I don't know if the thing I feel the need to write is a paper or a fanfic or a poem or something that's all three at once.

Imagine a Belle whose parentified-daughter patience stunts Beast's growth and keeps him from learning anything until after the last petal has fallen. Imagine an Elphaba who, accustomed from childhood to emotional neglect, gives Glinda so much cheap grace that it enables her fall to fascism.

Oooh.

Is there a particular theme to your playlist?

(Zombie has been on my frequently-played list all month because I've spent it practicing various songs for, again, TDOR stuff. Zombie, One More Light, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables...)

*Yes.*

I've been listening to Zombie a lot lately for obvious TDOR reasons and while it's nowhere near the most extreme example of this musically, it's definitely one of my personal favourites.

I like to try and get specific. If their importance comes from everyone building on them, 'foundational'. If their contribution was one epiphany that changed thought, 'illuminating'. Or sometimes I just describe it in full: "...whose work proved that [x] was, in fact, worthy of serious study..."

I generally agree, but want to add a wrinkle: It's like playing life with one of the difficulty sliders pulled way down. But there are others.

I think a lot of people the world *is* against (for example, because they're poor) get the reason wrong and turn against people they should be allying with.

Does it count as "public philosophy" if you do it for an audience of twenty and make jokes the whole time?

...I could do something with this, now that I think of it. What happens if I put Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work in conversation with the philosophical literature on...

...nope. No no nope nuh-uh no. I cannot afford yet another side interest when my actual dissertation is starting to forget my face.

To be clear, this isn't an argument against forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of my major values.

But the easy, limitless forgiveness women characters get celebrated for providing, usually without requiring any real atonement from the other party, is infuriating to see in media aimed at young people.

I'm not over this.

Wicked was pitched to me as a story that centers and humanizes someone the original story framed as a two-dimensional monster. I'm pretty disappointed to discover that it ultimately reframed her as Glinda's Uncle Ben.

(I'm exaggerating to be provocative, but not by much!)

It's one thing to put this kind of behaviour on an exaggerated figure of awe like Optimus Prime or Mother Nature. It still needs careful handling, and works best if they aren't the perspective character, but I'm less suspicious.

To do it to a human protagonist in their own story bugs me.

I notice also that Belle's story instrumentalizes a peasant woman to provide character development for a nobleman while Elphaba's instrumentalizes a woman of colour to provide character development for a white woman. Both are framed as virtuous for doing this.

This is the way.

Excellent.