Like I know I should be the most pissed that he’s going to spread hated deport, immigrants, restrict women, jail blacks, and in general make a lot of decisions that are going to hurt if not kill people.
But I’m actually the most pissed that he now thinks he’s justified. That he said all that drivel, was convicted of 34 federal crimes, sexually assaulted women, and his narcissistic brain is justified that he is a man among men. Fuck all y’all and your ignorance.
Author: Laura Highcove
Day 8
Okay, it makes perfect sense. The Uneducated are easiest to lie to. They don’t know how to think or reason beyond a certain capacity or how to research, find sources, and draw conclusions. If you want people to listen to your propaganda w/o questioning, being uneducated is the way to maximize the number of people who will believe you without questioning.
Thus leave it to the stakes, some of which will continue to fund schools and promote education and others who won’t, or, more likely, will teach whatever version of history they want. As a Qanon toting acquaintance so elegantly said when admonishing all education, “If you teach someone 2+2 is 3 their whole life, they won’t know any better.” And what better way to ensure children grow up knowing white males are superior, women are only smart enough to stay hope and please their husbands, and all POCs are dirty, stupid and savage such that they should either be deported or enslaved? Oh and America was always in the right and never did anything wrong.
So divides will really begin to form between states. Unable to find a job if you were educated in the ‘wrong state’. Does 2+2 equal 3 or 4? And, if you’re not rich/intelligent enough to home school a child in a state teaching its own version of history, sucks to be them.
Day 7
I read/ heard a story once about some prisoners of war and how they handled being imprisoned. The ones that expected to be freed, that expected any day that their country would come for them ended up breaking first. And the ones that accepted that this was their reality and maybe they would get out and maybe not ended up enduring.
I’ve been like the first one, expecting to wake up one day and the boomers have died and the idiotic selfish people have become the minority. And after the pain and shock of this election, I’ve have to accept that there is no one coming to save us. Things will never be ’good’ again, at least not during my lifetime. Enough voters are swayed by this drivel that it will always be a fight. And enough politicians care about nothing but money and power.
But even though this is reality, and even though sometimes we need to mourn or rage, there are plenty of people out there who feel the same. Plenty of people who are thinkers and carers, who are pushing through the fear to make things better. We are seeing the creation of the ’strong people’ that ’hard times’ create. And as long as we accept this reality and do what we can to nudge it toward a better one, we’ll be as okay as we can be.
Because this is the reality that we have to live in. There is no one coming to save us. I thought maybe the boomers would die off and we’d have only the younger generation who grew up in this shit economy, but this last election showed, nope.
Day 3
I had a very negative ’daydream’/what if type situation. I was at work doing a task that doesn’t require much active thought. And so my brain went on a magical journey about if the new regime tried to hand maids tale the women. And so I’m there imagining I’m in court because I won’t cover up, and the judge and people are telling me it’s the law and I’ll go to jail if I don’t and I just know if I comply that it’s all over and every woman in the country will end up like the women in Saudi Arabia.
And I know it’s stupid, but I went home and asked my partner what would happen if like, they passed a law that you couldn’t pay women as much as men. (Some sort of example of something little to get women in the home. I’m not diabolical, I know it’s not an amazing plan) for his logic, cause he just knows laws and examples and such and of course he did just that. How businesses could just ignore it, how women would strike, how like no one would put up with it.
And I felt better, but still informed a male friend of what was bothering me to which he replied that he got that was a terrifying thought, and entirely justified, though he doubted it would happen.
I know I wasn’t being logical. But at the same time, the feelings are real. Trump and supporters just have this…idea of the world that is so foreign to me sometimes and it’s a real possibility that they would try something like that. Technically roevwade could be considered the first step.
But the point of this was that no one looked at me and said that was stupid, or that I was overreacting. Not a single person I have expressed any feelings to has. If you have people in your life that are, get away from them. Find your supporters and be safe. Because this is not a good time to be holding in feelings because the people around you are emotionally stunted themselves.
Day 2
Yesterday was a day of shock and the five stages of grief. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to take the day off. I let myself mourn, I let myself worry, I let myself rage. I distracted, and created, and loved. And Tumblr was what snapped me out of it, because of course it did. Tumblr, the liberal bastion that is making so little money that it has only been minority corrupted by capitalism.
But today it’s time to start looking into what to do. Firstly, managing the emotional toll. First step, re above, was just letting myself feel everything I needed to. Without judgement, without shame. We, as a country, lost something yesterday, even the people who voted for it. Taking care of the mental health aspect of it is the most important, because everything is filtered through that lens. Ignoring your mental health (which includes tamping down your feelings) is the best way to lose before you even start.
Then on to the practical! Found a good article, in that someone on Tumblr posted it and I saw it, titled: ’’ Now this article is not messing around. There’s a certain amount of being an American that has seeped into my bones. We’re ’Murica. We’re awesome. A beacon of democracy, the land of the free and home of the brave and all the rest of that rhetoric, which really is the main reason for the rise of the MAGA regime. (Is anyone calling it that yet? I feel like it makes the most sense.) I’ve been aware and watching the slow(?) descent of the once powerful USA with a sad acceptance but somewhere I still believed in it. That America would stay the country I love.
Which is why I was so shocked (along with like…everyone) when Trump won in 2016. And even more shocked when he won two days ago. Because I assumed democracy would work, because ’Murica! We’re supposed to be free and safe and inclusive…right?
And reading this article was a slap on the face. “People who have lived under authoritarian regimes’. That’s who I’m accepting advice from. Because that’s an actually, real threat. Trump’s rhetoric, 2025. It’s fascism. (Oh good, scrivener doesn’t ’know’ the word fascism. I have to teach my word processor ’fascism’. Sigh.) we’re talking about direct comparisons to Hitler and the Nazi regime and not in a childish Internet argument where I don’t like your opinion so I’m comparing it to Hitler and Nazis, but in a very real world, adult, we are staring at fascism in the face in the United States of America way. We have been living the rise of a new fascist regime in real time.
People who are so scared at the charges in the country, who were then manipulated into even more fear, and remained so narrow minded in that fear that they voted for that…man. That they believe that things will get better if we kill all the immigrants, and the blacks, and the trans, and the gays, and put the women back in the kitchen to be used for sex and baby-making like God intended! And those fears will allow democracy to be overthrown. Safety over freedom.
Am I over-reacting? I sure as pie hope so. I hope that we collectively look back at this article in four years and you laugh at me, tease me about these predictions while we celebrate our new freely and fairly elected president. I hope. I really hope.
Untitled
Fear
Rage
Disbelief
Pain
Dizziness
Numbness
It was such a unfathomable outcome that I simply didn’t believe. I didn’t think people could be so hateful. So scared… I watched it happen in other countries, and I didn’t believe it could happen here. I’m going to watch my country crumble. The country that has surrounded and supported me, even though it wasn’t always the best. Even though it held back much of it’s love because I was born with a vagina. Even though. And it will go kicking and screaming as it’s raped by misogyny and racism and religious intolerance, but it will go. I will watch its gasping cries knowing that what I did wasn’t enough, and that all I can do now is sit in what privilege is afforded me, shielded while I whisper ‘I’m sorry I didn’t do more. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.’ And wait to see if it swallows me too.
No One Needed Umbrella Academy Season 4
There were lots of problems with Umbrella Academy Season 4, and truthfully, if you want a good overview of the individual plot lines and character issues, this video brings up almost everything I would, plus some things I forgot.
What I want to talk about is the ending. Yes. Spoilers.
So the entire story is that Hargreaves released the merigold, which created our characters, and with it a ton of timelines and an equal number of world ending scenarios. The Umbrellas stave off one world ending only to find another looming. So the ultimate reality is that for the Umbrellas to actually save the world they have to wipe the marigold (and themselves, who were created by the marigold) from existence.
We watched the Umbrellas, abused misfits that they were, working to do good, to make things better, to fight for good, to struggle and fail. Their quirky lives, their vivacious humor, as they lived their lives trying to navigate their traumas and their powers and each other. Saving the world, only to have it hurtle toward another ending.
This is not a matter of not liking that the story didn’t have a happy ending. This is the fact that not only was it a shaggy dog story, but the message was: no matter how hard you try or what your intentions are, you are worthless because everything you do only makes things worse. You were born wrong. You don’t belong. You can’t improve or change it. The world will be better off if you literally never existed in the first place.
I apologize if anyone is trigger by this; but that’s the point.
That was the take away message from this story, and as a creator, I’m appalled by it. We, as creators, have a responsibility to our readers/listeners/watchers to cause no harm. The industry of storytellers as a whole is trying to change the harmful stereotypes and tropes surrounding LGBTQIA+ groups and POCs in stories because of the misinformation and negative feelings it perpetuates. And this story’s message was a painful misstep that no one needed.
You Are Not Lazy
You leave clothing all over the floor.
You abandon dishes to pile up on the desk, the coffee table, the sink.
You wear clothing out of the clean laundry pile.
You procrastinate chores over and over and over.
Your brain tells you, you can do it later. Always later.
You are not lazy.
You pick up a new hobby, obsess over it, then drop it.
You doom scroll through Instagram, YouTube shorts, Tumblr.
You read every article on Bored Panda.
You can’t keep focus on what you need to do.
You play a video game for five hours without looking up.
You are not lazy.
You leave things in mounting piles.
You obsessively clean.
You have so much to do but you can never start.
You are called lazy.
You are not lazy.
You say something that occurred to you and your partner says they just said that.
You are asked if you ever listen, if you care.
You don’t understand why you can’t just do this task, why you can’t focus.
You can’t grasp how time works, you’re early, or late.
You are not lazy.
You host worlds in your mind.
You have people living whole and complete in your consciousness.
You see beauty in the mundane.
You create because you must.
You bring joy and authenticity to those around you.
You are not lazy.
What Type of Stories Would Women Write?
Spoilers for Naussica of the Valley of the Wind, Uprooted, Macross Frontier, and Damsel.
I have given a lot of thought to the very real fact that men have been in charge of, well everything for most, if not all, of recorded history. This means a lot of things that we are becoming more and more aware of, like the creation of and studies for drugs and safety equipment being tested on, and thus designed almost exclusively for men. The fact that I, and a vast majority of medically trained personal, didn’t know women have different symptoms for a heart attack than man. That I tried birth control, and stopped using it because it made me insane, and then I found out that’s just how it is. Women are expected to try different birth controls until they find one they can live with, take it every day at the exact same time, and this is just considered what is expected.
So I started thinking about the fact that stories are written a certain way, and that different cultures have different structures for stories. As an American, I expect stories to have a certain structure, certain beats. And then it occurred to me, that if the male experience had so permeated the world at large, in ways we don’t even notice because it’s just always been that way (seat belts are not designed for women, and the “normal” temperature that offices are set at support men in suits, leaving women in dresses freezing.), that stories are like that too.
The content and structure of stories were created by the male writers. And so I started to think about what stories might look like if written for and consumed by women. We have a few examples of that, the genres of writing where women have been “allowed” space. Romance being the main example, cozy mysteries, and books for children (picture books through young adult) But at the same time I wonder how much of even that has been dictated by the male gaze, because that’s what was available, because with very few exceptions, that’s what we’re made to read in school. (See this article about my own blind spots.) I think the only book school had me read that was by a woman was “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
Note: I am speaking in generalities and not directly to the LGBTQIA experience at this time. I recognize ‘not all men’ and ‘not all women’ and the presence of non-binary. Now, moving on with my point…
So I tried to go back to the beginning, what type of books would women write? What stories do women write when they write naturally? Men tend to be put favor on strength, being strong, beating the odds and the opponent, physical stuff and winning. Protecting, meaning they’re doing the protecting and to do that there obviously has to be a bad guy for them to protect from.
Women are the nurturers, they want to care and connect. And I have been slowly collecting examples of what I just in general call ‘feminine endings’. For the most part I am simply looking for stories where fighting, defeating your enemy, proving your superiority is not the way the story is ‘solved’.
Examples include Naussica of the Valley of the Wind (Manga)
Uprooted by Namoi Novak (Novel)
Macross Frontier (Anime)
And most recently, Damsel (Netflix Movie)
The way I determine this is that the ending is such that fighting is tried, and does not work. The way the conflict is solved, is through compassion and learning to communicate with the ‘enemy’ and coming to understand them.
In Naussica, the titular character works her way through a world that is increasingly covered by a poisonous mushroom forest where humans fight each other over the remaining livable area. Naussica takes time to understand the forest, the creatures that live within it, and works to stop the fighting when empathy and understanding.
In a similar vein is Uprooted where the world is being taken over by a forest that corrupts everything it touches, and humans are slowly losing ground to it no matter what they do. Agnieszka finds out the forest was created by hate and regret, by using magic based less on ‘rules’ and more on ‘feeling’, works slowly to heal it.
Macross Frontier, humans are traveling through space, looking for a habitable planet because Earth has been destroyed, and run into a hive-mind species of alien that they have to fight against for survival. In typical Macross fashion, the songstresses learn to communicate with the aliens through song, and once they can talk to each other, they come to a ceasefire.
When I started watching Damsel, I was hoping it would be the same. Elodie is sacrificed to a dragon (without her knowledge or consent) and manages to survive and escape, only the kingdom that is sacrificing these women say it’s because the dragon demanded it, only Elodie finds out it was because the king of old went in and killed the dragon’s whelps. Once Elodie manages to convince the dragon that the kingdom is taking women from other kingdoms and it’s not even the original kingdom suffering, she and the dragon team up and wipe out the royal family. It’s still fighting in the end, (I mean ‘fighting’ in that the dragon just burns everything down) but the came about by alliances of people who had been wronged.
Now I’m not saying stories with fighting in them are bad in any way, or that there shouldn’t be any fighting in stories. My main goal is just pointing out that this is not the only means of conflict resolution. That it has become normalized because of the pervasiveness of the males being in charge. Again, it is not inherently ‘bad’, but it means that as a society, we’ve come to expect that the person who is ‘right’ is decided to be whoever is stronger, or louder, or confidant (huh, ‘confidanter’ isn’t a word), or trickier. There is little attempt to come to a meeting of the minds, treating reasonable people as such, and using communication as a valid way to resolve conflict.
So be aware of what kind of story you’re telling, and what message you’re portraying about ‘strength’, ‘truth’, and ‘right’ vs ‘wrong’. I’d like to see more stories that have a more feminine bend, and that these stories are actually seen. I want to know what stories women would write if they weren’t inundated with male stories, expectations, and gaze since birth. It might be impossible right now, but I strive for a world where it becomes more and more possible.
Quick Thoughts: Healthy Women Conflict
Been watching a new Chinese Drama called ‘Everyone Loves Me’. Basic premise is Yue Qianling (female lead) is an artist at a game company and also loves playing fps games. She has a friend group who play together. Gu Xun (male lead) is a member of the friend group, and likes her, but she likes him in real life, and neither of them know the other is the online friend.
Gu Xun has Yue Qianling come work for his department due to her art skills for a particular character, and the person who was working on this character is a woman. I was impressed that they added conflict by having the woman disapprove of her in a completely reasonable way. Yue Qianling’s new and untested, hasn’t worked on this type of game before, her first draft comes out very bland, so the other artist has plenty of reasons to criticize her. And again, the criticisms are completely justified, and while blunt, are not harsh.
The reason I’m pointing it out is because it’s such a refreshing thing to have to women in conflict in an Asian drama in a reasonable way that doesn’t have anything to do with them both bring in love with the same guy or out of irrational jealousy/pettiness over the other’s looks. It’s a legitimate character interaction.
And yes, Yue Qianling does eventually earn her approval.
