#beastess

[gorgonwoman]

something i’ve noticed lately which is truly disheartening is that any retellings of medusa in which it is a direct classical retelling (i.e. she was raped and then transformed into a gorgon) always end with her murder. i have genuinely not once read a retelling that deals with those two themes and allows her to survive. i’ve read a review today of the natalie haynes medusa novel which comes out this month i believe and medusa apparently dies in her book too. what does that mean? what does it mean that authors cannot conceive of an ugly traumatized angry powerful woman who LIVES? women have only been allowed to be beasts if they A: are the villains or B: die tragically. is there a single female monster who isn’t sexy and isn’t palatable and isn’t male-catered, who survives? 

makes me want to vomit. who are we writing these stories for? a category of woman whose lesson to be learned is that she shouldn’t be alive? 

[gorgonwoman]

i think one of the biggest problems i’ve noticed while editing is that my first draft is way too corny. or, to be kinder to myself, too earnest. i think i use the word tenderness way too much. eleven times, which in a 90k text seems not so bad but it’s one of those words imo that needs to be used sparingly so it packs more punch. editing this is going to be difficult 

i’m so torn between developing the romance between andromeda & medusa and trying to maintain a horror/rageful element; so medusa has to somehow walk this line between being tender (with andromeda) and ALSO being a monstrous predator who really enjoys killing dudes 

which is HARD! finding the right spot in the duality is hard. she monologues too much! she has earnest conversations! she kills men with her teeth and then talks about her feelings! is this even a problem ! 

[gorgonwoman]

“In this way, writing avenging fiction feels like protecting oneself with a quiver of crooked arrows, or a satchel of boomerangs. Grievance gathers in my body, and I write toward it, even as my own words flay me. I keep on writing toward what hurts or angers me, trying to get at something I can’t seem to express in any other way.

These days, between floods and fires and fiery resistance to equity, I feel less accommodating. The world seems newly glaring, or maybe the change is in me. I smile, but I’m exhausted. I smile but I am heartsick too. As this thread of fictional vengeance reveals itself to me, I see too how these stories of mine aren’t only aimed toward retribution. Each smoldering account contains an attentiveness to injury—an urge toward vindication. It’s audacious, I know, but I believe that a story can be a seed. I hope that if you read my vengeful fiction, it grows into something in you more useful than bitter satisfaction. I do want to make you angry, but with me, so that we might be heartbroken together, and in service of something useful. That in our shared brokenness, we might recognize one another, and begin the real work—in ourselves, between us, and on this ailing earth—a practice of care and repair.”

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, on Finding Empathy in Writing and Putting Anger to Good Use

[gorgonwoman]

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson on Finding Empathy in Writing and Putting Anger to Good Use

[gorgonwoman]

whenever I write about a monstrous woman it's never about the desire to do violence. it's never about wanting to be powerful for power's sake. my monstrous women are monsters because that is what the world made of them, they are powerful not because they wish to do harm but because they wish to prevent it

[gorgonwoman]

thoughts on language as something against rage -- mostly until now it's been for rage, a hymn to it in a sense, a kind of prayer in its name but maybe it wasn't rage that I bent under, it was the small voice in my heart that spoke to me about the light, and the soft things. something about healing. something golden and gentle that was not rage but came after the rage. I did not deserve that (the scream) and then: I did not deserve that (the whisper).

[gorgonwoman]

I'm nearly to the point where I'm - not desperate, I think, but hungry enough for someone to read what I've been working on that I'm considering making a writeblr sideblog. because another sideblog is exactly what I need

[gorgonwoman]

having a lot of thoughts about monstrosity as physical manifestations of internal trauma, esp with medusa: trauma lives in the body but so too does power

monstrosity as wound, monstrosity as grief