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Woah.
This started out as development consulting internship AU, but I wasn't even halfway through the first page when it was clear that none of these people were Merlin characters. So I changed their names! To Angie, Kate, and James. Um.
So. Angie starts her internship in Manila and reconnects with an old friend. My original fiction joints are way rusty, and for some reason, imagining my characters as OOC Merlin characters is... helping?
It’s a traditional remedy, Kate tells her. Hot water, coconut oil, and rock salt in a bucket and you soak your legs in it. Not only do the itchiness and swelling of the bug bites go down, but you get beautiful moisturized legs as well. It’s a win-win situation.
“I don’t know,” says Angie. “Maybe I’ll stick with the Off.”
“Nonsense, that stuff has got toxic chemicals in it. This stuff’s completely traditional, and organic, and things.”
“Off can’t be that toxic if you’re supposed to put it on your skin.”
Kate convinces Angie to sit on the chair and dip her damn legs in the bucket already, and she kneels and gets out the washcloth and starts washing Angie’s legs. This is the point Angie starts going Oh Kate you don’t have to and Kate says Shut up Angie, it’s traditional. Like being traditional is some sort of panacea for the ills of this world. But then you have to look at Kate now, dressed up in last generation’s bohemian clothes living this generation’s bohemian lifestyle. She recenters herself on no center, redefining herself in terms of routes and not roots, going from one party season to the next like a bird escaping the oncoming winter. These days she survives on frequent flyer miles and the Penningtons’ patient charity, for they will always love her more than words can say, the way all people love Kate who have laughed with her and drank with her and sworn to keep her secrets. Kate loves easily, her heart unsullied by the compromises of growing up, and she moves through the world in a haze of pop philosophy and designer drugs, searching for her peace although she already has it, amused by the world she has adamantly left behind, and a clear product of the privilege she claims to have rejected long ago.
Angie thinks Kate fetishizes tradition because she claims to have none, and so collects them the way one collects rare stamps or beanie babies. She doesn’t really know what to say when Kate starts talking like that. She wishes she can be like James who would tell Kate Oh shut your gob, but Angie is not like that – she doesn’t tell anyone to shut their gobs. She’d just nod and ask questions and wait for the other person to say something intelligent, surely they’ll say something intelligent soon enough. Kate opens her arms at the window overlooking the constellations of the Makati business district, and says, “It’s so good to be away from it all!” But away from what? Just look at all the static lines of traffic, the manufacturing plants that belch pillars of smoke so black that when she saw them Angie thought there was a fire somewhere. The crush of humanity crowding the streets, hanging off the backs of jeepneys and building illegal tenements just beyond the high walls of upper class neighborhoods. Everything is here. What is Kate away from?
“Tell me that doesn’t feel good,” Kate says. The water is near-scalding and the heat on Angie’s bug bites are sort of like scratching them herself, a mix of pleasure and pain. Angie goes Mmmm and Ohhh, lets her head roll to one side and then the other, watching the light glisten off her legs, off Kate’s fingers.
“It doesn’t itch so much anymore, does it?” Kate says triumphantly.
“You’re essentially making soup with my foot,” Angie says, peering into the bucket. “Oil, salt, and hot water. Throw in some carrots and onions, dash of pepper.”
“You’ve got your immunization shots for malaria and dengue, right?” asks Kate.
“What?”
“Good.”
+
OH ANGIE, Kate had typed in her email. oh angie that’s wonderful! i cant wait for you to get here, we’ll go to the beach and have you ever been parasailing, and oh all the clubs and bars along manila bay!
And Angie had thought, Typical.
That is Kate. Either all caps-lock or all lowercase, and never properly punctuated.
I can’t do all that, Angie wrote back. I actually have to do stuff for my internship.
you’ll find some time, Kate wrote back. i’ll bully james into giving you more vacation days.
You don’t need to do that. I actually want to do this stuff, you know.
Kate replied, oh Angie : ).
And when Angie, bleary and disgruntled as all fuck, spilled out of the airplane and found herself without the energy to bum rush the immigration desks like the rest of the passengers, she saw Kate in the distance holding a sign above her head. She stood out from the other sign-holders by dint of her vigorous cheer. Angie squinted, but couldn’t read Kate’s sign from this distance, and she walked faster.
“Angela!” Kate squeaked.
Her sign said my one true love.
“Oh Kate,” Angie smiled.
“Come here,” said Kate, arms wide.
Angie sank into her embrace and said, “It’s so good to see you.” Then Kate kissed her cheek, and kissed her cheek again, and then she kissed Angie’s mouth, and Angie froze. Was this a promise from the past, or a shadow of it? Was it just Kate being Kate, who loved to shock and defy? Angie didn’t know anymore. The last time she saw Kate in person was a handful of years ago in New York, one afternoon of coffee and shared pastries, and one walk arm in arm through Central Park before the world whisked Kate away again, off to Boston, or was it Philly?
Angie kissed her back.
“So this is what you look like when you’re not pixelated on my screen,” Kate murmured, and Angie laughed.
Kate took her hand and led her to the special assistance immigration desk, the one reserved for people who are sickly, famous, or have diplomatic immunity. Kate was of the third persuasion, because Stuart Pennington works at ADB, operationalizing dam construction in central China and road networks in Papua New Guinea and getting airport passes for Kate when she plays on his suspicions that he hasn’t been the best provider for his children all these years.
+
Okay, so Kate was right: her bug bites feel better. And her legs are smooth and soft.
“You get used to it,” says Kate, pouring the bucket out. “To the bugs. It was so strange for me, going to New York to visit you and not having to worry about bug bites. Here, it’s so everyday. It’s like the heat. When Nancy came to visit me, she whined nonstop for a week about the sun and the mosquitoes. She was never in a room that wasn’t air-conditioned.”
The plan had been that, once Kate finishes making soup out of Angie’s feet, they would go to the mall and buy Angie a blazer. Her internship starts tomorrow and she has no blazer. Don’t worry, Kate had told her on the way home from the airport. We’ll get you one here, you’ve got some time before your thing starts, right? Angie said, Yes a little. Then they spent all that time watching movies during the day and hitting up Greenbelt at night. When her father asks her over Skype what she’s been up to, Angie says something like Oh just reading, because she feels guilty about being such a bum, but then Kate appears over her shoulder and says Hello Tom! at her father, and her father grins and says Hello Kate! and when Kate is gone, he just raises his eyebrow at Angie in that knowing away.
So yeah, Angie has no blazer.
“Well, we can’t go out now,” Kate says, gesturing at the window. “Look at that rain.”
“Is it the rainy season?” Angie asks.
“No, that starts next month. I think. I dunno. Actually, I never can tell. It’s always raining here.” Kate shrugs. “The hard rains don’t last long these days. Give it a couple of minutes, it’ll clear up.”
“Fuck it,” says Angie. “Let’s just go tomorrow. My meeting with James isn’t until one.”
“You sure?”
“Kate, not everyone takes four hours to buy one article of clothing.”
“I do not,” she huffs, and looks out the window. “Look at the traffic. It’s going to take me hours to get home in this weather.”
“So,” says Angie, “come here.”
“Hmm?”
Angie holds out her hand. “You don’t have to go home just yet.”
+
Kate stays the rest of the evening, then spends the night, and when Angie wakes up there is already the smell of eggs and sausages from the kitchen. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes and shuffles out of the bedroom, cringing at the sunlight. The blinds are still drawn in her room, but in the living room Kate has pulled back all the curtains, and set the table besides.
“There’s my working girl,” Kate coos, setting down the food on the table.
“I don’t think that means what you think it means,” Angie mumbles.
“Have a sausage.”
Breakfast is a quiet affair. After remembering how unresponsive Angie is in the mornings, Kate plays some bossa nova in the background and sings along when her mouth isn’t full of food. She takes a pack of Marb Reds from her purse and is halfway to offering one to Angie before she realizes what’s doing and laughs.
“Sorry sorry,” Kate says. “Force of habit. I keep on forgetting you’ve quit.”
Angie shrugs, eats her eggs.
The smell of cigarette smoke permeates the living room and Angie should be annoyed, but she is distracted by the familiar flick of Kate’s wrist as she plays with her zippo, and the way her eyes go all distant as she exhales the smoke through her nose. It brings back the past, this moment. Memories of quiet breakfasts with the both of them half-dressed, passing a cigarette back and forth. Kate has this habit: when she exhales the first inhale of smoke, she tips back her head and closes her eyes and lets it out slowly, and the smoke looks like the soul leaving the body.
“You don’t miss it?” Kate asks.
“What? The smoking?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, sometimes,” says Angie. “But I told myself I wouldn’t anymore, you know? So I don’t.”
“You’ve never had a cigarette since?”
“Well, I’ve had a couple here and there. But just a couple. Here and there.”
Kate nods. “I know what you mean.”
+
“He likes to talk,” Kate had told her. “He’s a good guy, but he likes to talk. Let him talk, but ask him questions to keep him on point.”
“—but what do they expect?” James is saying. “You’ve got some ass at USAID saying hey, you know who needs roads? Northern Afghanistan. Well fuck! You know why they don’t have roads up there? ‘Cos they kept getting blown up. You know why? ‘Cos there’s a war! So now they’ve shunted Owen off to Nepal, where the Chief of Party is riding his ass because Owen has a patchy success rate, due to his unforgivable inability to build infrastructure when they’re dropping bombs around his ears, goddamn.”
“So,” says Angie, “when is the conference in Cebu?”
“Um.” James checks the calendar hanging on his cubicle. “The week of June 20.”
Angie hadn’t needed the blazer at all. No one in ISC Consulting wears a blazer, and not all of them wear button-down shirts. ISC Consulting, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tetra Tech, takes up half of the sixteenth floor, and it still manages to feel both small and distant. It must be the cubicles, she thinks. She’s never worked in a cubicle before. James explains that there’s usually more people but a bunch of them are on mission, except for Kieran, who broke his leg doing some fact-finding in the Solomon Islands.
“Oh gosh,” says Angie.
“It’s all right, he’s an idiot,” James shrugs. “He’s supposed to help out with the Cebu conference too, but things being what they are, him being him, I think you may end up bearing the brunt of his responsibilities. They’re nothing too overwhelming, don’t worry.”
ISC Consulting is nothing like ADB, whose lobby can pass for a four star hotel’s. Angie went once accompanying Kate to get a couple of bottles of wine from the commissary. ADB has a fountain in the front and a squash court somewhere in the east wing, and everyone there wears blazers and most wear ties. In ISC Consulting, James wears a polo shirt and khakis. She’ll leave the blazer at home tomorrow, she thinks. Or wear it with a shirt that doesn’t have a collar.
James introduces her around the office – this is Ramon, this is Angie, this is Isabelle, this is Angie, this is Suzette – and shows her the kitchen. The snacks are communal, but she has to bring her own mug. Here, she can use this mug for today. Oh, and every day at lunchtime, a couple of ladies roll through and sell meals in plastic bags for thirty-five pesos. Do you like Filipino food, Angie?
“I like adobo,” Angie says slowly.
“Adobo is delicious,” James agrees. “I usually bring dinner leftovers myself.”
So Angie sits at her desk in the first cubicle of her life and starts looking for imperfections in the briefing documents that she can make smart suggestions about. Needs a map, she scribbles in her notebook. Needs to mention climate change. She looks at the bare cubicle walls around her and she thinks Needs more color.
how is it going :D, Kate texts her.
Good, Angie replies.
wanna see a movie tonight?, Kate asks.
I’ll call you later, Angie texts back.
The office is so quiet, she has to put on her earphones and listen to music while she works. You’re finally doing something with yourself, Angie, she thinks to herself. You’re doing something with yourself for the world, and how does it feel? Calm down, it’s just your first day.
Later she’s going to the toilet and she sees James on the tail end of a conference call out of the corner of her eye. He’s wearing his headset, smiling affably – “Yes, Mr. Li, thank you, bye bye.” – and as soon as the call ends, the smile vanishes like it was never there. He bends over his laptop and starts typing away, his face as intense as Kate when she’s on her borders don’t matter soapbox again, and his eyes just as blue.
+
Kate picks Angie up from work, and in the car she says, “How is it having James for a boss?”
“He’s not really my boss,” says Angie. “He says he’s more like my own personal human FAQ.”
“What a weirdo.”
“He’s not so bad. You keep talking shit about your brother, and okay, he's like... I don't know, but he’s not so bad.”
“He’s not really my brother,” Kate replies absently. “Duplicity or Terminator?”
“What?”
“The movie.”
“Oh, god. I don’t know, Kate, I’m kind of tired.”
There’s a pause before Kate nods. “You wanna stay in and order pizza?”
“Mmm. Heaven.”
“No mushrooms though, okay?”
“I won’t miss them,” Angie smiles, and lifts her hand to tuck a lock of Kate’s hair behind her ear. “My place or yours?”
“Yours,” says Kate. “It’s cleaner.”
“Not at the number you’re doing in there, it’s not. It won’t be for long.”
“Well. That’s for Future Us to worry about.”
“Future Us is fucked.”
“Good thing we’re not them.”
Then Kate turns on the radio. She tunes in to the oldies station and sings along, and after a while, Angie starts singing along too.
So. Angie starts her internship in Manila and reconnects with an old friend. My original fiction joints are way rusty, and for some reason, imagining my characters as OOC Merlin characters is... helping?
It’s a traditional remedy, Kate tells her. Hot water, coconut oil, and rock salt in a bucket and you soak your legs in it. Not only do the itchiness and swelling of the bug bites go down, but you get beautiful moisturized legs as well. It’s a win-win situation.
“I don’t know,” says Angie. “Maybe I’ll stick with the Off.”
“Nonsense, that stuff has got toxic chemicals in it. This stuff’s completely traditional, and organic, and things.”
“Off can’t be that toxic if you’re supposed to put it on your skin.”
Kate convinces Angie to sit on the chair and dip her damn legs in the bucket already, and she kneels and gets out the washcloth and starts washing Angie’s legs. This is the point Angie starts going Oh Kate you don’t have to and Kate says Shut up Angie, it’s traditional. Like being traditional is some sort of panacea for the ills of this world. But then you have to look at Kate now, dressed up in last generation’s bohemian clothes living this generation’s bohemian lifestyle. She recenters herself on no center, redefining herself in terms of routes and not roots, going from one party season to the next like a bird escaping the oncoming winter. These days she survives on frequent flyer miles and the Penningtons’ patient charity, for they will always love her more than words can say, the way all people love Kate who have laughed with her and drank with her and sworn to keep her secrets. Kate loves easily, her heart unsullied by the compromises of growing up, and she moves through the world in a haze of pop philosophy and designer drugs, searching for her peace although she already has it, amused by the world she has adamantly left behind, and a clear product of the privilege she claims to have rejected long ago.
Angie thinks Kate fetishizes tradition because she claims to have none, and so collects them the way one collects rare stamps or beanie babies. She doesn’t really know what to say when Kate starts talking like that. She wishes she can be like James who would tell Kate Oh shut your gob, but Angie is not like that – she doesn’t tell anyone to shut their gobs. She’d just nod and ask questions and wait for the other person to say something intelligent, surely they’ll say something intelligent soon enough. Kate opens her arms at the window overlooking the constellations of the Makati business district, and says, “It’s so good to be away from it all!” But away from what? Just look at all the static lines of traffic, the manufacturing plants that belch pillars of smoke so black that when she saw them Angie thought there was a fire somewhere. The crush of humanity crowding the streets, hanging off the backs of jeepneys and building illegal tenements just beyond the high walls of upper class neighborhoods. Everything is here. What is Kate away from?
“Tell me that doesn’t feel good,” Kate says. The water is near-scalding and the heat on Angie’s bug bites are sort of like scratching them herself, a mix of pleasure and pain. Angie goes Mmmm and Ohhh, lets her head roll to one side and then the other, watching the light glisten off her legs, off Kate’s fingers.
“It doesn’t itch so much anymore, does it?” Kate says triumphantly.
“You’re essentially making soup with my foot,” Angie says, peering into the bucket. “Oil, salt, and hot water. Throw in some carrots and onions, dash of pepper.”
“You’ve got your immunization shots for malaria and dengue, right?” asks Kate.
“What?”
“Good.”
+
OH ANGIE, Kate had typed in her email. oh angie that’s wonderful! i cant wait for you to get here, we’ll go to the beach and have you ever been parasailing, and oh all the clubs and bars along manila bay!
And Angie had thought, Typical.
That is Kate. Either all caps-lock or all lowercase, and never properly punctuated.
I can’t do all that, Angie wrote back. I actually have to do stuff for my internship.
you’ll find some time, Kate wrote back. i’ll bully james into giving you more vacation days.
You don’t need to do that. I actually want to do this stuff, you know.
Kate replied, oh Angie : ).
And when Angie, bleary and disgruntled as all fuck, spilled out of the airplane and found herself without the energy to bum rush the immigration desks like the rest of the passengers, she saw Kate in the distance holding a sign above her head. She stood out from the other sign-holders by dint of her vigorous cheer. Angie squinted, but couldn’t read Kate’s sign from this distance, and she walked faster.
“Angela!” Kate squeaked.
Her sign said my one true love.
“Oh Kate,” Angie smiled.
“Come here,” said Kate, arms wide.
Angie sank into her embrace and said, “It’s so good to see you.” Then Kate kissed her cheek, and kissed her cheek again, and then she kissed Angie’s mouth, and Angie froze. Was this a promise from the past, or a shadow of it? Was it just Kate being Kate, who loved to shock and defy? Angie didn’t know anymore. The last time she saw Kate in person was a handful of years ago in New York, one afternoon of coffee and shared pastries, and one walk arm in arm through Central Park before the world whisked Kate away again, off to Boston, or was it Philly?
Angie kissed her back.
“So this is what you look like when you’re not pixelated on my screen,” Kate murmured, and Angie laughed.
Kate took her hand and led her to the special assistance immigration desk, the one reserved for people who are sickly, famous, or have diplomatic immunity. Kate was of the third persuasion, because Stuart Pennington works at ADB, operationalizing dam construction in central China and road networks in Papua New Guinea and getting airport passes for Kate when she plays on his suspicions that he hasn’t been the best provider for his children all these years.
+
Okay, so Kate was right: her bug bites feel better. And her legs are smooth and soft.
“You get used to it,” says Kate, pouring the bucket out. “To the bugs. It was so strange for me, going to New York to visit you and not having to worry about bug bites. Here, it’s so everyday. It’s like the heat. When Nancy came to visit me, she whined nonstop for a week about the sun and the mosquitoes. She was never in a room that wasn’t air-conditioned.”
The plan had been that, once Kate finishes making soup out of Angie’s feet, they would go to the mall and buy Angie a blazer. Her internship starts tomorrow and she has no blazer. Don’t worry, Kate had told her on the way home from the airport. We’ll get you one here, you’ve got some time before your thing starts, right? Angie said, Yes a little. Then they spent all that time watching movies during the day and hitting up Greenbelt at night. When her father asks her over Skype what she’s been up to, Angie says something like Oh just reading, because she feels guilty about being such a bum, but then Kate appears over her shoulder and says Hello Tom! at her father, and her father grins and says Hello Kate! and when Kate is gone, he just raises his eyebrow at Angie in that knowing away.
So yeah, Angie has no blazer.
“Well, we can’t go out now,” Kate says, gesturing at the window. “Look at that rain.”
“Is it the rainy season?” Angie asks.
“No, that starts next month. I think. I dunno. Actually, I never can tell. It’s always raining here.” Kate shrugs. “The hard rains don’t last long these days. Give it a couple of minutes, it’ll clear up.”
“Fuck it,” says Angie. “Let’s just go tomorrow. My meeting with James isn’t until one.”
“You sure?”
“Kate, not everyone takes four hours to buy one article of clothing.”
“I do not,” she huffs, and looks out the window. “Look at the traffic. It’s going to take me hours to get home in this weather.”
“So,” says Angie, “come here.”
“Hmm?”
Angie holds out her hand. “You don’t have to go home just yet.”
+
Kate stays the rest of the evening, then spends the night, and when Angie wakes up there is already the smell of eggs and sausages from the kitchen. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes and shuffles out of the bedroom, cringing at the sunlight. The blinds are still drawn in her room, but in the living room Kate has pulled back all the curtains, and set the table besides.
“There’s my working girl,” Kate coos, setting down the food on the table.
“I don’t think that means what you think it means,” Angie mumbles.
“Have a sausage.”
Breakfast is a quiet affair. After remembering how unresponsive Angie is in the mornings, Kate plays some bossa nova in the background and sings along when her mouth isn’t full of food. She takes a pack of Marb Reds from her purse and is halfway to offering one to Angie before she realizes what’s doing and laughs.
“Sorry sorry,” Kate says. “Force of habit. I keep on forgetting you’ve quit.”
Angie shrugs, eats her eggs.
The smell of cigarette smoke permeates the living room and Angie should be annoyed, but she is distracted by the familiar flick of Kate’s wrist as she plays with her zippo, and the way her eyes go all distant as she exhales the smoke through her nose. It brings back the past, this moment. Memories of quiet breakfasts with the both of them half-dressed, passing a cigarette back and forth. Kate has this habit: when she exhales the first inhale of smoke, she tips back her head and closes her eyes and lets it out slowly, and the smoke looks like the soul leaving the body.
“You don’t miss it?” Kate asks.
“What? The smoking?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, sometimes,” says Angie. “But I told myself I wouldn’t anymore, you know? So I don’t.”
“You’ve never had a cigarette since?”
“Well, I’ve had a couple here and there. But just a couple. Here and there.”
Kate nods. “I know what you mean.”
+
“He likes to talk,” Kate had told her. “He’s a good guy, but he likes to talk. Let him talk, but ask him questions to keep him on point.”
“—but what do they expect?” James is saying. “You’ve got some ass at USAID saying hey, you know who needs roads? Northern Afghanistan. Well fuck! You know why they don’t have roads up there? ‘Cos they kept getting blown up. You know why? ‘Cos there’s a war! So now they’ve shunted Owen off to Nepal, where the Chief of Party is riding his ass because Owen has a patchy success rate, due to his unforgivable inability to build infrastructure when they’re dropping bombs around his ears, goddamn.”
“So,” says Angie, “when is the conference in Cebu?”
“Um.” James checks the calendar hanging on his cubicle. “The week of June 20.”
Angie hadn’t needed the blazer at all. No one in ISC Consulting wears a blazer, and not all of them wear button-down shirts. ISC Consulting, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tetra Tech, takes up half of the sixteenth floor, and it still manages to feel both small and distant. It must be the cubicles, she thinks. She’s never worked in a cubicle before. James explains that there’s usually more people but a bunch of them are on mission, except for Kieran, who broke his leg doing some fact-finding in the Solomon Islands.
“Oh gosh,” says Angie.
“It’s all right, he’s an idiot,” James shrugs. “He’s supposed to help out with the Cebu conference too, but things being what they are, him being him, I think you may end up bearing the brunt of his responsibilities. They’re nothing too overwhelming, don’t worry.”
ISC Consulting is nothing like ADB, whose lobby can pass for a four star hotel’s. Angie went once accompanying Kate to get a couple of bottles of wine from the commissary. ADB has a fountain in the front and a squash court somewhere in the east wing, and everyone there wears blazers and most wear ties. In ISC Consulting, James wears a polo shirt and khakis. She’ll leave the blazer at home tomorrow, she thinks. Or wear it with a shirt that doesn’t have a collar.
James introduces her around the office – this is Ramon, this is Angie, this is Isabelle, this is Angie, this is Suzette – and shows her the kitchen. The snacks are communal, but she has to bring her own mug. Here, she can use this mug for today. Oh, and every day at lunchtime, a couple of ladies roll through and sell meals in plastic bags for thirty-five pesos. Do you like Filipino food, Angie?
“I like adobo,” Angie says slowly.
“Adobo is delicious,” James agrees. “I usually bring dinner leftovers myself.”
So Angie sits at her desk in the first cubicle of her life and starts looking for imperfections in the briefing documents that she can make smart suggestions about. Needs a map, she scribbles in her notebook. Needs to mention climate change. She looks at the bare cubicle walls around her and she thinks Needs more color.
how is it going :D, Kate texts her.
Good, Angie replies.
wanna see a movie tonight?, Kate asks.
I’ll call you later, Angie texts back.
The office is so quiet, she has to put on her earphones and listen to music while she works. You’re finally doing something with yourself, Angie, she thinks to herself. You’re doing something with yourself for the world, and how does it feel? Calm down, it’s just your first day.
Later she’s going to the toilet and she sees James on the tail end of a conference call out of the corner of her eye. He’s wearing his headset, smiling affably – “Yes, Mr. Li, thank you, bye bye.” – and as soon as the call ends, the smile vanishes like it was never there. He bends over his laptop and starts typing away, his face as intense as Kate when she’s on her borders don’t matter soapbox again, and his eyes just as blue.
+
Kate picks Angie up from work, and in the car she says, “How is it having James for a boss?”
“He’s not really my boss,” says Angie. “He says he’s more like my own personal human FAQ.”
“What a weirdo.”
“He’s not so bad. You keep talking shit about your brother, and okay, he's like... I don't know, but he’s not so bad.”
“He’s not really my brother,” Kate replies absently. “Duplicity or Terminator?”
“What?”
“The movie.”
“Oh, god. I don’t know, Kate, I’m kind of tired.”
There’s a pause before Kate nods. “You wanna stay in and order pizza?”
“Mmm. Heaven.”
“No mushrooms though, okay?”
“I won’t miss them,” Angie smiles, and lifts her hand to tuck a lock of Kate’s hair behind her ear. “My place or yours?”
“Yours,” says Kate. “It’s cleaner.”
“Not at the number you’re doing in there, it’s not. It won’t be for long.”
“Well. That’s for Future Us to worry about.”
“Future Us is fucked.”
“Good thing we’re not them.”
Then Kate turns on the radio. She tunes in to the oldies station and sings along, and after a while, Angie starts singing along too.
no subject
I especially adored the first description of Katie, this one -
She recenters herself on no center, redefining herself in terms of routes and not roots, going from one party season to the next like a bird escaping the oncoming winter. These days she survives on frequent flyer miles and the Penningtons’ patient charity, for they will always love her more than words can say, the way all people love Kate who have laughed with her and drank with her and sworn to keep her secrets. Kate loves easily, her heart unsullied by the compromises of growing up, and she moves through the world in a haze of pop philosophy and designer drugs, searching for her peace although she already has it, amused by the world she has adamantly left behind, and a clear product of the privilege she claims to have rejected long ago.
Yeah, that was a long quote, but the whole section was just gorgeous and brilliant. I love how Angie is all work-oriented and finds Kate unsettling but at the same time absolutely lovable.
I think you're right - I can hear the echoes of the Merlin-people in here, but these aren't them. These characters are someone else, and I love them. I'm curious as to what James is like - do you think we'll get more of him?
no subject
We'll probably get more of James. His tendency to run at the mouth might come in as a handy excuse to soapbox hahaha. We'll probably get more of Kieran. And maybe a Luke XD. Writing this, I remember the old trends that used to appear in my pre-fanfic stories, of my tendency to write a duo in which the narrator is very staid and calm and the partner is a wild child.
Hey, are you doing
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Oh! The wild/calm duo! Haha, it's pretty common I think - I still tend towards it myself, though now I've also got couples like Sebastian/Cecilia, in which Celia's a bit of a free spirit but not at all wild, she just enjoys doing her own thing, and Sebastian's just weird. Also rebellious but not? I dunno.
... yeah, that'd be me rambling away. XD
Ooh, I wanted to do that when I saw it, but I don't have enough qualifying fic in any of the qualifying fandoms! *scowly scowl* I only qualify in Narnia, which isn't one of the main fandoms. D: I'm seriously considering picking one of those big fandoms that I know a bit and writing 7 100-word drabbles in it so I can qualify, because it sounds like fun. But I would have to do it like now and I don't want to do sloppy work. So we'll see. If I drop 7 Firefly drabbles on y'all tomorrow, you'll know why. XD I assume you are, then?
... wow I ramble too much. Sorry! <333
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Yup! I've only ever written one remix fic ages ago for an HP-specific remix, but it was awful awful and I don't even know where the hell it is now. Lost on the internets somewhere. I love the idea of the remix though. If this multifandom remix weren't happening, I might've done somethung KUHRAYZAY and organized a Merlin remix redux?! Or pestered someone else to do it for me.
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Like
My favorite part, because I'm a wee bit fucked in the head:
“—but what do they expect?” James is saying. “You’ve got some ass at USAID saying hey, you know who needs roads? Northern Afghanistan. Well fuck! You know why they don’t have roads up there? ‘Cos they kept getting blown up. You know why? ‘Cos there’s a war! So now they’ve shunted Owen off to Nepal, where the Chief of Party is riding his ass because Owen has a patchy success rate, due to his unforgivable inability to build infrastructure when they’re dropping bombs around his ears, goddamn.”
As for the more serious question: dude, does the bug bite soup thing really work? *eyes FIVE MILLION mosquito bites on feet warily*
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They get their own characters soon enough, I've found.
Yes! I was like, "Wow, Morgana would never do something like this... but I guess this character would, whoever she is."
It doesn't work as mosquito repellent, but it does help reduce the swelling and redness, and it helps to soothe the itchiness. The water has to be super-hot, as in I couldn't let my feet just soak in it at first and my mom was like "it's REALLY not that hot" and I'm like OUCH OUCH OUCH. And don't rub hard with the washcloth at all, just gentle strokings.
Thank you, Miss Bed! <3
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Ten reasons why I am afraid to actually start writing the colonial fantasy novel...the fact it's colonialism, times ten.
...I shall have to find a bucket and some coconut oil. (Why do the mosquitos go for my feet? There cannot be that much blood in feet!)
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I know what you mean though. I kept on the peripheries of RaceFail09, 'cos how can I not be, it was all over the flist anyway. I've become much more conscious of my representation of characters since then though, and I constantly second-guess myself, like I'm gonna be first against the wall if, I dunno, my female character isn't FABULOUS enough or something. I feel like especially in Merlin and Narnia, there is a lot of pressure to write really strong female characters who are self-possessed and well-centered. I don't mean Mary Sues, I mean ROLE MODELS basically. Which I sometimes find alienating, because of how these 'strong women' are constructed, and the way certain behavior and mannerisms are coded. The way feminism is articulated in the USA is very divisive and competitive, I find. In that way, it was refreshing to write Kate, who is a major ditz, and Angie, who puts up with people being stupid at her. The flawlessness of female characters exhausts me.
I am trying to rewrite LWW with eastern mythology. Instead of a war, it's the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Instead of kids going off to the country to be safe, the parents have to leave the country to find jobs and leave the kids with a distant uncle. So far, too much economic commentary and not enough magic.
Rock salt! Ready yourself for soft soft leeeeeeggssss.
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Oooh! That sounds really interesting. And probably more interesting than my "I am going to rewrite the War On Terror in SPACE!" novel.
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BAHAHAHAHA. I know what you mean, except for me it's not with culture and race, it's with gender. It's like what I said below to
I hope so! I have to do more research though, 'cos I want my cosmology/mythology and world-building to not be so slapdash as Lewis's.
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I just...I don't know, I read a lot of personal narratives where people are always on about how they've always felt different or what-all because they're one race or one religion or something, and then I start feeling like my experience was atypical and should have been a major issue; it's just that it wasn't, and so I have trouble understanding that either it should have been or that it is for everyone else. And I grew up in what everyone talks about is classic "be discriminated against" setting: Japanese-American non-Christian female in rural white farming community. And none of it was a problem, except for the occasional use as an example or pigeonhole in various bits of American history (read: Japanese interment camps), just because I was usually the odd one out.
And I'm terrified about writing about colonialism because for some reason I keep reading angry meta from militant Australians. *wince*
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I think one of the best things about the USA is how ppl are encouraged to be unapologetically themselves, no matter what that means. Could, I dunno, could that be it? It just seems to me that the consequences of rocking the boat are not as dire, what with all this emphasis on freedom of speech and rights to privacy (eg. that whole thing with warrants, even!).
Ahahaha, militant how? 'Cos it's not militant if they just want fair representation and they're jarring 'cos there hasn't been a history of a movement desiring such.
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I don't know, one of my pet peeves. *shrug*
I think it basically boiled down to a sudden surge of meta from Australians being all, "We are the only ones who know about colonialism!" (Oh, God, I'm totally going to get beat up by all the Australians on my flist.) Um. I don't know, it was a lot of meta that made me really uncomfortable and read, to me, like Americans or British -- the colonizers -- shouldn't write about anything remotely related to colonialism. (And I think this was related to RaceFail09 too, but --) And it wasn't just Australians, it just...seemed to be. And now I'm afraid to touch my original novel for fear of screwing it up because I don't have any personal history of the subject; I don't even have a family history that stretches back to the time when the U.S. was just a collection of colonies.
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I think in these discussions, 'race' and 'cultural identity' tend to be shorthand for upbringing and political empowerment. Also, I think it's pretty true how the US tends to focus on the hypen. African-American, Japanese-American. (In a French essay, I once referred to... the African-French, and my professor was like, "No, they're les noirs.") I do tend to find that if you're part of a minority group, your background tends to be thrown in your face more, or you tend to throw it out to others more, it's not something you take for granted. Like, how ppl say you don't find true in Englishmen in England anymore. Or how my mother used to say why can't I be more like my two friends, who are more "Indonesian" than I am even though they've lived in the US. But they're more Indonesian than me because they've lived in the US.
Hmm, I see. I wonder if it's that even colonization in fantasy is one of those things that's difficult to divorce from the real world, even in speculative fiction form. It's about the things left unsaid maybe? Like maybe, you're going out into the wilderness and you stake some land and have adventures around the frontier, but maybe the implicit thing is, who are you taking the land from? You form camaraderie with your fellow colonists over taming the land, but why does the land need taming in the first place? It's like, there's always someone else there first whose histories you're slowly pushing out with your outward expansion, whether you mean to or not.
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I am just...I mean, with the colonial fantasy story, one of the things that's freaking me out the most is that the locals, the natives, the people that are there first, are in the story literally nonhumans -- centaurs, fauns, satyrs, etc -- and the colonizers are humans. And I am terrified that someone is going to jump on me for that even though I don't mean to imply anything at all, I just think it would be cool!
What's funny is that the same thing is Just Fine in sci-fi.
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I like that you don't feel the need to explain everything about the setting/setup -- that stuff just comes up when it comes up, that you don't present anything as distant/strange. Does that make sense? (I'm so sorry -- I didn't really sleep last night.) I like the uncertainties about suitable clothing! God, clothing, such a pain.
It is interesting that you write in the comments about feeling pressure over female characters in fic, by the way, because I find it a little awkward that a lot of people don't seem wiling to dig real flaws into Gwen in particular, but also Morgana unless they do the insane-doomed-female thing -- I can't decide whether it's just less interest in them or the whole Strong Female Character fallacy. (I also have this whole thing about writing Gwen and race but I can never find the emotional energy to start properly setting it down; and I worry because most of my terms and ways of thinking about these things come from "read it somewhere 5-10 years ago" type stuff, and the online discussions I've caught bits and scraps of have -- different reference points? I don't know, I make no sense.)
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ALLsome, come to think of it.Yeah, Morgana and Gwen are written as such noble characters with noble flaws. Which is fun, sure - lovely escapism and all that - but it doesn't leave room for awkwardness that isn't cute, bitchiness that is entirely selfish, or ego games that aren't smart or graceful, etc. Actually that extends to more than just the women. I do enjoy the classical awesomeness of Merlin characters, but I just get weary of it after a while. I can't relate to characters who are the Best Person Ever 100% of the time. What is this Strong Female Character fallacy?
Race- & culture-wise, I wonder if it's possible for me to appropriate my own heritage. Like, how I was saying up there how I want to retell "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" using Southeast Asian folk tales and a cosmology that is less Good! vs. Evil! and more cycles of destruction and rebirth. But I'm still like, "God, I hope I don't misrepresent this culture," even if the culture is 'mine'. Then again, CS Lewis totally cut fast and loose with Western mythology in Narnia; he didn't give a damn as long as he got his Jesus lion in. But no one is wagging fingers at Lewis going, "Your bowdlerized portrayal of Maenads OFFENDS MY HERITAGE. This time it's PERSONAL."
I guess I'm wondering if there is a line to be drawn even when I'm working with my own myths. Quote unquote 'my own'. Indonesian myths riff off Hindu myths pretty heavily anyway. When it comes down to it, Lewis was a shitty world-builder anyway. Still, I grew up being exposed more to Zeus and Aphrodite than to Nyi Roro Kidul and Hanuman the monkey god, so I still feel a little like an interloper.
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Strong Female Characters -- I think the whole idea has become something of a red herring. It's useful in certain contexts, if you're criticising something particularly awful where all women need constant rescuing or something, but we've ended up with the misconception that You Should Write Women as Strong; and then intellectual laziness means that people conflate "strong" and "flawless". And through all of this there is no real interest in women's lives, or in digging into their characters. Hm, going back to Merlin, I got really annoyed with 1x10 because, metatextually, it's giving me women with swords and saying "look, we gave the women swords, they are Strong Female Characters, aren't you happy?" But their only real role in the plot is to comment on the BOYZ and, uh, fail to light a fire. Honestly, I would rather they took the swords away and gave me character arcs.
The misrepresentation anxiety -- sometimes, the awful way it looks to me is that just about whatever someone from outside Westernerland does, they are already and automatically a sort of ambassador, presenting one culture for the consumption of another, more powerful one. And whatever they do, someone will say, "that's not my experience!" (Wow, I am...cheery. I think sort of what I mean is, YOU CANNOT WIN, DON'T GIVE UP!)
Hm. You know, any big comparison would be deeply, deeply dodgy, but -- I think I would go completely insane trying to write much about being ill.
OH, hey, by the way, I hit upon the best way to explain the colonised mindset to A NORMAL PERSON today. It went something like, "So, you know how now we think of American muffins as 'muffins' and muffins as 'English muffins'? And how that's sort of fucked up? It's a bit like that, times a thousand." I must remember this because I think it worked and I am usually horrifyingly terrible at explaining anything to anyone.
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Oh man. Fascinating, I hadn't noticed that. And you can extend this to Lancelot too. I mean, granted he was only there for one episode, so it's not like there was time that much time to flesh him out, but yeah, the way we got St. Gwen and St. Lance, it's almost like an updated version of the 'noble savage' thing. Or maybe some sort of white-person guilt where they have to make sure the minority characters are superawesome, trying to make-up for centuries of two-dimensional representation... using more two-dimensional representation. Or like, we have to have more minority role models! Like we don't have any. Well, we do, but a lot of them have been erased from history and cultural consciousness. I dunno, so many THINGS. Minority characters are loaded with political baggage (the automatic ambassador thing that you mention) in a way white characters aren't.
the misconception that You Should Write Women as Strong; and then intellectual laziness means that people conflate "strong" and "flawless". And through all of this there is no real interest in women's lives, or in digging into their characters.
THIS. Gah, it's like that thing where a strong woman has to be a man. Where for a women to be ~*empowered*~, she has to be aggressive UGH UGH UGH. If she is not aggressive, then she is some passive doormat, like this dichotomy is actually true. PARADIGM SHIFT NOW PLS. And if a woman actually wants to stay home and take care of the kids and the house, then her desires and opinions don't count because she is obviously unenlightened and doesn't know any better aarrrrgh.
More important than giving us a character that says "you, too, can be this awesome!" (i.e. "like us!"), there should be a character that says, "you are not alone." Like, "you're not weird for thinking the way you think or reacting the way you do, no matter what the TV shows say. You are not lower on a sliding scale; you're just different and that's fine." 'Cos I think the colonized mindset is the feeling that you're always on the periphery of things. All the good things come from somewhere else, and you are not at the true center. Your center, where you are, where you're from, is just some crappy backwater, so YOU are just some crappy backwater rat. The colonized mentality is to accept people's dismissal of your own experience, to assume that you're going to be shrugged off anyway no matter what the legal system says, no matter this talk of human rights and equitable development, that's just some fancy talk that doesn't apply to you, the rat.
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The other thing about Gwen, of course, is -- I occasionally catch people commenting on how Angel Coulby looks much prettier IRL/in interviews than as Gwen. Because she's insanely gorgeous but basically made up and dressed to look sweet and nonsexual in the series. Whilst Katie McGrath is done to be HELLO, BREASTS. One: if Morgana really is going crazy/evil/damned, hello, Madonna/whore complex, you are not obvious in any way. Two: you do have to wonder why it is that Gwen's not allowed to be at least a little sexy.
You also have to wonder how Angel Coulby herself must feel about it -- and what with the constant misspeaking plus sainthood, Gwen is in general something of an overinnocent -- and particularly, isn't Angel the oldest of the actors playing the OT4? I have this idea that the boys are about my age, then Katie a little older, and Angel a little older again. I end up feeling rather uncomfortable for her.
Strong women: hrm, you know, I wouldn't phrase it as having to "be a man", because I'm wary of the gender essentialism, and it's not really the way men are written -- male characters tend to be allowed so many more flaws. But, yeah, this conflation of empowerment with aggression is just a slap in the face. The worst thing is that it doesn't always even bring real empowerment or agency within the plot. I mean, yeah, sure, women should get to do the literal kicking of arse a fair bit, but that's not a short cut out of writing them as people who are important and who do things that are important to the story. Giving Morgana a sword or Female Character X a gun or Female Character Y super arse-kicking powers will not buy you a get out of feminism free card!
I think the colonized mindset is the feeling that you're always on the periphery of things.
All of what you say here... I mean, not that I'm in that great a position to know (being quite possibly several shades paler than Colin Morgan) but god, yes, it's all so fucked up.
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Female Character Y super arse-kicking powers will not buy you a get out of feminism free card!
A+
I have a niggling suspicion that my role model would make a boring TV/movie protagonist.
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Character-wise, I wonder -- um, I wonder if it's not more that fic-writers gravitate towards texts with more and more writable male characters, perhaps because those stories feel more significant or because most ficced texts tend to be SFF which, as a very general rule, is particularly poor with women. I don't think it's particularly about being textually broken -- fic writers can and do gift characters with background trauma when they want to play Fix The Woobie, don't they? And there do exist texts that do women well -- we could seek them out, if we really wanted.
Ahaha, see me play the expert on stuff I know nothing about, I really haven't been in fandom long enough to be pretending to know much about this stuff. But I am always highly suspicious of my own motivations, so I don't see why I shouldn't be of other people's.
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So, it seems to me like minority groups who want to tell stories are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the White Male writes about them, they are being appropriated and wrongfully represented. But then that's why they become automatic ambassadors, which is a heavy mantle. The White Male throws down his pen and says, "Okay, how us how it's done then! Go on!" and you find yourself compelled to make the disclaimer, "Um, I speak only for myself!"
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How fiction is marketed -- I really need to look into whether this is studied much. I think it's my current obsession. Last month I read a novel called The Scholar, by Courttia Newland -- loads of problems with it, actually, but pretty compelling -- but the point is that this is a novel about black kids living on an East End resettlement estate in West London, and when it came out, apparently the publisher had no idea how to market it because there aren't really novels like that. And getting people to read stuff is all about fitting it into a preexisting category (I swear there's some ultradepressing misanthropic semi-truism, 'people want to read the same story again and again'). I also read The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, which was being sold as, horrifically paraphrasing, "An Indian novel that's not all saffron and bright colours and Mother Ganga," and, yeah, Indian Novel has now become a kind of genre with specific conventions and expectations that I bet publishers specifically select stuff to fulfill, to the extent that you can even market a book as a reaction to those conventions, but you might have a harder time with one that just ignored them. Or you'd just coopt it into them, I suppose.
Uh. I guess it's more than just one rock and one hard place.
Serious question: how interested are you in playing the ambassador -- in translating yourself? Not asking you to lay out all the arguments or anything, god knows that's a labour and a half and another whole or two. Just curiosity as to your answer.
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Does Ireland still have the fraught relationship with England from the colonial history?
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There's this awful thing where it's not your responsibility to teach people, versus not being able to trust them to get stuff right on their own, I suppose. (That's what I was talking about in re: illness, above -- I realise that comment must have looked really, really weird. Though I'm trying to work out whether I'm not doing this Thing that I do where I assume people know stuff I've never bothered to tell them -- uh, maybe I'll email you some time.)
Ireland -- well, Northern Ireland there's obviously still a lot of Stuff, it's still not that long since the Good Friday Agreement. But culturally, in general, there's just not the same level of issues as with -- the obvious example is India. I think it's telling that even when the IRA were bombing their way to the negotiating table, a lot of Americans were funding and romanticising them. Of course I would say and have said that middle-class south-eastern English is "unmarked" and every other kind of British is "marked" -- and I know well enough to wince whenever someone says "English" for British, or when Americans do the "Wales, in England" thing, or whatever -- but it's on a lower scale by several levels of magnitude.
With Eastern Europeans there's more Stuff, though less history, what with greater cultural and economic difference and current easy movement within the EU, people coming over to work and so on -- say "Polish" and part of my brain now hears "plumber".
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There's this awful thing where it's not your responsibility to teach people, versus not being able to trust them to get stuff right on their own
It's like that. "Performing their identities" is a really great phrase, I'll have to remember that one.
There was a debacle some years back with an Italian dictionary that translated 'Filipino' as 'housemaid'. And my mother told me about how one time in Manila, she saw a child say to his mother "let's go to that restaurant" and the mother said "no, that restaurant is for Chinese people", which is shorthand for "that restaurant is too expensive". I don't know how to present uncomfortable truths. A lot of the private sector in SE Asia is owned by people of Chinese descent and they're usually the ones who are rich, and so can send their kids to school abroad, so that when my Malay Indonesian friend went to uni in England, there were people who would doubt that she was Indonesian because she didn't look Chinese. I don't know, maybe more than that, the people who know about Indonesia tend to be in Indonesia, or the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a stronger Indonesian Studies program than Indonesia does (money's part of it, of course). It doesn't seem to me like Indonesian communities have a strong presence outside of Indonesia or the Netherlands.
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I finally got around to reading this (open in tab since you posted it but stupid job applications were between me and it) and it is so amazing.
You are such a fantastic writer.
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I think you and I have different definitions of being rusty at original stuff. This is BRILLIANT. I love them all! The girls are, like--so *normal*, you know? They are the people you would meet at a coffee shop, if you happened to walk into the right one. I love that they're friends and maybe more? I don't know! James is hilarious. And the setting is so concrete that I loooove it.
Does the oil and rock salt and stuff work? Will it make my bug bites go away?
(Also, there are such interesting threads here, I am reading them and marveling! It's weird how much Gwen is unsexualized, that isn't even a word, but you know what I mean. While Morgana is like I AM SEXY AND I FLIRT. I don't know if that's...they're both problematic sexually within the myth because Guinevere has Lancelot and Morgan le Fay is evil and stuff, but it's weird how it plays out within the show. Like, Gwen is so...Super Nice And Considerate Maidservant. I'm not sure if her passivity/forgiveness is meant to be a character flaw or if it's actually meant to be this good thing that she doesn't go after Uther when he kills her father. Or are they saying something about how people with more privilege don't have to play nice, because no one's going to stop them? And Gwen doesn't seem to have much of a character arc exactly--Arthur is Learning To Be King and Uther and Morgana are Beginning To Use Their Powers For Bad and Merlin is Learning To Control His Powers And Hang Out With His Destiny, and Gwen is just...like, nice a lot. I was sort of hoping she would wind up with an arc about what happens when you're on a sinking ship, or castle in this case, and the people sinking it are people you care about.
It's weird how many people think female characters are strong if you let them fight. I also wonder if this is like--there's this idea that female characters should be concerned with "big" things, which is to say male things (because for some reason a story about getting revenge has more weight than one where you fall in love), so they give her a gun or a sword without realizing that you have to give her agency too. Otherwise what's the point? Which is one of the reasons I feel like Narnia has a lot of really strong female characters, like Lucy or Aravis--it's just that he doesn't let them be traditionally feminine and strong and good all at once (Susan is feminine, and she's either useless or evil or both, and Jadis uses feminine wiles and is EVIL). And I love to see tomboys and bookworms and non-feminine girls when I read/watch stuff, but you can be traditionally feminine and a strong female character too, and I feel like I keep seeing this "Well, the cool girls are like the boys and the girly ones are shallow and/or evil.")
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It tones down the swelling and redness, but the water has to be really hot or something. Don't rub; gentle dabs. For best results, do nightly!
HAHA, Gwen is nice a lot. Yes. This icon's keywords ('superimposing valiance') have never been so relevant. The Series 2 press release says that next season Gwen "begins her difficult journey towards becoming the Queen Guinevere of legend" so HERE'S TO HOPING, MY FRIEND. Allothi was saying how there seems to be less fictional models for well-fleshed-out relationships between women, and how that's important 'cos these models can trump actual real-life experience. And there's something in that that rings really true for me. Or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. I just feel like I have to try harder to find these women, or something.
Gwen's passivity being a flaw is intriguing. I think 1.12 definitely wanted us to think that her not going after Uther was a good thing though. It's pretty typical "if you do this to them, you'll be just LIKE them" and probably designed to make us think "wow, there is a QUEEN in there waiting to get out". I don't have much of a problem with her not wanting to go after Uther though. I mean, fair enough. Also, how would she? Hmm, if she were smart, she'd go through Morgana and make use of her somehow, but probably she doesn't want to do that to Morgana? She knows how
creepilymuch her lady loves her lord, despite both their tempers.I don't know if playing nice is related to privilege so much as it's related to power? 'Cos look at Merlin. He has no privilege, but he sure as hell has a lot of power, and he's careless with it. And Gaius, he's probably not so powerful, but the power he has is knowledge. He keeps bunches of secrets from a lot of people, and that's how he controls Morgana and Merlin, by keeping things from them. He's like, sketchy Ravenclaw. But to bring it back: ergo, Gwen is powerless? Which I refuse to believe. She just gets overshadowed a lot because everyone else in Camelot has an ego twice as big as hers and needs to throw it around. GWEN, we are waiting for you, girl.
Do ladies talking about ladies talking about men still pass the Bechdel test?
you can be traditionally feminine and a strong female character too, and I feel like I keep seeing this "Well, the cool girls are like the boys and the girly ones are shallow and/or evil.
THIIIIIIS THIS THIS THIS.
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less fictional models for well-fleshed-out relationships between women
That actually makes a lot of sense. To some extent I feel like the archetypes for women are "mom" "evil temptress" or "nice girl [who needs to be protected and/or rescued]". And it seems like Gwen and Morgana fit squarely into the second two, although they both play mommy occasionally. But there are so many more archetypes for men, and they get to interact with each other--the girls not so much. I don't know.
I wondered at first if we were being set up for one of those bits where your good traits become your flaws, but it seems like it hasn't yet. Like she decides to live and let live with someone else later and it turns out to be bad. But then, okay, so no one goes after Uther and he just runs around killing people and BAD STUFF HAPPENS like, every episode. OTOH I suppose you are right, she can't very well stop him. Unless she works through Morgana or Arthur, or figures out about Merlin in time, or slips him something in his wine. I also don't know..maybe part of it is that she has no one to really be flawed with? Like, Arthur and Morgana are royal so they can afford to be less-than-perfect. Merlin can't, but he doesn't always remember he's a servant and in a pinch he could probably take care of himself. But Gwen doesn't have anywhere else to go if she loses her job, you know? She doesn't seem to have any friends other than Morgana (and they are not equals) and Merlin (and he just showed up). I like to think she has flaws off stage! (Also, Gwen is my favorite character EVER. If I write Merlin fics they will be all about her.)
Power was probably a better word! I guess I meant privilege caused by power. Gwen isn't powerless, but she's not--as powerful? She doesn't have any political influence, which everyone else has (except Merlin, sort of, but then he has the prince running around getting him flowers, so you know).
Do ladies talking about ladies talking about men still pass the Bechdel test?
I don't know! I think it depends how much they are talking about the ladies and how much they are talking about how the ladies are talking about the men.
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