PFP by @vvolfae Half girl, half cat demon, all trouble | Jk Iâm like mostly anxiety | Chaotic reblogs and musings from a romance author, monster lover, pansexual demi-girl. I bake cookies sometimes. | To the best of my ability, NS/FW reblogs & posts will be tagged as such | See pinned post for my writing | linktr.ee/bethanybaker
iâve been thinking a lot about book pirating lately, as someone who's always wanted to be published and make a living (or at least Some money) from it. my knowledge of publishing and authoring comes from spaces of genre fiction writers and the attitude is very much Thou Shalt Not Pirate, if you do youâre the absolute scum of the earth (also a group with the attitude that AI users are scum) so i dunno if the attitude is different in other author groups. piracy is always framed as one of the worst things that could happen to them, how dare someone wrong them like this etc etc. i understand lack of sales can lead to a publisher dropping you and having a hard time selling future books which sucks when you need to pay bills. but also publishing companies are obviously corrupt af and is the blame really on those pirating?
i think the point i'm trying reach is as i'm getting curious about my hatred of capitalism, and if i want to be part of creating better systems, i don't want to like give myself and my desires special treatment so am trying to investigate the ways my thoughts/desires (specifically here wanting to be a traditionally published author) just uphold all the things i say i hate
sorry, this was pretty much very rambly way to asking hey author man what are your thoughts on pirating books thanks
Yeah, in my opinion book authors rail against piracy of their works because they mistakenly believe the odds are good that they will make enough sales to get rich off of royalties, which statistically happens to the tiniest percentage of authors. We are talking a fraction of a fraction of a percent. Their public campaigns against piracy also dramatically misrepresent the economic and professional landscape in which they are operating.
98% of books released sell fewer than 5,000 copies, which is far, far from enough to unlock royalties. In order to start garnering royalties, you have to have sold enough copies to recoup the advance you were paid, which for most people is going to amount to anywhere from 10,000 to a 100,000 books. So hanging their hopes on making fat stacks of money off royalties is unrealistic, and placing the blame for that on a handful of people wanting to read their books but not being able to afford to do so is absurd.
This anti-piracy posturing also ignore the fact that these authors are waiting to get royalties because they were already paid an advance. They were paid for the work! An advance is literally an advance payment on royalties -- a speculation the publisher makes about how profitable they expect your book to be. Now, an advance payment can vary from anywhere in the neighborhood of $3,000 all the way up to millions of dollars, and certainly many of these contracts are exploitative and favor the publisher, but the authors did sign onto contracts with these publishing companies with the understanding that they were getting paid up front for the writing and editorial process, and that anything else that came afterward was not guaranteed.
There's also the fact that we have no reason to believe that piracy hampers book sales at all whatsoever. Most people still do not know about platforms like Z Library and Anna's Archive. The people who are pirating are generally those who are willing to put the time into figuring out how to do so, who might be such habitual pirates they were never going to buy any media anyway, or they are people who literally cannot access the book from a bookseller because they either can't afford it or the book is not available in their region of the world.
Furthermore, the worlds of music and video game piracy have demonstrated frequently for decades that a game that is pirated often is typically one that sells very well; piracy reflects the overall patterns in the marketplace and if anything, the availability of free copies of a book drums up interest, garners the book more word-of-mouth and reviews which helps is sell more copies! One of the primary ways that publishers market a book these days is by giving free copies away to hundreds, even thousands of people at launch time. Why is it a bad thing for free digital copies to be circulating outside of this? Clearly, the marketing and publicity teams know that the more a book is read, spread, and spoken about, the better.
My final note to you, the question-asker, is that if your dream is to make a huge profit off selling your books, you should reevaluate that. If anyone goes into publishing because they have the expectation of being rich, they should find another profession honestly. It's not realistic, for all the reasons that I have outlined above, and it runs counter to the principles of freely-shared information and creative remixing that makes being an artist possible.
When authors rail against pirates they are literally getting angry that people all across the world want to read their books. That should be every writer's greatest dream. Not to turn a fat profit. Not to own intellectual property that they can sue people over. But to write something that is meaningful, and to get to see it connecting with an audience that values what they have to say so much they are even willing to break laws in order to get to it. That's power. That's creative validation.
I understand that in our capitalist landscape people have to get money to eat and live and find the time that makes it possible to create the art they want to make, but that is a reason for us to build a society that meets all people's needs regardless of how conventionally productive or 'profitable' they are. The dream, for a creative writer, should not be to write something so generically and massively appealing and inoffensive that a ton of publishing industry executives can use sales from it to finance their next yacht. The dream should be getting free enough to write whatever you want to write -- and to find an audience that genuinely believes in it, passionately, regardless of if that audience can afford to pay for it.
But a lot of people are so conditioned by capitalist success stories that they think the only way to get to be a writer is to become the next Anne Rice. RIP to them because 99.999% of them will never do it, and even Anne Rice was suicidal from being Anne Rice. I'd rather every writer get to be comfortable and write whatever they wanted in dignity.
Something Iâd like to thoughtfully add is that many of the authors I see railing against piracy are indie (independent) authors (my algorithm is biased, as an indie author myself) who are *not* paid in advance, and who are usually keeping 70% of an ebook sale or getting money from page reads on KU (as abysmal as that pay rate is). The economics and emotions there are a bit different. Many people feel that every book pirated is $2-$3 out of their pocket.
Statistically, I tend to agree that pirates would not generally be paying customers anyway, and piracy is cost of doing business. (Easy for me to say when I havenât had a book go viral on a free books site, I suppose.)
However, some readers muddy the emotional waters by proudly proclaiming that they put indie ARCs (advance review copies) on pirate sites, or by hinting that they pirate indie books whilst making money off of their review content.
These readers will cite publisher corruption as a reason to pirate, while not realizing that 1) thereâs no publisher taking a cut in the case of most indie authors, who are self-published and 2) many indie authors offer their books direct on their websites, or have donation/tip links readers can use to give them money directly regardless of where the reader sourced the book.
You see this mostly in genre fiction, especially romance and romantasy (romance-fantasy), where the bulk of the titles on Amazon are indie authors. From here on out, Iâll be talking about genre fiction, because thatâs my area of knowledge. Itâs also a huge chunk of the book money pie.
Iâve heard anecdotes of fans showing up at conferences and to authorâs faces telling them they pirated the authorâs book, loved it, and want them to sign a free bookmark. If they can pay the entry fee for the conference, they can probably afford to pick up a copy to get signed. Kinda fun if you got an advance, pretty shocking and disappointing if a fan is proud of withholding $5-$10 from an author they supposedly adore.
I donât think readers generally are equipped to navigate the nuances of self vs indie vs trad publishing, especially when you have trad small presses that donât give advances, but have the appearance of trad publishing. Iâve seen people point at the trad trend of expensive $20 ebooks (trying to push print sales by pricing ebooks the same as or higher than print) as justification for pirating indie books that cost $3 each, over $2 of which goes straight to the author, even on Amazon.
If you read romance or romantasy, the vast majority of authors you see in storefronts will be indie. Furthermore, marginalized authors are most likely to be indie, because trad publishing is so gate kept.
Queer and disabled authors are disproportionately likely to be leaning on indie writing income to sustain themselves, as many people canât work full-time or in-person jobs but can write (or write on top of another job), and romance is a very lucrative genre overall. Pirating indie books you can otherwise afford is disproportionately likely to harm disabled and queer authors. (Just because someone is writing MF to make money doesnât mean they arenât queer. Tho there are plenty of privileged straight white women in the mix too.)
Iâm not a fan of moralizing this stuff, but I understand where self-pubbed authors are coming from when frustrated that their work has been downloaded more times than itâs sold, and theyâre relying on that income to support themselves. Big feelings make sense in that case.
I think itâs an important caveat that many authors railing against piracy may actually be indies who are directly affected, and who do not get advances or other protections from a publisher.
For example, when a print on demand (POD) paperback is sold, the author gets their percentage minus the print cost. For a book that costs $5 to print, priced at $10, 70% royalty rate, an author usually gets $2. However, when a book is returned, Amazon refuses to take a loss on the printing cost, so they donât just take $2 back, they take $7 back. Whenever a POD book is returned, the author has to pay the printing fee for a book they canât sell. Printing fees can be much higher than $5, too. (Some authors may be sent their returns to resell later, but Iâm not sure if this is the norm.)
Romance is a massive genre that churns through a ton of money each year, so it represents a huge chunk of both the total publishing market and the indie publishing marketâitâs not a fringe or niche thing that only affects a few people.
A lot of people may not realize that programs like KU (Kindle Unlimited) ban authors from listing their ebooks elsewhere, and self-pubbed authors can lose their whole account (including unpaid royalties) if a book is found on a pirate website and Amazon decides this is a breach of the exclusivity clause. Leaving your books out of KU doesnât fare much betterâthe people calling for Amazon boycotts donât tend to actually spend money at Kobo or Smashwords or other stores, so authors trying to go âwideâ (ie listing in stores other than Amazon) have a much harder time gaining traction. Amazon actively strong-arms self-pubbed authors into de-listing from other stores and being KU exclusive because itâs near impossible for other services to undercut KU. Kobo Plus is trying, but it has a tiny fraction of the user base.
Self-pubbed authors take all the risks on the chin, while also being a haven for marginalized storiesâqueer love, weird fetish erotica, meandering auto-fiction. Those stories take time, and paying self-pubbed authors (thru purchases or patreon or wherever) directly makes it possible for more of those stories to exist, and for more people to see them. The self-pubbed authors I know arenât trying to get Anne Rice rich, they just want to stay housed or take their kids on vacation or justify all the time spent writing when picking up a second job would make more economic sense.
I primarily reinvest what little I make from my books into making my books available to more peopleâmaintaining a newsletter, distributing ARCs, etc. Indie authors also spend a lot of money on character art, paying sensitivity readers what theyâre worth, enabling freelance editors, and more! I get to buy typefaces from people who made them and Iâm a font nerd so thatâs really cool. I get to buy art from artists scrambling to get their lives together after recent layoffs have left them unemployed with no jobs available in their day job field. I couldnât do that if people didnât buy my books.
My only real CTA is to consider donating to a self-pubbed author directly if youâve enjoyed works youâve read for free, and if youâre going to pirate indie books, at least be respectful enough to be subtle about it đ You may disagree with self-pubbed authors feeling sad but theyâre probably still gonna feel pretty fucking sad so please donât rub it in.
Also if you want the most money to go to the author, and they donât sell direct, see if their book is on Smashwords. You get a downloaded file that canât be magicked away from your eReader (as all Amazon purchases are vulnerable to) and they give the biggest cut to authors out of all major storefronts.
Heehee đ i saw you posts Sylusâ Darkborne on ao3 and I am internally screaming and giddy to devour it!! Thatâs gonna be my weekend relaxing activity đsomething to look forward to every time you post. Like how we save the best part when eating a dish, thatâs how it feels like â¤ď¸
Aaaaaah I'm so glad!! 𼚠This makes my heart so happy
âOh boo hoo you shouldnât ask your friends for favors weâre all adultsâ
I just spent three hours pulling up carpet and staples for a friendâs home renovation and we all did nothing but chat and joke and have wonderful conversation the whole time.
Helping somebody move or renovate or giving them a ride to the airport is functionally the same as going mini-golfing or playing a board game: itâs an activity that you do that is made more fun by having good company, and which provides something to talk about when the conversation lulls.
My fellow middle aged pals and I have formed a kind of home improvement club and it rules actually. Hell yes let me help you paint that wall. Want to come help me tile a backsplash? Letâs exchange plants from each others yards and go in on bulk buying hazelnut shrubs together. Letâs go look at salvaged lumber together because only one of us has a big enough car. We can talk about robots and gay stuff and books the whole time. This shit rules.
I am constantly begging my friends to ask for my help with random home projects. Give me a paintbrush and a job and we can talk shit about your coworkers. Itâs bliss.
My latest book just released today! đ It'd mean a lot if you checked it out. 𼚠It's got some premium pet play, and lots of care to depict realistic kink scenarios, because I find realistic kink to be super hot â¤ď¸âđĽ
Because I don't have enough WIPs, I may have also started a HS AU....
YOUR HONOR, I LOVE THEM
Begging, pleading with my muse to let this be the short, sweet little Prom novelette that I'm hoping it'll be. Here's some little nuggets for y'all.
Zayne
Without looking up from his book, Zayne reaches out and opens the drink, taking a long sip. As usual, the sugar seems to wake his brain up. He blinks and looks up at me.
âHey.â
âYouâre scaring the freshmen again,â I tease. The one that I caught fleeing would have been the last to exit after science club, meaning Zayne probably kept him behind to tell him to be more diligent in his studies or something.
âTheir anxious disposition is hardly my fault,â Zayne says cooly.
âYou should try smiling more. Like that snowman plush I got you.â People are always calling Zayne cold, but that cheerful snowman plushâthat he still has tucked in a place of honor in his locker, by the wayâbetter represents how I see him.
âSmiling doesnât get you into med school,â he replies, eyes sliding back down to his book.
Caleb
âYeah. Sure. Though⌠is there anyone youâre hoping will ask you out? I could maybe help drop some hintsâŚâ He leans closer, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye.
I shove him away. âLike Iâd tell you.â
âCâmon, pipsqueak! You know you can tell me anything.â
âYeah, and I know youâll go glare at them until they think better of it. Maybe youâre the reason nobodyâs asking me out.â
âSo there is someoneâŚâ
I give him a flat look. âWould I really be asking to work tickets if there was?â
âTouchĂŠ. Once you set your mind to something, itâs pretty impossible to stop you.â
Caleb ruffles my hair again, but the warmth in his smile keeps me from complaining.
âTheir loss,â he continues. âI think you outta be Prom Queen.â
Sylus
âAre you following me?â he asks.
âMy class is this way.â
âUsually people pretend to go the other way, at least for a second. Ahâbut then you wouldnât be sitting pretty in your seat right as the bell rings. Like I said. Goody two shoes.â
Iâm pretty sure the heat and tension rising in my chest are anger, but I wouldnât quite be willing to put money on that, especially when the incredulous sound that escapes from my chest is more of a laugh.
âIs it so hard to believe Iâm not afraid of you?â
Suddenly, Sylus turns, and the metal of the lockers behind me rings as his hand presses against it, half pinning me below him.
I momentarily forget how to breathe.
He leans lower, voice soft enough for only me to hear. âMaybe you should be.â
Xavier
âThatâs where I put it,â Xavier suddenly says, plucking the envelope from my hand.
I blink at him, confused by such a sudden movement from my normally placid classmate. Still, his tone was calm.
âWhere you put what?â I ask.
âJust something I was working on, but I meant to put it back in my own locker. Mustâve gotten mixed up.â
I laugh. âWouldnât be the first time. Remember when I got all your love letters leading up to Junior Prom last year?â
He rubs his chin. âOh yeah⌠now that you mention it, I may have gotten mixed up which number locker was mine and which one was yoursâŚâ
âAh, so you got all my love letters?â
Xavier blinks. âHm?â
âThat was a joke.â I shake my head. âObviously I didnât get any.â
Xavier offers a comforting smile. âI think itâs just âcause of my dad.â
âThatâs very kind of you to say, and Iâd maybe believe you if your dad was a celebrity or something. The teachers certainly care that heâs the superintendent, but I donât think any of the students do.â
Rafayel
âYouâre on the planning committee?â
âIsh. Mrs. Vee told me that since Iâve skipped all the group projects, I had to do at least one âcollaborativeâ thing this year or sheâd fail me. Me. Failing an art class. Can you believe it?â
âI mean, I can, given that I donât think Iâve ever seen you follow directions from an art teacher even one time.â Rafayel and I met when we took a drawing class together sophomore year, and have kept up since then in random moments like this.
Rafayel scoffs. âHow could I possibly make a masterpiece while taking their instructions? They know good art when they see it. Thatâs why I always get top marks. So, anyway, Iâm making these pieces extra magnificent to stick it to Mrs. Vee.â
I hide a smile behind a bite of macaroni. âYes, Iâm sure sheâll really feel like you got one over on her when the Prom art is the best itâs ever been.â
Rafayal snaps his fingers. âYou get it. Plus, itâs an ocean theme. I was born for this.â
I tilt my head. âWasnât it supposed to be Wild West themed?â
Rafayel shakes his head and flicks a hand dismissively. âItâs ocean-themed, now.â
I'm almost done though. And it's actually been so fun, very excited to start posting this soooooon. Every LI gets a sweet ending and a spicy (but also still sweet) ending đ
In this âhomeâ that Caleb and I share in the ruins of Lingshi, I can start to imagine what life is like in that place he describes at the edge of Deepspace.
Normal people walk out and return together. They are given tasks that help each otherâCaleb says these are called âjobsâ. When they are not doing their tasks, they go places that they want and do things that they want.
He tells me that the jobs give people âcreditsâ, and they can use those credits to obtain supplies. But not only suppliesâalso things âjust becauseâ.
âFun things, like clothes or plushiesâŚâ He sits on the bed next to me.
âWhat is âclothesâ?â
âClothes are⌠What people wear when they donât have mechanical exoskeletons.â
I look down at my metal-wreathed hand. âI do not need clothes?â
âWell, itâs not about what you need. Itâs about what you want.â
âDo I need plushies?â
He makes a warm soundâa laughâthat lights up his eyes. âYeah. You need plushies.â
âWhat is⌠are⌠plushies?â
âWell⌠you remember those birds we saw yesterday?â
âYes.â I nod firmly.
âItâs like⌠a little fake version of a bird that you can hold.â
âA fake⌠bird?â
âYeah, but⌠fake in a cute way. Theyâre soft and you can squish them. They donât need food and wonât run away.â
âWhat is âcuteâ?â
He blinks, and thereâs an expanding of the blood vessels of his face and ears that causes a pinkish hue. âWell⌠Itâs a way something looks that⌠makes you feel like you need to protect it. And⌠itâs very important to you.â
âI need to protect you. Youâre very important to me. You are cute?â
He laughs again and the pink color deepens. âNot as cute as you.â
âI am cute?â
His knuckles rise to brush my cheek. âExtremely.â
âWhen⌠you first saw me, you wanted to protect me. Itâs because⌠Iâm cute?â
His cheeks are the brightest Iâve ever seen them. He looks away and rubs the back of his neck. âUh, yeah, you could say it like that.â
~*~*~
âAre you sure?â he breathes.
I scan his face. âYou look like you think this is wrong. Is it?â
âI⌠I donât knowâŚâ
âWell⌠I want it. Do you want it?â
Caleb is quiet, breathing shallow and quick, eyes locked on mine. When he looks at me like this, I am not a weapon. I am not a shell. I am something divine.
Deep, primal instinct surges within me. It makes my voice husky and low.
I repeat my question. âCaleb, do you want it?â
The word is a desperate, abashed confession. âYesâŚâ
(Disclaimer: trans is at the head for a reason, but all else is random. Getting distracted by what should go where is exactly the petty distraction they want.)
Hmmm, possibly because many people seem to have a very limited understanding of what "the human soul" constitutes, or which isolated parts of the soul can be depicted effectively as meaningful in art? And thus when some people talk about art that "reflects the human soul", other people interpret that as "only the parts of the soul that are about Lofty, Highbrow Concerns Appropriate To Discuss At A Very Pompous, Stuffy Dinner Party Of People Who Fancy Themselves Philosophers". That's bad because it's reductive and simplistic, and the human soul is so much more vast than that.
Meanwhile, I often wonder, "Why can we not accept that things such as Horniness, Dumb Jokes, and Trashbag Tendencies are also parts of the human soul which are worthy of being reflected in art?" But maybe that's what other people DO mean when they say "reflecting the human soul"!
So I think it's just a matter of miscommunication and lack of clarity, really. What standard of "reflecting" does a piece of art need to achieve? What do we mean when we say "meaningful"? What parts of the human soul do the speaker and the interlocutor each respectively value, and how does each of them define "art"? These words are all awfully ambiguous, and thus they're very good for when you want to have a really interesting conversation about nothing.
EDIT: Oh, you're talking about AI. Never mind ur good im with you (But SEE??????? Ambiguous! Miscommunication! Lack of clarity! These words can mean anything!!!! đđđ)
no, I do think that everything that you've raised is still relevant to the discussion about AI. so-called AI slop is reviled by many critics for being filled only with the most lurid, animalistically satisfying, sumptuous images - the lowest of the lowest-brow stuff, filtered through it in uncomprehending algorithm. but if the existence of such images themselves demonstrate the human fixation with simplistic pretty, shiny tastiness, is there anything that really separates AI slop from the human-written glurge it was trained on? are both art? or neither? and why does the distinction matter so much to us? when we speak of what really is " art ", what do we mean?
Itâs a sidebar to the impacts on human creators so I donât usually get into it, but I absolutely would do a gallery of AI artâespecially with the wrong number of fingers, the weird eyes, the objects that morph into other objects. It creates a really interesting narrative of the process of a machine trying to recreate the pattern matching that we take for granted as basic and intuitive to humans, even though we literally each spend years and years training our neurons on the world around us, and our species delays maturity far longer than any other species to accommodate this process. The commentary on our endless demand for âcontentâ is quite interesting too.
I prefer the framing that âartâ need only be âcompellingâ, and these are vague definitions because itâs extremely subjective. I usually see no point in gate keeping whatâs âartâ, but I certainly have my opinions on pieces I find boring vs compelling, and on criticsâ accuracy in identifying what theyâre actually seeing and why they respond to it.
I find art that âhas fingerprintsâ to be most compellingâsometimes literal fingerprints in the case of sculpting, but also loose impressionist works, sketches, things with emotion embedded in them, etc. Photorealism is impressive to be technically, but I donât respond to it nearly as much as a loose, dynamic sketch. How few lines are needed to represent the idea of âembraceâ, âcatâ, âoceanâ etc?
We donât need to decide whether AI generated images are/arenât âartâ to find the idea of someone spitting out prompts and claiming indignantly to be a âCGI artistâ to be boring, uncompelling, exhausting (in my personal opinion). Process is its own kind of art. Thereâs something resonant in the idea that a hand created a line on a piece, and the observers hand can create the same movement, echoed later in time.
Anyway, that got a bit longer than I meantâI have an art critic streak in me. đ¤Ł
Sometimes a piece of media is so close to being great and then bungles it at the end in such a strange way that it leaves my brain... itchy. Idk. Like Wednesday, or the Acolyte. Unlike those two, where the analysis seemed worthwhile, my latest brain itch is courtesy of Spellbound, an obviously mid movie for children that is unlikely to be of much consequence. So it doesn't really seem worth analyzing, but given the ambitions this movie had to tell a "real story", maybe it's fair.
So, uh, if you watched Spellbound and care, you might find this interesting. Otherwise, I just need to get it out of my system.
Spellbound is one of those movies where you learn something at the end that changes the meaning of the rest of the plot.
As you watch it, it starts as a relatively straightforward premise: Princess's parents have been turned into literal monsters. It's been a year. They're trying to hide this from the kingdom and it's getting harder. Oracles from the forest finally arrive and inform the princess that she needs to bring her parents to the forest. Via magic, she does so. Then they go on a journey to cure the parents.
This is where things take a turn. Finally, they find the pool of light, but it turns out the parents can only be cured if they admit that they want a divorce. And, in fact, they were only cursed in the first place because they were fighting. This leaves the princess distraught, and the parents are pulled out of their self-centered thoughts to be reminded that they need to assure their child that they still love her. The family returns to the kingdom, the parents separate, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Now, I want to be clear that I am supportive of divorce, and I think a well-executed divorce can be much less damaging to children overall than parents in a dysfunctional relationship refusing to split up ever "for the kids". It is because I am supportive of this that I don't like how the story handled divorce. Notably, I'm also very wary of media that teaches kids is their responsibility to parent their parents. I'm sure this movie doesn't mean to send that message but... it's there.
So with the full context, the events behind this movie are: King and Queen go to the forest of darkness for Reasons (tm) and bicker so much the darkness turns them into monsters. They wreak havoc in their child's life for a full year. The movie is very clear that the princess feels ignored, like they don't even notice she's there, and so in retrospect this is clearly meant to reflect how a child with divorcing parents feels. She takes it upon herself to manage them, tend to them, and believe in them even when the other adults in her life give up on them and her. She then leads them on a magical journey, and is responsible for quelling their bickering to get them that far. Her reward for all this is to be explicitly told her parents are splitting up anyway, and her emotional stress summons the darkness again, threatening to devour her. Her parents telling her they love her no matter what saves her from the darkness, she accepts that life has to change, and that's pretty much it.
I'm at least very glad that the parents admitting wrongdoing was a key part of the plot, and that's why it's clear that the creators don't intend for "parent your parents" to be the final message, and despite the messy symbolism, I don't think most kids would absorb the problematic conclusion. But still, it leaves the brain itch. Much like Inside Out 2, there's a conflict between the genre and the point the movie's trying to make. In Inside Out, Riley's problems have to be resolved internally to give the Feelings something to do--though ultimately (light spoilers) the source of Riley's problem is an adult (the hockey coach) being too strict and cruel to children. Yes that's a common experience, but the movie ends up indicating that kids should be able to figure that out by themselves, vs. leaning on parents for support or recognizing that adults don't always behave appropriately. The movie seems to uphold the idea that strict coaches are good for kids, which I strongly disagree with.
Connecting that back to Spellbound, there's a fundamental mismatch between the genre and the story the movie's trying to tell. A fantasy adventure gives full agency to the main character, in this case a 15 year old girl. But when the main life-changing event is her parents getting divorced, the message starts to get muddied. The movie misses an opportunity to point out how the advisors have let the princess down as well--these are problems adults should have been attending to. It should have been another adult working tirelessly to cure the king and queen. The behavior of the advisors is actually quite grim through this lens--they gleefully inform the girl that her parents are effectively dead, and that it's her job to lead the kingdom now, with absolutely no comparison for her grief.
If it's a silly movie about a silly adventure, such things matter less--but since the creators made this movie very explicitly about parental separation, these other details bear greater weight in the story.
I think comparing to Brave is very illuminating--that's also a story about a child whose parent is cursed to become a "monster", but it succeeds at showing how the adventure ultimately brings mother and daughter closer together and heals the relationship. Merida is eager for an adventure out of her own genuine desire, and appropriately conflicted about being made responsible for her mother. And critical for the genre, the family bonds are restored, and the family is closer than before.
Spellbound tries to convince you through airy, triumphant music that the family is happier than before, but the image of each parent living on polar opposite sides of the city from each other is... kind of grim. It continues to center the parents' dislike of each other, which is odd for a happily ever after. I think there are many, many lived experiences of co-parenting that provide a much better example of prioritizing your child's true needs. Why can't they simply have separate rooms at the castle?
So the movie is unconvincing in its restoration of relationship, meaning it fails to fulfill its genre. A romantic story where the couple breaks up at the end isn't in the genre of Romance, it's in the genre of Love Story. Likewise, this movie fails to fulfill the genre conventions of a hero's journey/adventure story.
In fact, there's a bit of a sad theme through the whole movie where the parents' behavior upends and dictates the details of the princess's life and... she just kind of has to smile and deal with it. All the way through to the "happily ever after". There's some attention paid to that, with her flippantly saying "I have no dark feelings" (which attract the sentient darkness) and then we see two instances of those dark feelings developing, but I have a big issues with the idea of a child's anguish at their parents' selfish behavior being framed as "dark feelings". The "darkness" metaphor is clumsily used--is it an evil force? Is it a personification of anger/hate? If so, why is it attracted to justified grief and anguish? Ultimately, the darkness coming for the princess spurs the parents to act in her defense, so that's good, but the symbolism is still really muddy.
The ending feels very rushed--because it is. The movie treats this reveal as a twist, and though I saw it coming, that has a lot more to do with my meta-experience with these types of narratives, not the movie successfully foreshadowing its own conclusion. From everything we see of the princess and her memories, the family was totally happy before the monster curse. The movie avoids showing the parents bickering for long, which is probably good for a movie meant for young kids, but it also makes the ending bewildering. All we've seen is mild conflicts that would be easily overcome with, like, some light couples therapy. So the parents end up coming off as incredibly flippant and selfish when they deduce that they have to separate. The move has to tell us the stakes, it can't show the stakes, because the stakes of divorce are distressing for children. Perhaps it could have worked if the movie spent longer developing the conflict, but as it stands, it's just this awkward "twist" at the end.
I can see it providing some comfort to a child whose parents are separated, since a little representation can go a very long way. But at the same time, it feels like it trivializes that experience. Parents separating is complex and layered and distressing to a child, even when it's in their best interest. If a movie wants to explore this topic, I think a premise more like Inside Out is a much better choice. You can then explore the complex layered emotions, and validate them specifically, recognizing how hard it is for the kid before ultimately assuring them.
As it stands, the movie seems to imply that as long as your parents say they still love you, then your problems are solved, and you should go back to smiling as your parents divorce. This is really a shame, since the move is so close to providing a really cathartic example of the anguish of wondering if your parents still love you, but then it trips over itself. The song the princess sings when she learns her parents will be separating, "What about me", paints her as menacing and selfish. The tone is more angry than sad, and the emotion most often depicted as "dark"/bad/evil is anger. Her parents still jump to her aid, but she's depicted as being the one to summon the darkness to herself--the source of her own near-death experience.
The princess has clearly been doing a lot of emotional repression, claiming she doesn't have "dark feelings", and ultimately the movie paints this as... a good thing? basically? It's only when she lets slip and gets angry that the darkness comes for her. The movie doesn't do nearly enough to affirm her anger as justified, nor is it clear in showing how her repression interacts with the darkness. Whenever she's pretending to be fine... she's fine. I think there was a huge missed opportunity to have the "darkness" come for her repressed feelings, and illustrate just how much grief and anger she's hiding. Instead, the advisors are kind of flippant about her being a moody teenager, and... the plot kind of supports that.
I think part of why this movie bothered me so much is that so much of my experience has been pretending everything's fine, and having to parent my parents. So to see a movie depict that and be like "yeah it's mostly fine" is pretty deeply frustrating.
Hopefully most people aren't reading into it so much and just stop at the statement of "even if your parents are separating they love you" and "if your parents are splitting up it's not your fault and it's not your job to get them back together because you actually can't". But it's still really frustrating when a story's own symbolic layers contradict the message it's trying to send. And kids pick up on those layers more than we realize, sometimes.
I really wanted to love Spellbound, because the visuals are really charming. I love Nathan Lane, so hearing him as one of the oracles was a treat. The fluffy gryphons, the antelope and kingdom design, the cultural representation of the main cast, it was all really nice to see. So that definitely made it more disappointing when the story's central message was... very confused.
And to be clear, it's just sort of a low-quality plot in general. There are a lot of false starts, and creative decisions that seem geared towards filling time. The musical numbers are forgettable, and there's a few moments where the writing is weirdly cliche and lazy. And maybe that's all for the best--by being a generally "meh" movie, the more problematic elements of the story won't have as much reach.
But I'm still going to complain about them because I need to get this out of my system. (And, as a writer, analyzing what other media gets right/wrong helps me strengthen my own craft.)
The most striking thing to me is that this is a movie of false starts. Our first scene is of the princess flying through the sky on a fluffy gryphon with her friends, a la How to Train your Dragon. But then she doesn't ride a gryphon again or see her friends again until the very end of the movie.
Then, we have one of the more successful musical numbers of the movie, where the princess explains her current life to us (her parents are literally monsters). I don't personally like the way she talks to the camera, but that's a subjective creative choice. Interestingly, during this song, she talks about she'd rather have her parents be human and nagging or criticizing her instead of being actual monsters. This is a bit of a red flag to me--yes it's relatable and how a lot of kids feel, but it's also the basis of a lot of emotional abuse from parents to their children. The child who feels comforted that their parent is angry with them instead of absent is NOT having a good or healthy childhood. This is also a failed opportunity for foreshadowing--if she had said "well I was mad they were nagging me but now I'm sad they just ignore me" we know her life wasn't perfect. Instead, she sings about "the way things were before" in an idyllic way. The reason I was able to clock that the story was ultimately going to reveal that the parents weren't happy was "we can't go back to the way things were before" is such a common framing with grief/loss stories.
Then the advisors get a whole song about how they're going to fix all their own problems--coronate the princess and send the king and queen "to the country". The resemblance to "oh our old dog now lives on a farm in the country" is played for laughs, and as the advisors insist to the princess that the king and queen aren't "in there" anymore, there's absolutely no recognition given to this means that HER PARENTS ARE DEAD??? Like no compassion just "Hey kid, admit your parents are dead and rule the kingdom now! thanks!"
If the movie did more with the parentification/forced maturation of the princess it would be one thing, but it picks up that thread and then quickly drops it, because the princess refuses to believe her parents are gone (OBVIOUSLY).
Presumably, the point of that musical number is to create new urgency around the fact that the king and queen are monsters. But the story already created all the urgency it needed by showing how destructive they are in the previous song, and how hard it is to hide them.
The coronation detail actually ends up being entirely pointless. Because in basically the next scene, the parents escape anyway, creating the actual urgency that the story needed. You could cut straight from the parents rampaging around to them finally escaping and revealing the truth to the kingdom, and the overall pacing would be much better.
And on the flip side, other plot mechanisms don't really get enough flesh on them, leading to things feeling very mechanical. The princess sent for the Oracle of the Sun and Moon ages ago, they finally show up, then they flee, but they've left behind a magical item. The magical item is what allows the princess to get to the forest with the queen and king once they escape. It's all a lot of back and forth that ends up feeling odd for the genre, because it takes so long for the actual adventure to start. There's a lot of arbitrary decisions that seem to serve certain jokes or musical numbers but don't really come together into a cohesive story.
Speaking of jokes, the movie bungles its own punchlines on more than one occasion. The magical item is voice-activated as a little nod to voice-activated universal remotes replacing many separate remotes, but then the writers so clearly didn't want to actually deal with writing logical prompts for the voice activated part. The princess gives a vague command, it has a comedic result, so she's like "guess I have to be more specific" before giving another equally vague command that works this time. After that, the voice control gets passed to her rodent friend, so that the writers don't have to explain what prompts cause certain things to happen.
Once they reach the dark forest, the oracles of the sun and moon immediately know what the solution needs to be. I guess they've had some time to think on it, but it's odd that they go from so frazzled about it in the throne room to having a whole song ready to go about what needs to be done.
It's also the most generic convention imaginable. "This is the dark forest. Follow the light. Watch out, the darkness will chase you." This is another missed opportunity at foreshadowing--here would be a great place for the oracles to conclude that the curse is from the darkness itself, and to theorize as to how the parents picked it up. But they gloss over that entirely.
The trials that follow are relatively entertaining, and there's some real creativity in the rules of the forest. There's a part where sounds gain physical presence and power, and can be damaging when they're spoken with anger--I actually really like that as a symbol of the harm that rash words can cause, but when the princess's frustrated efforts to calm her parents down are painted as just as "violent", the symbolism really starts to break down.
There's also a sand sea, where the sand becomes quicksand when covered in shadow. It's visually beautiful and emotionally compelling, especially when clouds of darkness roll in, and there's adorable baby gryphons involved. Elements like that visual storytelling are what really made me want for the story to work--and made me frustrated when such a strong visual metaphor was so mis-used.
It's a subjective creative decisions, but I also didn't really care for the way the parents slowly regain the ability to speak. It just doesn't work as well as Brave to show the relationship healing, and the main point of it is that when they parents reach the final light, they're lucid enough to realize they need a divorce. It also means they're very childish and simple in the middle, which does lead to some amusing moments, but ultimately really exacerbates the feeling that the princess is needing to parent her parents.
Likewise, there were just some odd creative choices. Like when the sounds have physical power, the positive is that the parents do realize that the cycle of violent words is their own fault. So, to speak a "comforting" word, the first word they say is... "girl". It gets repeated, and it fits the idea that they're recognizing that their daughter exists again, but... it only works in that meta sense. It's really weird in the actual story. "Sorry" would have worked much better, and reflected their actual emotional state better, not to mention emphasizes early on that it's parents' responsibility to apologize and repair. Instead, the child-like first word prompts the princess to be even more parental towards them.
I've gotten this far without even mentioning that the male advisor body-swaps with the rodent sidekick on the way to the dark forest because it's rather baffling and pointless. It adds a second lucid voice to the adventuring party, but that leads more to uninspired jokes than anything that feels important. He does get a long musical number about finally enjoying being a rodent, but because his character development is so inconsequential to the story, it still doesn't feel necessary. It also serves to quickly bypass the story's third trial (a maze), and given that it only has three, it ends up feeling like it really only has two (the embodied sounds and the quicksand). And in the end, the princess ends up having to parent him as well.
Legit the most amusing part of the bodyswap is that the advisor's human body starts acting like a chipmunk and nobody seems to notice that there's anything wrong with him, with the other advisor making a quip about his incompetence. But that's also kind of dark? Like these adults that were supposed to be taking care of the princess are so self-absorbed nobody notices when one of them starts acting like a LITERAL CHIPMUNK?
At a meta level, the purpose of putting the advisor into the adventuring party is to allow for the kingdom's forces to more effectively pursue the princess, king, and queen. (They don't believe the parents can be saved, so they want to exile them.) On the one hand, they want to save the princess, but on the other hand they effectively want to murder her parents so it's also pretty dark? The advisor ends up leaving a trail for the kingdom to follow, which itself is only necessary because the story can't decide how dangerous the dark forest actually is. All you have to do is give the army some fantasy creature with super-smell powers and the body swap is totally pointless.
From there we launch pretty quickly into the final climax, which has some charming moments but also some inexplicably lazy writing?
When the princess, king and queen finally reach the pool of light that's supposed to fix the king and queen, the princess jumps right in and starts frolicking. The king and queen soon see that the light retracts from them, which is what prompts them to realize that they'll stay monsters until they commit to getting a divorce. (This is an absolutely bizarre sentence, right? it's not just me?)
This leads to one of the more baffling lines in the movie. "Come on in! The light's fine!" Given the target audience is children, I don't think they're going to have the cultural touchpoint of "come on in, the water's fine". (Does gen Z even have that? What is it even from?) And then if you do have the touchpoint, it's not funny or charming, it's just... lazy. Like, what? You couldn't think of anything else to say? Even just don't make it a joke and be very literal--"Hey, why aren't you coming in? It feels nice!"--so that at least it's more comprehensible to children?
Then the parents finally announce that they're separating, the princess is understandably distraught, a giant darkness cloud swirls around her (which is bizarrely lo-fi. In movie where every hair is individually animated, the darkness tornado is just a shiny black squiggle. Another subjective creative decision, but it makes the darkness more laughable than menacing). The parents team up (after being briefly and pointlessly captured by the army) to pour the "light" onto the distraught princess, communicating their love for her and calming her down.
But again, being told once that your parents love you doesn't exactly solve the feelings of parental abandonment. Her parents need to show through action that they're still prioritizing her, which the movie does not give them any time to do. (Yeah, teaming up to pour the light on her kinda counts, but there's also a giant swirling darkness tornado so you can't exactly argue they aren't being driven by panic and guilt.) False promises can be one of the most stressful things for a child to experience (whether their parent are separating or not) that solving the conflict with promises (not actions) feels irresponsible.
Then her parents turn back into humans, build new houses on polar opposite ends of the city, leaving the princess with three homes--her old home, the king's mini castle, and the queen's mini castle. Separating is one thing, but needing to be physically as far apart as possible is played for laughs, but is actually rather dark. It's part of the lingering feeling that the whole situation is being trivialized.
As you'd expect, anti-divorce moralists went off in the movies reviews, and I kind of think that's Spellbound's own fault. Despite the undoubtedly noble intentions behind normalizing the experience of parental separation, the movie can't exactly justify that it hasn't trivialized the experience either.
Spellbound almost understands that it needs to give the princess her childhood back--the final scene of the movie is a big surprise party with all her friends for her 16th birthday, making up for the non-party she had for her 15th as a result of her parents' curse. (This is also not really well-explained, but presumably letting the princess have a party without her parents showing up would have given too much away.)
So, Spellbound is mostly bad/mediocre in mostly mundane, unimportant ways. The songwriting is forgettable, the plot is a clumsy concoction of thin tropes, the humor doesn't entirely land--but that's hardly new for kids' movies. Sure, it's billed as having talent from Shrek and Toy Story, but even so, a "meh" kids movie is not usually worth writing so many words about. (God I don't even want to check the word count of this.)
Normally, the elements that shine would do just that--a cute character, a compelling visual--and you'd leave feeling happy those things were there, and not entirely disappointed.
But I think what has given me the brain itch after Spellbound is that the adults in it behave in really awful ways. The advisors that are supposed to be helping support the princess are actually incredibly selfish and cruel to her, flippantly suggesting she accept her parents are dead, and overly eager to put the entire weight of the kingdom on a fifteen year old's shoulders. It would be one thing if the male advisor had a change of heart after seeing how sad the princess truly is, but he doesn't, really. He does say "wow I guess I was wrong" but in no way does this cause him to step up and be a responsible adult in the situation.
Likewise, because of the constraints of the type of story this is (i.e. not depicting traumatic parental fights on-screen) the parents come off as incredibly selfish too. "Hey, kid, thanks for helping rescue us, but I'm remembering how I cannot tolerate being in your other parent's presence for literally five seconds so we are going to chose now, an incredibly vulnerable and inconvenient time, to announce to you that we're getting a divorce. But hey, we said we loved you! So it's all good now!" Within the movie's own logic, there's no reason the parents couldn't have agreed with each other to get a divorce, returned to their human form, reconciled with their daughter first, then weeks/months later sat down with her to discuss changes that need to happen. And, indeed, in a real-life scenario, that is what the parents should be doing. Those are the actions that communicate love to your child--seeing to their actual stability first, and then confronting the more difficult parts from a secure place.
There's a reason most kid stories have goofy villains and plot points that exist purely for comedy reasons. It's fun, it's entertaining, good wins, and you don't need to analyze it too closely. That's not to say that children can't follow emotionally complex stories--I think that both She Ra and Centaurworld are excellent examples of stories that explore complex themes like grief and loss in ways that are accessible to even young children. Notably, these stories are extremely well considered and precise in their messaging.
There's a reason you have to be careful when mixing goofy kids' movie logic with complex, painful stories--when done poorly, as in Spellbound, the movie ends up making a lot of points it doesn't mean to, and getting in the way of its own (well intentioned) message.
To me, the most disappointing failure of Spellbound is painting the princess's emotional repression and Fine Actually. It would be very easy for a viewer to conclude that everything would have been fine if the princess had just continued to repress her "dark" emotions, and to interpret her "letting the darkness in" as a personal failing that causes her to need more support from her already stressed parents. So while we may forgive her lapse in will power, and we appreciate her parents' helping her, she Should Have Known All Along (tm) that they loved her, and a Good Child (tm) would have kept soldiering on without letting such dark feelings get to her at all. A younger me absolutely would have taken this message away, and that's probably why I reacted so strongly to the story as an adult.
On the one hand, children who already have secure attachments to their parents probably won't internalize any of those negative messages. On the other hand, the movie's clumsy message can serve to reinforce abusive/neglectful family dynamics. "See, they said they loved you once. Things are better off when they're separate. You can't complain anymore--if mom and dad are happier, you need to be happy too."
If it had just stayed surface-level and fluffy, it would have been a fine movie. But it's frustrating to see that in an effort to normalize a common childhood experience, it strays into the territory of normalizing some disturbing and rather dark behavior from adults.
And I think that leads me to my ultimately conclusion with stories that deal with dysfunctional parental/adult dynamics--not only Spellbound, but also stories I've loved, like Turning Red or Inside Out 2.
There's a sense that the writers have unresolved parental/authority trauma. They unwittingly infuse their stories with many elements of their trauma, and see these as "relatable details" when actually they reveal the elements of unhealthy dynamics that linger. For example, there is always a strong drive to show that the parents meant well the whole time, no matter how cruel their behavior. "Your parent might have caused you deep harm, but they still love you, an reconciling with them should be your goal" is the message that comes across. Sometimes, this is true. But more often, when the child is experiencing that much anguish, it's a sign that the parent does not have the capacity to reconcile. The parent's willingness and ability to reconcile is ultimately a fantasy in the story, and may serve to reinforce abusive dynamics with children hanging on waiting for their parents to change.
I'm biased, of course--my own parents have proved over and over again that they do not have the capacity to change. Stories of parental reconciliation kept me working hard and pouring energy into the relationship, ultimately resulting in repeated harm. And this experience is not as uncommon as we'd like to believe. Children, as a developmental rule, desperately want to maintain relationship with their parents as a source of safety.
There's a certain line between "relatable family difficulties" and "signs a relationship cannot be reconciled." I think this line is well illustrated by the mother/son relationship in the movie Wish Dragon (which I love). Though there is surface-level conflict between them, her actions always communicate love (she feeds him even after getting angry at him), and she is the first to seek reconciliation when the conflict has gone too far. She is self-aware enough to confess her own struggles, and make clear to her son that it's not his fault.
Contrast this to Turning Red, where as much as I enjoyed the movie and its normalization of puberty/big emotions, I think there is still a little too much leash given to an emotionally abusive mother and emotionally passive father. It's striking to see what is really a quite abusive dynamic depicted as "just how families are", and you can feel the pain of those unresolved traumas clearly in the writing (at least in my opinion). ((Also to be clear, I am reacting to what is depicted on-screen based on my personal experience and research into attachment theory and trauma, doing my best to take the story at face-value. I really, really don't mean to be commenting on East Asian diaspora family dynamics in general, or implying that they're all abusive.))
Works like Centaurworld and She Ra seem to understand the arc of trauma healing from a much more resolved place--they're able to articulate the complexity of the sympathetic ways that trauma arises, vs the ultimate responsibility adults have for how they act. Notably, these stories focus on peer dynamics, since exploring parental dynamics in this way is (clearly) very fraught.
Every story dances this line of "this specific story about these specific characters" vs "something universal you can take with you into life experiences like this". You can say, "well, Spellbound is about this specific family and this worked for them, and that's all their is to it" but again, the fairy tale genre demands that stories have universal elements to them. There's a strong sense of the story communicating "how things should be".
That's what makes stories with abusive/neglectful parents particularly complex. Culturally, parental reconciliation is The Way Things Should Be. Many, many parents (especially boomers) believe that they are entitled to reconciliation no matter how reprehensible their behavior. Likewise, Spellbound accidentally insists that children being easily reassured that their parents still love them, no matter how neglectful the parents' pattern of actions, is The Way Things Should Be. There are no lasting consequences to the parents' selfishness and awful timing, and emotional repression is shown to be Useful Actually.
Because even just taking the story at face value, when the princess's parents start fighting, if she hadn't believe that she could keep them together and restore their humanity, they would have died. Permanent monster transformation where they don't recognize her equals death for all intents and purposes. So even though her hope to return things to the way they were is ultimately proven to be futile, it's literally the only reason her parents are still alive.
Spellbound seems to know what it wants to say, but it really does not seem to be able to organize its myriad disparate, derivative parts into being able to actually say that thing. And like, I'm not going to claim I've never accidentally implied something I didn't mean in my stories. But I am also one person (I edit my own works) so there is always a point at which I'm going to be so close to it that I miss things. But for a full feature film, with multiple writers, a director, story board artists, a whole publicity team, it's definitely disappointing to see something this clumsy.
And it makes me sad, because I liked the setting so much. Seeing fantasy worlds through a more diverse cultural lens is something that gets me really, really excited. And the oracles of the sun and moon were so gay! It was adorable! So it's always a let-down when the other parts of the story just... don't work.
On a broader level, I think I find it particularly disappointing when neglect and irresponsibility from adults is normalized alongside parentification and forced maturation of children. It's not a fun time. Just let me enjoy the fluffy gryphons without getting cPTSD triggered, please. đ
a lot of behaviors that get attributed to "female socialization" can be so much more easily and accurately understood as a person recognizing the power differential surrounding them and behaving sensibly in response to that.
like. does a woman politely listen to a man monologue at her because of some experience she had when she was twelve that magically cursed her to behave that way forever, or does she do it because the man has the power to hurt her and she knows it?
does a woman do all the dishes in her household because she is less capable of breaking out of a long-ago conditioned response than, like, your average trained dog, or is she doing that because she knows that all the men in the house will blame her if she doesnt and will make life worse for her if she speaks up?
maybe a lot of sexist patterns of behavior that are widely observed in society arent caused by women like, lacking willpower or backbone? maybe it is super fucking weird for supposedly feminist movements to imply this is the case when they talk about female socialization as the end all, be all of predicting human behavior?
isnt it both more useful and more respectful toward women to consider that they are perceiving their present circumstances accurately, and recognize when power is already being wielded against them, and take logical measures to deescalate and protect themselves because it works? is it not fucking clear to everybody that trans women in particular have to do this all the fucking time?
I've been thinking a lot about men talking in raised voices and how that, in almost every single woman I've come across, signifies that there is an immediate increase to the possibility of danger/aggression.
My old man is not capable of having a calm, even toned conversation. If he starts talking about something and there is any kind of personal or perceived linkage to him with the topic, his tone immediately gets louder. My father hasn't hit me, he never acted violently towards me, I do not believe he would lay hands on me.
But I am afab. And it feels like there is an ingrained instinct in women that is part of our DNA where, if a man we are around raises his voice, good bad or indifferent, there is the immediate sense of potential danger. It does not matter who the man is or how he is related to us, a raised male voice signifies to every woman that there is a potential threat and we must be the ones who need to react accordingly.
I'm not sure if this is necessarily related to the original post (my apologies if it isn't, I can delete this post if I've misunderstood), but it definitely made me think of this and I would be interested in seeing if this is the case with others and hearing more from them about it.
this is a post about how trans women are rendered deeply unsafe under patriarchy so i am really curious why, if you generally agree with that sentiment or the broader goal of feminism more effectively centering the concerns of trans women, you would see this as a moment to speculate that fearing 'male voices' is a "biological afab trait"
A person does not have to have been specifically violent towards you for you to understand them in the broader context of the power they have over you. DNA has nothing to do with it.
Compare to the âinvisible gun effectâ where when a boss comes into the room, everyone straightens up. That boss might think heâs everyoneâs friend, and maybe he is a nice boss and has never been inappropriate, but at the end of the day he can fire anyone for any reason and everybody knows it.
Men raising their voice is a similar thing. Plenty of AMAB people also go into fight/flight/freeze when powerful people raise their voices. Even if that guy sees himself as a friendly guy, even if heâs never been violent to anyone, marginalized people know that in any conflict, the person more favored by the patriarchy is likely to come out on top.
Blessings and apologies to The Peacemakers, but I do not have a set of scripts you can use to get your friends to change their entire person
A real masterclass from Captain Awkward on the art of navigating competing agendas within a passive-aggressive friendgroup without losing your head. Every word of this needs to be read and internalized by so many people, but here are the highlights:
People often call me diplomatic, and itâs true, but not in the way they mean. Diplomacy isnât just about being good at de-escalation, peace-keeping, compromise, or finding palatable ways to deliver hard truths. Diplomacy is about understanding power and leveraging what power you have in negotiations, which sometimes includes strategically escalating conflicts or letting them play out. You most likely donât have the power to fix your friendsâ hearts or make your group chats all run smooth, and I donât have any magic scripts up my sleeve that will guarantee that you can, but it doesnât mean you have no power in the situation. Itâs there, just, I suspect that itâs not where youâre looking for it.
Thereâs this persistent idea that the *only* right way to respond to shitty interpersonal behavior is to empathize deeply with the shitty person, figure out precisely why they are being like that, and use your own compassion to create a teachable moment that fosters greater self-awareness that results in eventual behavioral change from the inside out, and anything less constitutes a failure of *your* patience & empathy.
Thatâs where the notion that saying any version of âHey, can you knock it off right now with the housewarming party planning?â would be ârudeâ and âunhelpfulâ comes from. If somebodyâs being Rude, youâre supposed to Polite at them so hard that they Learn An Important Lesson, Eventually.
A couple problems with that:
What good does this do for the targets of shitty behavior?
What happens if the shitty people never learn?
What happens if they learn, but itâs exactly the wrong lesson? âI can be as shitty as I want, and people must be polite to me at all costs, and if they fail to tolerate my bad behavior with perfect grace, it makes them even worse than me and everything becomes actually their fault? Sweet!â
What do you win if you successfully erase your anger and annoyance from all of your closest friendships and present only the most accommodating, peace-making parts of yourself?
The answer to #1 is ânothing muchâ and the answer to #2-#4 about what happens and what you âwinâ is More Shitty Behavior, All The Time, Basically Forever because youâve robbed yourself of the tools for actually addressing it, tools like, âhealthy expressions of authentic emotionsâ and âmeaningful consequences.â
My pitch to you is basically, what if we changed the order of operations for dealing with someone whose behavior is out of pocket? What if we administered consequences first, and let the epiphanies sort themselves out later? If people get rapid negative feedback every time they do or say something shitty, maybe theyâll learn to think and feel differently over time, but that slow internal work is none of your business. If people wanna be assholes, theyâll need to do it somewhere else. If they want to hang out with you, there are limits on acceptable behavior.
I know thereâs an existing post somewhere, but hereâs the list of OBGYNs in the USA and other countries that will perform tubal ligation (aka female sterilization) without arguing with you
Gynecologists who will perform a tubal sterilization
Pinkest Nekomata @pinkest-nekomata - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
