(no subject)

"When Shelley’s corpse washed ashore, a friend identified it by a copy of Keats’s 1820 volume in the coat pocket, which he knew Shelley had taken with him. Then, after cremation in which Shelley’s heart, hardened by calcium, did not burn, this same friend snatched it from the embers and presented it to Mary Shelley, who kept it thereafter in her desk, wrapped in a copy of ‘Adonais.”

Tim Power’s The Stress of Her Regard does such a good job with these weirdos. The best thing about Tim Powers is when you realize just how many of the weird supernatural details of his books are actual historical facts.

(no subject)

Burroughs 101 | This American Life

Actually a British documentary from last year.  You can download the episode for free for a couple more weeks.

Salient points:

Will Self continues to be an asshole about people who use drugs.  And continues to blame Burroughs for singlehandedly making heroin “cool”.

A different commentator blames Burroughs for ruining 1970s punk by inspiring kids to do heroin.

Burroughs wrote some really amazing descriptions of an opiate rush, which I was totally not prepared to be listening to while driving.

In response to theivorytowercrumbles

https://theivorytowercrumbles.tumblr.com/post/35380914795/the-well-of-loneliness

“If you are personally uncomfortable with your own body …”

So, yes, internalized misogyny is a real problem.

But it is not something I can fight every fucking minute.

When I was pregnant and spent 8 months sick as a dog, when I had a miscarriage and spiraled into postpartum depression, when I got a write-up from my boss for not spending enough time at work because of juggling child and health care issues, the worst, stupidest, tropeyest, most melodramatic m/m slash was a refuge for me.  Just something dumb and pleasurable and unreal. And it made all the actual gross misogyny in my life a little easier to bear. And not because I hate my body or think pussy is gross.

And I do write explicit femslash. Maybe because I’m a bisexual in a monogamous relationship with a man, and I need to indulge those fantasies? I have no idea, and I don’t really care. I am deeply suspicious of simplistic explanations of female desire. Whether they’re coming from evolutionary psychologists, or people concerned about my internalized misogyny and false consciousness.

And actually my femslash has actually been pretty well received, considering I’m a total unknown in the fandom.

In response to Three Patch Podcast #33

http://three-patch.com/2015/02/01/episode-33/#more-1620

There were so many good and important points in the femslash discussion, but still I ended up feeling like I was going to cry. There are many kinds of criticism that I am getting better at accepting gracefully. But the idea that my pleasures are wrong, and (especially in queer women’s circles) not woman-oriented enough, hits so close to my heart. To so many fights with my ex-girlfriend about the books I read and the music I listened to. To public comment on my dyed hair, my plucked eyebrows, my shaved legs, the length of my skirt, what I like in bed, whom I’m attracted to.

Can I just say I’ll try.  Rec something you love and I will check it out. And I will try to put all my baggage aside, and not feel like I’ve failed if I don’t like it.

Don’t ask me to justify what I find so appealing about M/M slash, and I won’t pull an insulting and insufficient excuse out of my ass.  Because just knowing my desires and fetishes are socially constructed (and informed by all the worst biases and stereotypes of our culture) doesn’t mean I can dictate them. I can interrogate them, but I cannot bear to do it every minute. My world of acceptable pleasures is already so circumscribed by responsibility (to myself, to my children, to my husband, to my parents).