(no subject)
1. Cute Boy #4 gave me his number. I'm...having fun talking to him. He's dorky. I think I'll stick to texting for now, though. I hate talking on the phone. Unless it's my mom.
2. I liked Falling Skies so far. Yes there's a Dead Wife backstory, but also a Dead Husband, and I thought they did a good job (so far) of avoiding manpain. Everyone's too busy surviving to feel sorry for themselves (again, so far). Now, can we please avoid a triangle with the two blonds and the son and instead have a positive female relationship? And see them kicking ass a lot?
3. Cover Affairs - better than the first ep of the season, not as good as last week purely because of the lack of Oded Fehr. While I wish we didn't have so much emphasis on Annie's love life all the time, I did enjoy her flirting with the doc and her sisters reaction. It was sweet and lighthearted. I wouldn't have thought anything from it if we didn't already have Ben and Eyal. Also, Joan floating through the hallways, past the window like River Song. And it was nice to see Annie jump out of a plane again. And CG shirtless is always OK with me.
4. You know, I have to admit that I am hypocritical about certain things. For instance, I'm reading this urban fantasy series right now. It has a lot of the problems most uf has, but it does have a few nice things going for it (fully acknowledging the problematic tropes, not putting the main character in the damsel role that often, or at least having her save herself most of the time, etc...) Anyway, at the end of one of the books the main character is raped. Obviously I'm less than thrilled, but they handled it better than some fiction I've read recently. It was not sensationalized at all, she killed her attacker, and while the men in her life were really pissed (her werewolf boyfriend ripped the dead body to pieces) it's mainly focused on her dealing with the aftermath in her own head. Not that it's perfect, but clearly the author was making a real effort to treat this as something real, and not just a plot point (2 books later and it's still affecting her...but not so much that it's her whole story either).
OK, so some set up required to understand - this is a world with vampires, werewolves, and fae. The guy who rapes her makes her drink from a fae cup - basically fairy juice. And it makes her do what he tells her to. Including, when he tells her she loves him and wants him. So she kills him, but feels like she's betrayed her boyfriend because she "wanted it" (she's still fucked up on fairy juice for awhile and not thinking logically, and lets face it, people who aren't drugged with magic fairy juice end up thinking shit like that irl, so...)
Anyway, the scene I was trying to set up - right after the pack picks her up and takes her home, she shifts into a coyote (she's a shape-shifter) because she doesn't want to have to talk to anyone. Adam, the alpha, her sort of boyfriend, notices that she keeps flinching from him and thinks she's scared of him so he goes to leave. Ben, another werewolf who has been left to watch her, calls him back, and proceeds to explain how she feels guilty, how she's not even sure it counts as rape, etc. At first, I was pissed. So we have a guy mansplaining about rape while the woman who was raped is literally hiding under the bed (as a coyote).
And then towards the end of his explaining it's revealed that he was abused as a child. And he's explaining it for Adam because Mercy is too fucked up on fairy juice still to talk to anyone, and he knows first hand what it's like to be made to take part in your own abuse and then to feel that guilt afterwards, to feel responsible for it.
It never occurred to me that that's where she was going with it. Not once. I'm so used to rape and sexual assault being something that happens to women that it never entered my head that a male character would be able to speak on it with authority. And yes, rape and sexual assault happens far more often to women. There is a damn good reason we associate those things with women. But men can be raped too. And male rape victims are not any less important than female rape victims (er...that was a terrible way of phrasing it, but you know what I mean).
It wasn't about a man explaining to another man about a uniquely female experience. It was a survivor explaining to a victim's loved one what she was going through so that he could be there for her the way she needed him to be. Abuse may be more commonly inflicted on women, but it shouldn't be my default assumption that any man trying to speak about abuse or rape is doing something he's not qualified to do. That attitude isn't going to help anything.
And as I said, for the most part the aftermath has been dealt with from her POV. There are definitely issues with it, but overall, this want not the series ender (for me) that I thought it was going to be.
2. I liked Falling Skies so far. Yes there's a Dead Wife backstory, but also a Dead Husband, and I thought they did a good job (so far) of avoiding manpain. Everyone's too busy surviving to feel sorry for themselves (again, so far). Now, can we please avoid a triangle with the two blonds and the son and instead have a positive female relationship? And see them kicking ass a lot?
3. Cover Affairs - better than the first ep of the season, not as good as last week purely because of the lack of Oded Fehr. While I wish we didn't have so much emphasis on Annie's love life all the time, I did enjoy her flirting with the doc and her sisters reaction. It was sweet and lighthearted. I wouldn't have thought anything from it if we didn't already have Ben and Eyal. Also, Joan floating through the hallways, past the window like River Song. And it was nice to see Annie jump out of a plane again. And CG shirtless is always OK with me.
4. You know, I have to admit that I am hypocritical about certain things. For instance, I'm reading this urban fantasy series right now. It has a lot of the problems most uf has, but it does have a few nice things going for it (fully acknowledging the problematic tropes, not putting the main character in the damsel role that often, or at least having her save herself most of the time, etc...) Anyway, at the end of one of the books the main character is raped. Obviously I'm less than thrilled, but they handled it better than some fiction I've read recently. It was not sensationalized at all, she killed her attacker, and while the men in her life were really pissed (her werewolf boyfriend ripped the dead body to pieces) it's mainly focused on her dealing with the aftermath in her own head. Not that it's perfect, but clearly the author was making a real effort to treat this as something real, and not just a plot point (2 books later and it's still affecting her...but not so much that it's her whole story either).
OK, so some set up required to understand - this is a world with vampires, werewolves, and fae. The guy who rapes her makes her drink from a fae cup - basically fairy juice. And it makes her do what he tells her to. Including, when he tells her she loves him and wants him. So she kills him, but feels like she's betrayed her boyfriend because she "wanted it" (she's still fucked up on fairy juice for awhile and not thinking logically, and lets face it, people who aren't drugged with magic fairy juice end up thinking shit like that irl, so...)
Anyway, the scene I was trying to set up - right after the pack picks her up and takes her home, she shifts into a coyote (she's a shape-shifter) because she doesn't want to have to talk to anyone. Adam, the alpha, her sort of boyfriend, notices that she keeps flinching from him and thinks she's scared of him so he goes to leave. Ben, another werewolf who has been left to watch her, calls him back, and proceeds to explain how she feels guilty, how she's not even sure it counts as rape, etc. At first, I was pissed. So we have a guy mansplaining about rape while the woman who was raped is literally hiding under the bed (as a coyote).
And then towards the end of his explaining it's revealed that he was abused as a child. And he's explaining it for Adam because Mercy is too fucked up on fairy juice still to talk to anyone, and he knows first hand what it's like to be made to take part in your own abuse and then to feel that guilt afterwards, to feel responsible for it.
It never occurred to me that that's where she was going with it. Not once. I'm so used to rape and sexual assault being something that happens to women that it never entered my head that a male character would be able to speak on it with authority. And yes, rape and sexual assault happens far more often to women. There is a damn good reason we associate those things with women. But men can be raped too. And male rape victims are not any less important than female rape victims (er...that was a terrible way of phrasing it, but you know what I mean).
It wasn't about a man explaining to another man about a uniquely female experience. It was a survivor explaining to a victim's loved one what she was going through so that he could be there for her the way she needed him to be. Abuse may be more commonly inflicted on women, but it shouldn't be my default assumption that any man trying to speak about abuse or rape is doing something he's not qualified to do. That attitude isn't going to help anything.
And as I said, for the most part the aftermath has been dealt with from her POV. There are definitely issues with it, but overall, this want not the series ender (for me) that I thought it was going to be.