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+---
+id:
+aliases: []
+title: "2026-02-07 09:16:31"
+tags:
+  - authorship/original
+  - destiny/permanent
+  - status/draft
+  - type/periodic/timestamped
+dg-publish: true
+daily: "[[2026-02-07]]"
+weekly: "[[2026-W06]]"
+monthly: "[[2026-02]]"
+quarterly: "[[2026-Q1]]"
+yearly: "[[2026]]"
+---
+# 2026-02-07 09:16:31
+
+> [!quote] Malcolm X on Prospects for Freedom in 1965 (January 7, 1965)
+> You can't separate peace from freedom
+> because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
+
+> [!quote] Patera Silk in _Exodus from the Long Sun_ (1996), by Gene Wolfe
+> Nobody can be truly free without peace.
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+---
+id:
+aliases: []
+title: "2026-02-08 08:00:49"
+tags:
+  - authorship/original
+  - destiny/permanent
+  - status/draft
+  - type/periodic/timestamped
+dg-publish: true
+daily: "[[2026-02-08]]"
+weekly: "[[2026-W06]]"
+monthly: "[[2026-02]]"
+quarterly: "[[2026-Q1]]"
+yearly: "[[2026]]"
+---
+# 2026-02-08 08:00:49
+
+> [!danger] Spoiler Alert
+> This note contains major spoilers
+> for _Red Rising_ by Pierce Brown.
+
+I started _Red Rising_ yesterday
+at the recommendation of three coworkers.
+
+Within the first hundred pages
+the protagonist's wife is introduced,
+given the most sympathetic characterization possible,
+then summarily killed to motivate him to action.
+This is an example of [fridging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_refrigerators),
+a misogynist trope of lazy writing.
+
+Darrow takes Eo's death _far_ too gracefully,
+he doesn't mourn, he gets straight to action.
+He's characterized as hard,
+(he doesn't cry at his father's execution, either)
+but his immediate acceptance is so callous
+it legitimately makes me sick.
+
+There are ways this could be recovered,
+especially if Darrow recognizes
+the emotions he's been bottling up,
+or that there's no way Eo would approve of his methods.
+(He flirts with the second
+but doesn't give a hint that it might change his actions)
+I am very dubious that the series will go that direction though.
+It seems more interested in being "fuck this dystopia"
+than in criticizing the male power fantasy roots
+that often underly such motivations.
+
+I am also _so_ tired of dystopian settings with caste systems
+that are begging for a Buzzfeed "Which Caste Are You?" test.
+It's a cruel world that _Hunger Games_ is the best the genre has to offer.
+
+> [!aside] Digression
+> If Suzanne Collins was unpopular online
+> people would be doing the thing they do with Harry Potter now,
+> where they point out bad writing (and there's no shortage)
+> that always existed but that they only have a problem with now.
+
+This book is almost too YA for me to bare.
+
+Were I compelled to say something positive about the book,
+I enjoy that the narration is in present tense.
+I think it works well to invest the reader in the story,
+(I was able to read thirteen chapters in one sitting)
+and it's fun for its rarity besides.
+
+%% EOF 2026-02-08 09:02 %%