the Hathor Legacy

Links of Great Interest: Givin’ up that good-good

Maria — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:28:05 +0000

Um. Why is this story about rape filed under “Odd, but True?” Oh, right because we live in a RAPE CULTURE. I forgot that, just like I forget to thank those brave black women who gave up that good-good to massa because they wanted to. Heh, I guess it’s okay to locate some ethnic pride in the continuous rape and dehumanization of black women.

This is an interesting discussion on partner rape.

Hey brown people! You trying to get to Wiscon? Con_or_bust has got your back.

Congrats to the first graduating class of Urban Prep Academy! Y’all know that we at Hathor aren’t necessarily the hugest fans of single sex education, but I gotta say… Smith College changed my life, as did the Step Ahead/Step Forward program. My uncles, nephews, and fathers really benefited from St. Aug. I think the big thing working for those institutions is a larger commitment to social justice politics, and that they were operating under a kind of intersectional lens linking class, race, and gendered oppressions, vs the public schools where it’s ALL ABOUT STABLE GENDER!

The description of the bill explains its purpose as removing “prohibitions against prosecution” of women. In other words – Utah apparently aspires to be the first state to admit that the purpose of an anti-abortion law is not to stop doctors from performing abortions, but to lock-up women who have them.

More on the music front: WTF, Estelle? I love the song but am confuzzled as a mother duck over the video.

I really miss Lucille Clifton. RIP.

More on anti-gay protestors’ presence at military servicemembers’ furnerals.

Huh. Women aren’t baby crazy? For reals?

The footage from DC’s first gay marriage is available on CNN

Howard Stern is a hater.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Intersex athletes have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis??

This interview made me like Jennifer Garner a little more.

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You’ve got a long way to go, baby

Jennifer Kesler — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:17:40 +0000

Kathryn Bigelow absolutely deserved her Best Director Academy Award because she’s an awesome director. But before anyone praises the Academy for awarding it to her, there are a few things I need to point out.

How the Academy works

If you’re under the impression the Academy is a carefully selected group of studious filmmakers who carefully pore over every film being considered to make thoughtful choices, let me disabuse you of that notion. The Academy is pretty much anyone with a film career who wants in. Every year, the organizers behind the awards send out “For your consideration” copies of the movies being considered to the agents and business managers of the Academy members. The Academy members rarely take them, instead generously allowing the agency interns and lower-rung employees to keep them. The Academy members most likely never see every movie being considered. Few of them take their voting seriously.

They vote for names, not movies. Since women have rarely acquired the connections in this industry to make themselves into names, women have never seriously been considered. Kathryn Bigelow is not the first woman to earn a Best Director award; she is the first to get enough press to make the Academy think, “…no women? Really? Er, that doesn’t sound liberal. We’d better pick her.” Some glass ceilings do actually get cracked in this manner, so I’m hopeful. But let’s not have anyone arguing that Hollywood is getting better.

Particularly in the light of how women were treated at the recent Academy Awards.

Butt-slappin’ little girlin’ fun times

From CNN:

When Alec Baldwin closed out the Academy Awards on Sunday night by slapping director Kathryn Bigelow squarely on the backside, that pretty much said it all.

It was Ladies’ Night in a Boys’ Town… But did the orchestra need to follow Bigelow’s win of her long-deserved best director prize, for “The Hurt Locker,” by playing the old Helen Reddy song “I Am Woman”?

When Miley Cyrus and Amanda Seyfried arrived on stage to present the Best Original Song award, did they have to be intro-ed with “Thank Heaven For Little Girls”?

Hollywood probably thought the songs were highlighting how woman-friendly they are, and I’m sure Alec Baldwin’s, um, gesture was meant to be ironic. But it all still reminds me of the time I was working for a man who neurotically hated women and chose me to be his token Well-Treated And Respected Woman so when Human Resources came to investigate multiple allegations of gender discrimination and harassment, he could hold up my employee file as an example of just how good he treated gals when they actually deserved it. (Yes, I was the one who started the complaints. I’ve never been very smart about taking advantage of a good thing for me at the expense of others.)

Let’s be excited for Kathryn Bigelow. But don’t think this means Hollywood is opening up to women. They just recognized a cheap, easy Grand Gesture they could make that might help silence the opposition.

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The Stars Blue Yonder – Sandra McDonald

Gategrrl — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:30:20 +0000

The Stars Blue Yonder by Sandra McDonald is the third in a series of books beginning with The Outback Stars. The series is a space opera featuring military politics, True Obsessive Love, evil reptilian Roon, and Australian aboriginal gods who pick their Chosen when they enter spherical teleportation portals. The book’s dust jacket description says it better than I can: Chief Terry Myell died and became a god, careening around space and time at the behest of a voice that told him to save all of mankind. The entire book is spent time traveling and moving between alternate universes.

The backbone of the series, and this book, is Jodenny Scott, an officer in a military space fleet and a commander on one of its enormous ships. She spends the majority of the book seven months pregnant, or in old age and in several situations depending on the timeline. And being obsessive about getting her husband Terry back from wherever he died, even if the situation seems dismal in whatever time-stream she’s in, and even if she doesn’t completely believe he’s back from the dead. It’s a good thing Jodenny’s a likable character with flaws and a strong streak of heroism in her. Otherwise her obsession (so proper in space opera) puts her totally over the top. And yes, I did say, he died. But everyone knows, especially Jodenny, that no one in SF ever really dies.

Jodenny’s not in a typical position of an abandoned wife: no, her husband was kidnapped in the previous book by a band of humans trying to figure out those spherical portals, and then seized by the gods of his native Australia to fulfill a role in their pantheon. Her main goal is to be at the place he’s going to show up when he comes back to her time and place. It’s a huge leap of faith. Jodenny manages to convince the other man who cares for her to help her in her quest to find her [dead] husband, and McDonald makes his willingness and her determination in this context believable.

The Outback Stars series is fairly unique in US SF/F in that it uses the scaffolding of Australia’s native belief system. Terry Myell is part aboriginal, so he does have this connection in his background. Jodenny Scott isn’t, but she’s from Australia also. The gods/aliens themselves influence events in a series of short scenes, and an earlier seduction of Terry Myell by the crocodile goddess has vast repercussions for Earth, the Roon (who are and did invade Earth in the first timeline), and Jodenny and Terry.

There are a large number of plot-threads, a large cast of characters, and a bunch of time lines to keep track of, and McDonald does a great job of helping the reader keep everything straight. I could have done with less uber-obsession out of Jodenny. She’s a fighter, though, and has command ability flowing out of her, so…okay. Of course, Terry Myell, her husband, has equal plot time; his rests mainly on convincing Jodenny of-well, if I told you, that would be a big spoiler. They’re both saved by being charming characters and by McDonald’s ability to write a good tale.

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Reviews in Brief — Shadowlands series, Mortal Suns, Writing Magic

Maria — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:21:51 +0000

The Shadowlands series(made up of Silver’s Lure,Silver’s Bane, and Silver’s Edge) is… okay. I’d give this a solid C — interesting use of some tropes, neat inclusion of non-typical Maiden figures (a representation of Brigid as a young female blacksmith was quite nice), some all right sexin’ scenes, but points off for the demonization of queerness, essentialized gender roles, and somewhat predictable characterization. Basically, there’s a Silver Caul that protects Faerie and Mortal-topia from the evilness of the goblin hordes (who don’t… live in Fairy?) but it turns out the Caul is all jacked up because the original makers totally didn’t get that Faerie, the Shadowlands (that’s the real name for Mortal-topia), and whatever all have to be connected. Gloriana is the Faerie Queen who planned that, and you know her shit was all logistically incorrect because she took the holly and the oak staff for herself instead of sharing authority with her husband. Tropes include: preternaturally beautiful elves; mad kings who know too much; and symbolic interracial/mixed species couplings. I enjoyed reading this more because of the structure than anything else — there are several key players, and while the end of the second book felt a little HEY DID YOU GUESS WE ARE ARCHETYPES?, I overall enjoyed the pacing of the big reveals and the quirkiness of some of the world-building (like the lack of a word in Faerie for Mortal phenomena like dust or rust). The homophobia fit (problematically) into the overall themes re: manhood/womanhood, and pretty clearly illustrated that common fantasy trope is that a man is a man because of what he does and a woman is a woman because of what she is. While it was nice to see a plot so driven by female agency and relationships between women, it was a bummer to see that agency was in part about these characters getting in touch with a mystical femininity always already lurking inside them.

Mortal Suns was all right. Like always, Tanith Lee has tight prose, eerie visuals, and some interesting world-building. At the same time, this felt like Lee sleepwalking. Like, in terms of plots, it’s pretty standard Lee — utterly pale girl with disconcerting body movements is a great beauty, is consumed by lust for a hottie jalopy of a political/military leader who it turns out is batshit, and is eventually forced into a gods-endorsed servitude. There are creepy folks in masks and a subterranean chariot race, a mountain with a heartbeat, and a silver-faced goddess of ecstatic death. I liked this a great deal, but wish I could have read the sequel immediately after — it feels noticeably incomplete. However, Lee on ‘ludes is better than most other writers at their best. Basically, Mortal Suns’s semi-Greek setting, its child-bride of a footless heroine, and its amazing female characters are awesome. I mean, shit, unlike The King of Ys (yes, my loves, that ish still pisses me the frickity frack off) the multiple wives of a god-picked king talk about more than their omg wtf-ness over the king’s newfangled ways. They talk about ruling, directly influence political events, and poison fuckers who don’t know when they need to sit the fuck down and let a queen-consort do her thing. Also, there’s tons of allusions to that love that dare not speak its name as an acceptable thing interwoven in the fabric of daily life.

Now for something completely different!!

Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly is the perfect gift for the budding young author you know who’s smart enough to talk to you about writing but young enough that you don’t want to give them a grown-up’s writing tome. It’s fun, cute, and approachable… plus, the tips it includes are a good reminder for an author of any age that the most important thing about being a writer is actually WRITING, not talking yourself out of it. <3 This was a gift from a dear friend who knew I’d been struggling with writing in graduate school, and it’s the perfect antidote to theory-inspired creative angst.

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Media Monday: Kelly Ripa Enjoys Laundry. A Lot.

Revena — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:01:24 +0000

By special request of fellow Hathor writer SBG, Media Monday this week features one of the Electrolux appliance commercials which star television personality Kelly Ripa. I chose the “Juggle” commercial, which advertises a washer and dryer, largely because I find the use of the music from Bewitched too obvious not to comment on. An embedded version of the commercial follows. You can also view it on YouTube by clicking this link.

And now, my transcription:

The theme music from Bewitched begins to play as Ripa enters a spacious, completely clutter-free room with white shelving and a clothes washer and dryer in turquoise. She wears casual, fitted clothing. She is carrying a large white laundry basket.

A voiceover says: “Now that I have my Electrolux washer and perfect steam dryer, I can juggle more things in my day.”

Ripa smiles broadly as the music picks up. She twirls toward the camera with her laundry basket, then leaves the room. She walks down a hallway. She throws a garment in an open doorway, and the camera follows it to show that it puts itself away in the closet of a pink bedroom. The bedroom is spotlessly tidy. A pre-teen girl is sprawled on the bed, reading a book. She exclaims, “Wow!”

The scene changes. Ripa is now visible through the back of a white storage unit in a yellow room. Her arms are a blur of motion as she rapidly places folded clothing on shelves. A girl is visible in the background. She sits on a white bed, playing a clapping game with a partially-visible playmate, who appears to be another girl of around the same age.

The scene changes again. Ripa is walking through a hallway with her basket. The walls are pale blue, hung with art prints. A console table is under one print, and a white chair under the other. A dog barks. Without looking, she slides a bowl across the floor with her foot. The dog appears, and eats from the bowl.

The scene changes. Three girls wearing tank tops and lounge pants in various colors sit at precise intervals on a brown couch. They are sitting very upright, with their hands on their knees. They are facing a large, flat-panel television. Black display shelves and framed art pieces are visible in the background. As Ripa walks by, each girl in turn raises her arms, and is clothed by a shirt Ripa throws into the air. She is no longer carrying the basket.

There is a voiceover: “With the Electrolux washer and perfect steam dryer you can remove wrinkles, and wash and dry clothes in just 36 minutes.”

During this voiceover, the scene changes twice. First, Ripa is back in the spacious laundry room, removing a man’s dress shirt from the dryer and looking at it, apparently appreciative of the lack of wrinkles. Next, a different view of the room is shown. Ripa throws a child’s jacket into the air, and it puts itself away on a hook behind her. She kicks a laundry basket in the foreground. She is very happy.

The voiceover continues, saying, “So you can be even more amazing,” as the scene changes back to the girls sitting on the couch. They have moved closer together, at one end of the couch. They are holding glasses of milk. Ripa enters, carrying a plate with cookies. The camera angle changes. She sits on the couch, and tilts the plate. The cookies fly through the air and into the free hands of each of the girls. The girls smile and begin to dip their cookies in their glasses of milk as Ripa looks on with a broad smile.

Ripa says, “Nice catch!” to the girls. They look at her and smile as they eat their cookies. One girl nods.

The logo for the Electrolux company appears in blue against a white background. Grey text in a font resembling handwriting appears above the logo, reading “Thinking of you.” In voiceover, Ripa says, “Electrolux: Be even more amazing.” The logo rotates, and becomes the Electrolux web address. The commercial ends.

Annnnd finally, discussion time!

I think there are some obvious points to hit here. The theme music along with the laundry “magically” putting itself away, as though there isn’t still labor involved in washing clothes even with fancy appliances. The way Ripa walks through the house for thirty seconds doing things for the children and the dog (and apparently a man who doesn’t appear in the commercial, unless she plans to wear that shirt herself), smiling brightly and all but dancing. The spotless, tastefully decorated house. Is this a realistic portrait of what housework is like? What life with children and a dog is like? SBG hates this ad. How about you? Is there a positive side?

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‘Salem Falls’ – Jodi Picoult

scarlett — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:31:31 +0000

I really wanted to like Jodi Picoult’s Salem Falls. I’ve enjoyed other novels of hers – particularly Nineteen Minutes – and the history buff in me is a sucker for anything which promises persecution based on ignorance and fear and has Salem in the title. But Picoult fails royally with Salem Falls, primarily because of her plot device where not once but twice that girls who cry rape are, well, crying rape.

Note: Like most of Picoult’s work, the book flits back and forth between present day and events as far back as twenty years ago, detailing events whose consequences culminate in present day, with the final detail being revealed on the last page. It’s kind of like the literary equivalent of an episode of Cold Case. For the sake of clarity, I’ve summarised the plot chronologically, not how it’s revealed in the book.

So we have Jack St. Bride, a popular young teacher whom several female students have crushes on. Honourable man that he is, he doesn’t even register these crushes; they’re just impressionable young minds that he wants to fill with knowledge. One of the students, Catherine, writes her fantasies about him in her diary, and when her ultra-conservative preacher father finds it, along with the birth control pills she was using in her sexual relationship with her boyfriend, he assumes the worst and Catherine’s testimony is disregarded. Jack does an eight-month stint in jail for sexually assaulting a female. Catherine recants at the end of the book, y’know, after he’s done jail time and has a record as a sexual offender.

His time done, he makes his way to the little town of Salem Falls, New Hampshire. He starts up a relationship with (the very much adult) Addie Peabody, but of course it doesn’t take long for him to attract the attention of other members of the female population, particularly teenage girls. Specifically Gillian, daughter of the town’s richest man. Gillian’s a Wiccan, see, except she ignores the advice of her fellow-Wiccans (ie, her doppelganger friends) that magic should be used for good, and instead uses it to get back at the people who laugh at her and make Jack fall in love with her. It doesn’t take long for Gillian to accuse Jack of rape, except what actually happened is that Gillian and her friends were practicing spells, high as kites, when Jack stumbles upon them, drunk. Gillian comes onto him, and when Jack turns her down flat, Gillian cries rape.

So here we have a man who not once, but twice has been the victim of infatuated teenage girls and paid the price for their misplaced devotion – first through a series of misunderstandings with Catherine, then with a manipulative Gillian who cried rape when she was turned down. I’m pretty sure Picoult isn’t actually saying, hey, all rape allegations are just screwed-up teenage girls crying rape, but the book definitely perpetuates that myth.

(Also, has anyone read the book who’s also familiar with the US legal system? Because if I apply Picoult’s logic to the Australian legal system, the state would be lucky to get a trial, let alone a conviction, on the evidence they had in both cases. Come to think of it, My Sister’s Keeper kind of fails there, too.)

Wait, it gets even classier. In the final scene of the book, it turns out that Gillian is in a seemingly consensual sexual relationship with her father. I say ‘seemingly consensual’ because it’s hard to gauge as the whole scene takes less than a page; she goes into his room and there’s references made to ‘an old, old dance’ and ‘sealing the deal once more’. It’s left up to the reader to decide how consensual it is. Has Gillian been so damaged that she cried rape with Jack as a cry for help? Is she just an out-and-out evil, manipulative tramp? Somewhere in between? We don’t know, because Picoult thinks it’s a good idea to let the reader decide her motives. Uh, no. Sometimes, it’s a good plot device – but not when we’re talking about crying rape and father-daughter incestuous relationships.

The shame of it is that Salem Falls could have been a thought-provoking read about people’s tendency to judge out of fear and ignorance. Girl cries rape and naturally the new guy in town with the criminal record had to have done it, because men who are devoted fathers and pillars of the community don’t commit crimes, let alone such heinous ones. Or maybe it could have looked at the idea that instead of Jack being the victim of Catherine and Gillian’s actions, he was indirectly the victim of their fathers’ unhealthy attitudes towards their daughters, which in turn screwed with their way of interacting with men. Instead, Picoult not only relies on a seriously bad trope, but ends it with an even worse one that should never be treated lightly, let alone as a throwaway ‘Ohmygod! It was him all along!’ moment.

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International women’s day and trans women

Jennifer Kesler — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:31:35 +0000

March 8 is International Women’s Day, and while that sounds like such a positive woman-celebrating idea, there’s just one problem: how do trans women fit into this?

The F-word recently highlighted this problem with a particular women-only march (Million Women Rise) they’re having in London on the day:

The march has been publicized widely with flyers, and on feminist mailing lists and blogs, but conspicuously absent from the publicity has been any reference to the welcome that might be expected by trans women on this “women only” march.

After some correspondence, F-word did manage to get a nice answer affirming that anyone who self-identifies as a woman and wants to end male violence against women is welcome to march. But:

However despite our repeated requests, there has been no response about whether they intend to change the website to make this clear, and the posts about this on the facebook page have got evasive responses. For some reason, the organisers don’t seem to want to address this issue face on, and I’m not quite sure why.

Could it be that they’re worried many cisgender women won’t show up if they hear there are going to be trans women there, too? That they don’t want to scare off the transphobics, who are probably (sadly) a much bigger demographic than the trans women who’d like to come to the march? I hate to say it, but I think this is likely. F-Word points out that some smaller marches have explicitly stated that trans women are welcome:

Bristol Reclaim the Night, as just one recent example, has made trans-inclusion explicit in their publicity. But more of them need to do better, and the worst offenders seem to be the highest profile.

This is a typical pattern. The lower profile groups who have less to lose test the waters first, and all goes well. Then the higher profile groups who have more to lose finally get on board. My problem is: every damn time this pattern occurs, the results are the same. People who are prejudiced always end up going with the flow, because that’s how they ended up prejudiced in the first place: not thinking for themselves. I’m not saying all bigotry is this easy to solve – we’re talking about a few marches one day out of the year. But I do think the problem of opening your business/organization doors to That Kind is usually not as high a risk as people imagine.

In any case, we as women – whether we’re organizing marches or thinking about marching in them – need to make it clear where we stand. We may have all sorts of questions and opinions about what really makes a person a woman or man, or indeed if those assignations even mean anything. But all we’re talking about here is simply who is welcome where. If you consider and represent yourself as a woman, you should be welcome wherever women are welcome.

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Links of Great Interest: If you learned it then you should’ve got an A on it.

Maria — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:51:24 +0000

Huh. I… don’t know what to say to that.

“After the invasion of Iraq, a team of innovative U.S. soldiers captured Saddam Hussein by using Facebook-style social network theory to crack the network of families protecting him. This week, Slate is publishing a five-part series in which Wilson explores the implication of such social networking for other military operations, and asks why the U.S. hasn’t been able to get Osama Bin Laden using the same methods.” I’m so mad at myself for not going to this!! Stupid wisdom teeth. STUPID VICODIN.

Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls continues to keep it classy by making FWD (Feminists with Disabilities).

Here’s one more reason to NEVER move to Utah.

I love this rant defending black women. Honestly, my education has never been a problem on the dating scene. If anything, it’s helped me figure out in advance if someone is too insecure to handle all of this right here. :sweeping dramatic arm gestures encompassing awesomeness of Maria:

BTW your clothing causes SIN. SIN I SAY!!! SIN!! Was it the zebra print? I love zebra print. I totally only wear it because men love seeing women in slutty clothes, which sucks because then they might rape me.

At least I’ll be safe in the bathroom! Oh, wait.

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Introducing What Privilege?

Jennifer Kesler — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:48:40 +0000

In 2006, I found I had some things to say about privilege that didn’t quite fit on Hathor, so I started another website for that discussion. At that time, I was still just discovering many of my own privileges, so I didn’t publicize the site or prominently link it to Hathor. What if I said something that, upon reflection, was so intensely privileged that it wrecked my reputation and took Hathor down with me?

It turns out that’s a lot more difficult to do than I’d feared. We’re all ignorant of our privilege. It’s when we refuse to let that ignorance be removed that we become hypocrites.

The ultimate test came a few months ago when I started reading about ableist language and suddenly realized: maybe the name of my anti-privilege site (“Blind Privilege”) was ableist. A couple of weeks later, someone else asked the same question, and I opened a discussion. The discussion was… interesting.

It took me a few months of researching, thinking, discussing and thinking some more, but I finally decided the site required a new name, even if I managed to dig up thousands of people who thought it was fine as it was. We decided to make it a sister site to Hathor (see the cute link at the top left?) and relaunch it with the new name: What Privilege? You’re invited.

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Stephanie Rowe — Chill

Maria — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:13:39 +0000

Like, seriously, whoever recommended this book to me needs a good punch in the face. I’m serious. Everyone’s got a tortured past and a damn doctorate. WTF. Okay.

Okay.

Let me silence my annoyance long enough to summarize this thing.

Okay.

So, Isabella Kopas is a nice white girl (with a doctorate in what the hell what I don’t know) with a tortured past. She is ALL WOMAN but fragile and just wants to LOVE. This means that she’s incredibly pliant and submissive and whenever OUR HERO wants to inappropriately do it (like when they’re suffering from hypothermia after being fished out of a river by some random Inuit and are waiting to see if the baddies know where they are) she is down for it. Like… they have to get interrupted at gun-point. He fists her hair constantly. HER KINDNESS CAN HEAL HIS HURTING HURT HEART! Because she is innocent and pure and a survivor. She loved her mama even though her mom was a whore and lacked the courage to be pure, and she knows the men in her life don’t MEAN to be sociopaths. Please note how these two things are discursive equivalents. Let me repeat. Isabella loves her mother, who was forced into sex work, despite her mother having been forced into sex work. She loves the men in her life despite their consciously choosing to murder. I swear to God. Sometimes I want to poke my eyes out with spoons to make the pain of this ILLOGIC go away.

Anyways, she lives with her boss, Marcus Fie, for some weird reason. He is a baddie with too much money and a hard-on for antiquities. She can tell whether shit is real or not and has never been wrong. No. Don’t ask me if she’s got a specialty or if she likes her work. I DON’T KNOW AND IT DOESN’T MATTER, OKAY? SHE IS PRETTY AND TORTURED. Anyways, Marcus gives her a necklace that’s covered in rubies and is from some unnamed South American tribe (whose last members now live in Alaska??) and is promptly kidnapped. OR IS HE? Anyways, Isa is now on the run (presumably with snags in her pretty cashmere sweater ) and the only person who can help her is her boss’s estranged son, who is now a bush pilot in Alaska but is NOT friends with the Natives in Alaska who aren’t Alaskan natives. Huh. I think this means he must miss out on some rockin’ parties because he is one DOUR dude.

Anyways, Isa and Luke are hotties and promptly fall in love with each other. It’d be awesome, except the baddies want the necklace and are totally after Isa. Luke, the son, has to go back to his old violent ways in order to protect Isa… even though protecting Isa means he can’t chillax in the Alaskan wilderness anymore. That’s sad, because he really liked Alaska, despite his constant insistence on refusing to let others in. He’s also got a PhD but unfortunately it’s not in bullshit, which is sad because this book is full of it. Yo. If you want to name drop that someone went to a doctoral program at Harvard, also name drop what the fuck they studied and know that they probably are ALWAYS thinking about their research even when they’re not. I mean seriously? My friends HATE it when I randomly bring up anti-racist colonial histories when we’re watching movies but it totally happens. Because being in graduate school makes you a killjoy. It also makes you think about your research CONSTANTLY, particularly if you love your research so much it is your damn job. If you’re nuts enough to waste your youth on reading, you bring that shit up constantly. This brings me to my next point. Ummm. Let’s think about timeline. Luke is supposed to be 30-38. He spent the last 8 or so years in the Alaskan wilderness. Okay. Before that he earned a doctorate. Let’s assume it’s in something like archaeology, since that would make sense. Those programs are generally about what — 7 years? Okay. So assuming he was 18 when he started college, did it in four years, then went straight into graduate school… he was 29 when he graduated. So… in all that, when did he have time to do all the amazing fieldwork and gem stealing he says his father made him do? Same for Isabella. She’s TOO YOUNG to have the educational background she’s got. Also, she’s useless. Like everything she does is wrong and useless. And, she blames her mother for dying because her mother was a whore and was raped and beaten by a man in a strip club. Um. Isa is the heroine? And blames her raped and beaten mother for not having the strength to live? AND SHE’S THE HEROINE? God. Someone bake me cookies because the brain bleach I needed after this has erased my learnings.

Look. I don’t ask for much. Just… characterization. Logical characterization. Coherent plot structure. Internally consistent emotional responses. Just… some sign that the author labored on this text and didn’t just wake up one morning and go, “Hey, you know what’s a sign of smartness and a true Bostonian life style? A PhD from HAHVAHD! Phew, I thought I’d have to specifically name some landmarks to establish place.”

Chill

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