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asha-mage · 3 months

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Lesbian Rand AU?

[Send me a potential AU and I'll answer with five things from that story!]

Oh boy, here we go-

A lot depends on the setup. A big part of Rand's character is reckoning with the failures of his past life and the foundation of a lot the interesting ways Jordan interrogates the gender binary is built on the idea that those mistakes are a remix of Paradise Lost/The Fall. LTT is at both at once Eve and Lucifer. Eve in that he acts without the consent or permission of his other half (Latra Posae Decume- the Adam of this version) and runs of on his own in defiance of her will. Lucifier in that in his pride, he believes he can match or surpass the Creator, by attempting to Seal the Bore with only saidin. As a result, paradise is lost- the AoL is destroyed in the breaking by LTT's sin, an entire Age results where all men take the blame to a greater or lesser extent, for the original sin of one man. Of course, Jordan isn't just running with this premise as simple fact- he's interrogating the idea of original sin, salvation, and redemption and raising inherent and complicating questions. Does it make a difference that LTT's intentions where pure and genuine? That he didn't know and couldn't have predicted the consequences of his actions? How does Rand suffering for LTT's do any justice to those who suffered and died in the Breaking? Is chasing the splendor of an Age that could shatter so even a worthwhile endeavor, or should the focus be on building letting go of the past and building something new? Does that mean forgetting and forgiving and is that fair?

All this to say is that, I think for a Lesbian Rand AU to work the story would probably need a reversed gender dynamic to the one that is present in the books- which I don't know that I could ever write both because it would veer very uncomfortably close to the most misogynistic elements of our own historical societies, and probably have to exceed them in brutality to work (something I'm not very good at, since a lot of my world building energy is usually directed at reshaping and re interpenetrating those historical societies through more queer and equitable lenses), and because a lot of what I connect to in Rand's story has a lot to do with the specifically queer male reading of it. That said if I could or would do that, I think it could also work very effectively as a queer female reading in the same thematic ways.

Rand and male channelers in general in the WoT verse already full fill a lot of the tropes commonly associated with medieval witches- individuals tainted by otherworldly power that is poorly understood and inherently transgressive to the gender roles of their society, as well as threat to the established social order (to put it mildly). It's not hard to translate that to a theoretically tainted saidar and the feelings of a resulting broken world onto a theoretical female Dragon. Rand in this context fulfills a pretty familiar role- Joan of Arc, Himiko of Yamatai, Elizabeth Woodvile, etc- savior and hero to some, witch and monster to others.

My brain of course goes to female Mat to be Rand's love interest in this AU- trickster and guile heroine. Mat's specific brand is easy to imagine transcending into a female character in a strict patriarchy, both because Mat's role in the series is already pretty gender transgressive (as befits a trickster shapeshifting archetype), and because it's easy to imagine again that simmering homoerotic temptation Mat and Rand's relationship inherently invokes, but gender flipped: Mat representing a liberation a refusal of the traditional gender roles that Rand can't quite decide if she truly wants or only wants because she was raised to want them. Rand specifically being homosexual rather then my bisexual head canon means that, I would probably air on the side of it being compulsory heterosexuality/heteronormativity- and genuinely wanting the life of adventure and liberty offered by Mat's promises of running away together.

I could also see Min (again as her Gender Weird makes her surprisingly easy to translate into a traditional patriarchy without loosing core elements of her character) as Rand's love interest- again in largely the same role as the series. Someone who Rand could just be....herself around, who couldn't overawed or terrified or brow beaten into seeing a monster, but rather just a person- a woman sacred and overwhelmed and being crushed by the expectations of a savior, and all the fears of being a monster. Conversely I don't know that either Avihenda or Elayne's relationships would still function the same- not without flipping their genders as well which defeats the idea of the premise. A few extra thoughts (since 1 and 2 are basically just big disclaimers)-

While I find the idea of Lesbian Rand having to learn from Short Gay Ball of Anger Uncle Moiraine very funny conceptually (Moiraine is already a pretty strong riff of mentor characters like Obi Wan and Gandfalf, but genderflipped, and I find the idea flipping that back but keeping the more unique aspects of Moiraine's character to be interesting), I also can't help but find the idea of Moiraine as an older, slightly rattled/mad, female wilder Moiraine with the same motivation as in the series just as intriguing as a mentor figure to Lesbian Rand. It would give the entire series a very different vibe, but that's just a natural outcome of the premise as well. I once said Moiraine is a woman who, if she had be born into a patriarchy would have easily been burned as a witch- but the truth is, the idea of Moiraine as a witch to clever to burn, a witch who is surviving the curse of her power, and struggling to see the savior who may yet be able to reverse that curse and save their world...their is an Appeal There.

It's scary conversely, how easy it is to fit the Aes Sedai in general into a gender flipped Randland, and I think speaks to how effectively Jordan wrote them and their institutionally flaws. Mired in traditions, secure in their power, comfortable in ordering the world to their will- a mix between the Catholic Church and an order of magi, angry and resistant to reform and change that alters the base of their power, presided over by ancient and yet ageless cabals of entrenched elders. The scene, easily one of my favorites, in the series, in Fal Dara, is almost sickeningly easy to imagine with the genders flipped- a young woman still bright eye and scarred of what she is and what she is capable of, with three thousand years of tales of women going mad from power, declaring themselves the Dragon falsely in greed and lust for power and leaving the world to suffer for it, walking into a a room with three ancient wizards who tell her that this is her fate, to be this messiah and destroyer both, it hits sharply and exactly the right way.

Again, I don't know that I would do it, and I find what Jordan is doing with gender and sexuality already int he Wot Books inherently more interesting and....less....I don't know sticky? But it's a fun thought exercise.

#WoT #Wheel of time #WoT fanfic #AU Ask Game #WoT Book Spoilers #AMOL Spoilers #Rand al'thor #min farshaw #mat cauthon #cauthor #randmin #moiraine damodred #cw: sexism #cw: misogyny #discussed anyways #I'm a littttttle hesitant to post this one #As I am very much Not A Woman so it's hard for me to speak to this idea/experience #But it was a exercise that got me thinking pretty heavily and helped me articulate some of my complex thoughts #about the way Jordan writes gender #again I don't know that I could ever write as violently a patriarchal world as this au would necessitate #I struggle just to write in the HoTD world sometimes #but again I think it shows the strength of the world Jordan created that a lot of the core store would survive if you flipped the genders #and in some ways it would be...a lot more familiar to us and our sensibilities #which of course is why is why I think it shines the way it's written #anyways enough rambling

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aria-benedetto · 3 months

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The Quiet Princess

So... I kind of accidentally wrote a short story? No idea how that happened.

Content warnings: Sexism, death, illness, war (mention) and I think that's about it?

1780 words

The story goes something like this:

Once upon a time, there was a princess. She was an only child, born after a great many attempts and struggle and waiting. Her birth greatly saddened the king, for his heir had to be a son. Tradition demanded it.

And so the young princess was raised to be a bride. One day, her husband would be king, but for now, she had to learn.

And there was much to learn for the young princess.

The princess was an energetic child. She loved to run, to climb and to play. But a good bride had to be quiet and still and so the princess had to learn to sit and be still.

The princess was an emotional child. She loved to laugh and she cried and she grew angry. But a good bride never inconvenienced others with her emotions and so the princess had to learn how to smile and not feel.

The princess was a talkative child. She loved to speak and to joke and to argue. But a good bride never raised her voice and never spoke without invitation and so the princess had to learn how to be quiet and never to speak unless spoken to.

And so the princess learned and she grew. She grew to be still and elegant. She grew to smile and always show the proper emotion. She grew to be quiet and never spoke unless spoken to.

She grew to be a bride.

And when the time came for a groom to be chosen, she wasn't perfect, but she was close. When the men who would be king came to her father, she sat and she smiled and she did not speak unless spoken to.

She laughed at their jokes and didn't make her own. She admired their strength and bravery and wit, just like a bride should.

And soon, her father made his choice.

Her groom was to be a prince from a neighbouring land, a youngest son, never to inherit the throne of his own country. A long-term ally, who could be trusted to keep agreements and know how to rule and how to be.

And the princess sat and she smiled and she did not speak unless spoken to.

A royal wedding could never be truly soon, for there were envoys to send and treaties to set up and preparations to be made, but it would take place soon enough. The prince stayed in his new home, of course, for there was much for him to learn.

He needed to learn about the lands that would one day be his. He needed to learn about the lords who would one day answer to him. He needed to learn about the castle that would soon be his home.

He did not need to learn about the woman who would soon be his wife.

And the princess sat and she smiled and she did not speak unless spoken to.

In the castle, ambassadors and envoys and nobility, both foreign and not arrived. The wedding was to be a joyful occasion for all.

There were decorations and flags and banners all around. The wedding was to be a beautiful occasion to be remembered in history.

The cooks and servants and tailors worked day in day out. The wedding was to be flawless, lest it ruin the celebration.

The princess was groomed and dressed and decorated. Dozens of tailors had created her gown, representing the devotion of the people. Jewellery adorned her neck and arms and head, representing the wealth of the country. Her face was painted beautifully, representing wonders to be found in the nation.

She was not perfect, but it was close.

Her handmaidens led her to the hall and the ceremony went beautifully. The ambassadors and envoys and nobility celebrated joyfully. The castle was beautiful, a wonderful background fit for the history books. The cooks had cooked flawless meals and the tailors had tailored flawless gowns and robes and suits and the servants served flawlessly. Nothing marred the celebration.

And at night, the newly wedded bride and groom were to render their flawless marriage into a perfect union.

But even a flawless celebration can only last so long and soon all the ambassadors and envoys and nobles went home. The decorations and flags and banners were taken down and stored for the next flawless ceremony.

The cooks kept cooking and the tailors kept tailoring and the servants kept serving, for what else was there to do? And while only a celebration had to be flawless, there never should be flaws when serving a king.

There was still much to learn for the prince. After all, he would one day be king. And so there was never much time for his bride but that had never been the point of the marriage anyway.

And while he learned, the princess should see to her own duties. She was to be quiet and demure and do what a bride should.

And so she sat and she smiled and she did not speak unless spoken to.

And the king was happy, for he had gained a son and the crown had gained an heir and the country would have a king. But the prince still had to learn and the kind would show him how to rule.

And so it was determined that there would be a grand sweep throughout the lands, for there must be no discontent and all the subjects must be loyal and devoted.

And the people were afraid, for an investigation always found discontent and doubts and treason, for that was its purpose.

And the princess sat and she smiled and she did not speak unless spoken to.

Before the hunt for malcontents and doubters and traitors could start, the king fell gravely ill. It was a strange illness that baffled the physicians and confused the healers and frightened the priests. For it had came upon him suddenly and without warning and no matter what they did, he only ever got worse.

His life was soon despaired of and the hunt was soon forgotten, for why hunt while the king is dying? There were other things to do, duties to assign and preparations to be made and positions to fight over. The prince did his duties as a prince should, for though he had been the youngest, he had grown up as the son of a king, so he knew how to rule.

And the princess sat dutifully at her father's bedside, as a daughter should. And she did not speak, for she was not spoken to. But neither did she smile, for no daughter should smile at her father’s deathbed.

And when the king died, the princess sat and she did not smile and she did not speak unless spoken to.

And when the king was buried, the princess stood at the grave and she did not smile and she did not speak unless spoken to.

And when the new king was crowned, the new queen stood at his side and she smiled and she spoke the words supposed to be spoken by a queen when her husband is crowned.

The new king was young and ambitious and he knew what he wanted and how to get it. Soon, the soldiers were polishing their weapons and the generals were planning their tactics and the king was drafting a declaration of war.

And there was great unrest among the people of the kingdom, for the last war had been costly and many still mourned the dead.

But when a king wants war, war he shall have, for what are the common people to do?

And the queen sat and she smiled and she listened.

And when the young king fell gravely ill as the old king had before him, there was great unrest, but no more than there had been before.

For an ill king cannot draft a declaration of war and a dead king cannot send a declaration of war. And while the generals still planned their tactics and the soldiers still polished their weapons, for those were their duties, the people watched and they waited and they planned.

In the castle, the physicians brewed their medicine and their tonics and the healers collected their herbs and their plants and the priests said their prayers and sang their hymns, but the young king grew worse rather than better, as the old king had before.

And the queen sat at his bedside, as a bride should.

Then the great nobles came and they talked of succession and inheritance bloodlines. And they fought, for they all believed themselves to be the next king. But the king lay dying and he could not speak.

And the queen sat and she smiled and she spoke:

"This is not your choice to make."

And there was a great uproar, for even a queen should never speak unless spoken to. And though her husband would be king, a queen could never choose. And though she was the old kings child, a queen could never rule.

But the queen stood and she smiled and she spoke:

"There is no need to fight over a broken throne."

And out the window behind her, the night was lit by flames. For while the nobles had debated their politics and the generals had planned their tactics and the soldiers had polished their weapons, the people had risen up, for they had suffered enough.

And the castle gates were wide open for the people, for servants are of the people. And many a soldier had long since stopped polishing his weapon and joined the people, for they were of the people and they were weary of war.

And when the great nobles finished watching the people spill into the castle and turned back to the queen, they found that she had gone, for no queen wants to be in the castle when the revolution comes.

And the revolution came and the generals looked at their tactics, but they could do nothing, for a general without soldiers is just a man. And the nobles made speeches, but they could do nothing, for a noble without an army is just a man. And the king lay in his bed and he could do nothing, for he was just a man and he was dying.

And the queen had disappeared, for she could have done nothing, for she was just a woman.

And outside the city stood the woman who used to be queen and she was laughing and crying and shouting. And she would no longer be quiet for she had no more reason to be.

#ari writes stuff #ari writes short stuff #cw: sexism #cw: death #cw: illness #cw: war #I am not sure what this is #but it was fun #it just happened #I wanted to play with style a bit #and with leaving things unsaid

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ragnarlothcat · 1 year

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So I'm writing again after like six weeks of no-brain times which is exciting (although I am not working on one of my many half-posted wips so there's still room for improvement) and I'm sort of spiralling. I'm finally making progress on that baseball obikin thing from like two years ago and I've decided that even if it's a modern au I want women on my fake baseball teams. Because 1) it's kind of difficult to piece together a full roster of only male Jedi (and indeed, villains to go on the rival team) without feeling silly about how far I'm reaching for some of these people and 2) a lot (most!) of the female Jedi are wonderful and would be better at baseball than whatever random dude I toss in there to fill the ranks (probably men who have no real relationship with either Obi-Wan or Anakin which is just boring from a story perspective). Also? It's nice to imagine a world where anyone can play whatever sport without the usual whining chorus of "but biooooology"

But!!! I've written some discussion of homophobia and why characters might be uncomfortable coming out. There are (I think) two out players in men's professional sports (in the US at least, idk about globally) and it feels...weird? not to acknowledge that. But am I really concerned with maintaining verisimilitude (about bigotry of all things!) in a fic in which one of the batters is a giant spider? And in a world in which I've decided sex discrimination isn't a thing?

And then: am I incorrectly assuming that a non-sexist society would also be a non-homophobic society? Does one necessarily follow the other? Lived experience would suggest probably not but also this is my world and I can fix society's mistakes as I choose if I really want. Am I stuffing this poor gratuitous smut fic with too many confused thoughts about the societal ramifications of a fake baseball team? In addition to stuffing it with way too many words???

#and stuffing anakin with-#obikin #cw: homophobia #i feel like i should tag something else?#cw: sexism #maybe?#definitely tagging overthinking #if you've ever wondered why it takes me so long to update my fics this is why #i work myself into a lather instead of just writing fun baseball followed by kinky sex #might delete this later #i just had too many thoughts inside my head

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grollow · 1 year

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Here's some Ashe deep lore. CW sexism, misogyny, some trauma, depression and over-all a stressful time. Read at your own convenience.

I used to work in the gaming industry for an indie company. Watching some of you react to no Silksong news brings back some horrors.

To preface: The company that I worked for was a very small independent gaming company based out of the Netherlands -- so it was a remote position. We made a few different titles, none of which were wildly successful, in large because of major design flaws (examples include: story not mattering, too much emphasis on PVP in poorly balanced titles [and making the game COMPLETELY DEPENDENT on pvp in some cases] and most egregiously, no real direction beyond 'it should be fun.')

I was hired as a Community Manager initially. My responsibilities for this job largely involved managing the forums, doing news updates, sending out (Not writing) press releases, hanging out in the chats of our games / playing the games sometimes with players, and coming up with fun events. My colleague/boss was senior community manager, and she ran a very successful gaming blog (more successful than most of our games initially -- until she closed it). Both of us were/are heavily involved in games. I am more of an RPG and horror title enthusiast and she was a big fan of RPGs as well as FPS games. We both have a pretty wide repertoire of experience combined. She was a world's top 50 raider in World of Warcraft at the time of this all going down.

I should preface: I am AFAB. I, unfortunately for me, have a very feminine voice. At the time of this all happening, I was also still using she/her pronouns. So was my colleague.

During our experience as Community Managers, we were forced to do marketing despite neither of us knowing how to do that (examples include understanding metrics, learning how Google algorithms worked, composing and distributing Press Releases as well as finding the sites to send those TO).

Here's some examples of the awful things that she and I endured under this company:

80+ hour work weeks, where we were required to detail out with time sheets daily everything we did and what the reasons were. I think I clocked in 16 hour days most days and I was required to work weekends.

On Christmas, our boss called and screamed at my colleague because she and I dared to want the day off to spend with our families (we were not allowed any holidays).

My colleague was forced to work -from the hospital- while her mom underwent life-saving surgery, under threat of being fired.

"You look like a crayon eating [r slur]" is an actual phrase that was used to describe her because of a picture she was using of herself.

We both got told, numerous times, that "girls can't make strategy games."

We were blamed for them releasing an RTS/Tower Defense title the same day as Left4Dead despite my colleague telling them numerous times that that was a mistake.

I later got promoted to Project Manager, but I was still making over $1000 a month less than my male colleague who I hired. In order to get me a raise, he had to take a pay cut. I put in more hours than he did, by his own admission, and worked twice as hard. He was questioned far less on whether or not his work was "efficient."

There are more stories but in truth, I have blocked a lot of it out of my mind. She and I both ran screaming from the gaming industry and have nothing to do with it now in our professions for a reason.

The worst part of all of this is that this is not at all uncommon. This is unfortunately very typical of the industry -- there are good companies, but you hear about these horrors lot less often than they actually occur.

Why do I share this? Because when I see you all screaming about wanting Silksong news, I want you to remember what indie developers go through. And maybe have a little empathy. Good things take time.

(No, I am not saying this is happening at a little 3man studio. I am just telling you, as someone who has worked in the gaming industry, that you should try to be a little more understanding of how hard it can be for some of us.)

#cw: trauma #cw: misogyny #cw: sexism #cw: ? workplace abuse?#ashe rambles #don't read this if you're sensitive this is probably one of my biggest horror stories #im really only sharing it because some of the posts ive seen today have made me really displeased #im fine btw this was several years ago i have healed #but i want to share a firsthand account for people who dont know what goes on during the 'game dev crunch' sometimes #fun fact my steam account still has developer tools attached to it #despite the games i worked on being dead #so i get the steam sale emails long before you all do #probably the only cool thing left over from this

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christinaroseandrews · 2 years

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When you think of Ancient Rome, what often comes to mind is debauchery coupled with almost puritanical morals. Orgies. Vestal Virgins. Nero and Caligula. You know, the juicy stuff that peppered both HBO and PBS.

But what was the truth? Is it closer to the sex fueled fantasies of 1970s x-rated films and pearl clutching Christian saints? Or is it the dry and politics heavy shenanigans of I, Claudius.

The truth is amusingly revealed in this really fun historical quick-read by LJ Trafford.

First off, I need to level with you. I got this book because of the cover. This is one of my favorite paintings in the history of ever (Lorenzo Lotto’s Venus and Cupid) and every time I go to the MET in NYC I have to spend some time communing with it. It’s just that bonkers and fun and faboo. (I have a thing for odd Renaissance and Medieval art.)

So I should have been clued in that by selecting this picture the book itself is also just as fun and whimsical as the painting, and like the painting there is a whole lot more going on when you scratch the surface. Using primary sources of the day, Trafford explains that like many cultures and civilizations that there was nuance and hypocrisy when it came to Ancient Roman views on sex and sexuality. And that like many ancient (and let’s face it, modern) civilizations that the expectations differed between classes and genders.

The book is written in an amazingly readable format, and I often found myself laughing out loud at several turns of phrase. I managed to read this book while undergoing treatment for two different kinds of cancer and it was just the distraction I needed. The author was a tour guide in a previous life and it shows. The way the history and primary resources are presented are geared for a lay audience who wants to learn more after binging HBO’s Rome or Masterpiece Theater’s I, Claudius.

Readers do need to be aware that there is a lot of swear words, but this shouldn’t be surprising considering the graffiti that has survived from the period. It can be shocking if you think of Rome as a bunch of stuffy senators and pearl-clutching early Christians. But Rome is/was a very earthy and messy place (often literally) and this book doesn’t shy away from that.

I honestly enjoyed it.

Five Stars.

If this is your jam, you can get it here.

If you like these kind of honest reviews, please consider supporting us here!

I received an ARC via NetGalley.

**Review delayed due to cancer.

#book review #nonfiction #history #roman empire #rome #ancient rome #sex and sexuality #cw: sexism #cw: classism #cw: homophobia #cw: slavery #cw: historical people being awful to each other #five stars #rose and lark review books

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rolling-restart · 1 year

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My biggest ick with seb that I just can’t get over is how annoyingly sexual he was with female journalists (mainly Lee McKenzie) back in the day because as someone who has worked in a heavily male dominated workplace and was subjected to endless misogyny and sexualisation when I’m just trying to do my job, it’s uncomfortable to watch. Most people’s argument would be “oh she laughed along” or just brushing it off as flirting but as a woman who has also laughed along to avoid getting labelled as hysterical and made even more fun of, it’s a lame excuse. Women should be able to do their jobs without having to put up with some grown man acting like a horny teenager who doesn’t take women seriously. If he’s really changed then I think surely the first step should be admitting your questionable comments/actions in the past? If he took a bit of accountability then maybe I could get over it.

I don’t mean to start discourse and I’m not interested in arguing with the seb defenders who think he can do no wrong, I just wanted to vent about it.

Okay, honestly I was expecting something like this.

I know exactly what you are talking about, I remember watching a compilation of him flirting with journalists.

Honestly what you put forward supports my previous claim regarding grid girls. Like, the fact that they don't look uncomfortable and laugh along doesn't mean that it should be an accepted part of reality. Obviously, as drivers, they have the superior ground in all these and it feels like a misuse of that power. I honestly think if he is confronted about that behaviour now, he might acknowledge that it wasn't an appropriate way to behave but who knows.

Also along the same note, he does this while having a long-term partner and children which also gives me ick. Like, call me traditional but I would be extremely uncomfortable if my partner presented such behaviour in the media. It is ofc between the two of them but it just adds to the ick.

I am glad you find this platform as a place you can vent about these without worry. We all are human after all and forming a cult around someone who is also a fallible human doesn't make sense to me either. It is very important to identify wrongdoings while supporting those people or stop supporting them if their values truly don't align with yours.

#rolling restart ick challange #answered asks #sv #cw: sexism

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soul-dwelling · 2 years

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So Ohkubo put a message into the final volume of Fire Force. I don’t know whether it’s that big announcement that was teased or not, but if this is the big announcement, then it’s only him insisting that, yes, Fire Force is his last manga.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. And that means getting into spoilers, as I still–still–whine about what I do not like about the main takeaway from this series, and how, in this final(?) message, Ohkubo outright confirms that, yes, this has been a series about death, but whereas I had insisted it was a series where death is taken seriously, he instead is doubling-down on “LOL the power of imagination” crap again.

Content warning regarding how he handled Joker's abuser and Tamaki, so, content warnings about sexism, rape, homophobia, transphobia, and disablism.

Ohkubo: "Fire Force is a story about life, but you could also say that it is a story about death. Death is something that no one has ever experienced."

...What? I really hope something is lost in translation. I really hope I can look at this with a philosophical understanding, but right now, I can't read that and not think, "Dude, people do experience death--it's a question of whether they know it." If you mean the person dying, yes, they experience death--they just can't tell us what that's like. If you mean that other people around them cannot experience death, no, that's bullshit--you see people die, that is not you literally dying, but you see death and what it does.

"Yet it can happen at any time to us living beings--"

YOU JUST SAID NO ONE HAS EVER EXPERIENCED IT.

"--but can only be explained by our imagination."

By that same logic, everything is by our "imagination." This is phenomenology--and I'm getting bored with this pseudo-intellectual horseshit.

"[W]hat is the concept of death?"

Dude. You already wrote Soul Eater: it was a literal character. You were taking death seriously in Fire Force until you decided, LOL, nah, Shinra can just survive getting stabbed, Akitaru can just flex away a bug bite, and Shinra just resurrects everyone, even a fucking child rapist, Jesus, what the fuck, man.

Since the series wrapped up, my regard for Fire Force is pretty much the same now as when it ended: this sucks. Maybe I’m too close to everything, still in mourning over a parent’s death, but this series does not feel like some way to think about death and the imagination.

Rather, it seems like one man’s dull diatribe against religion: “Religions are dumb, but humans are dumb and therefore need them, so we might as well imagine a religion that we want!” No, we should be imagining the ethics that we want to hold people accountable to, and leave the “origin stories” of the universe to whatever people believe without harming people but, more importantly, what actual facts show us to be the origins of the world.

And it was one man’s massive ego getting in the way of honoring what he wrote before, especially when it came to writing girls and women: how this freak goes from Maka Albarn to “LOL girls are here to make men horny so that the human race persists” is fucking gross and, God, I still want to delete this blog because I’m that mad at his awful nonsense. Dude gets called out for doing fanservice badly, and his solution is a misogynist screed, whining that reduces sex to just making babies, which, as I said before, is not only limiting whatever personal enjoyment people get from sex but also misogynistic and transphobic (what if you want sex but don’t want to get pregnant?) and homophobic and disablist (what if you want sex but are not in a relationship where any party is capable of being pregnant by that sexual activity?).

#cw: sexism #cw: rape mention #cw: homophobia #cw: transphobia #cw: disablism #long post #dwells whines about fire force

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heartless-aro · 4 months

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So much of the arophobia directed towards aromantic heterosexual men seems to be rooted in willful ignorance about what aromanticism actually is and how allosexual aromanticism differs from sexual objectification. Aromanticism is experiencing little to no romantic attraction towards others. That’s it. It isn’t the same as sending unsolicited dick picks to strangers or reducing women to their bodies. When a misogynistic man disregards a woman’s personhood in favor of treating her as a sexual object, it isn’t because he doesn’t experience romantic attraction to women. It’s because he chooses not to value women as people.

That has nothing to do with whether or not the man in question experiences romantic attraction. You can respect someone’s personhood without being romantically attracted to them. In fact, if you can’t respect a woman’s personhood without being attracted to her, then that is misogynistic. However, there is nothing inherently misogynistic about finding a woman sexy (even if you aren’t romantically interested in her!), nor is there anything inherently misogynistic about having casual sex with a woman who has enthusiastically consented to having casual sex. (Because, yes. Women CAN consent to having casual sex without being tricked into it via false promises of romance. Women are fully capable of deciding for themselves what they want to do with their bodies. Just because a woman does something with her body that makes you uncomfortable—like casual sex—doesn’t mean she’s a helpless victim who needs you to rescue her from her own autonomy.)

It also just seems so bizarre to me to claim that aromantic heterosexual men don’t face any stigma related to their aromanticism. Do you really think a man who has never had a crush on a woman won’t face any stigma for that? If a heterosexual man says that he has never gone on a date or has never had his first kiss, how do people react to that? Social norms for how men engage with romance are different from how women are expected to engage with romance; that doesn’t change the fact that men are still expected to engage with romance in certain normative ways.

Of course, aromanticism is not the same as just not going on dates or not kissing people. That is just one of many ways that aromanticism can look. But aromantic experiences are diverse, so it’s difficult to give a one-size-fits-all example of how aromantic heterosexual people are affected by arophobia. What I’m trying to express here is that aromantic people often don’t engage with romance in the way that society expects us to (if we engage with romance at all) and that, furthermore, men are often perceived differently when they do not conform to those expectations.

#aro #aromantic #arophobia #alloaro #aroallo #things i wrote in one sitting without editing or proofreading #cw sexism #cw sex mention #cw arophobia #does this make sense?#long post

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norskheks · 1 year

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random personal shit about my family and Christmas but it's too long for twitter:

My mom and I are White Christmas Lights people. My dad is Colored Christmas Lights people. He is also an asshole and doesn't care that much about Christmas (those 2 facts are unrelated to each other but both related to this story), whereas Christmas is my mom's and my favorite holiday and we both fucking adore it.

This year, my mom decided to buy a new artificial Christmas tree with lights that can change color. I anticipated a Lights War (like a thermostat war), but my mom thinks that after almost 40 years of white lights on the tree, she owes it to my dad to allow him to enjoy the colored lights on the tree.

Now, if my dad were a good husband, good dad, and(/or, even) a nice, gracious person who came to conflicts like this in the spirit of compromise and harmony, I would agree. As it were, he is none of those things. And she owes him nothing, and less.

Owes him! For almost 40 years of verbal abuse, denigrations and putdowns?! For 23 years of barely lifting a hand to help raise two children?! For almost 40 years of his housework contributions mainly being... some laundry, and mowing the lawn?? For almost 40 years of putting his dirty dishes next to the sink, not in the sink, not intending to do them later, but fully intending her to do them? For almost 40 years of bland cooking for his racist picky-eater ass because he refused to learn how to cook his own damn meals?!

But she owes some colored lights to him?! Nahhhhhh. White lights every year for the rest of her life is the fucking LEAST he owes her.

So tonight I came downstairs and the colored lights were on on the freshly-decorated (by mom, of course) tree. My parents went out to a concert and like 0.5 seconds after the door closed, I turned the lights to white, so I could properly see all the ornaments. (Side note: she does not seem to have hung the Schitt's Creek ornament she gifted me last year, so I'll have to remedy that as well.)

It looks like I am fighting the Lights War myself this year. So be it. I'm ready.

#cw: abuse #cw: verbal abuse #cw: sexism #personal #do not reblarg pls

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theangryman · 13 days

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One person was banned almost immediately.

The other person was not banned until they made another post revealing that they were posting videos of their partner.

One person was harassed and bullied and told that they were lying.

One person was given advice, told about how they could improve their situation.

This is why kink is not safe. There is more compassion and kindness for someone who admits to wanting to kick their partner in the face than there is for someone who has received that treatment.

#reddit #antikink #kink critical #kink shaming #cw assault #kink discourse #kink discussion #cw vent #male violence #feminism #sex based oppression #sexism

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dereksmcgrath · 2 years

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Below is practically a written script that I am using as the basis for today’s livestream, Day 4 of the non-credit American Literature I survey course, going live at 11 AM EDT today.

Today’s livestream is about one of the first popular short stories published in the United States. This text is supposed to be a satire about how little changes even over generations, even after an American Revolution–but is probably more well known today as shorthand for “old people who sleep through things.” Today we discuss Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.” Read along for free and legally.

And feel free to read along with the script below, and leave a comment or email me to join the discussion!

A YouTube recording is included below.

youtube

Introductions

Okay, let’s get started: it’s 11 AM EDT on Thursday, September 22, 2022. This is a livestream for Day 4 of the American Literature I survey, a non-credit pseudo-class hosted on YouTube and Twitch that looks at United States literature from before 1865.

I’m Derek S. McGrath, my pronouns are he/him/his. I’m not on camera right now–if I was, you would see a white man with glasses and brown hair. I’m opting to instead use a slideshow presentation–while most of what I have to say is already on the slide, there are some details from the slides that I will read aloud.

For example, this slide features the statue "Rip Van Winkle Returned," designed in 1871, cast in 1871 or after, by John Rogers. This image is in the public domain courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art-you can find it in their online collection, metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11941.

Last Time

Last time, on Tuesday, we introduced the question that guides the rest of this semester: who reads American literature? The person who posed that question was nineteenth-century British author Sydney Smith.

Today

And today we talk about one of the few American authors that Smith thought anyone would read: Washington Irving. Today’s livestream is about one of the first popular short stories published in the United States. This text is supposed to be a satire about how little changes even over generations, even after an American Revolution–but is probably more well known today as shorthand for “old people who sleep through things.” Today we discuss Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.” Read along for free and legally.

Housekeeping

But before we get started, I wanted to very briefly touch three bits of housekeeping.

American Fragments

On Tuesday I had promoted the American Antiquarian Society’s seminar with Professor Daniel Diez Couch about his recent book American Fragments. I had complimented the seminar for showing how, especially in this kind of class, you want your seminar papers to not only be about the content of the text but also its form. In other words, look at how Professor Couch writes. He took the fragment–a form of writing, in which you have an incomplete story, almost like you ripped a page out of a journal, or saw scribblings on a slip of paper–and connected that to the topics covered in that writing, including people traumatized, people with amputations from war and injuries, and a nation divided–in other words, the content is itself about people, societies, and ideas that are also all fragmented. In all of your writing, try to show how the choices made in the form of the writing enhance or contradict the message. This is something I try to do when I do live-reactions to new comics coming out of Japan–shameless plug, you can hear my live reactions Sunday mornings at 11 AM EDT on YouTube and Twitch. But this is about Professor Couch, not me–and you can watch his informative, engaging seminar on YouTube right now, the link is in the video description.

The New College Classroom

In other news, a few weeks ago, I watched a live online seminar about the new book The New College Classroom, featuring the authors Cathy Davidson and Christina Katopodis. This talk gave me a lot of ideas that ended up guiding the structure to this livestream, including how I introduce discussion questions and keep bringing back discussions to how we apply literature to understanding identity and politics in this current moment.

A video recording of the seminar along with slides is available now on the Futures Initiatives web site. If you are teaching pre-1865 United States literature, pay attention to Professor Katopodis’s exercise that she demonstrates for teaching about privilege, by way of having students stand up, then sit down if they don’t match one of the racial, gendered, and class-based assessments who got to be considered American during the founding of the United States.

Questions for Today’s Class

With housekeeping out of the way, let’s jump into Washington Irving!

Last time, I left you with these three questions to guide today’s discussion. Let’s review those questions:

In which ways do past people or events in “Rip Van Winkle” re-emerge in the present? In other words, which moments of something repeating pop up in the story, such as names, events, or phrases?

In which ways do you see this story as perpetuating sexism, especially in the portrayal of Rip Van Winkle’s wife? And do you see ways in which this story actually undermines sexism?

Washington Irving wrote “Rip Van Winkle” as a very complicated set of “frame narratives”--a literary art form we’ll talk more about on Thursday. “Rip Van Winkle” is written by Washington Irving, pretending to be someone named Geoffrey Crayon, who he pretends found the writings of a fictional historian named Diedrich Knickerbocker, and it was Knickerbocker who found this supposedly real story about a supposedly real guy named Rip Van Winkle. Why do you think Irving was so interested in making up fake people like Crayon and Knickerbocker to tell this story, instead of just telling it himself? And what are some of the details we learn about Crayon and Knickerbocker’s personality? Is there anything we learn about Crayon and Knickerbocker that helps us believe that this fictional story is actually real New York history? Or are there clues by Irving that we should think Crayon and Knickerbocker are some real fools who are deceived and falling for other people’s tricks?

How to Teach Irving and Why?

Why is Washington Irving so important to include early on in your American Literature I class?

First Financially Self-supporting Author from the US

For starters, Irving was one of the few authors that Sydney Smith deigned to mention when we read Smith’s “Who Reads an American Book?” for Tuesday’s livestream. And there is a good reason Smith referred to Irving: he was one of the first, if not the first, American authors to support themselves financially with only their writing. Maybe we can touch upon this in later classes, but near-contemporaries of Irving, such as Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, were working in governmental jobs as bureaucrats, authors such as Edgar Allan Poe faced ever approaching poverty and were earning money more from editing journals than their own writing, and other authors such as Frederick Douglass were as much activists and public speakers as they were authors.

(Notice I am not mentioning enough authors here who were women: that is my oversight, and I apologize for the exclusion. In the case of many authors who are women, they were also editors like Poe, public speakers and activists like Douglass, and, as we will see when we get to Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley, so much of early American writing by women had to be a repeated insistence on their relationship to the family and the home. We’ll talk about this when we get to Bradstreet, but her writing was built on a framing mechanism in which she had to insist, “Hey, yeah, I’m writing right now, and you’re reading my writing right now, but please believe when I say that I am writing all of this at night only after I put my kids to sleep, so really I’m not sacrificing time with my family and my obligations to them to write this, I’m actually sacrificing my sleeping hours to do this. And look, I have this preface from this man in my community who backs up my claim, where he insists I was writing at night so that you don’t think I’m not being an idealized representations of what we think women should do in the house.”)

Visual Literacy

But how do you need to teach Irving? I’ve talked around this, but one problem with trying to teach “Rip Van Winkle” is that, in our popular imagination, it’s not seen as a complex short story: it’s seen one of America’s first fairy tales. And it’s not even an original fairy tale: I’ll skip past all the previous European and Biblical inspirations for the story, because they tend to just be “person sleeps for a long time,” and when you get to a lot of myths, eventually you’re going to find similar myths pop up in different cultures and societies that had zero way of having taken from each other.

I find that getting past that “it’s a fairy tale” mindset requires appealing to a skill set many of our students already have: critical assessment of visual culture.

I had discussed last week the challenge of making audio-based exercises more accessible to audiences with hearing impairments. I do not want to pretend that making visual exercises more accessible to visually impaired audiences is easier–but I will say I am more familiar with that kind of course design.

We’ll get to this later when answering the repetition of the past, but one key moment in “Rip Van Winkle” is when, before his 20-year nap, Rip used to go to the King George III tavern, and after waiting up, after the American Revolution, when England was kicked out of the colonies, this tavern, out of a cynical search for the almighty dollar, just repainted the George III sign to turn him into George Washington. This detail can go over students’ heads–so, why not turn this into a lesson in visual literacy, and ask students to specify whether it is really that easy to alter an image of George III into an image of George Washington.

Let’s compare these two famous illustrations of the two Georges.

Obviously these are two illustrated, rather than photographic, representations of the two Georges, so we’re not getting to accuracy in what they really looked like.

(If I was teaching more about the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Civil War this semester, I would bring into discussion how photography before 1865 was just as much suspected of not being accurate, and how that could help you in teaching media literacy and accuracy in history–but that is a long diatribe. If you’re interested, look up scholarship by Laura Barrett–her tracking of photography across Hawthorne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Don DeLillo is really good.)

But let’s pretend that these paintings are photo-accurate. Yes, you can see differences in the shape of the nose and the shape of the eyes. These are not the same person. But they are both white men with very similar hair styles–wig styles. So, you, as the teacher, can offer very detailed audio descriptions to your students. And your students can share in words that can be heard what they notice that is so similar about these two men physically. And that visual detail, that you are putting into audio format as well for accessibility, can really clarify for students how they can imagine the George III portrait before Rip’s nap, could so easily be transformed into the George Washington portrait after his nap. Keep the race, keep the gender, keep the wig, adjust the attire and the eyes and the nose, and bam, you changed King George to George Washington. Hey, the names are even the same–how about that for a time-saving exercise?

Hub-and-Spoke Map

This kind of visual work goes a long way to help some students visualize how all of these ideas will connect across the semester. And that can help your students practice how they will outline their essays. This kind of hub-and-wheel-spoke design is popular on numerous Internet platforms, Tumblr just introducing it in the last year or two, to show how one post disseminates across multiple blogs, getting additions, making new connections.

Start by putting “Rip Van Winkle” in the center. Now expand out from there. Connect to Washington Irving, which connects to Sydney Smith and the overarching question of this class, “Who reads American literature?”

Then connect to “Rip” to the reliability of narrators, which connects to “Benito Cereno” that we read next week, and to Frederick Douglas’s autobiography. And you also can connect “Rip” to drawing upon historical sources and records, which again connects to both “Benito” and Douglass.

Connect “Rip” as well to “multicultural sources” and “othering.” Irving is pulling from Dutch, not British, sources. There is an exoticizing of the other here–maybe that is not as big a barrier for discussion if you are teaching in New York, or teaching in the 2020s, but it is also an opportunity to remind students that the concept of whiteness was not so monolithic as we imagine it now. Whiteness became a coalition of various European and Asian identities over time, especially in the United States, both out of whatever good you can find in the melting pot argument, and out of a lot of bad in terms of building a coalition to reinforce white supremacy against people of non-white races. That bridges you to differences across race–Douglass again, Phillis Wheatley, William Apess–but also by gender–Wheatley again, Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson.

How does this help you as a teacher? You start getting students to think of common topics across multiple works in the class, which can help for any comparison-contrast essay in their final exam, or gives them a paper prompt for their seminar paper, or helps you as the teacher to devise class exercises, lecture topics, and your lesson plan.

Hoaxes, Propaganda, and Lies

And one last thing that you can use “Rip” for teaching nowadays: hoaxes, propaganda, and lies. And you get all of that by talking about the frame narrative. So, here, I am going to go out of order and address one of the three questions that started class:

“Rip Van Winkle” was first published under a fake name: Geoffrey Crayon. Crayon is himself a stand-in for Irving. But he’s not just a pseudonym: there is an entire fictional backstory and personality built around this character. This is not simply “Theodore Geissel and Dr. Seuss are the same person,” this is “I’m Stephen Colbert, but the person I play on The Colbert Report is also named Stephen Colbert, and we are not the same person.”

Meanwhile, Diedrich Knickerbocker is yet another character created by Irving. And he has his own personality. Just listen to this line from the text, describing one of Mrs. Rip Van Winkle’s admonishments against her husband: “[A] curtain-lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife [in other words, a harsh, short-tempered wife] may, therefore, in some respects be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed.”

Let’s paraphrase this: “a curtain-lecture”--a man being lectured at home by his wife, hence amongst the curtains of the house–”may [...] be considered a tolerable blessing.” Tolerable? Okay, so that is enough of a lecture that you need, enough of a blessing–it’s sarcastic, it’s not a blessing, it’s a curse. Then, Knickerbocker concludes, this isn’t just a normal blessing–a normal curse–it is a “thrice” blessing, a triple blessing, a triple curse. It’s understated sarcasm.

And it pops up again later from Knickerbocker here: “He was observed, at first, to vary on some points every time he told it [his story], which was, doubtless, owing to his having so recently awaked.” Is Knickerbocker really believing that Rip here kept changing his story because he just woke up from 20 years of sleeping? I doubt it, because if he kept telling the story, at some point, he is not just recently awakened, he is now wide awake. Does that mean Knickerbocker thinks Rip actually keeps changing his story because he’s exaggerating for storytelling effect and attention? Or maybe Rip keeps changing his story because he can’t keep his facts straight because he is lying so much.

So, either Knickerbocker is a fool who buys that Rip did sleep for 20 years, or is so sarcastic that he can’t just say “I don’t believe this,” he has to make a joke about it. He is therefore a flawed historian.

And as I will address when discussing the sexism to this story, Knickerbocker is not what you typically imagine of a historian as someone who seeks accuracy of information; he seeks consensus, he seeks what people agree is the truth, not what the truth shows in front of him. He is more concerned about appealing to the popular crowd, including what the mob thinks is true, so he will cave to public pressure and rumors more than he will take a stand based on the evidence in front of him that may contradict what the popular rumor is. Plus, as you may see in his other writing, Knickerbocker is portrayed as so enamored with women that we probably should take away from all of this that Irving wants you to think this guy is a bit of a perv and hence not the most reliable source if he is so distracted by sex appeal.

But this opens an opportunity for you as a teacher to discuss satire with your students. We don’t have enough satire in this syllabus–if this was my single-author course on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, I would go into more depth there. And what I say in that class is the following: satire requires a certain amount of agreement with the thing you mock—you can mock only that which you know intimately. In the preface to The Sketch Book, Geoffrey Crayon tells us that America is rich in resources and stories, but not in European refinement—and Irving proceeds to essentialize each continent along these terms for comedic effect. You cannot write something like that and not be so familiar with American culture and European culture. And you should hear in that a mocking of the way Sydney Smith wrote on Tuesday: Smith was reducing North America to just a continent of resources, and Irving repeats that same idea–so that he can go on to point out, “Yeah, but Europe is also silly and has its own obsession with resources, so don’t act like you are above this.”

What Should We Get Out of This?

It has taken me far too long today to answer the other two questions for today’s class.

In which ways do past people or events in “Rip Van Winkle” re-emerge in the present? In other words, which moments of something repeating pop up in the story, such as names, events, or phrases?

The title card for today’s lecture was about the continuum of time. Irving is trying to show that American culture remains an off-shoot of British culture. And to reinforce how even an American revolution doesn’t change much, we see things repeat in this story. We already covered the two Georges–George III and George Washington. But there are the two Rips: Rip Van Winkle Sr, and when he shows up in town, and saying he’s Rip, they all think he means Rip Van Winkle Jr, who is just as much of a layabout as his son.

All of this produce an uncanny effect. If you want to learn more about the uncanny and doubling and doppelgangers, go read Sigmund Freud. But the short definition of “uncanny” is that it means the past comes back in unexpected ways–which is creepy, because these things should be gone, they shouldn’t repeat, it should be over there, not in front of you right now. Rip is supposed to be dead–but he’s back. His world should stay the same as it was in the past–but for him, no time has past, so why does everything look familiar but different? His old house is now dilapidated. He is bothered to encounter his son because he looks so much like him, like looking into a mirror. Rip says as much–quoting Knickerbocker, “He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. […] ‘I’m not myself—I’m somebody else—that’s me yonder—no—that’s somebody else got into my shoes.’”

I said time was a continuum. It is, because even after momentous events, nothing changes. Rip was asleep for 20 years. HIs home is different. His town is different. His nation is different. His world is different–after the geopolitical changes by the American Revolution, the world is different. But Rip, despite looking different, has not changed. Rip repeats his previous trek: “Rip now resumed his old walks and habits.” And what has changed? Now he can’t walk with his old friends, and instead entertains the younger generation with his stories. There’s something melancholic about all of that.

Onto the last question: In which ways do you see this story as perpetuating sexism, especially in the portrayal of Rip Van Winkle’s wife? And do you see ways in which this story actually undermines sexism?

And, oh boy, this one is going to take a long time to discuss…

Mrs. Van Winkle appears in this text primarily as a threat against homosociality–in other words, a threat to men being with other men, the socializing of people of one sex–”homo” here referring to one group of one sex, hence just the men hanging out. When she brings Rip home to do his tasks as husband and father, the narrator claims that Mrs. Van Winkle “break[s] in upon the tranquillity [sic] of the assemblage” at the inn, as if she is to blame for ruining their fun.

How do you think “Rip” would differ as a story should our narrator be sympathetic to Mrs. Van Winkle? What are the flaws of the character of Rip Van Winkle? He has no job, spending time with children and dogs. His meekness earns him sympathy from the community, but his refusal to address his wife or, forgive the chauvinism, put her in her place, shows a lack of courage. And his wife’s admonitions could suggest that he is not doing his duties as not husband or father but as her lover—not only sexual but in terms of being a participant in this household. If Rip really wanted to put her in her place, he would do his duties so she could never complain!

Compare the two characters: Notice the paragraph that begins “Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mortals.” We’re only four pages into the story–that’s who we are to take him as, assuming Irving or Crayon or Knickerbocker is not being sarcastic.

On the other hand, maybe there are good qualities to Rip. He is described as pragmatic rather than lazy, as he “would rather starve on a penny than work for a pound.”

But his wife’s legitimate complaints are described in negative terms—“his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness […] [m]orning, noon, and night.”

Hell, the narrator and, by extension, based on his excitement, Rip himself, are overjoyed that Mrs. Van Winkle died—“broke a blood vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England peddler.” Hilarious, especially in reinforcing this hostility a New Yorker would have against a New Englander–it’s the colonial equivalent of the Yankees hating the Red Sox. But it’s so dark that we must acknowledge the sexism to this joke.

Does Rip have good qualities? Well, he’s fun with kids and animals. He does hunt—but it is only small game. He does help women in the neighborhood with chores—but he won’t for his own wife and family, denying them the financial support they need, so maybe it is flirting more than out of his good will.

But I want to look at more than only this caricature of the shrew character archetype used for Mrs. Van Winkle, and for so many other characters in so much fiction that persists even into today. I also want to look at this quotation at the very beginning of “Rip Van Winkle,” and what it may say about sexism in relation to what we consider to be “the hard truth” and “gossip.” Before Irving gets into the story, he has Geoffrey Crayon start by telling us that the story is actually written by historian Diedrich Knickerbocker. Crayon begins:

“His [Knickerbocker’s] historical researches, however, did not lie so much among books as among men; for the former are lamentably scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore so invaluable to true history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, and studied it with the zeal of a bookworm.”

What should we take out of this phrasing of “true history”? Crayon, and maybe Irving, is saying that “true history,” what we know from evidence, official governmental accounts, and learned historians with college degrees, is not enough. Rather, you also need “legendary lore” in order to sex up your truth, to make it not only significant but entertaining—understandable, but undermining the credibility of your argument with ulterior motives, whether because Knickerbocker is flirting with these wives or trying to make his story more entertaining.

Elsewhere in the text, Knickerbocker is looking for the truth by seeking information from “a genuine Dutch family.” Who decides what is “genuine,” or authentic? For Knickerbocker, “genuine” refers to an idyllic scene, comfortable domesticity—“low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading sycamore.” Knickerbocker is distracted by what he wants to see, not what is there. It is easier to believe Rip really did fall asleep for 20 years–and didn’t just run away and fake it.

And that is where we are still approaching sexism. It’s not just that he talked to burghers to make the story more entertaining–the remark is “still more their wives.”

But is that only sexist? Given the time period when Irving is writing, I’m hesitant to ascribe a more progressive view of women in his writing. But I could see a later author re-deploying what Irving wrote to make it progressive. Think of it like this: no good historian just refers to official government records, or newspapers, or other historians–they interview witnesses, they talk to descendants, they do seek out the popular opinion to see what meshes, what fits, and what doesn’t doesn’t fit. Therefore, of course Knickerbocker would talk to the wives of residents–because you want to be thorough.

What if, if you could re-write “Rip Van Winkle,” you were writing it in a way to point out that women, who thanks to sexism baked into the society, the economics, and the culture are not taken as seriously, can covertly get information in their conversations? Someone may be less likely to talk to someone walking in with an official capacity, but they’ll let their guard down when having a friendly conversation with someone they don’t suspect if trying to milk information out of them. And maybe the people who are standing by, observing people, maybe while working at home, or running errands, and predicting human behavior in sales, commerce, and transportation, are going to notice what a “true historian” won’t.

I could go on about this point, but time is short, so if you are interested in this topic with your students, I suggest a post-Civil War story you can pair with Washington Irving. It is a play–a short play–by Susan Glaspell, titled Trifles. And it is about how the police, who are all men, notice evidence but immediately interpret it as unimportant because they don’t know how the evidence they see is used, whereas the bystanders, who are two women, are knitters, see the knitting, and realize, “Oh, they misread the evidence, the evidence actually shows this.” If you are interested, the film production company Women Make Films have a well-done adaptation by Sally Heckel, titled A Jury of Her Peers. But...the 30-minute film is expensive, so, see if your library has it.

One More Point about History

Before I wrap up this question, I want to introduce another one you can show to your students: why is “history” such an important word that we take to mean that it is somehow the Truth with a capital T? Because that’s not where the word comes from. “History” develops from the same root as the word “story,” thereby compromising what we consider is fictional and what is nonfictional. At the end, “history” is just that–a story. And stories can be exaggerated.

For teachers watching, here’s a quick exercise you can do with your students. Have them pull up the Wikipedia page for “Rip Van Winkle.” I know, I know–many of us are, rightly, still cautious about how we move forward with using crowd-sourced information gathering and verification. But we are talking about history being an exaggerated story, so, go with me on this. You on the Wikipedia page for “Rip Van Winkle”? Good. Read that quotation up at the top:

“While the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains near where Irving later took up residence, he admitted, ‘When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills.’”

We even get a handy footnote from Wikipedia as to the source of this quotation: Pierre M. Irving, The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1883, volume 2, page 176. The page shows Irving, talking about a letter he received asking about the Catskills as shown in “Rip Van Winkle,” and Irving saying about the letter that he had never been there. Seeing as Pierre Irving was the nephew of Washington Irving, you still can take this as a lesson in knowing potential biases in your sources. But the source, as it is quoting Washington Irving’s own remarks about having never been to the Catskills yet, seems to be true, if only because what benefit would there be to lying, except to cover for anything you got wrong about the Catskills? The letter Irving received, as described by Pierre, wasn’t accusing Irving of lying about the Catskills–so Irving had no reason to be defensive, so I don’t hear him being defensive in saying, “Yeah, no, I never was there, sorry, can’t answer you about the Catskills.” It’s just him answering the question.

Now, what does that say about authorship? I’m not saying that somehow the veracity of Irving’s story suffers because he had never been in the place where he claims the story takes place: this is a story about a man who allegedly sleeps for 20 years, without food or water, that is already fantastic enough to stretch realism. We have to worry about believability and our intended readers, not realism, so the truth is going to matter much less than the desired effect we want to produce. See also Edgar Allan Poe’s essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” that we talked about in Week 1 in this class, in which he says the point of “The Raven” was producing the effect first, and all the other details, even the truth, are secondary.

Now think about how terrifying that is to say the truth is secondary to the desired effect. (Remind me to bring up a Q Anon question I got when moderating an Edgar Allan Poe panel at some point, because, oof, that sucked.)

The form a story takes influences who you judge to be the good guys, the bad guys, the lesson to take away. But complicating matters further, if you go back further, “history” derives from the Greek word for “to know”—hence, objective knowledge. Or, perhaps, knowledge you want to pass along. A lot of our teaching is going to be by story. It’s like parables, it’s like how the Christian bible shows Jesus educating others by telling stories. Your work as a teacher is about how stories can impart lessons–and our responsibility as teachers to make sure those lessons are not only going to contribute well to this world, but that they are built on the truth. You are teaching your students rhetoric–you don’t want to have a student learning how to use that rhetoric to just spread lies. It’s one reason why certain notable college professors have expressed sorrow for teaching people who went on to work in the White House from 2017 and 2021, helping destroy social programs in the United States and perpetuate the kind of fake history that Irving is warning about–but there I go being political again, so I better get back onto the script.

Next Time: Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno”

Thank you for joining this week’s livestream. I have some questions I’d like you to consider about Irving and “Rip Van Winkle” as you head out this afternoon. But before I get to those questions, I will introduce our next reading, which is another text with unreliable narration–but a weightier topic. We look at a slave revolt in the novella by the author of Moby-Dick. This is “Benito Cereno” by Herman Melville. We’ll cover this over two classes, so pace yourself through this novella.

Questions to Consider for Next Time

As you read “Benito Cereno,” think about answering these questions:

First, how is the narration different in “Rip Van Winkle” compared to “Benito Cereno”? What do you learn about the narrator to “Benito”? And how much is that narrator similar to the character we keep following, Delano?

Second, on a related note, describe Delano. How would you describe his powers of observation? What does he get right? What does he get wrong?

Finally, just how much dialogue do you hear coming from Babo? Why do you think Melville made these choices in creating this character?

Questions to Wrap Up

And as you look back on “Rip Van Winkle” today, consider these questions, some of which we should have been able to answer today:

What do you think “Rip Van Winkle” can teach us about propaganda in the modern United States?

Am I being too harsh on how sexist “Rip Van Winkle” as a story comes across? Or do you think the sexism is even more covert than the story originally comes across?

Finally, has there ever been a significant moment in your personal life, or in US history, that changes everything? Or, is it like Rip Van Winkle himself, where his life pretty much stays the same even after the entire freaking American Revolution?

Or, what question do you think we should have answered today? I’d love to know–feel free to share your question in the comments or email me, [email protected]. And if you enjoyed this livestream, consider a monetary contribution at ko-fi.com/dereksmcgrath–your financial support helps keep me working in education.

Until Tuesday at 11 AM EDT, I’ve been Derek S. McGrath. You have a good afternoon. Bye.

#american literature i #washington irving #rip van winkle #early america #misinformation #cw: sexism #Youtube

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