ā¦.how awful Heaven and Gabriel/Archangels/Metatron areā¦
And for anyone who might think Aziraphaleās paranoia is stupid, a reminder.
[I know about the Arrangement]
IF YOU WANT TO WORK WITH CROWLEY AGAIN; as Supreme Archangel, youāll have the power to reinstate him as an angel and do it that way. [And thatās the only way.]
There is absolutely no option for Aziraphale to stay and stay with Crowley. None. Zero. Nilch. Nada.
Itās not said out loud what will happen if he insist he wonāt take the job (or it is and we have not seen it because Aziraphale doesnāt tell Crowley about it). But he definitely doesnāt have the option to stay and carry on stopping Armageddons and hiding wayward Archangels.
At my most recent re-read of Addyās stories, I noticed a detail in Addy Learns a Lesson that I hadnāt caught ever before. I want to bring your attention to it, because I think itās important.Ā Ā
First: throw out your BeForever books. Get the first editions with the illustrations by Melodye Rosales, because they are luminous, expressive, and rich. They portray Addy as the sweet young girl she is, seeing as how they were modeled after Ms. Rosalesā own daughter Harmony.Ā
In fact, do the same for you 1998 editions with the new illustrations by Dahl Taylor. They serve their purpose fine, but in some pictures I think Addy looks closer to 12 or 13 years old, and theyāre a little less vibrant. But thatās a personal preference. They are inferior for another reason.
So in Addy Learns a Lesson, thereās a particular full-page illustration that shows Addyās second day of school, when she first shares a desk with Harriet. Letās compare the two illustrations side-by-side. The 1993 edition (Rosales) is on the left; 1998 (Taylor) on the right.
While most of the changes mostly look minor (although changing the skin color of the students is an issue itself), thereās one detail that is very, very different. Look at the map on the wall behind the students. Oneās a world map, and oneās a map of the United States.Ā
Hereās why this matters: earlier in the book, there is a scene where Addy is describing the classroom as she enters it for the first time. There are rows of desk, thereās a stove, andĀ āhuge black squares filled with writingā which are obviously blackboards. We can figure that out.Ā
But the next sentence is this:Ā
On another wall there was a large piece of paper filled with colorful shapes. Whatās that for? Addy wondered.
The narrative never actually explains what that shape-covered paper is. Did you try to guess what it is? Or did you forget it and move on? The wording is so ambiguous that you really need to see the illustration and piece together that she was looking at a map of the United States.Ā Could anyone actually ever determine, without looking at the picture, that sheās referring to a map of the country? Addy has never seen a map of the US.Ā Just like how it was illegal to teach an enslaved person to read, this was an advantage for slaveholders. You canāt successfully escape slavery if you donāt know where you are, where youāre going, and which states are free states.Ā
I canāt imagine why Dahl Taylor would have omitted the map of the states and used a world map instead. Thereās really no point, except maybe he overlooked the meaning of the colored shapes entirely. And maybe this isnāt surprising: according to his page on the American Girl Wiki, some of his illustrationsĀ āmade characters either lighter or darker than they were originally and some scenes less intense, changing several dynamics of the stories in images.āĀ
It certainly does change a lot. I wish this detail, the map, had been preserved with the new illustration, because it adds such an interesting layer to the story by proving how incredibly smart and capable Addy and her mother are. They couldnāt have read a map during their journey even if they could have carried one. Still, they successfully followed an escape route entirely by remembering landmarks, paying attention to their surroundings, and knowing when to trust people. Iām so glad Melodye Rosales included that subtle detail.Ā
(You can read more about why Ms. Rosales only illustrated the first three books in this article [here].)Ā
weāre having an angst war over on @goodomensafterdark and @gleafer, @gahellhimself-blog and I are having a competition who can spread the most pain and suffering. Hereās my contribution. Enjoy
donāt worry, this isnāt the end yet: hereās part two. | Part 3
don't use "ftm" it's outdated and offensive. it implies that the trans person was their agab, which we never were. i was always a boy, never a girl who became a boy.
i’m 35 years old. i’ve been IDing as trans or something similar to trans for nearly 20 years. i was probably calling myself FTM while you were playing tag during recess, anon.
i WAS a girl. i IDed as a girl early in my life. i recognized myself as a girl, called myself a girl, lived as a girl, and was a girl. who then IDed as a man. hence, F t M.
spend more time worrying about yourself instead of strangers on the internet, anon.
sorry not sorry if this comes off as needlessly hostile, but i’ve been getting a lot of shit from a lot of teenage trans kids about the language i use to describe my own goddamn experience, and i’m growing real fuckin weary of it.
i have elder trans friends who call themselves transsexuals and transvestites and trannies. are you going to seriously go to a 60-year-old trans person who survived the reagan years and tell her she’s not allowed to use certain language to describe herself because it might offend the delicate sensibilities of some teenager on the internet?
do yourself a favor and log off, find some real-life trans people who are over the age of 20 or 25, and spend time talking to them instead of getting all holier-than-thou at random strangers on tumblr.
It may be weird to encounter because it’s not the trans narrative that the media sells to us as ‘the only valid way to be trans’, but the 'I always knew I was x’ is not all-encompassing.
Anon there are more people than you think who were girls who grew up into men, or boys who grew up into women, or girls or boys who grew up to be nonbinary. There is a rather obscure theory that girl and boy are distinct genders from man and woman and while the most common trajectory is that boys grow into men and girls grow into women it’s not the rule.
Let people define themselves.
also if you think genderfluid people are real and you’re not just humoring us, you by definition have to allow that gender can change over time. I was a girl once. I am not a girl now.
Chiming in with solidarity to OP.
I feel very protective of my former identity BECAUSE there’s so little room in the Mainstream Trans Narrative ™️ for allowing gender to change.
I was a girl. Now I’m genderqueer. Maybe later I will find different words for myself.
There has to be room for all of us in the trans community or there’s no point to any of this.
Ive been here long enough to see words like ftm/mtf, afab/amab, transmale/female, trans man/womanall go through the cycle of ppl telling you to “Dont use X word its out dated. Now use this Y word”. Only for a year or two pass and suddenly “Y word is outdated. Now use Z word” like yall this is exhausting. Just because a word is old doesn’t automatically make it a slur or offensive.
They’re pulling high school clique bullshit out and just replacing 'uncool’ with 'problematic’ and pretending it’s activism somehow. We’re trying to get work done here not everybody is going to keep up with the ever-rotating lexicon of words.
I used to be a member of the commentariat where I learned the phrase
THERE IS NO QUEER REVIEW BOARD
Which has kinda helped me be a bit better at being decent
NEIL NEIL! There’s an article from Deadline Hollywood that says good omens is going to be renewed for a third season IS IT TRUE??? CAN I START SCREAMING ALREADY???
“Kill yourself” is basic. “I hope your fandom gets a new installment that is objectively a great work but also tonally dissonant from the previous ones in a way that generates a huge newbie boom of people uninterested and hostile towards the history of the franchise” is smart. It’s possible. It’s terrifying. It’s happening right now.
Bee. 32. š. Wife š. Mother of Corgis (and one deaf, toothless, geriatric cat). Lactose intolerant cheese enthusiast. Trans ally! Captain of an armada of Ships and OTPs.
