Daine, Numair, Alanna, and other members of a diplomatic mission are sent to Carthak, a country to the South that’s been using proxies to attack Tortall. Carthak, as you may surmise from the name, is standing in for North Africa. The Emperor Ozorne was also responsible for releasing the immortal creatures from the Divine Realms into the mortal world. The book ends with Ozorne’s seeming defeat. Things I love most about this book: the baby dragon Kitten, and the dinosaur skeletons Daine brings to life to wreck the palace. Things that I don’t love so much: the destruction of the palace, and sometimes the handling of slavery. Daine befriended Ozorne’s nephew and heir Kaddar, and the young prince has enough on his plate after his uncle is deposed–like dealing with famine–without the destruction of the empire’s administrative center, not to mention important cultural artifacts that were presumably housed in the palace. I understand Daine’s desire to take down Ozorne, but I think she probably hinders the reconstruction efforts. She also lets the dinosaurs destroy food in the palace, and there are definitely people there who could have used a good meal. So I don’t think that was actually very smart. I wish slavery was dealt with more, but there’s also limitations to Daine’s ability to discuss slavery, since she’s part of the diplomatic mission.

In The Realms of the Gods, Daine and Numair wind up in the Divine Realms, where Daine sees her mother, who’s become a minor goddess, and meets her father, who turns out to be a god of the hunt–hence Daine’s magical abilities. Uusoae, a goddess-like figure that represents Chaos, has apparently allied herself with someone in the mortal realms, and is busy sowing all manner of havoc. Daine and Numair make a journey across the Divine Realms to reach home, and meet Kitten’s cantankerous relatives.

The big thing in the last book is Daine’s and Numair’s budding romance. This definitely disturbed me as a kid, because there’s such a large age difference–16 years, I think–and it does still bother me. I don’t like that they meet when Daine’s only 13, and I think she’s only 16 in this book, and he’s in his 30s. Numair is a great character, and he fortunately expresses deep reservations about a relationship with his much-younger student. I know Daine’s pretty exceptional, being a demi-god and all, but that’s still a large gap in maturity and experience, and I think Tamora Pierce said she wouldn’t write such a large age difference again. (Although, according to this, Numair is 27? Still a big gap.)

Anyway, I really just want a book about Kitten.

Full disclosure: I get a very small percentage of the sale if you use this link to buy the books on Amazon. If you’d like to buy the books, I’d be most grateful if you did it from here!

Emperor Mage (Immortals)

The Realms of the Gods (Immortals)

I haven’t done an Unnecessary Products post in awhile, so this was an enjoyable find:

Ladies, if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere with access to clean drinking water, then you know that the stuff coming straight from your tap is enough to keep you alive in a purely physiological sense. But can you “live your best life” while drinking H2O from the sink? Can you “have it all” while drinking off-brand bottled water you bought at the deli?

 

The answer is no, you can’t.

 

And Nestlé knows that, which is why the company launched “Resource” on Monday, a premium water made specifically for “a woman who is a little more on the trendy side and higher-income side,” according to Larry Cooper, group marketing manager for Resource.

 

Resource is more than just a beverage, it’s a reflection of who you are as a woman in the very deepest and most personal sense of your very being, as Cooper went on to explain to the New York Times: “We want to raise it to the level of a lifestyle brand,” he said, “where she’s proud to carry around Resource as her bottled water accessory, so to speak.”

Wow, it’s like massive, global wealth inequality distilled to its purest form. Seriously, who had the hubris to name an expensively packaged bottle of water “Resource?”

I also have to think that, amongst their target demographic, disposable water bottles are now completely anathema, anyway. Trying to turn a precious and essential resource into a trendy “accessory” is pretty heinous. It’s absurd and I hope no one buys it.

And attempting to gender water for marketing purposes is, I think, several steps beyond those Bic pens we all chuckled over a few months back. I mean, really.

In other news, the world got slightly less exploitative on a couple of counts: the Supreme Court has banned the patenting of naturally occurring genes, and a New York judge set a precedent for preventing employers from using unpaid interns to do labor that should rightfully be paid. Hopefully that will be a good thing.

Have a good weekend!

So, this is a review of my first year of blogging:

Top Posts:

A Brief History of Ballet Dancers and Social Status I’m a little surprised that this post rocketed to the top, but I probably shouldn’t be. I doubt that many people were looking for a discussion of 18th century coverture laws when they searched for “ballet prostitution”, but maybe they learned something. Hat tip to Lucreza Borgia for asking the question in the first place.

Chivalry, Class, and Race was the frontrunner for a long time, and is still going pretty strong. It might be the post I’m most proud of. Also, a belated thank you to Graceishuman for including it in her Sunday Reading round-up for Aaron Bady’s blog at The New Inquiry.

Did Women Vote for Prohibition? In Which I Analyze Internet Comments. This is apparently a compelling topic for a lot of people. Remember kids, if you’re writing a paper, you need to cite better sources than some random blogger.

Chivalry Part I: The Middle Ages. I’m really sorry if I ruined your knightly fantasies. Here, read some Tamora Pierce instead.

Fox News Continues to Occupy the Alternate Reality It Constructed For Itself. Eh, election news.

Post with the most surprising number of views:

Suffragist of the Day: Charlotte Woodward, c. 1829-1921. Charlotte Woodward wasn’t a leader of the suffrage movement, but she does have the distinction of being the only attendee of the Seneca Falls Convention to outlive the passage of the 19th Amendment. There isn’t that much information about her, and I appear to have cornered the Charlotte Woodward market. There must be a textbook somewhere in the world that asks the question, “why might working class women like charlotte woodward have supported the seneca falls convention and the declaration of sentiments?” At least, that’s what I surmise from the frequency of that search term.

Favorite search term: “Redwall is my childhood.” And it really was, at least until Tortall became my childhood.

Other random search terms: ”which holes(women) to make pregnant”; “secrets about charlotte woodward”; “situations at which a girl can get pregnant”; “were people in the lucky few generation good?”; “frederic remington hates women”; “dating in high society when you’re not”; “what happens when a girl is pregnant in the middle ages”. Make of those what you will.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Oh, and I forgot my final tally of posts for the past year: 265. Not too shabby, I think!

My friends and I decided to use our January break from university to visit Krakow, Vienna, and Prague. We agreed to make a side trip from Krakow to visit Auschwitz, near the town of Oświęcim. My Polish friend, G., had come with us to Krakow, but opted to visit her aunt on the day we went to Auschwitz. We parted ways at the train station. “Well,” G. said. “I don’t want to say, ‘have a good time’…”

 

The train ride through the Polish woods was truly beautiful. Fresh snow formed deep drifts between the evergreens. The only blot on the landscape was anti-Semitic graffiti, written in English, scrawled on the cement of forgotten train platforms. What were people even doing out there? “English football fans,” my friend R. said, her lip curling disdainfully. It was galling, whoever was responsible.

Head over to Medium to read the rest!

During closing arguments Tuesday, Gilbert’s defense team conceded the shooting did occur but said the intent wasn’t to kill. Gilbert’s actions were justified, they argued, because he was trying to retrieve stolen property: the $150 he paid Frago. It became theft when she refused to have sex with him or give the money back, they said.

 

Gilbert testified earlier Tuesday that he had found Frago’s escort ad on Craigslist and believed sex was included in her $150 fee. But instead, Frago walked around his apartment and after about 20 minutes left, saying she had to give the money to her driver, he said.

 

That driver, the defense contended, was Frago’s pimp and her partner in the theft scheme.

 

The Texas law that allows people to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft was put in place for “law-abiding” citizens, prosecutors Matt Lovell and Jessica Schulze countered. It’s not intended for someone trying to force another person into an illegal act such as prostitution, they argued.

I’m honestly flabbergasted that we have laws that allow for property to be given higher precedence than a person’s life. This wasn’t a self-defense case; I’ve read nothing that indicates Gilbert’s life was endangered. This was about $150 and a demand to have sex. There is nothing, nothing, nothing that can possibly “justify” Gilbert’s actions.

And of course, there’s a very long history of minimization of violence against prostitutes.

Although this wasn’t a self-defense case, it’s drawn comparisons to the case of Marissa Alexander, an African-American woman sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot (that didn’t injure anyone) at her estranged husband, against whom she had a restraining order. I remember reading studies that indicated women are convicted more frequently and sentenced more harshly in property defense/self-defense cases, but a cursory google search didn’t turn up any comprehensive sources, at least none that weren’t behind paywalls. Readers, do you have any good sources to recommend on gender and race disparities in self-defense sentencing? The general theory is that jurors are less comfortable with women and people of color using violence, and they’re less likely to see that violence as proportionate to the threat. Conversely, they’re more likely to view violence employed by white men as justifiable and proportionate.

Update: Bridgette Dunlap argues that the jury acquitted on the grounds that Gilbert didn’t intend to kill, rather than based on the property defense law. But why wasn’t the jury instructed to consider charges of manslaughter? And it’s still disturbing that the defense, and the prosecution’s response, centered on the property defense law.

Anyway, I’ve been reading Tamora Pierce’s The Immortals quartet, which fits into the Tortall universe between Song of the Lioness and Protector of the Small. I can’t remember if I read Immortals before SOTL, or after. I definitely identified with Immortals protagonist Daine less than with Alanna, but I did enjoy the books, and I actually find that I enjoy them a lot as an adult. (Mild spoilers. I’m going to assume knowledge of characters from SOTL–apologies to those who aren’t familiar.)

I’ve written before that Tamora Pierce is really good at writing a variety of protagonists with different personalities, challenges, and strengths, and it seems like there’s a group of very devoted Daine fans who identify with her more than with Alanna or Kel. I think it’s great that lots of people, especially adolescent girls, are able to bring away inspiration for their own lives from these different protagonists.

Daine is a 13-year-old orphan from Galla, a country northeast of Tortall. She fled her village after her mother and grandfather were killed by bandits. She never knew her father, a fact for which she faced ostracism from the other villagers. Although she doesn’t realize it, Daine possesses wild magic, which allows her to communicate with animals. Her only friend left in the world is her pony, Cloud. She travels to a fair in the Gallan capitol to look for work, and signs on with Onua, the horse trader for the Tortallan Queen’s Riders. So that’s how Daine gets involved with the SOTL cast–Alanna, Jonathan, Thayet, Buri, and George all show up in pretty short order. And it is fun to see them, and to see them through the eyes of a new character. Daine’s heard of Alanna, who’s basically a living legend, and is kind of shocked to meet her. Alanna quips, “Don’t tell me. You expected someone bigger.” She meets Thayet and Jonathan before she knows they’re the monarchs, and is adorably floored by Jonathan’s handsomeness. I’m especially glad that we get so see more Thayet, because she’s only in the last book of SOTL.

The other major character introduction is Numair, a high-level but rather absent-minded mage who becomes Daine’s teacher. Numair helps Daine gain control of her wild magic. After her family was killed, Daine basically went feral and lived with a wolf pack, which helped her hunt down the bandits. Then her own neighbors, terrified of the girl who lived with wolves, tried to hunt her down and kill her, but she was able to escape and remember that she was human. So Daine is both thoroughly traumatized by her experiences with her fellow human beings, and frightened that she’ll lose control and forget she’s a human herself. I think Daine especially speaks to people who had difficult childhoods, or faced ostracism, family loss, or the shock of relocating to a different culture.

Daine becomes involved in the dangers facing Tortall; it appears that someone, probably the Carthaki Emperor, has released immortal creatures from the Divine Realms. Some of these creatures are downright terrible, like spidrens, which are giant spiders with human heads. Others are highly intelligent and generally good, like dragons and basilisks. Stormwings, which are half-human and half-metal bird, are rather ambiguous. Their purpose is to foul bodies on battlefields, which is pretty abhorrent, but they definitely have a sense of ethics. The first two books are taken up with the entrance of the immortals into the mortal world, and with plots of treason against the Tortallan throne.

One of my favorite characters is Kitten, a baby dragon adopted by Daine. Kitten seems like great company. She’s very smart, and communicates by chortling, and can open locks by whistling at them, and is even cute when she sulks. When they’re living with the wolf pack in the second book, the pups are afraid of Kitten and won’t say hello to her, so she goes off on her own to play with rocks and pretends to ignore everyone. One of the adult wolves goes to play rocks with her, and she stops sulking, because all she wanted was to play! Poor Kitten. I’d play with her. Of course, once she reached adulthood, she’d be terrifyingly large and probably smarter than I am.

Anyway, there’s a lot of great new characters in the books, and there’s a lot more diversity within the world. The perspective and scope of the Tortall universe widens substantially in The Immortals. I’ll put up a review of the next two books shortly.

Full disclosure: I get a very small percentage of the sale if you use this link to buy the books on Amazon. If you’d like to buy the books, I’d be most grateful if you did it from here!

St Andrews was founded in 1413 by a papal bull issued by the Avignon pope during the Schism. It’s the third oldest university in the English-speaking world, after Oxford and Cambridge.

The university website has a timeline of some of the more notable events in St Andrews’ long and surprisingly bloody history:

1457: The Scottish Parliament bans golf. The game was invented in St Andrews at some point in the 15th century, and became so popular that Parliament actually moved itself to ban it, because it was distracting young men from archery practice. Apparently the ban didn’t take, because Parliament reissued bans on both golf and football in 1471 and 1491, the latter of which outlawed “fut bawis gouff or uthir sic unproffitable sports” (football, golf, or other such unprofitable sports). Maybe they realized they were fighting a losing battle, because the ban on golf was overturned in 1502.

1470: Several masters and students expelled for attacking the Dean with bows and arrows. Be careful what you wish for.

1528: Patrick Hamilton burned at the stake. St Andrews was the historical seat of the Church in Scotland, and became a center of conflict during the Protestant Reformation. (John Knox preached at St Andrews.) Hamilton wasn’t the only St Andrean to meet such a ghastly end, but he is the only one to allegedly have his face miraculously appear on the stonework above the location of his burning, which is now marked with his initials. It’s considered bad luck to step on “the PH”; supposedly you’ll fail your exams unless you take a purging dip in the North Sea at dawn on May 1st.

1546: George Wishart burned at the stake. Cardinal David Beaton murdered in retaliation. The execution spot is marked with Wishart’s initials, but for some reason it’s not bad luck to step on them. At least, not that I’ve heard.

1620: Establishment of a student archery competition. I guess people were able to do both golf and archery, after all.

1759: The university awards an honorary degree to Benjamin Franklin, in recognition of his work on electricity. Additional fun fact: Two signers of the Declaration of Independence, James Wilson and John Witherspoon, graduated from St Andrews.

1892: Women admitted, finally, but only to classes with professors willing to teach men and women together. In 1896, the university built a women-only residence on the outskirts of town. This is what it looks like:

It looks like a miniature fortress. Was it designed to keep them in, or to keep other people out?

1970: The student body elects John Cleese as Rector, the position that presides over the University Court. In the 15th century, St Andrews students were being burned at the stake for heresy. In the 20th century, they elected one of the Pythons to represent their interests. Progress? I think so.

Don’t laugh–this is a solemn event. Wikimedia Commons.

The ballet is about the ritual sacrifice of a young woman in “pagan Russia,” and it’s as disturbing as you might imagine. Stravinsky’s music was jarring and dissonant, and the choreography placed the dancers in awkward, twisted positions, requiring them to perform movements that look remarkably creepy when performed en masse. Although Nijinsky wasn’t a stranger to scandalous pieces that pushed the boundaries of accepted artistic taste, The Rite of Spring was a stark departure from classical forms, and a lot of people found it pretty upsetting.

In the 1980s, the Joffrey Ballet reconstructed the original work, complete with the original costume designs. Things start to get extra disturbing around this point:

Many other choreographers have taken on Stravinsky’s score. This version by Pina Bausch is especially unsettling. (There’s nudity.)

People in the 19th century were really enamored of posing with their own decapitated heads. I’m sure our successor civilization will plumb this for deep spiritual significance.

Originally from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hey, if you’re old enough to walk, you’re old enough to butcher a chocolate bunny.

Originally from Capitol Gallery.

I particularly enjoy this gentleman:

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

And this picture of a sharpshooter, holding a mirror for backwards trick shots.

Cowan Auctions.

I’d definitely recommend taking a look around.

An image of a woman crumpled at the bottom of the stairs with the caption “Next time don’t get pregnant”? Pages with titles like “Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs” and “Kicking Your Girlfriend in the Fanny [vagina] because she won’t make you a Sandwich”? Constitutionally protected free speech! Apparently.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the fact that homicide is one of the leading causes of death for pregnant women, and that around two-thirds of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim.

Soraya Chemaly, Jaclyn Friedman, and Laura Bates wrote an open letter to Facebook, signed by numerous other people and organizations, calling on them to recognize these images and pages as hate speech. Facebook already aggressively cracks down on racist and homophobic hate speech; how is this different? It’s advocating and making light of violence against a group of people.

From Chemaly’s letter:

It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women’s bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women’s nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse.  Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke…

 

Although Facebook claims, not to be involved in challenging norms or censoring people’s speech, you have in place procedures, terms and community guidelines that you interpret and enforce. Facebook prohibits hate speech and your moderators deal with content that is violently racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic every day. Your refusal to similarly address gender-based hate speech marginalizes girls and women, sidelines our experiences and concerns, and contributes to violence against us.  Facebook is an enormous social network with more than a billion users around the world, making your site extremely influential in shaping social and cultural norms and behaviors.

Think “joke” pages don’t negatively impact the lives of real people?

[A]llowing content about raping and beating women to be shared, boasted and joked about contributes to the normalisation of domestic and sexual violence, creates an atmosphere in which perpetrators are more likely to believe they will go unpunished, and communicates to victims that they will not be taken seriously if they report.

What do you think gave the Steubenville perpetrators the confidence to photograph themselves assaulting an unconscious girl? What about the men in Texas who raped an 11-year-old and recorded it on a cell phone? What about the three teenagers in Chicago who have been arrested on charges of raping a 12-year-old girl, then posting the video to Facebook? What made them think they would get away with it?

You can connect the dots, I’m sure.