State of the CW AKA Where the fuck have I been

Short story: I fell off my meds.

Which is why I hate being on medication in the first place, reguardless of how much I need it or not. Staying on medication is very, very, VERY hard for me. Especially since the problem (memory+motivation+attention span) is tied directly to the depression. And there's been stress. Lots of it. Work stress (Note: Half the shit I do at work is not and was never in my job description, and nobody else can understand it, let alone do any of it. That is not an exaggeration. That's actually part of the stress.) financial stress. Moving stress, as we have to downsize and we've been packing boxes. Oh, and I've discovered that moving and packing is yet another massive trigger.

Which I experienced off meds. Which lead to a very spectacular meltdown and several days of Not Wanting To Touch Shit. Because I had a feeling (in part due to not being on meds) that if I touched anything, it would fall apart. Whereas if I sat very still and played stupid shit on the computer, things would be okay. It's like trying to hold a bomb together with string and spit. It doesn't work.

I am still trying to get the book out. All that's left is minor editing and formatting and finishing the cover. Which is about halfway done or more.

I really, really, really do not like being sick. Especially not mentally sick, and especially not chronically sick. I want to feel better and have it be done, and I know that's never going to happen.Or if it is, it won't happen for a very, very long time.

There is no more accurate description of dealing with depression than "fighting". It's a fight. Every day. Every hour. Every minute. When it's not suicidal ideation it's just this gray meaningless fog. Or it's anxiety strong enough to immobilize. Funny, that.  I used to think of that as being something so intense you couldn't breathe. Now I understand it's just moderate, but you want it to stop so you hedge yourself in and then you just. don't. move. Because if you move, you have to feel and when you're anxious, feeling is bad.

Yes. I have an anti-anxiety drug.

In short, my lovelies: This year sucked. Hard. For a lot of people, not just me. The wheels of my wagon came off in January and have yet to get screwed back on. So many of you have been wonderful helps, I can't even begin to say how much gratitude I have for ya'll. You are one of the things that has gotten me through this year.

I'm going to reassemble my plans for things on the other side of the year, so to speak. Try to work out where to go from here. Be happy, my lovelies, and even if you can't, be well.

Stroke of Midnight 16

What's this? Has a random countdown appeared? Yes. I am committing to a date, and that means lots of energy and work and all sorts of other wonderful things. 

Taking a brief break from Elsie to work on other projects, but I figured we might as well keep LKH going.

WE WAITED FOR THE POLICE TO RETURN TO US AFTER ESCORTING their befuddled colleague away.

We have yet to have a single law enforcement officer see the body of the dead human. We are sixteen chapters into this book.

Meanwhile, we've managed to have a full blown sex scene and a lot of making out. So at least we know where the author's priorities lie.

It was almost as if the chalice didn’t want to leave me alone to solve the murders. The cup pulsed so hard that it made me gasp.

So apparently the cup is a lot like a penis. It's tumescent and it keeps getting in the way of the plot. The cup keeps sending orgasmic little thrills through Merry, and the guards who didn't see the cup are all like "WTF IS WRONG WITH HER" and the ones who did are like "NOTHING TO SEE HERE MOVE ALONG"

Meanwhile, Random Boy Toy A has eyes that are...special.

His eyes were not the three rings of color common among the sidhe, but a spiral painted in lines of color, with his pupil at the heart of the design. As a child I’d once asked him how he could see out of them, and he had smiled and replied that he did not know.

The same way you can see out of a spiral contact lens. In fact, probably better. 'cause his iris can contract and a colored contact can't. Also, I swear to god the first time I read that I went "he has heart shaped pupils" and I threw up in my mouth a little.

Everybody smells apples, and Merry brings the chalice out where everyone can see it, just as if we hadn't spent the last several chapters discussing how ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT it is to keep the goddamn thing hidden. Everybody gasps. Ivy says that they should be making Merry queen and not "playing copper" even though I think he's about three hundred years too old for that slang to come casually. The cup pulsates again. Then this happens:

“You just want to fuck her ,” Dogmaela said, and she made it sound like a dirty thing. An unusual attitude among any fey.

LKH's special brand of slut shaming. It's slutty clothes, unless the main character is wearing them, or its dating multiple men, unless the main character is dating them, and generally any kind of sex at all, unless the main character is having it. It's less double standard and more "I have no self awareness whatsoever, pass the condoms".

I looked up at his face, so carefully arrogant. “Are you saying I should take time out of solving a double homicide to have sex?”

NO. NO YOU SHOULD NOT. SOLVE THE DOUBLE HOMICIDE PLEASE IT WOULD BE SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING.

Everyone talks about how much they want to have sex. And whose desire to have sex is strongest. It's like a philosophical dick measuring contest. Then Amatheon and a couple of the others start down-talking Merry's mortal heritage because Prejudice Allegory, which is now incredibly squicky for me because this series is set in fucking St. Louis. So Merry gives Amatheon a hug, aaaaand we're having sex now.

I stood in the middle of a huge, barren plain. Amatheon was still pressed to my waist, his head buried against my body. I wasn’t certain that he knew anything had changed.

One of the bizzare side-effects of LKH's unwillingness to use either "penis" or "vagina" in her writing is I have no idea if this is actual sex or not. Merry becomes the stand-in for the Goddess again, and starts telling Amatheon that she (the Goddess) has never left them--even though they're making out in the middle of a barren plain, which doesn't exactly scream "Divine Blessings."

I understood then that if one tear felt so good to the land, then other body fluids would feel even better.

You have no idea how much dread this one sentence filled me with. Then it became clear that Amatheon wants to give his blood to the land, and not his semen.

...Dude. The cops are RIGHT THERE. Okay, they're upstairs, but they are here on campus, they'll be back real soon, and you are offering to let your princess take your blood. THIS IS NOT A SMART THING.

And then the Goddess tries to talk Merry into killing Amatheon.

Her voice came from my lips again. “He will not die as men die, but as the corn dies. To rise again, and feed his people.”

He's not motherfucking John Barleycorn. This is a bad idea. This is a very, very, very bad idea.

“But this is not real death. This is vision and dream.

YOU GOT THE FUCKING CUP IN A DREAM DREAMS IN THIS UNIVERSE CAN BE VERY REAL. DO NOT DO THIS THING.

“Will you leave the land barren?” the voice said, out of my mouth.

The bizzare thing about LKH's writing is she keeps having scenes like this, where the heroine knows that there's something wrong with this shit. Merry knows that human sacrifice isn't the smartest thing to do right now. Anita knows it's a bad idea to screw London/Richard/All the wereswans ever because the consent is iffy and it'll probably be a rape. But some higher power--Jean Claude, the Goddess, the MOAD--then talks the main character into it because Laurel K. Hamilton wants this to happen and screw anybody who says "UH HELLO, THERE ARE COPS UPSTAIRS."

And then the Goddess begins chewing Merry out for trying to investigate the murders instead of having sex.

Laurel, this is YOUR PLOT. Do you know what you do when you do not like your plot? THROW IT OUT AND START OVER. YOU are the writer. YOU get to make the plot be what you want it to be. Oh, and by the way? Airing out your issues over your writing IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING BOOK is not a very smart thing to do. You hate plot. Great. Write porn. Admit that you like writing porn and write fucking porn. You will not die. Bolts of lightening will not rain down from heaven and incinerate you. You can be honest with yourself and your audience. It's not gonna hurt you.

But DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT promise us a murder investigation plot a la early Anita and then bitch your character out for trying to follow through with it. If I want a bait and switch I'll go to a mega church during fundraiser week.

“I do not mean Cromm Cruach’s true name, I mean these deaths. They will be reborn, Child. Why do you mourn them so? Even true death is not an ending. Others can find your murderers and clues, but there are duties that only you can perform, Meredith, only you..” “And what exactly would those duties be?” She motioned at Amatheon . “Make my land live.”

WE HAD A PLOT GODDAMN IT. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUN. WHY ARE YOU TAKING THAT AWAY FROM US.

“He is a willing sacrifice, Meredith . There is no evil here.”

I'd draw connections with "you can't rape the willing" and how utterly fucking stupid both these statements are, but I think I'd get eviscerated.

And then the Goddess sighs happily, because it was all a dream test.

On the one hand, YAY THE POLICE PLOT IS BACK ON THE TABLE.

On the other hand

That means that all of this--the tree shit, the stuff with the cup, the conversation with Amatheon and the Goddess--is a motherfucking non-event, and LKH has, once again, wasted our time.

Meanwhile, it's time for our dose of quasi-pagan pretentiousness! Courtesy of 20+ Kindle Highlighters, here we go:

“I did not stop speaking to my people, they stopped listening to me, and after a time, they could no longer hear my voice. But I never stopped speaking to them. In dreams, or that moment between waking and sleep, there is my voice. In a song, the touch of another’s hand in theirs, I am there. I am Goddess, I am everywhere, and in everything. I cannot leave, nor can you lose me. But you can leave me, and you can turn your back on me.”

Yes, folks. Goddess doesn't leave you, you leave Goddess.

Either LKH is talking about the unnamed Wiccan Lady (which is Oathbound material and not something you can easily find, which shows how seriously Wiccans take their Oathbound shit) in which case DAMN the Wiccan Lady is an awful lot like Protestant Jesus, or she's talking about that general, quasi-Celtic-and-Greek-with-a-pinch-of-Native-Culture, all-encompassing Goddess figure that certain brands of paganism (coughfluffybunnycough) like to embrace. In which case WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. 

Even the Christian God "turns his face away", albeit from really awful bad shit. If you believe in religion than Deity is something that gets to decide shit. And your respective Gods are fully capable of deciding that you've screwed the pooch and they don't want to play anymore. In other words, this is dehumanizing Deity.  

And for the record, NO. "Goddess" is not an all-encompassing figure. Athena is not Diana is not Kali is not Pele is not the Virgin Mary. Grow up.

“Goddess,” he said. Her voice floated to us. “Yes, Child.” “Will I see you again?” Just her voice now, young and old at the same time. “In the face of every woman you meet.” And she was gone.

I need an "Even for Dummies" book because I have forgotten how to Even. I haven't been this flabberghasted since I accidentally watched the 700 Club.

This chapter is not done yet. Why is this chapter not done yet?

He smiled, a quick flash of real humor, that made his face less perfectly handsome, but more real, more precious to my sight. “My honor was never gone, because no one can take your honor from you, not without your letting it go. I was going to say that you have given me back my honor, but I understand now.” I smiled at him. “No one can take your honor, but you can give it away.” The smile wilted around the edges. “Yes. I let fear take my honor from me.”

Ah, because we have to get even more pretension out of the way. Okay. You did it. Can we get back to the plot now?

Right. More sex.

. “I want you to ride me, to press my naked body into the dirt. I want to watch your breasts dance above me. I want to feel your body slipped over mine like a sheath to a sword.

Every time she does this I keep thinking of that (albeit problematic) scene in American Gods where the Indian goddess-figure swallows a man with her vagina. THERE IS A REASON WE HAVE THE WORD PENIS.

I put my finger on his lips and stopped him. “Let’s make the grass grow.”

It's not quite "Ride the Storm" but it'll do.

I sat up and pressed my most intimate parts against his most intimate parts, and even through all our clothes, the sensation was amazing.

What? Did you suddenly forget how a thesaurus works? Did it die? It died, didn't it. You used the poor thing so much that when you finally needed it, it had shriveled up and died. Also, am I the only one having My Immortal-esque flashbacks? "He put his thing into my you-know-what and we did it for the first time."

The chapter ends with them taking off their clothes.

On Homeschooling and Growing Up: Real School

I kept getting in trouble for skipping school.

It's funny that I'm going to open this possible series about homeschooling by talking about the one time I did go to a normal school. But it set a standard in my mind. As I grew up and gained more autonomy, the episode with real school became more and more important. It's what turned Homeschooling into my choice, into something that I owned and defended every chance I got.

In retrospect that school probably wasn't normal. I had a very small class--7th and 8th grade put together, 13 students--and the curriculum was A Beka. A Beka is primarily aimed at conservative homeschooling groups; I was very familiar with the materials. I'd been using things like them for as long as I can remember. The American History books, for example, used the same photographs and paintings on the same pages in both the 4th grade and 6th grade textbooks. The most we ever learned about Native American cultures were the evangelical attempts of David Brainerd. George Whitfield got more space than George Washington. Civil rights were a footnote; Billy Graham was a chapter.

World History did not exist.

Paddles did.

Of course, the parents had to sign a permission slip. Most of them did. This was a very tight knit community. Most of them went to the same church I did, until that church had a doctrinal falling out and split up. Most of these kids had gone to this same school from first grade on up. Most of the parents agreed that the world might end the next election if we didn't get a Republican into the White House, but they disagreed on wheither or not the End of the World would be good or bad. Clinton was still president. I overheard several adults once have a serious conversation about how he fit all the criteria for the Antichrist.

 Every morning we would gather in the gymasium--which doubled as a church sanctuary on Sundays--and sing worship songs after the Pledge of Allegiance...and the Pledge to the Christian Flag, and the Pledge to the Bible. I was familiar with all three; I'd been doing Awanas AKA Christian Girl Scouts for as long as I could remember. A different class would get to come up to the front and hold up the big, hand-lettered song lyric cards up so that everyone could read them. These were songs that most of us knew by heart. Amazing Grace. Go tell it on the Mountain. As the Deer. I thought everyone knew these songs, because everyone I knew did. Contemporary Christian music was edgy. Pop music like Madonna and N'Sync was unheard of. Literally. No one listened to it. When we were allowed to bring outside novels to school they were the Left Behind series. C.S. Lewis was risky because there were talking animals and magic in them. My class memorized the entire book of James, one chapter at a time. When it came time to learn about evolution, our science teacher gave us a big speech about how this was a state mandated course and we didn't really need to pay attention. He followed it up with a special on how Mt. St. Helens disproved the whole thing because of petrified trees.

We got tested on that.

My brother and I were enrolled there because my mother wanted to have a job. Our homelife was chaotic and financially unpredictable, and Mom's tactic for solving this was to get a job. She did this several times that I can remember. Sometimes she would try to homeschool us while working. I'd be the one taking care of my brother and supervising both his lessons and my own. Mom would grade our work when she got home. But this was difficult and stressful and more often than not I'd wind up playing dolls upstairs, or digging in the side yard with my brother, or up the nearest tree with a science fiction novel. Sometimes I'd even get my brother wrapped up in a video game, then get on my bike and take off for the library. Then, bookbag balanced on the handlebars, I'd go down to the city park, hide my bike in the bushes and walk down to the riverbank. This time around, she decided to place us in school. I was very excited. It felt like a special treat. I'd get to be with other kids. I'd have all these great new books to read. But because her job started earlier than my dad's, it became his job to get me and my brother to school.

We were never on time. NEVER. I would be outside, sitting in the car fifteen minutes before we were supposed to leave; my father would come out ten minutes after. Then the rush to my classroom, hoping and praying to God that I'd get there and the class would still be there, that this time Assembly was a few minutes late. No luck. Shove the coat and lunch box into the cubby--everybody brought their lunch, the school served no food--and race down the hall. If I was lucky and Dad were quicker I'd make it in time for the Pledge to the Christian Flag or the Pledge to the Bible. More often than not we were on the third or fourth song, and I had to make my way to my class with my head down in shame. I was so awfully, horribly late. It was my fault for not making Dad get out to the car sooner. I'd have to be better tomorrow.

After a few months, though, Dad decided to stop taking us to school.

It wasn't an every day thing. He had a job, after all. But at least once a week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, sometimes on Friday, he'd decide we didn't need to go to school that day. We'd get in the car--I'd be nerviously drumming my fingers on the armrest, worried about being late--and when we got to the highway he'd turn left instead of right and we'd start driving. We'd end up in Weatherbury, or Grandbury, or Dublin, and he'd go to garage sales while we sat in the car. When our grades began to suffer, he'd take my brother to school and keep me out, and we'd be driving, driving, driving all day until it was time to pick my brother up and take us home. We'd go to lunch. He'd tell me how special I was. He'd introduce me to all his friends. I learned to bring books with me because I knew I'd get very bored. I'd ask nicely to listen to Christian radio; more often than not, we just played Rush Limbaugh.

By this time I hated school. I hated how boring the materials were. I hated that we were allowed to use calculators during math, that I wasn't allowed to learn how to calculate square roots longhand, that we spent two weeks on "practical" math, like learning how to read electric meters and how to divide recipes, but only spent one day on pi. I hated that we traded World History--something I'd never gotten to study--for Texas Government. I hated, hated, hated the bible study period. I hated the materials we had to study in language arts. The english teacher had an obsession with Spain, so when it came time to do research reports we were each assigned a different Provence. Some of the books we had to study were good--Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and Shiloh stand out as high points--but some of them were just teeth-grittingly awful. Johnny Tremaine should never be inflicted on an adult, much less a thirteen year old. Each day we had to read an assigned chapter, summerize what we'd just read, and then identify the parts of the sentences in our summery. This is a noun, this is a verb, this is an adjective. I'd been diagramming sentences since I was eight, so this was completely uninteresting. Finally, I stopped copying down the lessons altogether. I already knew this and I was sick of all of it. I just wanted to go back home to my homemade yarn dolls and the epic fantasy adventure we were having beneath my bed.

At that point, the English teacher pulled me out of class, sat me down, and gave me a long lecture on everything I was doing wrong. And the thing he focused on wasn't that I had stopped participating in the lessons, but that I was skipping school. And I sat there feeling deeply betrayed. I had not understood that Dad was pulling us out without permission from the school. I believed that a parent had every right to simply call in and say "So and so is sick today" and then just...not take us. I sat there, staring back at my teacher, and feeling like I'd just been tricked by all these adults. I'd been told my whole life the world worked a certain way. Now they were telling me it worked differently and that it was my fault I wasn't playing by the rules.

The next day, Dad wanted to keep me home again. I begged and pleaded no. I didn't explain about the talking to I'd gotten--I didn't want to get in trouble with him--so I just said that I really, really wanted to go to school that day. Please. I didn't want to skip it anymore. 

 He was very hurt. He didn't understand why I did not want to have fun with him anymore.

Now, as an adult, I understand: my brother and I existed for our parents, not for us. They saw school as warehousing kids, a place to get them out of their parent's hair for a few hours so they could go have jobs and whatnot. School was not a place for children. Education was something we got because the government said we had to do it, and because it'd be useful in some far off distant land where we'd be adults and our own people. When Dad decided that he didn't want to put his toys in the School box, he'd keep us out and spend the day amusing himself. When he didn't want to play with us, well, that's what school was for. And of course it all got dressed up in God's Will. We weren't going to evil public school--no hyperbole there, the public school system was the literal tool of Satan and my brother and I were so blessed not to be in it. No matter how bad things got at home, public school would be worse.

There is a part of me that understands how insane all of that sounds. There's another part that still thinks it is normal, that still cannot see what the problem was.

He cut down on the absenteeism, but he'd still do it. And now I'd sit in the car with high anxiety, knowing that the next day I'd be going to school and I'd probably get in trouble again. By then I wasn't allowed to go to recess anymore. I had to sit in class and do additional work to make up for the amount of school I'd skipped. I didn't care; the class had decided that they wanted to play basketball in the gym instead of going outside, and I was sick to death of basketball. I'd much rather sit in the classroom. When I finally got caught up, I still begged off. I didn't want to touch that goddamn ball ever again. I'd memorize bible verses until the class left, then sneak over to the bookcase and snag something interesting, like The Invisible Man or The Dark is Rising.

That's the only good thing I got out of that year of school: it introduced me to Susan Cooper.

When school ended, we moved. We'd been living up north near Dallas, and now we moved back south to just outside of Corpus Christi; that was when the wheels on the family bus really fell off. We went back to homeschooling. We'd learn out of old, battered college textbooks. I'd do research reports on whatever I wanted. I'd read the encyclopedia for fun. I never had to learn to spell. For maybe a year, things were stable. The one thing I knew, though, was that I did not ever want to go back to school. Mom was right--it was just a place to warehouse kids, where learning was limited by the slowest person in class, and where you were not allowed to study anything you wanted, but only what the teacher had assigned you.

After that, some years my mother would ask me if we wanted to enroll in real school or stay at home. I was always adamant. Homeschooling. Real school, I knew, would just be misery all over again.

A few weeks ago my mother and I were talking about the past, and my growing up and homeschooling, and I brought up how abysmal my lone experience with "real" school was. How I was often driven to frustrated tears in Math Class because I didn't understand, and I wanted to, and the rest of the class was just using their calculators when there was this whole wonderful thing we could have been learning about. How much I loathed reading the assigned books. And I mentioned how I got in trouble for absenteeism because Dad kept pulling us out of school.

She stared at me, amazed, because she never knew.

Stroke of Midnight chapter 15, Elsie chapter 12

So Frost makes a door into Fairie, and LKH forgets how sentences work.

It was the door to faerie, all humans go through smiling, but they don’t always come out that way.

Ah, the commas that die to provide LKH with run on sentences.

The police immediately get rolled by fairy magic even though the press didn't, so now Merry and Co. have to oil up the cops.

NO. REALLY.

“The queen gave vials of oil to the guard as a precaution in case the reporters became befuddled by the magic that is intrinsic to the sithen, but it was merely a precaution. The main hallways of the sithen have not affected humans in this way for more than fifty years.”

And of course it's Merry bringing magic back. Also, there's a random guard who is tattooed with fur all over his body.

I am sure this is absolutely necessary to the narrative.

So they grease up the cops. One at a time. In detail. There's a point where one cop asks Merry for a cross instead of whatever sigil Merry intends to use, and Merry says a cross won't work because the faeries aren't evil.

“We aren’t evil, Carmichael, just other. Contrary to popular myth, holy symbols won’t stop our magic, any more than holding up a cross would stop a blizzard from harming you.”

Yeah, but a blizzard doesn't decide to threaten your life, decieve all your senses and potentially abuse you because it would find it entertaining. Also: turning your jacket inside out apparently works better than prayer.

So now the freshly oiled cops start lusting after the fairy men because this makes totally sense. All the men show off, and it takes three pages for them to get back to the plot. Then Galen heads off on his own and Merry has a premonition, so she sends a couple of other guys off with him. Doyle headed off on his own quite a while ago. Then the magic cup appears because why not, it's not like we wanted to actually GET TO THE GODDAMN PLOT.

One of the cops is still making cow-eyes at the men, and Merry has to explain what being elf-struck is to the cops. Who have to deal with them fairly regularly. Eventually they send that person back up topside, because that's the easiest way to resolve the problem. It's also implied that this episode fucked up that woman's life forever, but that's less important than making sure we all understand, Merry's men are PRETTY.

The chapter ends with one of them making the poor bewitched girl cry.

Meanwhile, in Elsie...We finally have a chapter that isn't completely worthless. Christmas is coming up, and Horace gives Elsie extra money so she can buy Christmas presents...after instructing her to keep track of every penny she spends, because "his little girl must not be lazy". He leaves. presents are bought. He comes back. This happens:

"Well, daughter," he said, passing his hand caressingly over her curls, "papa has brought you a present; will you have it now, or shall it be kept for Christmas?" "Keep it for Christmas, papa," she answered gayly. "Christmas is almost here, and besides, I don't want to look at anything but you to-night."

And then Elsie spends most of the rest of the chapter evangelizing to her father.

You know, a funny thing about growing up in an abusive situation is how quickly we normalize the adult's behaviors. It's a survival mechanism--we are dependant on our parents. They HAVE to be perfect in our eyes because otherwise the world might fall apart. It's the logic of a child. A couple weeks ago a child from one of homeschooling's superstar families came forward with her story. One of the things she said hit very, VERY close to home:

The life of abuse isn’t full of anger, getting thrown and smacked and bruised, and being yelled at and torn down. That’s only part of it. You also feel special and needed. You don’t feel like life is hell, even if it is, because you know how to force a smile. It feels good to damage your own health and wellbeing for your abusers, because you’re told that you’re doing what is right. You fight for acceptance and admonition, because you’re always getting small tastes of it, and it’s always just out of reach.

I don't know who Cynthia Jeub is, but that paragraph right there is something I've always wanted to say. People who are abused as children are often unaware of just how deep and profound the damage really is. We internalize it and repeat it and perpetuate it because we do not want to lose something we've always seen as a foundation. We do not want to face how shaky that foundation really is.

I've got some pretty out there variations in my version of Christianity--tarot cards, new agey things. This last week I finally understood why. It's because a part of getting positive attention from my parents, especially my father, was to repeat exactly what they believed exactly the way it was taught to me. I believe I took a more-than-slightly heretical path because it took my spirituality out of a toxic framework and put it into a place where I couldn't use it in my relationships with my parents. It made it into something that was mine.

Abusive situations are never a continual, ongoing ocean of misery. They do have positive moments. If they didn't, it wouldn't be so very hard to leave. Elsie is getting positive feedback now that she's conformed perfectly to her father's wishes. She's getting presents and affection. She's also gotten the message that if she wishes these things to continue, she is not allowed to have her own thoughts. The only reason her faith has a greater stranglehold on her than her father is that her version of God is exactly the same as her version of Dad, and she doesn't want God angry at her.

When you live with abuse you live for the sake of your abuser. In the process, you forget who you are. And if you're a child, you never get to learn.

Stroke of Midnight chapter 14, Elsie chapter 11

 THE POLICE, ALL FLAVORS, STOOD IN THE DECEMBER COLD.

POLICE. ARE NOT. POPSICLES.

 Well, these guys are because Merry's kept them waiting for-fucking-ever. Oh, she blames the brass, but she's the one who had to investigate brownies going boggart and protest being wrapped in troll fur.

Merry tries to sort through the dick-measuring contest between the local boys and the feds. Apparently the Fairy reservations fall under the same rules as the Native American reservations.

...and that means it falls under fed jurisdiction.

...which is probably correct (comparison between Shiny Sparklepoo fairies and a demographic that sometimes doesn't even get running water aside) but that would mean we wouldn't have to deal with the BULLSHIT pissing contest. So somehow an overworked St. Louis crime lab is better equipped to handle an investigation than the FBI.

RIGHT.

 LKH elects to make the FBI total morons.

Marquez argued , as I’d expected him to. “You are not an officer of any kind, Princess. No offense, but this investigation needs more than just a private detective in charge of it.”

...and yet he somehow manages to score a valid point. The FBI have more resources to focus than St. Louis PD. They don't have to deal with crack-house murders. They don't have to work traffic stops. And also? Given the way cops in the St. Louis area have behaved over the last couple months? They're probably not nearly that fucking racist.

 Merry reminds Marquez that she's a goddamn princess.

He asks her if he hurt her feelings.

Merry calls the goddamn wife of the president of the goddamn United States I am not making that up I swear to fucking God.

  The First Lady chews Marquez out. He agrees to co-operate.

...I have to admit, that's kind of fucking cool.

The First Lady then gushes over Merry for a few minutes, and then we move on to the rest of the chapter.

...which ends shortly after the lead cop laughs his ass off over the feds getting shown the door by the First Lady.

I really do hate this book.


On to Elsie.

This was published as a series. The version I read originally cut out very large chunks of the next part because it concerns Elsie being happy, and there's nothing to be gained from watching Elsie being happy...at least from the POV of the IDIOTS who decided this should be given to modern children.

There is a LONG, LONG passage about how Horace doesn't really love Jesus. Now, anybody with two braincells to rub together would notice that Horace is a horrible fuck of a human being and that Jesus probably doesn't want to have much to do with him. But Elsie's big concern is that Horace isn't Saved. Her evidence that he isn't Saved? He doesn't give two shits about the Sabbath.

There are many, many theological arguements I can bring concerning that. Suffice to say that Paul addressed it (Romans 14) and the jist of that is that you have to live according to your conscience, but that God is big enough to work with you and if you need to reschedule to Wednesday, he'll be cool with that.

But that kind of flexibility is anathema to these idiots, so Elsie decides her dad isn't saved because her theological teaching doesn't allow for one single fucking mistake, EVER. Great

And thus it was with Elsie. She knew now that her father was not a Christian; that he had no real love for Jesus, none of the true fear of God before his eyes. She saw that if he permitted her to read to him from God's word, as he sometimes did, it was not that he felt any pleasure in listening, but only to please her; she had no reason to suppose he ever prayed, and though he went regularly to church, it was because he considered it proper and respectable to do so, and not that he cared to worship God, or to learn His will.

I have been on the receiving end of this attitude multiple times. I've also handed it out, but in my defense that shit stopped when I was eighteen and smart enough to know better. So we don't all worship God the same way. My way happens to involve self-created rituals and lots of cool incense. Other people use old rituals and lots of cool incense. Other people use neither of those. You know what? The Faith is bigger than having to adhere to a code of conduct. According to basic theology, that was the entire point of the Cross. It's that you DON'T have to play these stupid games anymore. It's that you're able to minister to people on your holy days because they NEED it. You're able to break out of the mold and do what you need to do for others. Not by works but by faith means that you don't need to worry about the nitty gritty legalism of your conduct, and you just need to focus on wheither or not what you do is helpful to the faith or helpful to others. You know that God's got you covered if you fuck up, so it's perfectly alright to jump off the cliff, so to speak, to catch somebody else.

"He could see no necessity for a change of heart; he did not believe in the doctrine of total depravity, not he; no indeed, he thought the world much better than many people would have us believe."

Yes. The legalistic religion of an 18th century Calvinist would go that route.

Elsie lifted her eyes timidly to the gentleman's face as she replied, "I was just thinking, sir, of what our Saviour said to Nicodemus: 'Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' 'Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.'"

1. STOP GIVING CHILDREN THE KJV1611 THEY DO NOT HAVE THE EDUCATION TO READ THE FUCKING THING.

2. The conversation between Christ and Nicodemus is really, really complicated, and it's not the kind of thing you trot out during an ANTEBELLUM SOUTH DINNER PARTY.

And of course Elsie "Saves" a random stranger at Daddy's party, but she doesn't manage to save Horace because Plot.

Elsie finally manages to go to bed, and then this happens:

Her questioner followed her with an admiring glance, then turning to her father, exclaimed warmly, "She is a remarkably intelligent child, Dinsmore! one that any father might be proud of. I was astonished at her answers."

I wish I didn't know this.

In the 1980s there was a man named Joel Steinberg. His common law wife was named Hedda Nusbaum. Depending on who you talked to they either had an intense S/m relationship OR he was an abusive shithead who abused her on a regular basis (Either case left Hedda horribly disfigured by the abuse she received.) They (Illegally)adopted a kid named Lisa. Lisa was known for being intelligant and rather un-child-like. She was that way because nobody around her was willing to tolerate a child. Lisa Steinberg existed to be an accessory and an emotional crutch for her "parents". She was never allowed to be a child.

Childhood is a very important thing for children to have. All the things that annoy us adults are actually a child practicing things that will be very necessary to adult life. Sabotaging that process by demanding that a child show "wisdom beyond their years" means that they won't learn the very basic building blocks we all need to ensure our social survival.

Elsie is a BADLY neglected child who is expected to pass up her developmental years for the pleasure of the adults around her.

Also, Lisa Steinberg? Died. She was beaten to death by her "father", and then left alone on the floor of a bathroom by her "mother".

So no. I find nothing adorable or admirable about precious Elsie Dinsmore. I see something very sad, very dangerous, and very VERY troubling.

She opened at the third chapter of John's Gospel and read it through. At the sixteenth verse, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," she paused, and asked, "Was not that a wonderful gift, papa? and wonderful love that prompted it?"

I had that verse memorized by the time I was six. With exactly that language, because the Sunday Schools, Vacation Bible Schools, homeschooling curriculum AND motherfucking private schools ALL used the KJV 1611 version of the bible.

You wanna know what this is like to Christian audiences? You really want to know? If this novel were erotica? This? This is missionary position sex. This is something that everybody could do with their eyes closed through a hole in the sheets. This is a key stop on the goddamn Roman Road. This is not new information to ANYBODY who would still be reading this series.

Don't get me wrong. I like that verse. I'd like it a lot better if I didn't see it a MINIMUM of once a day. I see it so much that it has lost ALL MEANING to me. There is a lovely, beautiful idea encapuslated in those words and I can't see it anymore because it gets shoved in my face EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. MINUTE.

The chapter ends with Elsie sobbing because Horace doesn't understand she's trying to SAVE HIS SOUL.

Editing, Free Books, and Other things

First up: Free Book. This Found Thing. Get it. Read it. Enjoy it (if possible)

Second: I'm beginning to understand why people don't talk about it when other people abuse them. You have the fear of reprisal, which sucks...and then you get the people who won't stop talking about the thing. EVER. Guys, I am not and do not want to be "That writer that RH stalked" or "That rape victim" ect ect. It's a thing that happened, but it's not my identity. And that is the part that is getting very, very exhausting.

One thing that I dislike is when a victim's story becomes a part of their aggressor's narrative. It erases the identity of the victim, while simultaneously hooking everything about their life to their abuser, forever. I strongly admire people like Malala Yusafzai and Elizabeth Smart, because they both managed to rip their stories out of their abuser's hands and make it about them, their recovery, and about building up other girls like them so that shit like that never happens again. And that's what the point of stuff like this ought to be. It shouldn't be about how terrible Person X is--that should be a part of the story, dear GOD yes, but that shouldn't be the point of the story. The point should be this is what this behavior does, this is how people survive, and this is what we need to stop. 

It's not about them, guys. It's not about the people that hurt us. It's about us, and making ourselves and our lives have value above and beyond what other people do to us. There's a line in James Alan Gardner's Vigilant, "Live in the Real and name the lies". I believe a big lie is that the people who harm us have power over us. They don't. They can hurt us, but hurting isn't power. They only get power if we surrender it.

Don't let them get away with it, by all means, but don't let them and what they've done become so much of your life that you don't have room for anything else.

Meanwhile, I am editing books. I am back on the horse, somewhat. Should be able to start talking release dates for the next part of Ivory Scars, Iron Bars very soon. Like, within the next week soon.

So be well, my lovelies. Have a great weekend.

...and, uh, buy books. Mine. If you like. :D

Free Book Day

So. In the interests of cleaning a bad taste out of everybody's mouth (and using KDP free days I've been ignoring for ages) FREE BOOK DAYS!

This Found Thing will be free from tomorrow to Sunday.

That is all.