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* It sounded like there was a major crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood by the Egyptian military going on over the weekend, followed by retaliation in the form of terrorist bombings.
* Remember how the US was fairly popular in Libya because we actually consulted the inhabitants about what they wanted before intervening and how the new government was cooperating with us? We just pissed on that by renditioning someone from there without consulting the government thus undermining the new government there. Yes, the guy we renditioned was Al Queada. The thing is though, How would we feel if another country sent people to kidnap Bush, Cheney, or Rove for their war crimes? Clearly these are war criminals involved in ordering the torture of prisoners and they ought to be brought to trial at the Hague, but kidnapping people from other countries is a serious asshole maneuver and violates international law. I'm in favor of international law and not pissing on your friends just generally.
* They are still retrieving bodies from the African refugee ship off the coast of Italy. The refugees were mostly from Eritrea and Somalia. There are 150 survivors at the over crowded migrant center, with people sleeping in the open and winter coming. Conditions at the site have made body recovery hard. They have found 83 out of three hundred or so they believe to be dead. They've started taking DNA and photographs to try to identify the dead. It is horrifying. I can only imagine the trauma the survivors and islanders are going through. The survivors face harsh fines they can't afford by the Italian government as well. These are people pulled out of the water who have lost what little they have. The Italian government is debating what to do with them.
* The Koch brothers spent 10x the money on closing pre-schools that provide education and child care than they spent building a child care facility for the families that work at MIT. Why are people praising them for this? It seems to me that folks working minimum wage are the ones needing child care the most, not the least.
* Once Upon a Time the line between Rent, Taxes, and Fines was blurry in England. This changed everything. (Also feudalism was way messier than gets presented a lot of the time):
The idea was that the King or Queen owned all the land in the country. The right to use the land was lent to various nobles in exchange for military duty and/or rent. Those folks who held the land directly from the crown would generally lend bits of it to other folks who did the same and so on. You likely got a neat little pyramid chart back when you learned about feudalism in Middle School. The problem is, in real life it was so much messier. Over time, marriage alliances got made during which land changed hands, families died out, other families went bankrupt, still other families rose through the hierarchy and were granted new lands for services rendered or married into them or bought them. This means that people ended up holding random plots of land all over England and France. They might owe fealty to both kings. Lord A might be lord B's overlord for some of his lands, while lord B might be Lord A's overlord for others. At various points the ruler in England owed fealty to the french king with complicated political results. Now remember that this system goes all the way down to the folks doing below subsistence farming. Land for peasants tended to be divided into free and unfree. You could be born free, but if you rented even a tiny piece of unfree land you became unfree yourself. This also got complicated. You could be a well off serf while your free neighbor was starving, trying to feed a family on a acre or two and what they could make doing odd jobs.
Early on, Nobles mostly owed military service and were supposed to turn up with x number of soldiers of various types when the ruler called, but sometimes they owed rent in kind for some of their lands. This means they were supposed to turn up with X amount of wheat or apples or wool or whatever. They might owe both to the crown, as as in X Archers and Y bushels of strawberries. Over the centuries this got more complicated instead of less. Similarly, farmers might owe X amount of Y commodity and/or A number of days of labor and/or z amount of money. This was all rent, but some of these situations are more like tax in effect. If you are paying your barley to the crown to run the government is it rent or tax, really?
Why was it mostly considered rent? Remember, in the beginning, tax wasn't something assessed regularly, but an extraordinary levy. The vikings will attack if we don't pay them Danegeld! Everyone pay in a share! The vikings are attacking and we need to raise money for weapons and troops! Everyone pay a share! We are having a civil war! Everyone chip in! We are at war with France! Everyone chip in! I have written elsewhere about how the periodic and increasingly more frequent need to raise money for the government led to the modern parliamentary system, so I'm not getting into that today. Suffice to say that over time, taxation increasingly required the need for some form of consent by the governed, at first by the nobles who were required to have private armies, but over time also by the ordinary folk. The inclusion of the Commons was a rubber stamp at first, but over time, they gained power. Traditionally, tax levels were based on a combination of how much land and/or movable goods you owned. (It will actually say x amount of land or movable goods worth Y). In the late 14th century, they experimented with a "poll tax." This is a regressive tax that charged everyone the same regardless of wealth, which was potentially deadly if you had to sell your last sheep. This lead to a massive peasant rebellion that led to the effective end of serfdom which I've also written about elsewhere. Early on, taxation was often in kind, but ended up being in money fairly quickly.
The thing is, landlords ended up wanting rather more money than they were getting in rent, so they made laws against things they everyone had to do to survive. There was a "fine" for bread making and another for brewing ale, even though everyone had to drink ale because the water wasn't generally safe. This fine was paid a couple of times a year at the same time rents were paid and courts were held for actual criminal acts. If your landlord is your local magistrate, is this really a fine or is it a sales tax? You see? Blurry lines.
So there are multiple systems of payment going on at the same time from Anglo-Saxon times onwards, involving mixtures of military service, payment in kind, and money.
Now imagine a noble who owes a weird mix of soldiers and commodities to the crown. Ze has the hassle of getting someone to transport wagons of stuff. Some years the bandits are bad and you have to hire people to guard the stuff. One year, the price for those commodities is really high on the open market, which means that even though the physical objects ze is are turning over are the same as last year, zir rent is functionally higher. The next year there is a glut and the rent is worth less. Imagine that the noble in question is very young or very old or sick or female. (Women routinely organized and participated in castle or manor house defense, but they hardly ever lead armies. Yes there are notable exceptions, but it wasnt very often). The Lord or Lady can't lead the military levy when there is a muster for whatever reason. How do they make up the Levy? The obvious solution in all these situations is to transform your payment in kind or service into a cash payment with fixed value, since there was already a taxation system based mostly on coin.
This turned out to be a popular idea with Queens and Kings as well. We are at war! 10 bushels of strawberries are vastly less useful right now than money to hire soldiers or build ships. Similarly, having fixed payments meant they didn't have to worry about market fluctuations controlling the budget as much. Rye is low and barley high this season? Feed the servants more rye bought with fixed rents. As a bonus, troops bought with money have primar loyalty to the crown, where as Lords turning up with private armies can switch sides or use them as leverage to get concessions.
All in all, money turned out simplest all around, even though in glut years it could be hard to raise coin if some hadn't been saved from higher selling harvests. The idea of mixed payments was already there, and there was a tradition of people getting a choice of payment method. There was always an expectation that nobles not paying military service would switch to one of the other systems. As the pressures of maintaining a standing army and naval defense increased, the crown put laws into effect requiring people over certain levels of wealth to officially move up the social structure. A commoner who made good as a metalsmith or weaver or farmer got knighted whether he wanted to or not, for example. The tax system stayed progressive and the few attempts to make it otherwise were resisted violently.
Meanwhile, French nobles had the expectation of military service only and Salic Law meant there was less pressure to convert to other payment types. There was less bleed between forms and types of taxation. Over time, the system of military duty for the aristocracy died out in favor of a standing professional army paid for with taxes on the poor and Middle Class. They never converted levy requirements into taxation on the rich. As the expense of running an early modern state increased over time, it got harder and harder for the productive members of society to carry the tax burden that supported while also dealing with skyrocketing rents to pay for increasingly more expensive aristocratic life styles. England had a progressive tax system and significantly higher social mobility; France had a massively regressive tax system and the gap between hereditary nobility and people who worked for a living got wider and wider. The connection between money and power led to non-nobles having fewer and fewer rights and opportunities. The English system was more flexible and so survived despite civil wars and uprisings. The more rigid French system became financially bankrupt and so oppressive that killing noble families down to the children started looking like a good idea. (I do not condone the murder of innocent children and babies, I am just explaining where all that anger comes from). A noble could do literally anything to a commoner without expectation of repercussion by the end. When the Nobles attempted to leverage the discontent of ordinary people in a power struggle with the monarchy, they released centuries of pent up fury.
* It has come to my attention that there is a lot of assholery going around about Darren Criss and his girlfriend:
I honestly do not give a fart about celebrity private lives unless the celebrity in question is over the top bigoted or doing things like sexually assaulting people, killing them, or doing things along those lines. I do not are about who's dating who as long as everyone is a consenting adult (or if under aged dating someone close enough in age for that not to raise consent questions). I think everyone, no matter how famous, needs and deserves a private life. I can't stop people from using telephoto lenses to invade privacy or the publishing of blind items or gossip. I can control my actions, however and I chose not to participate in any way.
Darren Criss is not my boyfriend, so who he dates is none of my damned business. Unless he is dating you right now? It's no your business either. I don't even think it's my business who people I dated personally are dating five minutes after we blow up. Quite literally, all I know about Mr. Criss's girlfriend is what I've seen in red carpet photos and I'm fairly sure her name is Mia. Maybe.
It's hard dating someone internationally famous. Hell, it's pretty rough dating someone small scale locally famous. Death threats and internet bullying are never okay, even if we're talking about war criminals, and we are not. We are talking about what appears to be a nice lady who is having to deal with all the crap that comes with dating someone with a demanding career in the public eye. Let's extend a little empathy here and leave their private business private.
If you are the sort of person hating on someone because shes dating your imaginary boyfriend? You aren't someone I want anything to do with and I'm going to lower my opinion of you to pond scum.
Re the blind item:
The Outing shit is completely unacceptable on multiple levels. 1. Being gay or Bisexual is not shameful and this sort of crap reinforces ugly stuff in our culture that hurts all sorts of kids an teens and adults who are already getting a lot of toxic nastiness that harms them. 2. Outing people like this is not okay. I've written about this extensively. What people chose to say about their orientation and their private life in general should be their choice.
Short Form? Don't Be a Dick!
* "2014 Olympic Flame Lit And Headed To Sochi:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/10/2014-olympic-flame-lit-and-headed-to.html
* "Bigotry Costs You Big Money:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/10/bigotry-costs-you-big-money.html
* Today was a really bad leg day and I am really cranky. Luckily, my errands were low key.
* Glee 4.5-7 (The last bit of 5, parts of 7):
The Role You Were Born to Play and Glease: (I'm not sure what went in what). I never liked Finn as much as I did when he stood up for Unique to Sue. When I think of how far he's come since the homophobic rant he laid on Kurt... Damn. That is some serious character development. Of course, being Finn, he ruined it by saying that unacceptable thing, but the rest of it? That's what our trans kids deserve and so seldom get. Unique needs Burt Hummel for a father and it's unfortunate that her parents are all to realistic. I know, I know, they could be worse. This why the trans youth homeless rate is so unacceptably high. I want to hug her. I want her to have a school where there's a proper trans policy in place. (Both my districts let out Trans* students choose the restroom and locker room that matches their presentation or the faculty single person rest rooms if they don't feel safe in gendered facilities.) I want her to have a Mother like mine to fight for her and a father like Kurt's willing to move the world to make her feel safe. This was hard to watch, but very, very important to talk about. With Finn just generally, these two episodes show both how much he's grown and also that there is a danger of him becoming Shue's minime, which is a serious worry.
I do not understand why they didn't instantly suspect Kitty with the waist band. I did. I was expecting her to do it. Marley's been bullied before; Marley's street clothes fit; Tina should have her waist measurements from them taking them for the costume in the first place; they could just measure the waist band to see if there had been tampering. If I could put this together in seconds including a way to check my guess, couldn't they figure it out with days to do it? Why does anyone listen to anything Kitty says anyway, given her being worse than Sue. They know she's toxic. If she's being "helpful" it's time to get suspicious.
Tina is right to be angry and they are still ignoring her.
Teen Angel was, if anything, somehow scarier than Cough Syrup and Teenaged Dream. I had trouble watching it and will have to rewatch when I'm more prepared emotionally. Sorry. I just can't with analysis right now.
Was the scene where Beiste talks Emma into standing up for herself in this one? Beiste: still amazing. Also, ouch. I'm glad they are still having her process the abuse. The way she talked to Emma made me think she processes trauma similar to the way I do, looking it straight in the eye unflinching, never dancing around the past, but dealing with it head on for better or worse. She is valiant and admirable.
The vignette with Santana and Brittany was brilliant. It said so much about the ways Brittany gets underestimated on top of what it said about their relationship.
I like the way there was no closure in Finchel and Klaine's conversations. In real life, one more conversation with the ex after an ugly break up generally doesn't lead to closure, only recriminations. Instead what's needed is processing. I've said before I identify with Kurt. (I can count characters I identify with even a little on one hand). This means that in some ways I am too close to say clever things about his grief. Cheating never was an issue in my relationships, but I have had bad breakups mixed in with the amicable ones, and oh, have I done the Klaine relationship dynamic back in the day. I made some different mistakes than Kurt, but I've also made some of the same ones. When I say he's been doing a better job with this than I did in seasons 3 and 4, I don't mean that he's handling Blaine the way that I wish I'd handled my Blaine. It just means that I know why he does what he does all too well and I get how impossible it is to handle something like this well unless you've already failed at it miserably and had time to process everything that both of you did wrong. I had to fail my Blaine without knowing I was failing him to figure out how not to fail the next Blaine. This may sound like I blame Kurt, but I don't. Blaine hasn't figured out how to ask for help yet and he projects the Dalton "I'm okay" facade, which makes it extremely hard for Kurt to figure out when he's seeing cries for help. Kurt spends all of three and the early episodes of four innocently walking through a minefield that he can't see.
Dynamic Duets: If they are superheroes, why don't they organize to protect Unique the way they stood up for Jake? Just saying.
Blaine going back to Faeryland and letting them tempt him with their fruit? No, honey, no. I'm with Sam that this is essentially self harm. this is going back to the abusive ex. This is punishment so harsh it could destroy him. It's not what he needs. He needs to figure out who he is instead of who people want him to be and he needs to learn to ask for help, damn it! Watching this process is painful and I keep yelling at the screen. Blaine cheating was a shit thing to do, but it's so obvious that he did it because he doesn't know how to ask for help. I am so glad, that this year, Sam has started spotting people drowning and started playing life guard, because the adults are not doing it. I loved it that he got Btitany. The scene I was watching when I had to turn the TV off was Sam trying to throw Blaine a life preserver. I wish I'd been as wise at his age.
Jake is the bigger man. Jake also has some serious leadership potential if he gets his shit together. What he did with/for Ryder wasn't easy, given high school boy culture. I love Puck, but I also think he just steered his brother onto a reef. It was nice to see more depth to Ryder.
Seriously, why would anyone trust Kitty ever?
* Remember how I said they keep finding or reconstructing old lost classic Doctor Who episodes? They have found the mother load. "106 Doctor Who episodes uncovered in Ethiopia featuring William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton:" http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/106-doctor-who-episodes-uncovered-2343474
* Last week during the pre-inspection chaos, Mozart balls came in the mail. I have taken to sucking them instead of gobbling them. Yes, I know how that sounds. Thank you, whoever sent them.
It just occurred me I have been sucking on balls of unknown provenience all week.
* "The Last Trick or Treaters:" http://www.rhymes-with-witch.com/rww10072013.shtml
* Remember how the US was fairly popular in Libya because we actually consulted the inhabitants about what they wanted before intervening and how the new government was cooperating with us? We just pissed on that by renditioning someone from there without consulting the government thus undermining the new government there. Yes, the guy we renditioned was Al Queada. The thing is though, How would we feel if another country sent people to kidnap Bush, Cheney, or Rove for their war crimes? Clearly these are war criminals involved in ordering the torture of prisoners and they ought to be brought to trial at the Hague, but kidnapping people from other countries is a serious asshole maneuver and violates international law. I'm in favor of international law and not pissing on your friends just generally.
* They are still retrieving bodies from the African refugee ship off the coast of Italy. The refugees were mostly from Eritrea and Somalia. There are 150 survivors at the over crowded migrant center, with people sleeping in the open and winter coming. Conditions at the site have made body recovery hard. They have found 83 out of three hundred or so they believe to be dead. They've started taking DNA and photographs to try to identify the dead. It is horrifying. I can only imagine the trauma the survivors and islanders are going through. The survivors face harsh fines they can't afford by the Italian government as well. These are people pulled out of the water who have lost what little they have. The Italian government is debating what to do with them.
* The Koch brothers spent 10x the money on closing pre-schools that provide education and child care than they spent building a child care facility for the families that work at MIT. Why are people praising them for this? It seems to me that folks working minimum wage are the ones needing child care the most, not the least.
* Once Upon a Time the line between Rent, Taxes, and Fines was blurry in England. This changed everything. (Also feudalism was way messier than gets presented a lot of the time):
The idea was that the King or Queen owned all the land in the country. The right to use the land was lent to various nobles in exchange for military duty and/or rent. Those folks who held the land directly from the crown would generally lend bits of it to other folks who did the same and so on. You likely got a neat little pyramid chart back when you learned about feudalism in Middle School. The problem is, in real life it was so much messier. Over time, marriage alliances got made during which land changed hands, families died out, other families went bankrupt, still other families rose through the hierarchy and were granted new lands for services rendered or married into them or bought them. This means that people ended up holding random plots of land all over England and France. They might owe fealty to both kings. Lord A might be lord B's overlord for some of his lands, while lord B might be Lord A's overlord for others. At various points the ruler in England owed fealty to the french king with complicated political results. Now remember that this system goes all the way down to the folks doing below subsistence farming. Land for peasants tended to be divided into free and unfree. You could be born free, but if you rented even a tiny piece of unfree land you became unfree yourself. This also got complicated. You could be a well off serf while your free neighbor was starving, trying to feed a family on a acre or two and what they could make doing odd jobs.
Early on, Nobles mostly owed military service and were supposed to turn up with x number of soldiers of various types when the ruler called, but sometimes they owed rent in kind for some of their lands. This means they were supposed to turn up with X amount of wheat or apples or wool or whatever. They might owe both to the crown, as as in X Archers and Y bushels of strawberries. Over the centuries this got more complicated instead of less. Similarly, farmers might owe X amount of Y commodity and/or A number of days of labor and/or z amount of money. This was all rent, but some of these situations are more like tax in effect. If you are paying your barley to the crown to run the government is it rent or tax, really?
Why was it mostly considered rent? Remember, in the beginning, tax wasn't something assessed regularly, but an extraordinary levy. The vikings will attack if we don't pay them Danegeld! Everyone pay in a share! The vikings are attacking and we need to raise money for weapons and troops! Everyone pay a share! We are having a civil war! Everyone chip in! We are at war with France! Everyone chip in! I have written elsewhere about how the periodic and increasingly more frequent need to raise money for the government led to the modern parliamentary system, so I'm not getting into that today. Suffice to say that over time, taxation increasingly required the need for some form of consent by the governed, at first by the nobles who were required to have private armies, but over time also by the ordinary folk. The inclusion of the Commons was a rubber stamp at first, but over time, they gained power. Traditionally, tax levels were based on a combination of how much land and/or movable goods you owned. (It will actually say x amount of land or movable goods worth Y). In the late 14th century, they experimented with a "poll tax." This is a regressive tax that charged everyone the same regardless of wealth, which was potentially deadly if you had to sell your last sheep. This lead to a massive peasant rebellion that led to the effective end of serfdom which I've also written about elsewhere. Early on, taxation was often in kind, but ended up being in money fairly quickly.
The thing is, landlords ended up wanting rather more money than they were getting in rent, so they made laws against things they everyone had to do to survive. There was a "fine" for bread making and another for brewing ale, even though everyone had to drink ale because the water wasn't generally safe. This fine was paid a couple of times a year at the same time rents were paid and courts were held for actual criminal acts. If your landlord is your local magistrate, is this really a fine or is it a sales tax? You see? Blurry lines.
So there are multiple systems of payment going on at the same time from Anglo-Saxon times onwards, involving mixtures of military service, payment in kind, and money.
Now imagine a noble who owes a weird mix of soldiers and commodities to the crown. Ze has the hassle of getting someone to transport wagons of stuff. Some years the bandits are bad and you have to hire people to guard the stuff. One year, the price for those commodities is really high on the open market, which means that even though the physical objects ze is are turning over are the same as last year, zir rent is functionally higher. The next year there is a glut and the rent is worth less. Imagine that the noble in question is very young or very old or sick or female. (Women routinely organized and participated in castle or manor house defense, but they hardly ever lead armies. Yes there are notable exceptions, but it wasnt very often). The Lord or Lady can't lead the military levy when there is a muster for whatever reason. How do they make up the Levy? The obvious solution in all these situations is to transform your payment in kind or service into a cash payment with fixed value, since there was already a taxation system based mostly on coin.
This turned out to be a popular idea with Queens and Kings as well. We are at war! 10 bushels of strawberries are vastly less useful right now than money to hire soldiers or build ships. Similarly, having fixed payments meant they didn't have to worry about market fluctuations controlling the budget as much. Rye is low and barley high this season? Feed the servants more rye bought with fixed rents. As a bonus, troops bought with money have primar loyalty to the crown, where as Lords turning up with private armies can switch sides or use them as leverage to get concessions.
All in all, money turned out simplest all around, even though in glut years it could be hard to raise coin if some hadn't been saved from higher selling harvests. The idea of mixed payments was already there, and there was a tradition of people getting a choice of payment method. There was always an expectation that nobles not paying military service would switch to one of the other systems. As the pressures of maintaining a standing army and naval defense increased, the crown put laws into effect requiring people over certain levels of wealth to officially move up the social structure. A commoner who made good as a metalsmith or weaver or farmer got knighted whether he wanted to or not, for example. The tax system stayed progressive and the few attempts to make it otherwise were resisted violently.
Meanwhile, French nobles had the expectation of military service only and Salic Law meant there was less pressure to convert to other payment types. There was less bleed between forms and types of taxation. Over time, the system of military duty for the aristocracy died out in favor of a standing professional army paid for with taxes on the poor and Middle Class. They never converted levy requirements into taxation on the rich. As the expense of running an early modern state increased over time, it got harder and harder for the productive members of society to carry the tax burden that supported while also dealing with skyrocketing rents to pay for increasingly more expensive aristocratic life styles. England had a progressive tax system and significantly higher social mobility; France had a massively regressive tax system and the gap between hereditary nobility and people who worked for a living got wider and wider. The connection between money and power led to non-nobles having fewer and fewer rights and opportunities. The English system was more flexible and so survived despite civil wars and uprisings. The more rigid French system became financially bankrupt and so oppressive that killing noble families down to the children started looking like a good idea. (I do not condone the murder of innocent children and babies, I am just explaining where all that anger comes from). A noble could do literally anything to a commoner without expectation of repercussion by the end. When the Nobles attempted to leverage the discontent of ordinary people in a power struggle with the monarchy, they released centuries of pent up fury.
* It has come to my attention that there is a lot of assholery going around about Darren Criss and his girlfriend:
I honestly do not give a fart about celebrity private lives unless the celebrity in question is over the top bigoted or doing things like sexually assaulting people, killing them, or doing things along those lines. I do not are about who's dating who as long as everyone is a consenting adult (or if under aged dating someone close enough in age for that not to raise consent questions). I think everyone, no matter how famous, needs and deserves a private life. I can't stop people from using telephoto lenses to invade privacy or the publishing of blind items or gossip. I can control my actions, however and I chose not to participate in any way.
Darren Criss is not my boyfriend, so who he dates is none of my damned business. Unless he is dating you right now? It's no your business either. I don't even think it's my business who people I dated personally are dating five minutes after we blow up. Quite literally, all I know about Mr. Criss's girlfriend is what I've seen in red carpet photos and I'm fairly sure her name is Mia. Maybe.
It's hard dating someone internationally famous. Hell, it's pretty rough dating someone small scale locally famous. Death threats and internet bullying are never okay, even if we're talking about war criminals, and we are not. We are talking about what appears to be a nice lady who is having to deal with all the crap that comes with dating someone with a demanding career in the public eye. Let's extend a little empathy here and leave their private business private.
If you are the sort of person hating on someone because shes dating your imaginary boyfriend? You aren't someone I want anything to do with and I'm going to lower my opinion of you to pond scum.
Re the blind item:
The Outing shit is completely unacceptable on multiple levels. 1. Being gay or Bisexual is not shameful and this sort of crap reinforces ugly stuff in our culture that hurts all sorts of kids an teens and adults who are already getting a lot of toxic nastiness that harms them. 2. Outing people like this is not okay. I've written about this extensively. What people chose to say about their orientation and their private life in general should be their choice.
Short Form? Don't Be a Dick!
* "2014 Olympic Flame Lit And Headed To Sochi:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/10/2014-olympic-flame-lit-and-headed-to.html
* "Bigotry Costs You Big Money:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2013/10/bigotry-costs-you-big-money.html
* Today was a really bad leg day and I am really cranky. Luckily, my errands were low key.
* Glee 4.5-7 (The last bit of 5, parts of 7):
The Role You Were Born to Play and Glease: (I'm not sure what went in what). I never liked Finn as much as I did when he stood up for Unique to Sue. When I think of how far he's come since the homophobic rant he laid on Kurt... Damn. That is some serious character development. Of course, being Finn, he ruined it by saying that unacceptable thing, but the rest of it? That's what our trans kids deserve and so seldom get. Unique needs Burt Hummel for a father and it's unfortunate that her parents are all to realistic. I know, I know, they could be worse. This why the trans youth homeless rate is so unacceptably high. I want to hug her. I want her to have a school where there's a proper trans policy in place. (Both my districts let out Trans* students choose the restroom and locker room that matches their presentation or the faculty single person rest rooms if they don't feel safe in gendered facilities.) I want her to have a Mother like mine to fight for her and a father like Kurt's willing to move the world to make her feel safe. This was hard to watch, but very, very important to talk about. With Finn just generally, these two episodes show both how much he's grown and also that there is a danger of him becoming Shue's minime, which is a serious worry.
I do not understand why they didn't instantly suspect Kitty with the waist band. I did. I was expecting her to do it. Marley's been bullied before; Marley's street clothes fit; Tina should have her waist measurements from them taking them for the costume in the first place; they could just measure the waist band to see if there had been tampering. If I could put this together in seconds including a way to check my guess, couldn't they figure it out with days to do it? Why does anyone listen to anything Kitty says anyway, given her being worse than Sue. They know she's toxic. If she's being "helpful" it's time to get suspicious.
Tina is right to be angry and they are still ignoring her.
Teen Angel was, if anything, somehow scarier than Cough Syrup and Teenaged Dream. I had trouble watching it and will have to rewatch when I'm more prepared emotionally. Sorry. I just can't with analysis right now.
Was the scene where Beiste talks Emma into standing up for herself in this one? Beiste: still amazing. Also, ouch. I'm glad they are still having her process the abuse. The way she talked to Emma made me think she processes trauma similar to the way I do, looking it straight in the eye unflinching, never dancing around the past, but dealing with it head on for better or worse. She is valiant and admirable.
The vignette with Santana and Brittany was brilliant. It said so much about the ways Brittany gets underestimated on top of what it said about their relationship.
I like the way there was no closure in Finchel and Klaine's conversations. In real life, one more conversation with the ex after an ugly break up generally doesn't lead to closure, only recriminations. Instead what's needed is processing. I've said before I identify with Kurt. (I can count characters I identify with even a little on one hand). This means that in some ways I am too close to say clever things about his grief. Cheating never was an issue in my relationships, but I have had bad breakups mixed in with the amicable ones, and oh, have I done the Klaine relationship dynamic back in the day. I made some different mistakes than Kurt, but I've also made some of the same ones. When I say he's been doing a better job with this than I did in seasons 3 and 4, I don't mean that he's handling Blaine the way that I wish I'd handled my Blaine. It just means that I know why he does what he does all too well and I get how impossible it is to handle something like this well unless you've already failed at it miserably and had time to process everything that both of you did wrong. I had to fail my Blaine without knowing I was failing him to figure out how not to fail the next Blaine. This may sound like I blame Kurt, but I don't. Blaine hasn't figured out how to ask for help yet and he projects the Dalton "I'm okay" facade, which makes it extremely hard for Kurt to figure out when he's seeing cries for help. Kurt spends all of three and the early episodes of four innocently walking through a minefield that he can't see.
Dynamic Duets: If they are superheroes, why don't they organize to protect Unique the way they stood up for Jake? Just saying.
Blaine going back to Faeryland and letting them tempt him with their fruit? No, honey, no. I'm with Sam that this is essentially self harm. this is going back to the abusive ex. This is punishment so harsh it could destroy him. It's not what he needs. He needs to figure out who he is instead of who people want him to be and he needs to learn to ask for help, damn it! Watching this process is painful and I keep yelling at the screen. Blaine cheating was a shit thing to do, but it's so obvious that he did it because he doesn't know how to ask for help. I am so glad, that this year, Sam has started spotting people drowning and started playing life guard, because the adults are not doing it. I loved it that he got Btitany. The scene I was watching when I had to turn the TV off was Sam trying to throw Blaine a life preserver. I wish I'd been as wise at his age.
Jake is the bigger man. Jake also has some serious leadership potential if he gets his shit together. What he did with/for Ryder wasn't easy, given high school boy culture. I love Puck, but I also think he just steered his brother onto a reef. It was nice to see more depth to Ryder.
Seriously, why would anyone trust Kitty ever?
* Remember how I said they keep finding or reconstructing old lost classic Doctor Who episodes? They have found the mother load. "106 Doctor Who episodes uncovered in Ethiopia featuring William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton:" http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/106-doctor-who-episodes-uncovered-2343474
* Last week during the pre-inspection chaos, Mozart balls came in the mail. I have taken to sucking them instead of gobbling them. Yes, I know how that sounds. Thank you, whoever sent them.
It just occurred me I have been sucking on balls of unknown provenience all week.
* "The Last Trick or Treaters:" http://www.rhymes-with-witch.com/rww10072013.shtml