🌻

[orions-garden]

mother, daughter // a sandra lynn and figueroth faeth poem

here’s the contrapuntal poem I wrote as a part of @d20exchange 2025 for @complicatedwomenpodcast!!❄️

+ bonus short sandra lynn playlist here because I was feeling inspired

[readtilyoudie]

For her it was simple: Bebe Chow had been a poor mother; Linda McCullough had been a good one. One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

[its-tortle]

the questions that 'little fires everywhere' asks about motherhood will haunt me forever

[mossy-aro]

what's up with the little fires everywhere tv show? I've only seen it and not read the book

well. so there’s nothing explicitly wrong with it, as long as you choose to view it as a standalone tv show - rather than as an adaptation of a pre-existing book. personally, i didn’t hugely enjoy it as a tv show either, but as an adaptation of the little fires everywhere book, it thinks it fails on several levels at understanding mia as a character. the mia in the show is a very very different character than book mia, which is not inherently a bad thing when we’re talking about adaptation - but many of the core themes and traits of her character were switched out for seemingly no reason in ways that did not make sense, which i find frustrating as a fan of the book.

first of all, book mia is heavily implied to be aromantic and asexual - she explicitly states that she has never experienced sexual nor romantic attraction to anyone in her life, nor has ever thought much about it until confronting the issue w her teenage daughter while trying to give her relationship advice. one of the key themes to mia’s story in the book is that the path of her life has been defined by choices made out of love for her daughter. in a story concerned with the meaning and experience of motherhood, mia’s all consuming love for her daughter, which is arguably framed as the “love of her life”, is a central theme of her story and experience of motherhood. she says, quote: “The only thing that had given her that feeling [that electric warmth] had been art-and then, of course, Pearl.” therefore, you can understand my confusion at the show’s decision to switch out her love for her daughter to… a romantic relationship between 18-year old mia (who is estranged from her family, struggling financially and has just moved to a new city on her own) and her photography professor, a significantly older woman whom she idolises. this change feels both unnecessary and out of place because it fundamentally seems to misunderstand the core of what mia’s story was about in the book. motherhood was her all consuming love. and this change becomes extra egregious to me as a book first fan who very much saw mia as an aroace character whose life was fulfilled by and defined by choices made out of this all consuming platonic love. in the book, her professor served as a mother figure to mia (which again, ties in with the themes of the story - mia’s parental abandonment, then finding a mother elsewhere). so again, i just have to ask how changing the narrative to reframe their relationship, and the “love of mia’s life” this way, was meant to come off. that being said, it is an adaptation - so okay, fine, changes are made. i’m genuinely happy for anyone who saw age gap yuri and got joy out of that, even if it frustrated me. however, it’s not just that they so fundamentally altered mia’s story - i also disliked the way this romantic relationship was written. like, it’s objectively pretty quote unquote problematic - which tbc is not something i shy away from - that being said, there is absolutely no engagement on the show’s part with how this relationship might come off (in terms of its very unequal power dynamics - and how it can possibly be seen as grooming, essentially). it’s just framed as a beautiful and idyllic romance that defined the course of mia’s life. it’s also just, in my opinion, pretty rushed and underdeveloped? which again feels extra egregious to me as a book fan… because why do this entire plotline and then barely put any effort into developing it…?

there are other things about the show i don’t love either, just in terms of mia’s very different characterisation and the pacing, but those are all things i can chalk up to a matter of personal preference. overall, i’m just frustrated with the changes the show made to mia’s story for no ostensible reason - did they think she NEEDED a romantic relationship to be a more complex and interesting character? they change her to be far more proactive than she is in the book in terms of getting herself involved in the adoption dispute, so it’s my impression that they felt she was perhaps too, i don’t know, uninteresting or passive? which is insane to me because she is by far the most compelling and layered character in the book. if you ask me. anyway those are just my two cents. there’s nothing wrong with liking the show as it’s own standalone thing! but as an adaptation, i think it’s really disappointing, as a fan of mia. hope this all makes sense!

[coldasyou]

TV Appreciation Week 2024: (Day Six) Favorite miniseries - Little Fires Everywhere

You didn't make good choices. You had good choices. Options that being rich and white and entitled gave you.

[rainagainstthewindowatnight]

i am the shape you made me

little fires everywhere (2020) dir. lynn shelton, michael weaver and nzingha stewart / sharp objects by gillian flynn / an oresteia by anne carson / gracie’s choice (2004) dir. peter werner / midnight sun by stephenie meyer / shameless (2011-2021) / my father’s eyes, my mother’s rage by rose brik

[mossy-aro]

Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng

[flowerytale]

Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

[bauliya]

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

[darkshrimpemotions]

This reminds me of something I observed in college while I was doing my honors thesis on women in modern horror films. I watched a LOT of horror during that time as part of my research, and sometimes that was done with my family around.

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

And they flinch every time.

[tzikeh]

Here have a newspaper comic from 1993

[dragonflavoredcake]

Rejection sensitivity dysphoria is the weirdest ADHD symptom ever. Like hello yes my weird brain chemistry manifests as Whiny Crybaby Disorder

[eroscestlavie]

btw this is not a universally agreed upon "symptom" of ADHD and I think many people would benefit from treating it as part & parcel of ADHD's broad, foundational trait: inability to do emotional regulation. A feeling of total rejection and terror at failure is a treatable and manageable issue. For me, I found it easier to manage once recognized that the reason I was having these reactions is that like many other emotional states, I couldn't "exit" an emotional state related to feelings of rejection once I was in it.

imo way too many people are going through life thinking they're just going to be sensitive to rejection for life because of how some people (not OP, but definitely plenty of ADHD influencers) talk about this "symptom." I don't think it's terribly productive that it gets constantly cordoned off as its own thing. like a lot of ADHD, while it sucks to have it shape your life up to the point you realize what it is, it is indeed possible to exposure therapy & DBT your way out of it.

signed: someone with ADHD who used to not be able to take critical feedback from anyone every and is now a freelancer and gets critical feedback three times before breakfast. still workin on it but it's very possible to go from "whiny crybaby disorder" to "mostly functional, if slightly sensitive ADHD adult"

[grison-in-space]

I also think it's worth noting that rejection sensitive dysphoria is most parsimoniously interpreted as a trauma reaction—a learned response to a potential signals of social relationship deteriorating for reasons the ADHD person can't necessarily control. Social relationships are incredibly important to humans, and ADHD (especially undiagnosed and undisclosed) really sets us up to fail. This is especially true given that perceived social blame for stressful situations is a massive factor in transmuting stressful experiences into lasting trauma, and ADHDers are typically judged to be personally responsible for the failures that happen as a result of attentional, time awareness, or memory failures.

What conceptualizing RSD as a category of trauma response to social triggers does is allow us to treat it like any other trauma response. It pulls RSD out of the bioessentialist framework and into the realm of injuries that can be treated, learned associations that can be unlearned. It turns out that the same techniques that help with PTSD triggers, including the same damn meds (hi, clonidine), are effective for helping reduce RSD. (It also explains why RSD is also common in autistic people, who often have a similar history of social error and narratives of self blame, without requiring inherent neurological differences.)

It's a common kind of stress injury, basically. It's not Whiny Crybaby Disorder; it's more like shin splints. Getting better shoes for running, being careful about the ground you run on, and letting the splints heal properly can all help make shin splints go away when you've been running barefoot on concrete roads your whole life.

[dangercocktail]

[elodieunderglass]

[simply-a-dream]

“don’t take it personally” how would you like me to take it then? professionally? romantically? academically?

[creative-anchorage]

[suriandtaal]

[dogpuppy]

[autoneurotic]

was compelled to paint the fat baby seal doing nothing special in the glittering backlight last month

[kafk-a]

David Walker’s paper clip collection

[librarycard]

V is such a perfect letter. Vivid... vicious... valentine... velvet... vex... it makes other words so much better like silver... evening... cavernous... Thank U god for inventing (! another word blessed by the vivacious letter V) her for verbose bitches everywhere

[5llh]

[heartclef]

NEW EARTH PHOTO JUST DROPPED FROM ARTEMIS II

[busket]

thats my home

you can see the atmosphere. that halo around the edge, that's my air. the green on the upper right is my aurora. those are my clouds, my sunlight.

and its yours! this is your home. this is the home of everyone you ever heard of and everyone you will ever meet. every animal you've been curious about. every plant you've ever picked, and sniffed. its mine and its yours and its theirs. everything is here. its all that i have. its all that you have too.