housekeeping pt 2

09 Dec, 2025

This is another housekeeping post, where I get a bunch of stuff off my mind so I can be more fully present with my work deadline. This is probably my next-to-last post here until 2026. (editor’s note: Nice try, Jenn!)

bad guy

I’ve always admired people who are willing to be the “bad guy”—to let others believe whatever they want about them, as long as it’s in service of the greater collective good. I think a lot about Bradley Whitford and Ike Barinholtz, who don’t even balk at playing a believably irredeemable villain onscreen. Michael Emerson, too, who seems like he’d be absolutely lovely in real life.

Recently I heard that, according to Christian Gnosticism, the real crucifixion conspiracy was between Jesus and Judas, His most precious disciple. They agreed that Judas would fulfill a prophecy—at the expense of never living it down. He’d be cursed by generations, cursed to be misunderstood. And Judas, the most loyal of Christ’s adherents, complied.

I’ve never read a gnostic text personally, so I’m only aware of basic generalities. But it’s a thought that had already occurred to me in fits and starts over the years—hey, didn’t this dude fulfill a prophecy? Can he really be held accountable for actions predestined as canon events?—and, ultimately, it doesn’t even matter whether he and his mentor had a handshake pact. Judas behaved As Written. That’s it, that’s all.

Anyway, that’s what I think about when I lie in bed and cry and cry.

bad cop

Something that keeps coming to me is this idea that if you advocate for what is right—if you're willing to be 'unpopular' when it matters—people around you will definitely notice, and some people will try to use it.

"Ooh, she doesn't give a shit if people like her!" they will think. "She can be my bad cop!" It probably isn't so insidious at first—"every Moses needs an Aaron" or something—but a people-pleaser might partner up with a Mouthpiece. This provides the foundation for the future dynamic of Fun Dad and Cop Mom. The latter initially goes along with it because they understand having boundaries is hard, not realizing their new job is solely to be hated.

A former coworker once suggested to me that the Fun Dad dynamic is actually "Machiavellianism"; what he meant was that our boss maintained his likability in the workplace by concealing the reality that all unpleasant edicts were being issued from his office. So the boss used messengers and other co-conspirators to get the messy work done—to keep his own likability, the perception that he was a charismatic leader, intact. Once a person is already hated, they have become a perfect biohazard container for others' blame: the system's wheel eventually turns all by itself, like a perpetual motion machine, without any need for the force of an external actor.

When the bad cop resists—when the person refuses to be a messenger of abuse, or to shield others from perfectly valid criticism or whatever—this is when the "bad cop" goes from ordinary scapegoat to human shield. People in general are extremely willing to let the unlikable person go on being unlikable, to absorb all the hits on behalf of the community or institution. Human shield, human sacrifice, it's all the same. Cannon fodder, grist for the mill.

myth of the auteur

A friend of mine just messaged me about big-budget video games and all the individual artists' efforts that go into making one. I replied with my go-to remarks about Second Life, where disparate artists and multiple landowners have cobbled their parcels together into a continuous landscape.

In the run-up to GamerGate, a lot of gamers were apparently discouraged or irate at critics' continued conversations about the "myth of the auteur" in game design (although this myth is obviously extended to filmmaking and other joint efforts). An entire community has to come together to realize a triple-A title but, if these employees work for an auteur, he is the one who will be assuming all credit: there is an illusion of his total artistic control, and that illusion is very important for his brand.

The denial or erasure of the ideas, efforts, and expertise of others is effectively theft. I have been thinking about this a lot lately: about my preference to work as a "shoemaker elf," all through the night when no one is looking, because I'm embarrassed at how painstaking, perfectionist, and laborious my work process tends to be. This regularly results in a 'curator' or 'director' taking credit—often inadvertently!—for work they aren't even aware of. They have a vision, and it's miraculously executed overnight. In this way, I accidentally make my own labor invisible: "Christmas just happens!"

I was fascinated listening to Sam Lake speak alongside a panel of his artists and actors two years ago, because it's clear that he thinks of himself as a writer and collaborator. He shared credit with everyone. Each member of his team felt like a creative peer whose contributions were recognized and valued, and each said as much. They were basically the A-Team. However, most auteurs aren't willing to cede any control or credit to their collaborators; as a result, those studios tend to be hostile work environments. I'm sure this happens in academia, too. Especially in academia.

My friend pointed out that, if something in a video game is poorly implemented, the auteur is obviously less eager to take credit for that. "Oh sure," I replied, "the auteur wants credit for everything that 'worked' and none of the blame for anything that didn't." I thought about it. "I guess that is human nature??" I answered myself. Maybe we all have a tendency to pat ourselves on the back for our efforts anytime things work out, and a tendency to look to assign blame—or to chalk things up to "bad luck"—anytime things crater.

My friend answered that, conversely, his tendency is to blame himself for a lack of preparation, "and then I can spend more time preparing and less time doing things!"

Yep, that sounded right. "Holding oneself overly accountable, taking ownership/control of happenstance lmaooooo," I replied. Sure! Self-flagellation is a way of reassuring ourselves we have more control over outcomes than we really do, probably.

I guess blame is, not the opposite of credit, but negative credit. Maybe when a workplace smears blame around, it's claiming other people had agency when they really didn't. And when one person is stealing credit for everything that does go off without a hitch, it's stripping employees of the little agency they did have. It's a paradox where you, the underling, are held responsible for everything bad and nothing good.

A scapegoat experiences the cognitive dissonance of having all these profound powers of mass destruction inexplicably ascribed to them, while simultaneously being characterized as ineffectual and disposable. Well, which is it?

caste

Recently in the car, my best friend revisited something that had happened to her earlier in the year, which she is still processing. For her, alarm bells had gone off when an authority figure accused her of something that, surprise of surprises, he was in fact guilty of doing. But he didn't accuse her directly, no: instead, he'd planted the seed, floated an alternative narrative with the people closest to her first. A bad move on his part! He'd overplayed his hand. Really, he'd expected my friend to concede she might be capable of negligence, that there was something she'd hypothetically missed, something accidental. He was unprepared for the amount of documentation my best friend had scrupulously kept and maintained over the years.

I warned her that his goal was to get her to accept some degree of blame when, in actuality, the system he worked for was, in this particular case, entirely culpable. I described to her the article published by London Review of Books, how it had attempted to shift some measure of accountability for the transatlantic slave trade onto West Africa. She was appropriately shocked. (I told her about having written a point-by-point response. Then I mentioned our fourth-grade social studies textbook to her. "Some slaves were treated well!" we recited in sardonic unison.)

"It's a retcon of Han Shot First," I told her. I explained: Greedo comes to the cantina looking for Han Solo, because Greedo is a bounty hunter and Han is a criminal. Greedo slides into Han's booth, and Han shoots him: rightfully jumpy, Han launches a preemptive strike. But George Lucas revised the scene later—turning it into a sort of duel, with Greedo firing his gun, yet Han is somehow quicker on the uptake—so that Han is retroactively granted some sort of moral or ethical high ground.

My friend gripped the wheel at 10 and 2. "Weren't you the one who told me England is very racist?" she asked me.

"I don't know," I said, startled. I didn't remember ever saying that, but I could think of a specific reason, in undergrad, that I would've said that. "But it is—typically toward the very people the British Empire colonized," I said. "And it's so shallow! You only have to scratch the surface."

"Do you think that's why they hate Meghan Markle so much?" she asked. We think about Meghan Markle kind of a lot.

"Surely part of it," I said, shrugging. A lot of people are Royalists, I added. She didn't just marry into a dysfunctional family; she married into the concept of the entire British Empire.

One time, as we were walking up the block in West Hollywood, a friend who was born in the U.K. had started to explain the national animosity toward Meghan Markle. I'd interrupted her. "I get it," I'd said to her, "you don't have to explain it to me." In the U.S., we admire Markle for being self-made, a working actor; in the U.K. it is horrifying that she ever had to work at all. Members of aristocracy do not work. An actor is a type of prostitute. My friend from the U.K. was surprised, but relieved, that I understood.

I recounted this explanation to my best friend. "They really admire us and at the same time really hate us over there," I concluded, "for our class mobility."

"They like how it is??" my best friend screeched. We were already speaking in broad generalizations, so why stop now.

"No," I said, "but they're born into it, so that's just the way the world works, and they resent anyone who isn't subject to the system's rules." I cringed. "Working-class people hate her the most, for being an everywoman. Harry was supposed to marry a titled member of society. There's a lot of ugliness here. Divine right and manifest destiny and all that." The plot of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is all about having the rough edges sanded off, learning how to 'fit in' to this horror show: Princess Catherine is a national success story. I haven't read Caste yet, but a friend of mine has.

12/9 update: The friend from the U.K. has messaged to say I'm kidding myself if I think the U.S. is any different from the U.K. on these counts, since 'class mobility' and 'bootstrapping' are equally myths: the fantasy of a meritocracy. Rather, she says, the U.S. has to tell itself stories about cultural differences. I think this is a point well made: myths about 'difference' allow us to conceal or deny structural inequality. She also suggested that monarchists are a fringe group of Daily Mail readers; this would mean that the animosity my best friend and I have noticed online is likely astroturfed. Still, what I'd hoped to impress upon my best friend in the car is that racism tends to be aimed at people who've already been victimized, because racism—supremacy—is a story we tell ourselves to justify older harms or thefts. In the case of the LRB article (and the comment I received about it), there's a narrative, a sort of revisionist history, about other countries' 'aggression' needing to be suppressed or contained.

But it's clear that Meghan and Harry's marriage is a map for others' anxieties about the fragility of the British monarchy. She is, to a Royalist audience, in every way that counts, an interloper.

kernel panic

Two weeks ago, during a pause on a video call with a notary, my future-ex spouse looked up from a crossword to ask me for a word, starting with the letter V, that meant 'sell'.

What I'd heard, though, was "cell," and I summoned up a memory from freshman biology class: "A vacuole is a part of a cell," I finally managed, frowning. Anyway, the word my spouse was looking for was "vend."

A few nights later, some of us were playing Trivia Murder Party, the Jackbox game. The question that came up was about what eukaryotic cells contain. The answer was "a nucleus," obviously, but I'd guessed "ribosomes." My memories of freshman biology can only carry me so far.

Wikipedia:

The word eukaryote is derived from the Greek words "eu" (εὖ) meaning "true" or "good" and "karyon" (κάρυον) meaning "nut" or "kernel", referring to the nucleus of a cell.

Later that night, in bed, I tossed around trying to fall asleep. In retrospect, my agitation was from trying to ease back onto Wellbutrin, a medication that was originally prescribed to me for fatigue (due to postviral mitochondrial dysfunction, which is to emphasize that my issues are cellular). Ultimately I ended up on my side, my face mashed into a Pillow Cube, with my hands and feet exposed for temperature regulation.

Anyway, I flopped around, thinking about the way human biofields overlap, kind of like the Flower of Life or a Moroccan tile pattern, with reality stitched together in a sort of Venn lacework. I remembered my husband describing our marriage as a "magic circle," a boundary of salt around us. I thought about door locks and keypads and permeable cellular membranes, and I wondered how good I'd really been at preserving its border. Not very, I sighed to myself, turning in bed again.

I remembered the first time we caught Covid. I was fresh off the first phase of ketamine treatment, so my crippling fear of death had temporarily abated, just in time for my 40th birthday. My spouse had rented some sort of VIP section in the horror-themed bar so that the six of us would get to breathe our own air. But as the night wore on and I got drunker (sharing alcohol from an enormous communal Jack-o-Lantern), I began "making friends" and inviting them onto the platform to party in our space.

My husband and I were the only two of us to get sick. I guess I'd always secretly blamed him, just because he got sick a day or two earlier and I got sicker, but the fault was much more likely mine—obviously. I'd invited a bunch of strangers into our cell, our magic circle. (I'd also danced and close-talked with a woman who was, against all odds, drunker than I was.)

As I lay there in bed accepting accountability for getting us sick three years prior, I felt a weight lift off my hip, as if someone unseen had been sitting on me up until that moment. After several long moments, I sloooowly pulled my hands and feet under the covers—just in case some somatically-perceived force were about to slap high fives with me.

A few days later, I would toss out my Wellbutrin. "It's like an artificially dysregulated central nervous system," I explained to my best friend, "medically induced." It's sad, because I loved Wellbutrin. But fighting fatigue isn't worth this; there are other ways of generating energy.