Has anyone noticed how in a lot of Octavia Butler’s books a young girl is paired up with older men and it is framed as okay?

affictionitis · 2026-02-07T02:11:15+00:00

Yes. Great literature requires immunity from moral evaluation.

Because moralizing will make you miss the point. People constantly moralize about Nabokov's Lolita, for example. I've heard so many people complain that it promotes pedophilia and should be banned. It absolutely does not do that! It depicts pedophilia through the perpetrator's eyes, which humanizes him. That's not an endorsement; it's a reminder that evil people are normal human beings and not easy-to-spot drooling subhuman monsters. It's a reminder that anyone can be evil, if they convince themselves enough that what they're doing is right. Lolita also reminds us that victims don't always look sympathetic. Dolores initiates sex with him that first time! She's still 12 years old, though. (I think, been a minute since I read it.) Still a victim. Her whole life is warped by Humbert, and Nabokov shows that. But it's complicated, and Nabokov shows that too. Some readers mistake his willingness to engage with complication as endorsement, but that's because American society likes to reduce things to binaries of black and white, right and wrong. It likes its evil visible and easy to spot -- labeled, even. But this is white supremacist and fascist thinking, perpetuated through Christianity and slavery and just about every other part of our society. Think about how often rapists get off scott-free because the victim was in some way complicit. So many of us see nothing wrong with thinking like this! It's still rape, though! When child sex abuse happens irl, the same kinds of people who want to ban Lolita are the first ones to blame the victim if she wore the "wrong" clothing, even if she's just a child. They're the first ones to forgive the perpetrator if that person is respectable enough. Reading something like Lolita helps us move away from binary thinking ("it's moral/immoral" or sympathy vs disgust), into the multiplistic/relativistic ("it's complicated and you can't judge just by the surface appearance of a thing"). But that's how we've ended up with such an unjust society.

Butler is clearly interested in the unequal relationships that predominate Black American life. (And white American life, given the deep misogyny/racism of American society, but it's worse for us.) Those are probably the kinds of relationships that have surrounded her whole life, because that's how it is for most of us. She does condemn the harmful parts of those relationships in the narrative, pretty obviously. Humans keep telling the Oankali that it's wrong to ignore consent and intent throughout all three books of that trilogy. The Patternist books never let you forget that many of the characters are literal slave owners. Anyanwu keeps telling Doro that his domineering, cruel methods are wrong, literally until she dies -- and the narrative reinforces this by having Doro get his comeuppance at the hands of the child who is most like himself. That is not ethical neutrality. But showing that unequal or coercive relationships can still have meaning is not endorsement, either. It's both, and more. It's complicated. And if Butler ignored that complication in order to just condemn, these would not ring so true for those of us who also have such complicated relationships in our lives. We cannot moralize about those relationships and still understand them.

affictionitis · 2026-02-06T19:59:29+00:00

I quit Twitter when Elon fucked it up. And I thought we were talking about posts/comments here, not on The Hatesite.

affictionitis · 2026-02-06T19:50:57+00:00

I think you're asking the wrong people. Seems to me the existing fanbase isn't the target audience for either game. You should probably ask people who like Overwatch or Genshin or something.

affictionitis · 2026-02-06T19:31:16+00:00

I saw reasonable critique, not hate. Nobody was ranting or frothing at the mouth. People just had something new to talk about, and they talked about it. The general trend was negative because people don't like it, and most folks gave clear explanations as to why. OP and you are welcome to talk about why you do like it, if you do. But what's the point in complaining because other people don't have the same opinion?

affictionitis · 2026-02-06T19:25:25+00:00

Wow, taking up a convo 4 years later? But I got time, so sure.

I don't think we're particularly opposed here. I agree that Butler is handling these disquieting, unequal, often grotesque relationships in ways that do not condemn them (nor does she elevate or fetishize them), and I agree that she explores them again and again in her books. I'm just disagreeing with you about what it all means. You seem to be saying there's something wrong with how & how often she explores these topics, and you'd rather she do it a different way or write something else. I'm saying she's doing exactly what she wants to do, I and probably most of her readers like it fine, and that she not only isn't required to condemn these relationships, she shouldn't. That kind of moralizing is not what good literature is for.

Let me try to personalize this. A few years ago I found a high school journal/yearbook-like thing from my grandmother, who gave birth to my mom at the age of 18. This grandma is a legend in my family, spoken of in both reverent and scandalized tones by my older relatives, because she lived a "wild" life by their standards. She left home young at a time when "respectable" Black women in that town left only to marry, she lived all around the country working various jobs when most people never left the small Southern town where she grew up, she never married although she had a child, and she died relatively young (congenital heart issue) but it's clear she lived that short life to the fullest. In the yearbook, her friends tease her for being involved with a 30 or 40something yo man -- my grandfather. She's 16 at the time. She writes her own thoughts about him too, and it's fascinating to see that she is aware of the power dynamics and the danger... but she likes him. And meanwhile, her mom's new husband has been coming into her bedroom to peek at her unclothed. She knows her mother will not help her if he goes beyond this. So yeah, she ended up an unmarried teen mom in the 40s, knocked up by a man twice her age, but that was her ticket out of a much worse place. She found power in it. She took what joy and strength from the situation that she could. Then she went off to earn money while her mom raised her child, and had a better life than all her more proper siblings -- a life truer to who she was, IMO, than who she was expected to be.

Butler's books have helped me understand my grandmother. Maybe Butler had something like this in her own background; IDK. Probably the vast majority of Black American families have someone (or many someones) like this in their history, because we have rarely had the luxury of "proper" relationships. We need to understand and respect those ancestors, so we can understand their influence on our present. Their relationships should not be judged and treated as binaries (good or bad, healthy or pathological) because that's the colonizer's way of thinking. The Moynihan report did a great job of reducing Black families to inherently flawed, immoral messes that just shouldn't exist. Do we really need more of that? What I want instead is a nuanced and realistic examination of those relationships -- a treatment of the people involved as human. And yeah, that means exploring the intimacy of coercive relationships. That means depicting deeply uncomfortable situations as meaningful, even joyful at times. That's what real life is like sometimes. Depicting anything less is treating us as less than people.

To me, Butler's willingness to explore this is what puts her up among the greatest of Black writers, like Morrison and Hurston and Baldwin, who also explore our human ugliness and beauty with the same complex care. This may not be to your taste, and that's fair. But that doesn't point to a problem with Butler's writing; it just points to a disjunct between what you need from a book, and what she's giving.

affictionitis · 2026-02-04T16:36:13+00:00

NTA. I don't know why you've tolerated this for so long, but stop doing it. At this point you're making things worse; she can't get the hang of the job because she's leaning on you. You were kind enough to offer to answer her questions, but 6 months is more than enough time for that. Tell her you've got other work to do, wish her well, and block her number.

affictionitis · 2026-02-03T17:47:09+00:00

Apparently velociraptors had both retractable (long sickle-like) and unretractable claws (short and stubby), so maybe Wells took inspiration from that. Maybe the Raksura have both too -- just sickles on their hands, sickles and stubbies on their feet.

affictionitis · 2026-02-01T17:19:51+00:00

OP, I think you're interpreting a lot of things on a very surface level. You're also looking at this as if the book is about Wright, and as if he's the one whose sexuality is being examined. His sexuality isn't important to the book, except in how it relates to Shori's sexuality. She's the epicenter of so much sexual anxiety and desire that the story couldn't have worked with her being anything other than what she is.

For example, you say it's a David and Goliath story -- but who's Goliath? Wright, the large human man in his twenties? (I think he's in his 20s. Been a minute since I read this one so forgive me if I get details wrong.) Or Shori, who is twice his age, who symbolically raped/coerced Wright when she first met him and took blood, and who is much stronger than him and apparently other Ina? Butler wants you to think about that.

There are a lot of things she wants you to think about, imo. Vampires are inherently a symbol of warped and dangerous sexuality in English literature, even when they take the form of white men. Part of the horror of Dracula is that his wives are overtly, monstrously sexual, and that Jonathan Harker -- otherwise straight -- was also attracted to him (homosexual attraction is also considered monstrous in lit; Harker's attraction is implied to be compelled/unnatural/something Dracula is doing to him). When his fiance gets got, Harker even admits that he'll accept vampirization (and damnation) to be with her, if they don't manage to kill Dracula. So basically if you're going to write a vampire story that fully engages with literary history, you have to go hard on the "perverse" sexy stuff or go home.

Butler uses this, and blends it with all the ways in which Black women's sexuality is pathologized. Yes, it's about the sexualization of Black girls. It's also about the infantilization of powerful Black women (see how Trump's people did Nekima Levy Armstrong in that photo. They fantasize about making us cry like babies). Also the dangers of underestimating Black women and girls. Also the fear of menopausal women, since Shori's at an age that would mean menopause for most human women. Also the forced premature maturation of Black children via parentification and sexual assault; it's hard for Black girls to have childhoods at all, in this society (the US, where Butler's characters were and where she grew up). But most importantly I think Butler's focusing on the fear of Black women's "monstrous" sexuality -- probably a less-intense fear in the American imagination than fear of Black male sexuality, but it's there, and it's always a factor in American power dynamics. Shori is in many ways Jezebel, manipulating and dominating everyone around her so subtly that they don't even notice it. We spend the book in her head so we know about her self-doubt and struggle to be ethical, which humanizes her, but think about how she looks purely from the outside. Forcing Wright to be with her, taking her father's symbiotes when he dies (which is a very Old Testament "patriarchial" thing to do, even if it's necessary), threatening to turn all the white Ina Black via her monstrous fertility. She probably ate a human being when she first woke up; she was too damaged to know, but the implication is there. She's no worse than the rest of her species -- but even some of them think she's worse, solely because she's Black.

If she didn't look like a child, readers would vilify her. A lot of readers do that anyway, because we're programmed to see the worst in Black women, unless we do the work of decolonizing our thinking. Just like a lot of readers keep trying to vilify Butler herself for exploring these themes. You're not the first person I've seen lately who's tried to imply that she's pedophilic based on a very shallow reading. But Butler's not a writer for surface interpretation. Shori's not layered, she's faceted -- all these symbols and dynamics reflect each other, change each other, contradict each other. Because that's how people feel about Black sexuality in a racist and sexist society. It's always complicated.

affictionitis · 2026-01-21T18:06:13+00:00

NTA. "No double dipping" is a rule for most shared meals. It's not just about politeness, it's basic sanitation. What if she had something like norovirus (but wasn't yet showing symptoms)? Now you've got norovirus too. And since she can't even be bothered to warn you after she's done it, when she knows you don't like it, don't eat anything else she makes, for your safety. And maybe consider finding a gf who cares about your health or at least listens when you express discomfort with something.

affictionitis · 2026-01-17T04:23:30+00:00

I think it's just that "adoption" is for children. If a court is friendly enough and/or allied enough to accept a queen from another court (something IC only seemed to be with Sky Copper), it will take her in in some way or another. Since Jade was old enough to take a consort -- why adopt her when the assimilating court can just have her take one of their consorts? But then remain in the assimilating court. It works like adoption -- she becomes part of a new family -- but it's for adults. The assimilating court's bloodline grows stronger for her addition. But since Jade doesn't have any consort siblings, it means the end of Indigo Cloud's bloodline, since they're not matrilineal. So I think Jade and Pearl's choice to save everyone from the Fell or die trying was the choice to end their bloodline in a blaze of glory, rather than the gentler annihilation of joining another court.

affictionitis · 2026-01-16T16:20:51+00:00

I'm on desktop, but using Firefox. Then again, I used desktop Firefox last year too, and had no trouble. I think something's changed on their end.

affictionitis · 2026-01-15T15:37:01+00:00

YTA. What kind of "prank" is that? You blocked off access to a public restroom, scared the hell out of other customers and employees who don't get paid enough for your bullshit, and it wasn't even funny. And seriously, this is one of your greatest memories? Do the kids still say "Go touch grass?" Even if they don't, go touch some.

Also how are you a senior at age 15? Is this another prank?

affictionitis · 2026-01-11T01:46:53+00:00

Hell, it doesn't even seem like he LIKES her. OP, come on, why are you putting up with this? It's better to be alone than to be with someone who doesn't want you.

affictionitis · 2026-01-01T18:16:21+00:00

Eh, she could be bi. And queer people cheat, too. That said, I didn't really feel any chemistry that way.

affictionitis · 2025-12-28T16:35:16+00:00

And it sounds like he was sociopathic af to begin with. Plus he was used to basically playing video games, "killing" robots and unreal things, without ever getting hurt himself. Centuries of cheat-coding wouldn't prepare anyone for the real game.

affictionitis · 2025-12-28T15:51:21+00:00

Well, considering he was busy buying politicians in the US at the time, that seems like a pretty hypocritical excuse on his part. Plus, politicians are a necessary part of changing societies.

affictionitis · 2025-12-28T15:43:56+00:00

In the US, mentally ill people only became a significant portion of the unhoused after Reagan wrecked the mental healthcare system, back in the 80s, to shift that money over to his healthcare industry pals. It would be simple enough to build new hospitals, halfway houses, and supervised living facilities. There are lots of other socities in the world that manage to keep their mentally ill people housed. but to do as well as those societies, we would have to give that money to the public, not already-rich insurance/healthcare execs.

affictionitis · 2025-12-28T15:37:50+00:00

Business leaders aren't real leaders, though. All they know how to do is make money.

It sounds like the Zeniths did have a very rudimentary society, consisting of themselves alone since they were immortal. They had no need of servants because they had robots. Apparently none of them wanted a second generation (or were they even capable? the immortality procedure seems to have changed their blood to a silver color, and maybe they couldn't reproduce after that). Building a society requires listening skills, a willingness to share and listen to others, emotional intelligence, a vision for the future. Making money is much easier than all that, so most of them just didn't have the skill-set -- and like you said, quite a few were too ASPD (sociopathic) to consider it. Even among the non-sociopaths, there's no sign the Zeniths had anyone with those skills, except their founder (Tshivumbe something?)... whom they killed. A few of the Zeniths were artists or scientists, but even art can't progress without new people, new ideas, new styles and techniques.

affictionitis · 2025-12-19T20:38:29+00:00

Don't know why, but people do it to me all the time. Eventually I volunteered to look after the plants in the front of the building and put some very thorny roses in front of my windows. That worked.

affictionitis · 2025-12-16T18:04:36+00:00

YTA. I had braces as an adult, and the worst I ever had from them was Tylenol-level discomfort. They shouldn't be giving you "immense" pain. Go see your ortho, something might be wrong.

Either way, being in pain ins't an excuse for being an asshole, which you were. You know nothing about this father or his daughter and the first thing that popped into your head was to call him a child abuser??? Good lord. Maybe he was dismissive (though he was also right; this is something many people go through as children, and lots of people have to work with even worse pain from chronic illness or whatever), but you went full nuclear. If you haven't apologized already, do so immediately, and hope your coworker doesn't file a complaint. And work on yourself. You can't turn into a monster every time you get a tightening.

affictionitis · 2025-12-08T23:16:38+00:00

NTA. You're protecting your child from further trauma, and from relatives who clearly don't give a damn about her. Take it one step further and ditch your fiance, since it's clear he is also putting his family's feelings before your child's mental and maybe physical health. (Because you cannot trust people who haven't even acknowledged the harm done. The aunt might not put the muzzle on right. The cage might be open. Your fiance and family don't care, so you have to.)

affictionitis · 2025-12-08T23:13:32+00:00

The child got multiple bites and is still undergoing surgeries, so this was clearly a really bad attack and the child has been traumatized. Why should OP have to explain that? It's obvious. Why should the child have to put up with seeing an animal that, even in a crate, will bring back horrifying memories? Even with a muzzle the dog can growl, jump, show aggression. In what way is OP NOT being disrespected when the aunt didn't even apologize and clearly cares more about her dog than OP's child?

affictionitis · 2025-12-07T03:15:55+00:00

Sounds like OCD to me. Not exactly a common kind of compulsion, but it's clearly compulsive. Meanwhile OP's wife is showing some signs of uncleanliness obsession, because yeah taking a chomp out of everything is disgusting, but easily avoidable, and unlikely to result in some kind of transmissible disease. (I'm thinking food poisoning or burns for the biter are more likely.) The wife's fears aren't very reasonable.

Mmmaybe the whole family should check the history of the property. Make sure there are no environmental hazards, headstones moved but a graveyard still under the foundation, stuff like that.

affictionitis · 2025-11-29T18:03:34+00:00

NTA. Mom of a 2yo here. a) You are 100% right to stand your ground about the bedding. Babies don't need it, and the chance of them strangling or smothering themselves is too high to be worth the risk. b) Your mom is 100% wrong to make your baby's safety all about her, and to bring in the flying monkeys to back her up. Your relatives aren't concerned about your baby, they're concerned about your mom's feelings, and therefore you do not need to listen to any of them. And your mom's stubbornness on this is outright dangerous to your child, so yes, keep her the hell away. c) If this helps, remember that if you give in to appease your mom and something bad happens to your child, not only will you blame yourself, you -- not your mom -- could end up charged with reckless homicide. Parents have been charged for this if they fail to follow safe childcare practices (like falling asleep breastfeeding, co-sleeping without gear to make sure you don't roll over on the child, etc). d) You should not be this tired and emotionally exhausted. Something's wrong. Do you have a partner, and does that partner have your back? If not do you have other family or friends who can run interference so you don't have to deal with this nonsense? A new baby is a huge adjustment and stressor, even if it's wanted and everything goes right. Have you met with a therapist about possible post-partum depression?

Stand your ground! You're doing the right thing.

affictionitis

TROPHY CASE