Employee of the Week: Maria

Hey a shorter one, I think.

My other machine's hard-disk failed (fair, it's ancient; goodbye old friend) so this is a rewrite. You're gonna be missing out on a lot of good takes like "what if good things are actually bad things, y'know?" but we'll muddle through.

This week the brand is strong and the brand is reading "Forget me Not", a chapter that I liked a lot. Dorley has kind of a 3-value spectrum it plays in between "harrowing psychological horrors", "popcorn movie", and "teen dramedy". This chapter, while it had its share of all 3, balanced more on the "popcorn" and "dramedy" sides of things, and that's a nice reprieve in some ways.

Paige has Competition

Maria's arc post-concussion has been pretty gripping. It's not entirely clear to me how much of that is just her taking some time off and reevaluating, vs how much of it is from having Stephanie in the mix, vs how much is something to do with the actual Incident. But either way, it's fascinating; she really could've doubled down with basically no push-back from her organization. Instead, she's changing and reorienting herself more towards the reformist goals she nominally already held. On the other hand, her absence during the kitchen fuck-up made it abundantly clear how indispensable a steady hand is to the smooth operation of Dorley.

Advice: ask for a raise.

Recap

This one will be a little bit brisker; my process, such as it is, usually involves fully re-reading the chapter while I write this and I've already done about 60% of that, and then messed about trying to fix my laptop (which lives, albeit with a different filesystem.)

December 11, 2019

Missing Persons Continued

Vicky and Lorna panic, research Melissa's background (graduated 2015, left immediately, never finished degree,) and track down Shahida, back from the States. Shahida explains Melissa's family tragedy: mother died when she was young, not getting along with Russ, etc. Shahida says she and then-Mark "didn't leave it in a good place" before the intervening 7 years.

On Lorna

Roll on FFS. A life without these constant calculations, where her gender is in her own hands and not in the grip of strangers’ prejudices, sounds pretty fucking sweet.

Lorna's kind of heroic at her best (which is usually, so far.) It seems like, given that this is Dorley, at some point she'll have an absolute red-ring-of-death day, but normally she is just on her grind.

Her recent history has involved:

• Her girlfriend's swift unraveling.
• Being locked in her girlfriend's dorm.
• Discovering and then keeping quiet about a secret kidnapping ring.
• Continued organizing for trans rights.
• Just trying to live her goddamn life, like, shit.

Which is probably a fair, if slightly elevated, approximation of what the un-Dorley equivalent is. People are always falling apart, things are always complicated, but getting really, publicly, involved in a cause that affects you personally is exhausting more than "other people's" causes.

Lorna can't scrub out for one of these very easily because her life is so oriented around justice that it'd be tantamount to a crisis of identity for her to drop the ball. I'm, you know, politically active sometimes, but I'd never get into disability advocacy because it would be too hard. Huge props to anyone working on their own shit, I'm sure it gives them an edge, but it couldn't be me.

Kitchen Crisis on Infinite Worlds

The Good Ideas Gang decide to send out some mentally-duct-taped-together teens to fetch Christine from her truancy meeting with Marianne. Smart! The kind of staffing death-spiral Dorley is experiencing might have something to do with the kind of haphazard fuckwittery they demand from their recruits and then staff. I do think they did the right thing not bothering Edy or Maria, but, if it's not so much of an emergency that you need to wake An Adult, then it's not enough of an emergency to pull this bullshit.

On a positive note, I do look forward to whatever complications arise out of their mistake. We get two nice dangling threads:

• Marianne must end up picking up a strange vibe from Christine in their meeting.
• Did anyone recognize Rebecca and Faye?

Halliday Building

Christine does, in fact, have to go to class to graduate. Them's just the breaks. It is hilariously bad decision-making to interrupt this meeting on the Good Ideas Gang's part. Sure, fog of war, whatever, but that kind of panicky decision is just laughable. What does Dawson think after this little vignette, exactly?

The note's wording calls a ton of attention to Dorley and/or Christine, not that it can really be avoided.

On a contrasting note, and in support of the idea that Christine should end up in a supervisory capacity in Dorley some day, she has a great rapport with her littlest Sisters.

Manchester

Melissa seems to have some sort of ill-maintained eating disorder. Unclear what's up there, but it's not shocking given how evil Dorley has been around food in the basement until about 5 seconds ago (unless Ollie's still being tube-fed in which case still, but I digress.)

We meet Zach, who I think is the first trans man character of the series? I'm sort of hoping we don't get any trans men seeing novelty mugs, because that seems like it would be, ah, deeply unpleasant for them within the context of the fiction.

Anyway, Dorley really fucked Melissa up (or, did not heal her soul or whatever, take your pick.)

Christine is Angry and also Correct -- No Notes.

First off, it really is very good how empathetic Christine is with Rebecca and Faye. A lot of people would've shot the messenger on this little caper.

On the other hand this whole little thing was, just, incendiary stupidity from the brain trust back in the kitchen. "We can't get Edy or wake Maria, but we need to send these 2 out on their own!" is an inherently dubious assertion. Once more I say, Dorley is an extractive institution for its membership, with some redeeming qualities. Currently the institution is extracting from Christine, by not giving her the room to get her goddamn degree. I know they pay her. I know that many of these women are happier and better and cetera as women.

If she thought it couldn’t wait, it couldn’t wait.

What an inane unaccountable way to run an organization.

Go easy on her, Christine

Well which fucking is it?

Honestly, the carelessness that this place shows the people they're supposed to be reforming, like Christine for example, is laughable.

All that's pretty surface-level. I don't have much deeper on it to give, except that it's good writing to illustrate how much the wheels are coming off the goddamn train while they lay down track in front of it as it goes, or whatever other mixed metaphors you'd care to work in.

That and, apparently I'm way back in Christine's corner again.

Brass Tacks

So Christine will get Abby to help with the Melissa situation.

Basement ... Boys?

Aaron really seems to have turned a corner here, towards, something. They cuddled, there's a little forehead kiss, it's very sweet. Greaves makes a lot of hay out of the inscrutability of the Holt-thing, and it's good great stuff no notes. Later we learn that Aaron is considering taking his own life right now, more or less passively ideating, but in the moment, it's a marked improvement. Maybe the first bounce off of rock bottom.

One thing I think is worth mentioning is how subtly Greaves illustrates the damage that Indira did to her own future sisterhood with Aaron. I really appreciate her doing that indirectly, via Steph's observations. Indira did that damage in service to Dorley and by following a playbook, of course. Even so, Aaron's apparently terrified of her, per Steph. You can kind of, cast that forward a few generations and see how attenuated Bea's relationship with the younger women is just by layered necessity. And it's another little sign of the strain the organization feels. Good stuff.

Fetching Abby

Also very sweet, Abby's family send her with frozen food and leftovers. Leftovers from your family are basically takeout though if you think about it, grocery-bros in total shambles, coping and seething and malding and reading the hand-written prep instructions to reheat some kind of mid-English Lark-in-Aspic-salad or whatever it is that they eat over on jelly-salad island.

Once more though, great case of Dorley not letting the Sisters have lives. All kind of parallels Lorna's experience I suppose, on a more allegorical level; these women just want to live their goddamn lives and here comes some scary-coercive-gender-construct keeps yoinking them out of their days to go be semi-professionally trans (pick your scary-construct, could be any of them on a given day I suppose.)

Abby's Phone Call

I don't think I'd realized Abby was Melissa's sponsor. Can't wait for the prequel trilogy to drop (or I guess the midqual trilogy) in 2045. I'm guessing we'll keep learning about what went wrong with Melissa since it's one of the 2 cases of the book right now, but my genre understanding has been so wrongly tuned for this series that who knows?

I don't really know much about power imbalances in relationships honestly. I only ever dated people within a year of my age in either direction at all seriously. But, I guess for trans people there's the whole "second adolescence" thing, and the reported differences in duratoin for trans people (thanks Crunchy.)

So, and this is a wild swing at guessing semi-allegorical content's intent, I guess small gaps in transition-vintage (is that a thing?) and total-age might be really magnified in a fun-house way? Is the Melissa/Abby fallout kind of a known anti-pattern that Greaves is instantiating?

Melissa Takes the Call

Abby calls, and Melissa answers.

Ah. Good for her.

See? Everyone knows: Paige da best.

Anyhow, Melissa learns that Shahida is back in Britain.

Egg Nation

Oopsie woopsie I fumbled a pronoun and now half the jig is up!

First off, lol at Egg Nation.

Abby tells a story of then-Mark as journalism student, her depression, final incident at the Anthill. And of finding the broken iPod at a bus stop near Legend.

Aaron Loses It

Aaron's having a medium-grade menty-B losing his identity, and becoming completely untethered. I felt a bit guilty for thinking he was doing so much better, and some of that must be him letting go of that metaphorical driftwood. What did not occur to me in the earlier portion of the chapter was the propensity to drown.

Weaving through so much of Dorley's foreground preoccupation with gender, Greaves very often writes about legacy. Both as part of gender and apart from it.

Like, ok let's talk again about Discipline and Punish. Just for a minute. Please, I promise. Greaves feels like she has to have thought about that text writing Dorley, and is taking gender as an institution (and therefor a prison) surreally and hyper-literally.

So, Aaron's exiting one order of discourse (the masculine-aristocratic mainstream) and has not entered another. The principle that ordered his life and led him to become a Renfield sort of a fraction of a man has evaporated. That's great news! That principle sucked; he picked a really bad one!

You can see that that principle was of negative value to the man because he's a kinder gentler person without it. Aaron, totally empty, is better than what he was full of before.

The bad news is that he's in the new order's physical grasp but not in any kind of personal hock yet. Which is where Steph yes, but Maria even more in this chapter, come in.

Holt on Tight

The gang notice that Aaron is an idiot doom spiral.

Maria goes to intervene and... oh shit we deep-disclosuring! I'm glad Aaron has a new big Sister, she seems nice.

I think this is where Dorley starts to become Aaron's new, well, prison in a trite Foucauldian sense, but "paradigm" in a more useful phrasing.

So why wasn't his affection for Steph enough? I think it's that "having a crush" is something Aaron could've probably done as a wilted little shit of a man. And having a big Sister is something he lost as an adolescent. Like, Elizabeth became lost to him as he became lost. And that, I think, puts Holt under Dorley's psychological power.

Aaront Thoughts

Goat

I like Taylor Swift's music (with the caveat that every really, really good song she writes has one absolutely terrible lyric. Ahem, "I'm a crumpled piece of paper lying here"), but I can't think of "I Knew You Were Trouble" without recalling this

The Holt Thing

Last week I said that I thought Aaron was reaching rock bottom, or had reached rock bottom, or something. I meant "had reached," even if I said the other thing.

So, I was wrong, because asking your mentor to help you autocomplete (and not the fun version of the euphemism) has to be the "plonk" at the bottom of the well.

If I think about the way Greaves has traced Aaron's arc, it's kind of a peeling back. First he's losing his skin-deep bravado. Then he's being brushed back from his incessant self-exposure. Then he's reckoning with his past recklessness.

You don’t need to reciprocate.

But here still, there's a big chunk of classic dude mistake leftover. Aaron can finally help Steph, but the street can't go both ways. He's sorted her into the "woman" camp (good, correct, yes,) and he's no longer rubbing his dick against her without permission (again, a low bar to clear but this basement is literally underground.) But his attitude towards her even at his best right now is one of infantilism.

[E]ncircles her with gentle arms, and kisses her softly on the forehead.

That's something that lovers do, yes, but also something that grownups do for children. What it isn't, precisely, is something that friends do.

I think, that attitude is maybe the hardest thing to get rid of as a man who supports feminism. Or, it was ("is"? Hopefully "was") for me. Some guys have different problems; I'm not mowing down pedestrians driving drunk so who knows what's hard for which men.

But to be always-giving. Long-suffering. Permanently generous. Self-abnegating. It's just so innocuous and so seductive. It's virtue-shaped, even. Why not just be the caretaker, right? The people who don't take care are horrible! They're the Declans of the world, the Enemy.

Of course, you can't; it's a fine life if you never tire. And, women aren't children, obviously. So, cute little paternalism you had there, still a paternalism.

It's funny that that's the base-coat for Aaron's dick-pic-a-thon.

Ultimately if Aaron had been out in the world being like he is by now in the story, he would be fine. Fit for purpose, but in need of therapy or a lucky few bits of life experience to cut that shit out. But, here he is and they're stripping the boards on the rotted-out deck to build a new one.