@NoBentSpines Lada: "I am not something to be kept"- {#AndIDarken by @kierstenwhite} pic.twitter.com/kTX3RxeUP3— Jackie (@NoBentSpines) July 17, 2016
“I am not something to be kept!”
I don’t like Lada, but I do love her. She’s horrible to her
younger brother (who I just plain don’t like) and thinks of herself above all
others. She strives for the love of her father, Vlad, until the day he gives
her and her brother away to the Ottoman Empire. This female version of Vlad
the Impaler is brutal; she’s vicious in a take no prisoner’s persona that
made me want to swoon. She’s horrible as a human, by today’s standards. In the
1400-1500s, she’s got the personality that would make any father proud—if not a
bit fearful—for a son.
She’s a daughter.
AND I DARKEN is the tale of Lada’s quest to distinguish
between femininity and masculinity. She wants to be a warlord, a prince, the
ruler of her people. She wants to dominate the world. Unfortunately, she was
born with the wrong body parts. Lada uses her own savagery to make a same for
herself and distinguish a place for herself among the men.
While females aren’t quite as brutal as Lada now days in
hopes of conquering all of human kind (I mean, females commit only about 11
percent of all murders, and men 98 percent of all mass shooting, as commented
on in this Bustle
article). One of the bigger
myths about serial killers that have persisted through time if that there
are only male serial killers. Folks, this is simply
not true. The Femme Fatal idea came from somewhere, some person. A woman.
This is one of the reasons why I found Lada, the female
version of Vlad the Impaler, such an intriguing notion. Not only is she
re-writing a male story, but she’s ingraining the basic struggles of the
everyday woman from the 1400-1500s. Men were thought to be superior to women. And
Lada challenged all those ideas with a force to be reckoned with. She didn’t flinch
at pain, and the loved the idea of brutally taking down her enemy. And all
through this, she struggled with the idea of who to love, and how much to love
them.
Equality takes many forms, of course. The feminist movement’s
can't be tacked down, and Roe V.
Wade (legalizing abortions, and the right to choose to have one, if the
woman so desires) was approved by the Supreme Court in 1973.
Still, people are trying to overturn the ruling that gave
women the right to choose, or to choose not. Social justice and equality for
all is a hard medicine to swallow across all of time, people. Let’s go back to
talking about Lada, the girl of the hour.
Is this not sort of what she fought for? The right to choose
her own destiny? To go to war if the wanted to, and if she was more than able
to? The right to want who she wanted, and to not feel guilty for doing so? To
be recognized for her status as a princess born from death and brutality and
not for her vagina?
I love this post so much!
ReplyDeleteA++++++++++++++
YAY! I'm so glad you love the post! It was a blast to write. Expect more like this in the future <3
DeleteFirst: woooooow this post is AMAZING!! and second: okay I need this book you were right!! (@adragoninspace on twitter!)
ReplyDelete*waves* Hey Girl! AND YES YOU DO. And thank you <3
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