Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 98

Is Beyoncé Feminist Enough?

 

Beyoncé is fine. Don’t worry about Beyoncé.

 

Merlin Club S03E04, “Gwaine” or “MY SHIP HAS COME IN”

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 four: After Merlin and Arthur get into a brawl with some dudes trying to shake down a tavern wench, they meet Gwaine, a rugged potential sex offender with Pantene commercial hair and Disney prince eyes. Gwaine is injured, so they take him back to Camelot, where Gaius can tend to him. Meanwhile, some magic dudes get really sharp, blunt looking swords and head to Camelot in magic disguises. Their plans are to sneak these secretly sharp swords into the melee, a non-lethal combat tournament at Camelot. When the knights are dicks to Merlin, Gwaine steps in and helps him. They talk about their daddy issues and hug it out, until Gwaine’s protection of Merlin lands him in the dungeons for being disrespectful to knights. He’s banished from Camelot, but hangs around to kill the fake knights who are going to murder Arthur, then goes off to be banished.

If I had written this episode, I would have changed: A lot. Brace yourselves.

Okay, so, this is the first time we meet Gwaine, and he spends an entirely too-long scene harassing Gwen, long after she’s made it clear that she doesn’t want anything to do with him. I’m supposed to like this guy? How, when he makes me so uncomfortable? The answer is because everyone is out of character. How can Gwaine be out of character, you ask? Because after this episode, he’s like a totally different person. It’s jarring to come back to this episode and go, “This is the guy I have the hots for? He’s so gross.”

Also, because I’m coming off of vacation, I needed more than just this little bit of Anthony Head to recharge my fangurl batteries. And Uther was written so out of character in this one, too. How many times has Arthur begged Uther to value someone’s life because they saved his? And it has never, ever worked before. There’s always had to be some dramatic rescue or some shit from the dungeon, but this time Uther suddenly sees that somebody saving his son’s life is a thing he should not throw them in the dungeon for? Why this one time?

It also didn’t make any sense for Sir Oswald to not just kill Arthur when they spar the first time. He could have easily gotten the job done, in front of fewer witnesses and people to block their escape.

But most of all, the thing I would change is how everyone is making a bigger deal out of the melee than they ever have over a life-or-death duel. Even Arthur, who fights most of those aforementioned duels, acts like a melee is such serious business in comparison to all the other really scary shit he’s done in fights.

The thing I loved most about this episode: The tavern wench. They could have cast a conventionally attractive actress, but they went for the bigger girl, didn’t slap a bunch of makeup on her, and she still gets to be the damsel in distress for three hot male characters to rescue. The “yay, a fat girl on TV!” intersects with “gross, damsel in distress trope,” in some troubling ways, but whatever. They tried, right?

I also love Merlin’s sass. I know I complained about characters being out of character, but I feel like Merlin spends the entire episode saying exactly what we’re all feeling about the scenes we’re watching.

The thing I hated most about this episode: Merlin doesn’t try to use magic to save himself all that much, which annoys me. Yes, the fangirl side of me is like, “Yay, Gwaine is going to save Merlin and now they can fall in love in my fanfic opus!” but I’m a little let down that Merlin couldn’t get himself out of dangerous situations in this.

Something I never noticed before:  How super out of character everyone seemed. Only Arthur and Gwen were themselves.

Favorite Costume: None for this episode, unless Gwaine’s thick, lustrous mane counts.

Here is proof of some random headcanon I created: Nothing in this one. It’s not headcanon, it’s just a fact that Merlin and Gwaine would do it with each other. You know. Do the sex.

What object would Bronwyn steal from this episode? Let’s be real here: all three of us would steal Gwaine. But maybe not this Gwaine. The Gwaine that shows up in later episodes and isn’t a creepster.

What Merthur moment did Jess have the naughtiest thoughts about? This entire episode is a Merthur moment. I’m guessing that the entire build up of Merlin being disobedient and sassy to Arthur, broken in a single, orgasmic moment when Merlin senses that Arthur is in trouble, is what she likes most about this show.

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 next week for S03E05, “The Crystal Cave,” Monday,  8pm EST on the hashtag #MerlinClub.

 

State of The Trout: Going Away. Again. Whee.

This is just a quick note to let you all know that I’m going away on family vacation this week. Does it seem like I’m constantly traveling? If it does, it’s probably just because I’m CONSTANTLY TRAVELING. After September, I think I have a whole month where I don’t have to leave or do anything.

The Merlin Club post will go up as scheduled on Friday, but I’ll be absent for #MerlinClub on Monday night because the hotel we’re staying in on Mackinac Island doesn’t have wifi.

In other news, I was on a local daytime show in Grand Rapids, MI this past week:

Notice that super cool dress? That’s from ModCloth.com. The next time you see me on TV, I’ll be wearing ModCloth, because they’ve graciously offered to dress me.

When I get back from vacation, I’ll have pictures of my recent cosplays, a new chapter of The Afflicted, and hopefully another Buffy recap.

After a Long Illness

TW: Suicide, Mental Illness, Addiction

I’d like the media to report that Robin Williams has died after a long illness. That it was mental illness shouldn’t be a factor. Miss him.

— Ms D (@msdwrites) August 11, 2014

One afternoon during the last month of my senior year in high school, the dean of students called me into his office. I wasn’t in trouble, he assured me. He just wanted to talk to me. I was the goofy, loud, weird kind of kid who carried around crayons and coloring books in her backpack. I wore a ratty brown sweater every day. Sometimes I wore a princess hat, the cone-shaped kind with the little gauze streamer down the top. I was in drama club. I MCed the school talent show. I tried with all my heart to be funny and strange and to make people laugh. Beneath, I was as insecure as every other teenager, but I was so sure that if I covered it up with humor, nobody would comment on it.

The dean of students knew someone just like me, he explained. This kid had been everything I was: dramatic, silly, shooting out manic intensity all over the place. And during the last week of high school, that kid killed himself.

At the time, and for a long time after, I thought it was a funny story. Not the part where the guy committed suicide, but the fact that the dean of students thought he needed to confront me over the possibility that I would. I wasn’t going to kill myself. Couldn’t he see how happy I was? Sure, I was routinely self-harming and having uncontrollable manic episodes that often ended in panic attacks or broken furniture. But I was really good at covering that up, wasn’t I?

It took me ten more years to understand the difference between being happy and being “on.” I’m a pro at being “on.” I love being around people. If you’ve ever met me in person, you know this, because I probably asked you ninety thousand questions about where you live and what you do. But I can do that on days when I’m feeling my lowest. I can do that on days when the only thing that gets me out of bed is my obligation to others. I can do that on days where I’m actively getting through it while promising that I don’t have to do it again. Get through this day, Jenny, and I promise you can kill yourself tomorrow. I do it because it’s what I’m driven to do, through some deeply strange part of me that feels that if I’m not putting on a show, I’m disappointing others. Every person in the world is an audience that I have to prove my sanity to, and every day I’m giving the performance of a lifetime.

When I heard about Robin Williams’s suicide, my first reaction was that visceral shock you get when someone who seems like they’re going to be around forever is suddenly gone. My second was, “Well, it makes sense.” He’d long been open about his struggles with addiction and mental illness, but the initial moment of surprise was, to me, an indication that even facing mental illness issues of my own I do not associate the words “mental illness” with “suicide.”

There’s a mechanism in us that separates suicide and suffering. It’s what makes people say things like, “suicide doesn’t solve anything,” and  “suicide is the most selfish thing a person can do.” I’ve long contended that the most selfish thing a person can do is critique another person’s reasons for taking their own life, but that’s a rant, and this week I just don’t have the energy for one. I don’t have the energy for anything. I feel… numb.

I could go on and on about how Robin Williams was a great performer, and he touched my life through his movies, but it wouldn’t be honest. I wasn’t a fan in the sense that if he was in a movie, I had to rush out and see it. My husband loved his stand-up, but I found it obnoxious. I don’t have any personal ties or particularly great memories associated with his work, aside from the dope as hell rainbow suspenders my mom got me so I could pretend to be Mork. But now I feel, as I’m sure many people struggling with mental illness do, a kinship with him. He’s been where we have been; he just couldn’t come back.

The press has reported lurid details about Williams’s suicide that I won’t reprint here. When someone kills themselves, the spectacle of the method sometimes overshadows the tragedy of the act itself. Certainly, it overshadows the connection between mental illness and suicide. We talk about suicide like it’s a choice. Suicide is never a choice. Suicide is a terminal illness hijacking the brain and torturing the victim to death.

If we’re going to throw out platitudes like, “Suicide never solves anything,” or “if he had only waited a day, things might have gotten better,” when someone dies from suicide, then we need to say the same things about people who die from other diseases. “He shouldn’t have died from heart disease. If he’d waited a day, things might have gotten better.” “Having a stroke never solves anything.” “Dying from cancer is the most selfish thing a person can do.” We often blame patients for their illnesses, especially in cases where addiction, obesity, or sexuality is a factor, but somehow it strikes me as especially cruel in a case where the criticism is echoing the very thing that killed the patient in the first place. People who have committed suicide already believe themselves selfish, weak, and cowardly. Rarely does a person succumb to Leukemia specifically because they feel bad about what a Leukemia-having person they secretly are at heart.

Robin Williams will join the ranks of the “sad clown” comedians whose lives were taken by the self-destructive impulses of mental illness and/or addiction (which are often co-morbid): Belushi, Farley, Jeni, Hedberg. And after each of those deaths, we’d say to ourselves, “Well, we always knew it would happen this way.” Because in hindsight, everyone can see the warning signs. Everyone can look back and say, “No one would put up that big of a front if something wasn’t wrong. No one would joke about that subject, or act so crazy. It was so obvious.” But those of us who’ve been there could see it coming; we saw it coming with Farley. We saw it coming with Hedberg. I know that I’d often seen Williams in an interview or stand-up special and thought, “That guy’s head has to be pretty dark, that all of this is working so hard to cover it up.” Yet each time, the death has come as a shock, because we don’t want to admit that we’ve been enjoying a persona that smothered a suffering person’s pain like a blanket.

As the public mourning for Williams rolls on, we’ll hear more and more about what he “should” have done. He “should” have gotten help (never mind that a man in Williams’s tax bracket could easily have as many therapists and drugs and hospitalizations as necessary if it truly were that simple). He “should” have called a crisis line (people tend to forget that a crisis line is for a crisis, not a long term fix, and that those in the midst of a suicidal depression may not realize that they’re in a crisis situation in the first place). He “should” have “counted his blessings” and “realized how important he was to everyone,” (somehow, the latter is not considered a selfish position in the dialogue of the selfishness of suicide). But what we won’t hear is that we should view depression and mental illness as possibly fatal diseases. We won’t hear the truth: that it’s as possible to positive-think your way out of depression as it is to positive-think a failed organ into working again.

That’s why the dean of students called me into his office that day. He’d seen the glitter-throwing, the invisible-partner tango dancing in the hall. He knew that the veneer of weirdness would eventually wear down, because he’d seen it before. He knew that the difference between quirky and clinically manic is always clear, even to the people around us. He didn’t romanticize it as artistic genius or an adorable personality quirk. He knew that no matter how much help I might receive, no matter what kind of support system I had among family and friends, I was isolated by mental illness. And while I saw his concern as a joke, he saw me the way mental illness never lets any of us see ourselves: as the inevitable suicide that we could all still be.

We’re not fooling ourselves. We want to keep up our performance, our make-’em-laugh mental illness vaudeville routine with a side of slight-of-hand magic and a big applause sign that lights up to read, “Ignore Everything But This Because We’re All Totally Fine,” never realizing that none of us are in a comedy.  If anyone’s death could pull back the curtain and reveal the tragedy behind it, it would be Williams’s. Why would a famous man with famous friends and a loving family, with success in his past and his present and presumably ahead of him, as well, kill himself?

Because he didn’t. Robin Williams did not kill himself. Mental illness killed Robin Williams.

More About That Bass

Comments on the original “All About That Bass” post are closed: I’ve elected to close those comments after a threat I received on my Facebook author page. The comments have now been removed, but here’s a screencap so you can see why I’m basically 100% done with that post and anyone’s thoughts on it (you’ll have to click on the image to see it full-sized):

I think it’s fair to say that since comments disagreeing with this story have been so passionate as to sometimes cross into vitriol, and now have escalated into threats, I’m not overreacting in shutting them down. Especially since Facebook has not responded to my concerns with anything other than a form letter to let me know that they don’t answer their email. I guess if I disappear mysteriously, you’ll know what happened to me. In the event of my death by skinning,  send updates to Facebook. They won’t read them or respond to them, because they couldn’t care less.

Clarification on my comments regarding reconstructive surgery after mastectomy: A few people have expressed concerns about this portion of the “I’m Not All About That Bass” post:

Why is it that we don’t view breast implants as body modification on the same scale as piercings or tattoos? I have this crazy feeling that it has something to do with misogyny. Maybe because the primary objective of breast implants is to conform to a specific cultural standard? How is that different from piercing your septum?

I know how it’s different. Men pierce shit, too! Plastic surgery is viewed as a way for women to make themselves more sexually desirable to heterosexual men for as far into their lives as possible. Even reconstructive plastic surgery after breast cancer fulfills this role; when performed for the patient’s personal comfort, it’s still done to uphold the standard that all women must have breasts (well hello, transmisogyny!), which is what’s making that patient uncomfortable in the first place. To be clear, I’m not shaming anyone for having any elective cosmetic surgery for any reason, just defining our world view and cultural expectations of breasts in this context.”

When I first started receiving comments from women who were angry that I’d said all women who have elective breast reconstruction post-mastectomy were doing so to be sexually attractive, once I went back and read it I realized that I had not worded the passage carefully enough. I do not believe that every woman goes into breast reconstruction thinking, “I’m doing this to be sexy again.” I realize that to many women, losing their breasts is traumatic, and they’re choosing reconstruction because they want to feel whole or remove the reminder of what they went through as best they can. Some have made the argument for balance and posture issues in the case of partial mastectomy, which I’m not dismissing at all . The point I was trying to make, before I messed it all up in clumsy wording, is that replacement of any non-essential body part with a new, non-functioning version of that body part for cosmetic reasons is due to our cultural perception of how bodies “should” look.

If we lose a leg, we get a prosthesis so we can walk again. If we lose a hand, we might get a little claw. These are body parts that help our bodies to function, and the function can be more or less restored using these things. But if we lose our nose, we can’t replace it with a new nose that can perform the same function our old one did. When we have reconstructive surgery to return our bodies to a “whole” or “normal” looking state, we’re doing so because of deeply ingrained expectations of what a human being looks like. This is not a judgment against people who elect to have these surgeries. It is an observation and condemnation of cultural biases we do not notice about ourselves and which we have no control over. I’m not saying this should change so that women are unable to receive reconstruction. I’m not wagging a finger at women and saying, “You shouldn’t do this, it makes you vain.” I understand the reasons a woman would have reconstruction. I absolutely would have one, because not having breasts would make me feel, as many women do, like something about me was missing. But I would not be making this decision without any cultural conditioning that tells me that an important piece is missing. I would be making this decision specifically because of that cultural conditioning. If it were my nose, or my ear, or the removal of a facial scar or a mole, I would be doing it for the same reason. There is no possible way to make a decision about how our bodies look that does not have something to do with our expectations for how bodies should look. When people lose fingers, it’s less common to get a prosthetic one for cosmetic reasons. Do you know why? Because we don’t place as much aesthetic value on our fingers as we do our faces and our breasts.

Reiterating: having reconstruction does not make a woman bad, vain, shallow, or stupid, but no woman is making this decision with a mind devoid of awareness of cultural expectations.

If you disagree with this, or you still believe that by saying this I’m pointing fingers at women who choose reconstructive surgery, then I can’t prove further that I’m not, and this is pretty much the last thing I have to say on the subject.

Women who have had breast cancer and who have opted not to have reconstructive surgery share their views on gender expectations and how they played into their decision to forego reconstruction, and you can find their work here:

“Cover Your Boobs Whether You Have Them or Not”

“Life After Mastectomy and The Choice Against Reconstruction”

“I Chose to Live as a Flat Chested Woman”

“The Sum of All My Parts: A Guest Post on Feminism, Breast Cancer Awareness, and More”

None of these women have suggested that no one get reconstructive surgery, nor do they shame the women who decide to. But to overlook their valid points about how they’ve been treated due to their appearance post-mastectomy would be just as bad as making that judgement against the women who choose reconstruction.

If you didn’t agree that the song reinforces misogynistic cultural tropes, have a listen:

 Former X-Factor competitors Emblem3 have covered “All About That Bass.” See how you feel about lines like, “Us guys like a little more booty to hold at night,” and “It’s pretty clear she ain’t no size two/but she can shake it shake it/the way she’s supposed to do,” when you’re listening to young men sing them.

Not only do they reinforce they original tropes that made the song so problematic in the first place, they up the ante on the misogyny and body shaming by changing lyrics to say things like, “She’s bringing booty back/go ahead and tell those skinny bitches that/no more joking/never say you’re fat,” and “My father once told me don’t worry about her size.” Are we supposed to applaud this? It’s positive to hear young men trash “skinny bitches,” just so some women can feel better about not fulfilling a standard of beauty they’re longing for? How’s that body positivity working out for you, women who showed up in the comments to tell me I’m the one doing the shaming?

Also, Emblem3, rethink your policy of covering songs by female artists and making them all about you. It makes you look like assholes.

If you liked the message behind “All About That Bass,” try this instead: Many commenters who disagreed with me suggested I was either a frustrated singer/songwriter who couldn’t make it, or that I should write a song and make it better than Meghan Trainors. As I am not a singer/songwriter, I can neither be frustrated by my non-existent failed music career, nor can I write a song, because I lack the necessary skills and education needed to do so. However, I can recommend some body positive songs that should make you feel as good, if not better than, what you’re hearing in “All About That Bass.”

I wanted to make this list longer, but it seems like it’s impossible for a woman to write a song about accepting our bodies without relying on the validation of the male gaze.

And now, I’m done talking about this song. When I wrote that piece, I had no idea that I would receive more outright hate mail in a few weeks than I did when I tore apart Fifty Shades of Grey over the course of two years, or when I wrote about Jennifer Lawrence and it wasn’t to fall all over myself loving how she falls all over. Congratulations, Meghan Trainor stans. You’re officially 100,000 times more frightening and unbalanced than 50 Shades readers and JLaw fans combined. That’s really, really saying something.

Still at AAD, but I had to share this.

I just found this spam comment in moderation, and it’s AMAZING:

This is because CCS Elementary School is said to be haunted by the ghost of an elderly women was murdered in the building. It may be just an urban legend, but it is said that she was pushed down a staircase, where she lay in a heap until her murderer picked up her lifeless body and placed it in the dumpster out back.

WTF, spam comment. Don’t leave me hanging. What happened next?!

State of The Trout: Yet Another Whirl-Wind Travel Adventure

Hey everybody! This is a head’s up to tell you that I’ll be gone from Tuesday until next Monday at the Author’s After Dark conference in Charlotte, NC. In the meantime, comments that go into moderation will probably not get moderated, because I’ll be hob-nobbing with all the reader elite, and desperately hoping someone buys my books.

• Are you in the Charlotte, NC, area? I’ll be signing books at a huge, multi-author book fair at the Westin Charlotte (601 S College St) on Saturday, August 9th, from 2-4pm. The signing is free, and there are going to be a lot of authors. I think like, well over a hundred.

• The  Afflicted chapter four is now available on Wattpad.

• If Ever I Would Leave You is on sale for $0.99 at Amazon and Smashwords. It’s still not available at other retailers, but you can get every format you could possibly need at Smashwords. It will eventually be available in broader distribution.

And… well, I guess that’s about it. Huh. I thought for sure I had more news this week. Guess I didn’t.

Merlin Club S03E03, “Goblin’s Gold” or “I could have lived a thousand years without seeing Gaius’s tongue”

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 three: Merlin accidentally lets a goblin loose in the castle, and it possesses Gaius, with hilarious results. Uther loses his hair. Everyone gets struck with a horrible case of comical flatulence. Arthur gets turned into a donkey. And basically everyone in Camelot gets swindled paying “Gaius” for cures to a plague that doesn’t exist. When Merlin figures out what’s happening, Goblin!Gaius tells Uther that Merlin is the cause of all the enchantments. And of course, Merlin gets thrown in the dungeon. But because the Camelot dungeon has a revolving door, Merlin is soon free to prove his innocence. With Gwen’s help, they poison Goblin!Gaius’s gold. The plan is to poison Gaius’s body so that the goblin will have no choice but to leave him,  then administer an antidote to save Gaius’s life. and it works! Except Gwen knocks over basically everything even vaguely bottle-shaped thing in the castle and the antidote is lost among them. Obviously they find the antidote and Gaius is cured and Merlin is exonerated.

If I had written this episode, I would have changed: Not much at all. Off the top of my head, I guess I’d have to say I would have included fewer extended scenes of Gaius licking coins.

The thing I loved most about this episode: I love comedic episodes. This show does them really well, and the cast seems to be having fun. The scene where Gaius repeatedly slaps Uther’s head is especially funny to me, because it appears as though Anthony Head is having trouble keeping a straight face.

The thing I hated most about this episode: In the last episode, it seemed pretty clear (to me, at least) that Morgana knew that Gaius knew she was the one doing the mandrake root spell to Uther. So, why did she seek out Gaius for help with a sleeping potion? And if I’m misreading the scene, and she didn’t know Gaius knew what’s up… why would she ever go get help from Gaius, whose protege is the same dude that poisoned her? Merlin could easily have poisoned her sleeping potion. Come on, Morgana. Get it together.

Something I never noticed before:  How often the actors look like they’re about to totally lose it while acting out these scenes.

Favorite Costume:

Here is proof of some random headcanon I created: None of my headcanons are represented here.

What object would Bronwyn steal from this episode? I’m not sure I have one for this episode. There isn’t much going on the way of propage.

What Merthur moment did Jess have the naughtiest thoughts about? In the scene where Merlin is tossing Arthur’s room looking for the goblin, Arthur is stern, but not angry. I don’t know about Jess, but to me, that says “spanking scene.”

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. Next week we’ll be on hiatus as the three of us attend the Authors After Dark conference in Charlotte, NC. Well be back the monday after that at 8pm EST on the hashtag #MerlinClub.

 

Wednesday Blogging: Motivation

“Jenny,” I’m sure you’re all probably not wondering, “what is it that motivates you to keep to your office hermitage, barely seeking the sunlight or the warm embrace of the outside world?” Well, I’ll tell you. I have several powerful motivators:

Fear of poverty. If you’re new to this here blog, you’ve missed a really exciting past five years. After my career shot around the room making fart noises as it rapidly deflated, I just kept working right along, until the day I no longer gave a fuck and started mocking Fifty Shades of Grey. I owe a lot to that book. If I hadn’t decided, “Fuck it, this book is so bad, I don’t care if no publisher will ever touch me again, if I’m going down, I’m going out in a blaze,” and started viciously mocking it on the internet, I wouldn’t have gotten the courage to say “Fuck it, I’m going to do this publishing thing my way.” But I did, and we went from food stamps to relative financial security in a couple of months. It was insane. But as bad as it was to be poor, what’s almost worse is not being poor, but remembering how easy it was to lose everything the last time. I’m constantly afraid that somehow, everyone will find out that I’m a fraud and not a real writer at all, and I’ll lose everything again.
Fear that I won’t get to write all the books I want to write before I die. Does what it says on the tin. I have so many stories in my head, there is no possible way I could ever tell them all. It’s like my brain is a sinking ship, and I have to get as many passengers off of it as possible. I wish I could write every second of every day.
Just generally being a malcontent. I get angry about things, as you may or may not have noticed. And when I get angry, I write about the things that make me angry, and usually I can make one or two of you angry (either with me or at me), and it goes in a beautiful circle of blazing hostility at the world, ourselves, and other.

That’s pretty much what motivates me. I know “championing social justice causes” probably should be on there, and I should be like, all noble about trying to make the world better for my fellow fat people, but I couldn’t take myself seriously if I were taking myself that seriously, and this blog is really only a thinly-veiled excuse for me to make dick jokes about pop culture, anyway.

As you’re reading this, I’m either recording a segment with NPR, nervous about recording the upcoming segment with NPR, or being super relieved that I’m done recording that segment with NPR. Let’s all cross our fingers that I don’t say something dumb, okay? I’ll ask them when it’s going to be on and let you all know. I’m going to be talking about “All About The Bass.” So it’s a pretty fair bet that today, abject terror is my motivator.

Wanna see what other Wednesday writers get all motivated by (I’ve used variations of “motivate” so much in this post, I feel like it’s not even a real word anymore)? Check out their posts:

Gwendolyn Cease • Kellie St. James • Bronwyn Green

Jessica Jarman • Leigh Jones • Kris Norris

Sophie Scaife has a Tumblr

Hey everybody! Since 2013, Sophie Scaife has had a Tumblr, but it was sort of my little fun side project just for myself. But since The Boss experienced such a big surge in popularity over the weekend (Thanks, Mara Wilson!), I thought, what the heck, I’ll share it. Sophie’s Tumblr is 100% NSFW due to tons and tons of graphic sex, usually BDSM-themed (mostly BDSM-lite). You can find it here.