green. I feel super bad that I didn’t mention it before.

The Facebook “likes” on my Huffington Post essay, “I Wore A Bikini And Nothing Happened” have reached 100k. I don’t know how I feel about that. On the one hand, I knew I was putting my bikini picture on the Huffington Post and the internet in general. On the other hand, my most popular piece there was my Jennifer Lawrence body-shaming article, and that has something like 49k likes. So I didn’t expect for much to happen with it. WOW. Did I vastly underestimate women’s need to see “imperfect” bodies just doing regular, human stuff. There are so many comments there, and I’ve gotten so many tweets and emails, where women will say things like they’re going to wear shorts, or go sleeveless, or try a two-piece or any bathing suit at all, now that they’ve seen that article. A lot of you have said really sweet things to me over the years about my writing affecting your lives (especially during my 50 Shades of Grey recaps), but it stuns me every time. Not only am I getting messages going, “You’re helping me with my personal stuff,” but the support I’m getting is overwhelming. People saying, “You look fantastic,” and “my husband approves,” and “you’re wearing it well.” Obviously, that’s not why I posted the article, it’s a broader social commentary (the point of which was that it doesn’t matter how you look, you’re still entitled to wear whatever you want and be comfortable doing it), but the fact that I’ve received more of those messages than negative ones makes me really hopeful for the future of fat people. I’d braced myself against losing my faith in humanity when I scrolled through the comments section, but it was actually restored. Bolstered, even. Yeah, there have been a few people who’ve missed the point and launched into the very same health lecture I lampooned in the article. And there have been some shitty comments too.  The current record holder is the guy who left simply, “No thanks.” No thanks? Are women just on offer to you, and you deem them worthy of humanity based on whether or not you’d grace them with a fuck? It should come as no surprise to anyone that the accompanying photo was of a dorky middle-aged white guy. I’ve digressed into Angryland. Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know that the support and positivity around this has overwhelmed me, and I’ll leave you with these lovely drawings made for me by Plunderpuss: Hmmm… on a scale of one to Steve-O, how douchey would I be to get a tattoo of a cartoon of myself?

Merlin Club S02E11: “The Witch’s Quickening,” or “The first of many smirks”

 

We had the chance to do the Merlin Club banner for real, and we carped that diem.

We also took a Merlin Club field trip to Camelot!

It was only a model. But I’m pretty sure that the shawl pattern I bought will require sorcery. I’ve cast that fucker on like fourteen times and I still get the middle wrong.

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

So, here’s a quick rundown of episode eleven: In a land of myth and a time of magic, the poor man’s Alan Rickman is sheltering creepy omen child, Mordred, who wants to sneak back into Camelot to find Morgana again. The druids are going to fight against Uther, but they need this crystal as a weapon. Morgana, who has increasingly had enough of Uther’s bullshit, decides she’ll do Mordred and his friend Alvvar a solid by stealing the crystal. Merlin knows she took it, and he goes to tell the dragon, and the dragon is all, “Ha ha, she won’t know what to do with it!” And then Merlin is all, “Actually, Mordred has the crystal,” and the dragon is like, “Oh. Yeah, that’s more troubling.” Obviously he doesn’t say that, but you get that general idea. Uther is freaking out looking for the crystal because magic is dangerous and blah blah blah, let’s keep a bunch of it under the castle for some reason. Alvarr convinces Morgana that Uther is an evil tyrant, and she’s now 100% anti-Camelot, as evidenced by the fact that she smirks hard enough to twist something. To make matters worse, Merlin already told that dragon he would let him out, and then he sees the future in the crystal and the dragon is straight blowing up Camelot. Alvarr gets captured, and Morgana rescues him, and Uther totally knows she did it.

Oh, and Mordred finally calls Merlin on his magicfolk betraying bullshit.

If I had written this episode, I would have changed: This is the part of the series where things start to go downhill for me, in terms of Merlin siding with Camelot against magic people. What’s the motivation? Arthur treats him like crap all the way through this episode, and really, for the past few, right? The dragon is like, “Your destiny is tied to Arthur’s,” but then Merlin sees into the crystal and finds out that the dragon is a big ole fucking liar. Why isn’t he like, “You know what? My life was awesome before I got here. This place is a big mess. Hey, Morgana, wait up!”?

The thing I loved most about this episode: This is one of the very last episodes where Katie McGrath has acting to do beyond just smirking when only the camera can see her. They really don’t give her a lot to work with from here out, so enjoy it.

The thing I hated most about this episode: When a dragon tells Merlin something, Merlin’s decisions are not at all influenced by the fact that he just talked to a fucking dragon. When a dude tells Morgana something, it’s brainwashing via hormones and romance, and absolutely no critical thought is involved. OKAY.

Also, everyone loves the line where Morgana tells Uther he’s going to hell, but it’s yet another glaring hole in the world building, as we still have never seen any evidence of Christianity in Camelot.

True story, this past week I told the girls that if I wrote a porno version of Merlin, I would call it Cumalot, and now I can’t even type Camelot with a straight face.

Something I never noticed before: That this is the first episode with the very first Morgana smirk! It’s just a baby one, and difficult to screencap, but there is definite smirk movement on her face.

Favorite Costume: Morgana’s nightgown of indecision and betrayal.

Here is proof of some random headcanon I created: None in this episode, though I still contend it was a mistake to make Morgana Uther’s ward instead of his queen, because how amazing would that last scene between them be? VERY, that’s why.

What object would Bronwyn steal from this episode? Anyone who has ever been in her office knows the answer to this:

What Merthur moment did Jess have the naughtiest thoughts about? You know, I had a hard time coming up with this one, because the Arthur/Merlin interactions are pretty uniformly antagonistic in this episode. So, I’ve settled on it being the scene where they’re both wearing lace-up collared shirts.

Check out Jessica Jarman’s take on the episode here

Check out Bronwyn Green’s take on the episode here

That’s it for this week. Join us on Monday as we watch S02E12, “The Fires of Idirsholas” at 8pm EST on the hashtag #MerlinClub.

 

State of The Trout: Cool stuff that happened.

So, a bunch of cool stuff happened on my trip to the UP. Despite breaking my personal word count record by logging a cool 30k words in a single week, I also managed to exact revenge on Bronwyn Green for her earlier Weeping Angel prank (WARNING: tons of screaming, shaky camera images, and the mortal sin of vertical recording):



While we were in the UP, Jess Jarman and I did a lot of talking about fanfic, and the subject of RPF ship names came up. We created an RPF ship name for my OTP, TroutHead. Apologies to Mr. Jen.

Are you in the mood to read a really sarcastic essay about being fat? You’re in luck! I shared my bikini experience at the Huffington Post and it is super snarky.

Also, DRock got bit by a horse! And it looks like an apple!

 

So, heads up, Fox, if you ever produce “When Horses Attack,” you know who to call.

 

My friends are a bad influence on my doll

Yesterday, I shared with you the heartwarming tale of my doll, Samantha. Well, my friends on the trip weren’t as enthusiastic about her. Words like “creepy” and “haunted” and “possessed” were flung around, rather casually, in my opinion. Last night, after my deeply moving blog post about Samantha, those bitches I went on the trip with sent me this:

Yup. Wednesday bloggers Leigh Jones, Kris Norris, Bronwyn Green, Jessica Jarman, and Kellie St. James were aaaaaaaall in on this, as was reader Anne Reeths. Any time I left the cabin– or let Samantha out of my sight– they were secretly introducing her to a seedy underworld of sex, drugs, and violence.

There’s nothing that makes one feel loved like a well-executed, labor intensive, highly detailed prank, and this one was no exception. The fact that they took the time to do this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. So thank you, guys, from the bottom of my warped little heart.

Unfortunately, it makes the prank Norris, Jarman and  I pulled on Bronwyn Green this time around look pretty tame by comparison. I’ll share that one this week, as well.