Chapter 2
It was Tuesday, September 10th, and the weather in Mexico, Missouri was unseasonably warm. Blaze, empowered by her new name, was at Stupid Bar, which was Mexico’s stupidest bar and premier performance space. It was Talent Tuesday, and Blaze was making her big debut into the music world. For just under a year Blaze had been working on putting out an EP called Cool Kids Only, which was hybrid electronic music geared towards cool kids. The bar was filled with mostly pre-teens who had formed bands and sang songs that they thought were subtle, but were easily decipherable and clearly about their strict moms. The strict moms were also there (because they were strict), as well as some mingling locals, and a man in a slick suit.
In Stupid Bar’s back parking lot, Jodie Foster was sitting in her car breathing deeply.
“Come on Jodie. You can do it. You do it in movies all the time! Just get in, do it, and get out.” Jodie leaned over to the passenger seat and reached into her purse and gingerly pulled out a gun. Jodie grimaced and looked down.
“Dammit Jodie! Now’s your chance to prove to Ellen you’re not a pussy!” Jodie paused. “I know what will get you jazzed.”
Jodie dropped the gun back into her purse and pulled out her phone. She went on Youtube and searched “Clarice Kills Buffalo Bill”. She sat in the car and watched herself give an Academy Award worthy performance.
Inside Stupid Bar, Blaze tuned her guitar while a group of fourteen year old boys finished their set. They sounded as awful as one would expect, and it was obvious the people in the bar were not into it. A woman in a trench coat, sunglasses and a felt rancher hat low over her eyes stepped inside and hovered near the bar. The bartender approached her and asked, “Would you like anything? cocktail? Shot?” When he said “shot” the woman jumped and screamed “NO!” The bartender could not tell the jumpy woman was Jodie Foster, she was too incognito. The band onstage finished their song.
“That was ‘Just Let Me Go Out With My Friends’. We are The Deadly Thorns! Thank you so much for listening!” The lead singer stepped away from the microphone and immediately began packing equipment. The emcee (the owner’s wife Trish) stepped up to the microphone and began speaking enthusiastically.
“Wow, thank you so much, Deadly Thorns. Sounds like you boys are mad at your mom.”
The lead singer of The Deadly Thorns looked mortified and shouted nervously, “IT’S NOT ABOUT OUR MOMS!” and slammed his guitar case shut.
Trish continued, “Alright, give a warm welcome to a next performer, Blaze.”
Some people in the bar clapped, not everyone, though. Jodie Foster clapped in an attempt to not look suspicious. Blaze stepped onto the stage and suddenly Jodie felt her heart squeeze. Blaze’s power was clear to her. Jodie could tell that under those skinny jeans was the lesbian that was prophesized to end all lesbians. Jodie knew if she didn’t kill Blaze now, she would only get stronger and cuter until all the lesbians of the world were crushin’ on her. She would have more fan power than One Direction, Justin Bieber, The Jonas Brothers (when people still cared about them), and the Harry Potter series combined. With all that angst heading in the same direction, chaos would break out across the world. Jodie reached into her purse and touched the gun.
“Hey, I’m Blaze, and this song is called ‘Yo Girl.'”
Blaze hit a button on her laptop and picked up her guitar. She started shredding while the laptop played a modest back beat. Blaze stepped up to the microphone and began to sing. The bar was suddenly still, all watching completely rapt by the girl on stage.
Even Jodie couldn’t believe what she was hearing; the girls talent reminded her of her own.
“She’s almost as good as me in The Silence Of The Lambs. And I won an Oscar for that,” she thought.
Blaze finished the song, and the applause came quickly, with gumption. Blaze smiled, as if she were not surprised by the reaction.
“It’s the name,” she thought, “Katie was a shitty musician, but Blaze is fucking awesome and should maybe tryout for The Voice.”
Blaze leaned into the mic. “Thank you. Thank you. This next song is called ‘Alright, Cool’.”
Blaze hit her laptop and picked up her guitar. As Blaze sang, Jodie looked around the bar. It was mostly men, split between the bar regulars and the preteens in bands. There was one man in a nice suit, but Jodie ignored him; she was looking for women. She spotted Trish, the emcee, standing next to the stage. She seemed to be watching Blaze with a blank expression and kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, then, seemly exasperated, Trish ran into the bathroom.
“Dammit,” Jodie thought, “her power over women is undeniable. There is no doubt she is the one.”
Jodie wrapped her hand tightly around the gun.
Illustration by Rory Midhani
Blaze played two more songs, thanked the crowd and stepped off stage. Jodie knew it was time to do it. With her hand still in her purse, she made her way through the crowd slowly. Jodie could feel the sweat on the nape of her neck dripping down her back. The sound of the room disappeared as she moved closer and closer to Blaze who was concentrated on coiling various wires.
“This is so intense,” she thought. Breathing slowly, Jodie lifted the gun from her purse, but before she could pull it out completely, she was suddenly blocked. The man in the nice suit had jumped between her and Blaze.
“Howdy, that was a great set,” said the man, offering his hand to Blaze.
“You’re a real talent. My name is Louis, and I’m an independent producer. You haven’t been signed, have you?”
Blaze looked startled. “Um, no, this was actually my first performance.”
“Amazing! Hang on, one second.” The man whirled around and faced Jodie. He flashed a big toothy grin at her. Jodie recognized him immediately; Louis was short for Lucifer, he was one of the devil’s henchmen. Jodie had met him while filming The Beaver. He had been eating lunch with Mel Gibson (they were friends from Gibson’s anti-Semitic days). Louis held a C-level position in Hell — CFO or COO — Jodie couldn’t remember. But basically the devil sent Louis out when there was damage of epic proportions to be done. Jodie’s stomach dropped to her feet and Louis bent to greet her.
“Hello, what brings you here to Mexico, Missouri?” he inquired.
“AH! NOTHING?” Jodie stammered. Blaze leaned over to see who Louis was talking to.
“I like your hat,” Blaze said.
“THANK YOU IT’S FROM ANTHROPOLOGIE. I MUST GO, GOODBYE!” Jodie turned and ran out of the bar.
“Ellen was right! You are a pussy!” Louis shouted after her as she slammed out the exit.
Next: Chapter 3
Pages: 1 2 3 4See entire article on one page
” Portia was sleeping quietly at her feet.”
That’s all I needed. Excellent.
This is everything I ever wanted and so much more.
this is excellent, keep them coming!
I laughed through the whole thing, but “Thank you, it’s easier when you put it all in scientific notation.” really took my little engineer heart away. Hilarious
My dreams are coming true. Jodie Foster and Silence of the Lamb references.. aww yessss! The queer powah is strong in this one!
I love it! I hope that this will become more absurdist and hilarious. I’m looking forward to the next instalment of fear fuelled action! ;)
“Inside the car, Jodie Foster nervously ate a Subway sandwich.”
How I Met Your Mother gives this sentence a whole new meaning.
oh my god. so good.
Ooh
Um.
Oh my god.
This is incredible. This can’t be real. This is amazing.
So… are you gonna keep slagging on every femme presenting women character in your story and writing every non-femme presenting women character as super empowered? Or is that just a magical coincidence?
I can’t believe this exists :D
THIS IS AMAZING. Also pro tip: do not read in the library if you are uncomfortable receiving strange looks in response to your uncontrollable chuckling.
I feel that way about at least half of the things I read here. And I love it!
I love this so much!
That is so so great! I’m looking forward to the next chapter! So cool!
Dyke D. Eisenhower – totally gonna steal this.
DO US PROUD MELANIE
:)
Oh my god, how much do I wish that there were actually a giant lesbian celebrity phone tree and that they call each other every time someone new comes out!? I seriously need that to be a real thing.
Nice …
Uh…ok…
“Portia was sleeping quietly at her feet”
“Portia, at her feet, looked up with scared eyes.
“Shhhh, shhhhh,” Ellen said and pet Portia’s cute short haircut. “It’s okay girl, go back to sleep.”
Portia dutifully put her head back down.”
Portia as a pet? This gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. I know it’s fiction but how is it ok to turn her into that?
This made me really uncomfortable too.
I logged in for the sole purpose of writing what you just did. This made me incredibly sick to my stomach, fiction or not this is misogynistic AS FUCK!
I do think this piece has some problems with femme-presenting women, but I just want to give my perspective on the pet thing since I interpreted it a different way. I have no idea how much the author(s) or readers & commenters know about BDSM, but in the BDSM community there is a thing called pet play (aka pony play, kitten play, puppy play, etc.) and it basically means both partners consensually agree that one partner (the submissive) will act/be treated as a pet of some sort (i.e. they may sleep at their dominant’s feet, their dom may pet them, etc.). This is all on the sub’s terms and not meant as a sign of disrespect at all. So anyway, maybe because I’ve got one foot in the BDSM world, that was how I pictured the Ellen/Portia thing, which made it seem cute. I understand, however, that the author probably didn’t intend that/most of you didn’t read it that way.
And I would be perfectly okay with this being D/s thing (far be it from me to yuck anyone’s yum and all), but if that’s the case, it needs to clearly stated and labeled that way. Especially given the misogyny that femme presenting people experience in queer communities. That is what, in my mind, makes the difference between degradation and domination in mainstream porn and erotica and porn and erotica that is explicit and aware of the dynamics they’re presenting.
Yeah I totally get that. It would have been more responsible to like make that evident if that was the point because, like you said, there is so much misogyny both inside and outside of the LGBT community.
what amanda said is how i felt when i read it. fanfic is often sexual fantasy, and it plays with a lot of different styles of sex and play and usually dom/sub stuff. (the author references EL james in her bio.) to me personally, this whole piece felt hyperbolic and overblown and goofy but also consensual? sex in fiction is rarely politically correct or ethical. sex itself isn’t, either. obviously this story isn’t for everybody, and that’s okay, but maybe that doesn’t also mean there’s anything wrong with it. maybe it does need a warning at the top, like leigh said, i don’t know. but some femmes (myself included) do enjoy sexual fantasies like that and these reactions, not the story, is what makes my stomach hurt.
I really like bdsm and kink (in fiction and in life) and I don’t know how the author intended it, but for me there was no sense at all that the Portia as a pet was consensual play.
I felt like there was some kind of point being made about the nature of celebrity and maybe I’m wrong but it was really uncomfortable for me to read and I found it dehumanising to Portia.
I never intended to imply that there was anything wrong with pet play or femmes who enjoy pet play. However, I can totally see how my comment came across that way and I’m sorry for that.
Not to “yuck anyone’s yum” here, but if it’s a matter of D/s relationships, it REALLY needs to be explicitly communicated. You wouldn’t enter a D/s relationship without communicating it with your partner, right? The author has that obligation to their readers just as well.
Firefly, I didn’t interpret your comment as anti-BDSM at all (although others might have). I was just offering another perspective because something felt off to me about this piece, but I didn’t realize that I had interpreted the Portia/Ellen thing in such a specific way/breezed past that scene until reading the comments. Thanks for being so gracious though. I appreciate hearing other people’s thoughts about the dynamic and the piece as a whole.
I commend Autostraddle for courageously publishing this exposé of the celesbian kyriarchy.
The piece balances hard-hitting journalism with nuanced portrayals of those involved, so that while we may never forget the dangers posed by the shadowy sapphic cabal that runs our lives, we might, at last, begin to understand them.
I look forward to further instalments, which I hope are written with the same level of integrity.
When I saw this I was like, “what the fuck?” but in a good way
Best thing ever! Can’t wait for part 2.
This is amazing. OMG. I can’t wait for the next installment!!!
Indeed, this is the best thing.
This is hands down the most disgusting thing I’ve read on AS. The dehumanization of Portia, the constant pussy slander, “actual boy” (like seriously, wtf is that supposed to mean??)
Also, whisky and whiskey are two separate things.
I’m not sure if the amateur writing-style was purposeful, orrrrr… But, umm, yeah, I don’t think I’ll be waiting for Part Two. I couldn’t get past Chapter Three or something =\
^ Echoing comments above in feeling uncomfortable with Portia being treated as a dog, and having the word “PUSSY” used in a demeaning way.
Yes, amateur is a good word for it. The amount of typos/spelling errors was a little too high for me and the lack of social awareness was also upsetting. I really didn’t like the “pussy” thing either.
Yeah, I think overall, that was the biggest turn-off with this piece – the shoddy quality of writing. I mean, I have literally shed tears reading some exquisite fanfiction, and you’d think a website with such a talented staff of writers would have something better as their ‘ground-breaking’ fiction series.
This makes me curious as to how this writer in particular was selected. I don’t recall seeing a call for fiction writers to submit.
“When I did a reading at Carnegie Mellon, he was there. He was in the business school. He’s pretty chatty. He was telling me about his internship in Hell the summer before.”
CMU alum here, crying from laughter. This sounds like all the business school students I knew.
autostraddle, i’m a long term reader and usually i’m of the opinion that you can do no wrong… but what’s going on with the whole portia as a dog thing here? is it supposed to be some kind of comment about how femmes are inherently subservient?
i don’t want to be oversensitive but this whole post made me feel sick. there’s absurd and then there’s gross. honestly what were you guys thinking?
There is nothing “oversensitive” about your feelings regarding this post! Many of us agree with you and our reactions to this fanfic shitshow are valid <3
No, I’m incredibly disappointed with the quality of writing and the misogyny in this piece. I’d expect this level of trash on virtually any other website except this one.
I may be reading this wrongly, but I think they’re taking the piss of the subservient femme stereotype that sometimes does exist in lesbian fiction/fanfiction by playing it up to such an absurd extent. I seriously doubt that they actually think femmes should sleep on rugs at their girlfriends feet, ya know?
“IT’S NOT ABOUT OUR MOMS”
perfs…I am nervously and quietly awaiting Part Two with masterly baited breath
This is simply the thing I’ve been waiting for that I didn’t know I was waiting for.
I really like the idea of original fiction on AS. This one isn’t really my jam, in part because of the femme=hyperweak issue pointed out by DJ and others above, and the whole celebrity fanfic thing feels uncomfortable to me. I’m always very excited to see more of Rory’s illustrations, though! They seem to be uncredited here.
parts of this are very funny, but yeah, what’s with slamming femmes?
and isn’t pussy, like, why we get up in the morning/not an insult?
exactly my sentiment as well
“and isn’t pussy, like, why we get up in the morning/not an insult?”
for reals though.
I love that AS is posting fiction, and I can’t wait for more. As others said above this particular story has a lot of problematic thing going on.
Am I the only one crushing on Blaze?
Also, my name is Katie so we’re like same-sames
Ha! This is fairly brilliant, more please!
I’ve read tons of fanfiction for reasons… *
When I first saw this story, I was like, “Yes! Lesbian fanfiction endorsed by Autostraddle.”
I have searched high and very low for lesbian fanfiction.
Once I realized I hadn’t found the holy grail of lesbian fanfiction, but a satire, I embraced this story. I’m looking forward to the next part.
*I will never read E.L. James
*slow claps*
this has everything i love in a fanfic. a fall out boy reference if there is no fall out boy, art, ellen degeneres and cute dykes! :D
also “I SAID GO TO SLEEP” made me laugh forever.
i’m so happy about this and want lots and lots more