>Reply to Porrim.
-- gnocturnalArdor [GA] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at PESTERCHUM TRIAL VERSION - REGISTER TO UNLOCK TIMESTAMPS AND MORE! --
GA: In case I don't say it enough...
GA: Thank you for my life, Jane.
GA: Despite everything always being stupid, messy, annoying, frustrating, and sometimes heartbreaking, it's the best thing to wake up and feel the warm yellow sun on your skin every day.
GG: You are most welcome. Your presence in this world is a wonderful thing.
GG: However, your word choice strikes me as being pretty specific... "Heartbreaking", is it?
GG: Who was it this time? Am I gonna have to go bop this lady over the noggin for ya?
GA: While I find your silly, vaguely brutish expression of support to be equal parts charming and presumptuous, there are no ladies currently hopping for a bopping.
GG: C'mon! I can see right through you, Porrim Maryam. It's that darn old Latula again, isn't it? C'mon, you don't want me to go out there and snap her sweet tuckus in half like a saltine cracker?
GA: No! Leave Latula and her perfect butt alone. She has to figure her own stuff out.
GA: I'm not worried about that. I'm doing my own things right now. Porrim things.
GG: Porrim things, huh. Such as?
GA: Uhhh... vaping outside my gay bar and texting you...?
GA: But I have more going on than that. Later I'll go home and do a bunch of things, probably only some of which involve laying on top of my bed doomscrolling the captornets.
GA: ...I'm not being very convincing, am I.
GG: Not really, but that's fine. I mean, I think doomscrolling is the only type of scrolling one can even really do on the captornets?
GA: Okay. I'll lay it out on the table. Everything is complicated and I don't really know what I'm doing.
GA: What else is new, ha.
GA: I mean, I don't regret being where I'm at now. But it feels like this whole endeavor is just a diversion?
GA: Like yeah, I can create this little oasis. I can make a difference in the lives of people I love. That's fantastic, assuming that my someone has punched me in the brain repeatedly and damaged my physical ability to extrapolate empathy to anyone beyond my immediate circle.
GA: Sorry, you must be so sick of me talking about this.
GG: I brought you into this world, I think it's only fair that I give a listening ear to what I know are your deepest and most heartfelt concerns. What am I gonna say?
GG: "Oh, someone call the predictability department, Porrim is making good points about feminism again! What's next? Is something going to wrongfully insinuate that she's a slut? Will she tactfully negotiate other people's incredible rudeness and disregard?"
GA: Thank you. Your ridiculous vignette about something called a 'predictability department' has reassured me of the value and timeliness of my deepest held ideals.
GA: It's just that I don't want this world to end up like all the others. Places where women were never free from the endless cycles of repression, maltreatment, and diminution.
GA: Not that I think it will, especially not with leaders like that lamb-gentle mayor and that go-getter Postmistress General.
GA: But a lot of the stuff I've been reading on the wiikii about the history of this planet, I find truly disquieting.
GA: And not even just the most horribly grandiose abuses--the witch hunts, the enslavement, pimping and concubinage and forced marriage, the sexed division of labor, the culturally endemic medical malpractice, the mutilation.
GG: (Hoo boy. All of this serious stuff, and me without my joke book...!)
GA: You don't need a joke book. Jane Crocker. You are funny on your own and you're not afraid to face up to the unfunny truths of life.
GA: Like I was saying, though, it's not just the big, terrible crimes against women. It's also the little things. It's the smallest indignities and culturally sanctioned humiliation rituals.
GA: Jane...
GA: I think it's safe to assume you've heard of a woman called "Betty Crocker"?
GG: (!!!)
GG: I mean, sure! I just might be familiar... How did you know? Or rather, what do you know? In fact, tell me everything you know right now.
GG: Oops! Sorry, all that must sound suspicious and accusatory. Let's start over. Tell me about Betty Crocker, who I feel totally neutral about, in your own words.
GA: Well, I just started learning about her recently. Kanaya and Rose told me plenty about the history of their planets, but I haven't had time to pick Roxy's brain nearly as much about this one.
GA: Of course, historically, Betty Crocker is identified with the Condescension. But outside of that? She was never anything more than a ridiculous gimmick.
GA: It seems that she was a fictional woman made up of an amalgam of domestic and heterosexual servility signifiers and, in a devious marketing ploy, presented as a real woman for women to pattern themselves after as they pursue the bizarre 1950s human courtship ritual of the feeding of plasticine cake to the man.
GA: A fake woman invented to promote the bottom line of a commercial enterprise run by a few men--one man, ultimately--at the expense of all.
GA: How absurd can you get??
GA: You'd think there'd be, I don't know.
GA: Some kind of limit to absurdity or something?
But no. The more you learn about the world, the more you realize that there is truly no bottom to the atrocious abyss of the absurd.
GG: Right. That is... factually accurate out the wazoo, and it sure does lead to a concluding absurdity! Haha!
GG: Yes indeedy. People may well think of Betty Crocker as "sexy", "irresistible" and "mesmerizing", but in a world like ours, Betty Crocker is rightfully regarded as a symbol of subjugation, submission, and schoolf--schoolfee--and schoolfing up the surplus wealth created by the efforts of the masses!!!
GG: So it would be totally wrong for a lady to, for example, still have an embarrassing fangirl streak for Betty Crocker that has, in the course of lonesome years, metastasized into a full-on freaky Freudian obsession with her!!!
GG: We all can agree with and acknowledge that fact!!!!!!!!
GA: Well said. I mean... weirdly specific, confusing, and eyebrow-raisingly tangential, but correct on several points.
GA: We don't need the icons of our subjugation in our old worlds anymore. Something new is in the process of being made.
GA: Girls will grow up better in a world with no Betty Crockers and one Jane Crocker. Err, well, three Jane Crockers, technically. But that just sweetens the deal.
GA: Wow, I think I just excited the hell out of myself. I would like to grant you an award. Here it is, I am holding it up to you.
GA:"Best sounding board of all time."
GG: Yep! So glad to be of assistance, just as I am SO goshdarned glad to live in a world where no ever one thinks or talks about Betty Crocker anymore! Absolutely nothing to dissect here! Regarding this topic and also every other topic imaginable, I'm about as normal as they come!!!
GA: Honestly, compared to who I grew up with? You kind of literally are.
GA: Anyway, I know you're a busy gal, so I won't keep you. And while I'm sorting out my grander destiny and aims, someone has to make sure these attractive chess piece ladies behave themselves.
GA: See you at the party though, right?
GG: See you there, permanent guest of honor! <33 :B
GA: Pump biscuits to you too, dearest Jane. Can't wait.
-- gnocturnalArdor [GA] ceased pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at PESTERCHUM TRIAL VERSION - REGISTER TO UNLOCK TIMESTAMPS AND MORE! --