Xander

Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, died on March 20th. He was less than a month away from turning 55.

Xander was a major character on a show that meant a lot to a lot of people. Without any special powers or supernatural traits, he may have been the easiest to relate to. For many he was the heart of the show. It makes sense that people were upset and expressed grief. 

Perhaps less logical but still not surprising, many people swooped in to criticize that outpouring of grief for such a problematic person. That set off additional people swooping in to ask whether we can't just let people grieve.

For Brendon himself, he did have legal and health issues, some of it pretty well-documented.

The cycle of grief, anger at the grief, and anger at the anger is all pretty familiar. I have even written about it before.

However, since we have a lot of people dying around now, and a lot of people being terrible as a matter of course, perhaps this is a good time to review some things.

We should remember that an actor is not the person that they played, even when there are remarkable physical similarities. 

It's okay to care about entertainers. Their faces are familiar, they create work that we find meaningful... why wouldn't we care? And they're still human beings, which should be a good reason to care, though that doesn't always work out the way you might hope.

With social media we sometimes get more personal sides. Those might be carefully curated, but sometimes you can get an idea of a person and like them better. Plus, with conventions, there are often opportunities to meet and have photos and maybe listen to them on panels.

I don't want to discount any of those experiences.

It would also be a bad idea to worship them. 

It is also okay to care about imperfect people. It's necessary to do so. Otherwise your choices are either shutting your heart down completely for a miserable existence or using denial as the coping tool that allows you to enjoy anyone only by ignoring their flaws.

That one gets used more than it should.

When we know someone's flaws and still love them, that love is a love that can last and grow. Necessary for family, but probably less important for celebrities.

I have said before that it is reductive to focus on whether someone is a good person or a bad person. That's still true, but there are people who try harder to do good and people who don't seem to make any efforts at all in a positive direction.

Fame can mess people up, and health issues can take an emotional toll. 

Dominator culture often rewards people for bad behavior, making it seem reasonable and even admirable.

This is not limited to Nicholas Brendon. I don't actually know that much about him. If some people had bad experiences with him and other people had bad experiences, neither side negates the other.

It is unfortunate that often this mostly gets talked about after someone is dead. If it came up earlier -- maybe someone gets called out or called in -- maybe some people would improve and right some wrongs, or at least try.

One can easily try and get nowhere, though. That happens too.

I can't give you any easy answer for any person. There are some things that I think are important.

We need to be able to reject bad behavior, even from people we like.

We need to be willing to allow attempts to change, even from people we don't like.

We need to prioritize the people who are most vulnerable.

We need to care about each other and wish each other well.  

I'm not expecting the world to end tonight, but if it did, all we would have is our characters and the love that we shared, our knowledge and our memories. 

There are lots of good reasons to try and be better. 

Related posts:  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/03/and-i-like-them.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/02/nahm-2017-taking-sides.html 

Spooky Season: New horizons

I know; there was a bit of a gap, as I was last writing about this in January. 

There are always a lot of things to write about. I will try and finish this round next week, with links.

For planned reading that I had mentioned further back, technically there should really only be finishing up the four series I had been reading.

It's never that simple, is it?

I did finish four trilogies, but I was also thinking of other books that I intended to get to eventually that might apply. 

First I should note that there are some books that could go with horror but are Native American written and themed; they don't feel like they belong here so I am saving them. 

Otherwise, I found another three trilogies, sort of.

First off, I have followed Daniel José Older for some time. I actually wanted to read his Bone Street Rumba series, but the library only had that electronically. I do not have an appropriate device, so I started Shadowshaper, the first in the Shadowshaper Cypher series, instead.. 

The setting really feels alive and the people breathe. Well, there are some that stop breathing though they do not stop existing in different ways. Heritage is important, and art, both of which make sense from Older.

There are ways in which it is very beautiful. I probably will read more in this series.  

Maya and the Rising Dark, #1 in the same-named series, by Rena Barron.

I'd added this to my to-read list a while ago, but I can't remember who recommended it. A comic-con was a key factor, so I assume that was part of how it came up.

For the series I was already reading, The Forge and Fracture Series features Orisha as a key part of the world-building, as well as a threat of dangerous foes coming through a breach in what had been providing safety. Those are both true for Maya as well, but the tone is completely different.

While it can feel young, it still handles some complex issues well, including that killing your enemies may be necessary without it being good.

I feel a little less likely to stick with this series than Shadowshaper, but am still not ruling it out.  

I added Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward to my to-read list back in 2016. Again, I don't remember what the recommendation had been. However, I saw it listed as Bois Sauvage #2. A series? You don't say..

Well, kind of. I read #1, Where the Line Bleeds.

Two things about that: while there are three books that all take place in Bois Sauvage -- a place in rural Mississippi -- each book focuses on a different family. 

Having only read one, I do not know if there are characters in common between the three books, though I suspect that does happen.

I can't trust my suspicions, though, because while those two titles and the third, Sing, Unburied, Sing, had me thinking that there would be supernatural elements, there are not. They are just about how difficult and depressing regular life can be.

I may have had a harder time because parents who are present but not (even if it's for the best) may be a harder issue for me right now.

I am not sure if I am going to continue. I might.

I haven't removed number 2 from my to-read list yet, so there's that. 

If I decide to finish these series, or at least read the second offerings, will I decide to do that around October?

That is not impossible. 

Catching up: April 2nd

Something was weird with my Tuesday post, where it just didn't seem to get the visibility that it normally does.

Yesterday it only had eight views. There is a limit to how much I care about views, but I do care some.

In addition, because it was April Fool's Day there was a part of me that worried that anything I posted could come off as a joke. 

That was not the only way the date influenced me. I actually changed the song order on the playlist to have the kind of less serious song up. It was just switching the order of two adjacent songs, so not a big deal, but still something I worried about.

In addition, I somehow miscounted the quotes for Women's History Month and had an extra. Sometimes I just go over into the next month, but a quote about racism on April 1st?

I don't know that anyone is celebrating, but there are too many fools on display all the time now; it puts a real damper on things.

I thought I knew what I was going to write today, but I am simply not feeling it. Maybe I had the order wrong. 

Anyway, here's what's going on.

I am currently working on the literature study for my capstone. There is a research component to the learning module, and before working that out I need to know what other research has said and what areas could use more investigation. 

This mainly involves looking up old academic journals, but not too old. There can be older articles that are foundational and have value for that, but I should not be basing my work on anything outdated. I should be aware of the current state of the academic thought on my topic.

One article that sounded interesting to me was from 2009. That's a little old, but not necessarily useless. 

However, my school library only has issues of that journal going back to 2012. There was an option to purchase, but it was $68.00! You are not important enough for that!

For perspective, a different article I am interested in would also require purchase, but I could have access to the information for 48 hours for $12. That is much more reasonable.

As it is, it looks like I have enough free information available that I probably won't buy anything, but that is one of the issues to consider.

It is taking longer than I had hoped, but this is one of the two assignments that I expected to need more time.

I was telling a friend about the frustration of always thinking I should go through things faster. She advised that I double the time expected and then add fifteen minutes.

It's an interesting way of looking at it. I think of it as two steps: first, you are just underestimating the time, so keep that as a guiding principle. 

Then, weird little things will come up that don't drastically change the schedule, but are still annoying. That's your fifteen minutes.

It could be a lot worse. 

Life expectancy

Remember how people used to talk about celebrity death trifectas? 

I think it was always more myth than reality. If one famous person died, people just talked about that. If a second famous person died shortly after, then people would wait for the third. Even if you got three, the connections were usually pretty tenuous.

Lately, it feels like there have been too many deaths to count in threes, that it's been going on for a while, and while famous people have been included, it is more general than that.

I had indicated that I was going to write about death and how we think about it, but first I want to point out the recent prevalence of it.

Maybe I am just noticing more or it has been weighing on me more heavily.    

We have made it through the first full year since my father's death and have passed some important milestones. My mother is still in hospice and outlasting predictions. I might be a little sensitive on this topic. (We also recently had to say goodbye to a cat we'd had since 2013.)

Still, it feels like more people are dying, often younger or more suddenly than one would hope. It's like there are more accidents, more illness, more suicide, and more exacerbating stress.

All of which would make sense, considering things.

I believe that this life is not all there is, so am not really scared of death; I am hopeful about it. That being said, I am still deeply aware of the grief of separation. Believing that it is only temporary may make it hurt less, but it still hurts.

In addition, I believe that life is precious and significant. There is so much that it can be good to do with this time that we have together that we shouldn't want to see it cut short.

And it keeps happening, to friends and relatives of friends and prominent people and everywhere in between. I don't think it's my imagination.

Over a month ago I asked for learning module suggestions, but much of the feedback I received related to things that were issues where it was not that people didn't know, but probably that they didn't care. That included driving and parking lot etiquette.

I have seen some very dangerous driving lately. It appears to be due to some people not being willing to wait. I have no reason to believe that they don't know that they shouldn't make a turn out of the straight lane or run the light just as it turns red or wait until the absolute end of the line to merge and then assume the person who planned appropriately will have to let you in. 

I also see that people don't seem to know how to do things that I took for granted when I worked retail, like making change or bagging groceries so there wasn't squishing or contamination. These weren't things that I was taught so much as just understood; they were clear if you thought about it. There is less thinking.

There might be reasons there are more accidents.

Not only have most people given up on trying to prevent spreading diseases like COVID, but -- especially with anti-vaxxers -- there may be resistance to preventing any disease. Plus, as we strip away environmental protections and food safety, the odds of taking in something toxic from the food you eat, the water you drink, or the air you breathe goes way up. 

There might be reasons there is more illness. 

That, along with increased racism, hate, dehumanization, and the blaring of all of it, may potentially explain an increase in stress and suicide. 

That's not encouraging, I know.

I know there are limits to what we can do, but let's do what we can. Especially, let's be kind and caring to each other. Those positive interactions feels so much better than doomscrolling. They're more effort, but they are worth it.

Also, if this can end on a somewhat better if still morbid note, two freak accidents have stuck in my mind recently, and maybe there can be some humor here:

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/us-sport/jeff-webb-charlie-kirk-cheerleading-dead-b2942614.html 

First of all, Charlie Kirk's (Kirk is going to come up later) mentor died in a "freak pickleball accident"; I don't understand how those three words go together. 

I guess you can injure your head doing anything. One reason I know life is fragile is learning about how the different things we see in movies and television would really play out. You cannot easily knock someone out temporarily without bad risks, as inconvenient as that is.

Without laughing at death, this terrible guy who mentored another terrible guy (but apparently not in cheer, which he influenced a lot) also had a duck-hunting estate in Arkansas. Who does that?

Then -- and this story is better because it does not end in death and involves a better person -- Pat Smear was injured in a freak gardening accident, requiring a temporary replacement guitarist for the Foo Fighters:

https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/pat-smear-injured-in-gardening-accident 

I can only assume that he was working on a retaining wall and dropped some of the stones on his foot, but it is impossible to get details on it because all you find is This is Spinal Tap jokes, referencing original drummer John "Stumpy" Pepys who died in a bizarre gardening accident that the authorities said it was best to leave unsolved.

So, we can be grateful that Pat is not a drummer, but then I remember that the Foo Fighters painfully lost their real drummer, and that if they hadn't made Spinal Tap II: The End Continues when they did, they wouldn't have had Rob Reiner... 

A lot of it just sucks.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/03/death-life-and-legacy.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/02/putting-it-out-there.html 

Spotlight on Jane Austen

It is still Women's History Month (though not for much longer) and I have been reading a lot about my dear Jane lately.

There has been a recent increase in online chatter about her due to The Other Bennett Sister, a current BBC series based on a book by Janice Hadlow.

A lot of that conversation is a mix of how they are getting Mary wrong and how they are there for it anyway. It sounds like they are getting Mary wrong, and I think they would have been better off starting after the events of Pride and Prejudice (though it does seem that more happens after) but I do not anticipate watching or reading anytime soon.

It is still fun to see people being passionate about it.

This increase is recent, but there had been an earlier extended conversation as well, starting with one very ignorant post:

https://x.com/vocalcry/status/1998790778001494425 

My university had a Great Books curriculum and one of the last books on the syllabus was ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and I told my professor that we were only reading it because they wanted to add a woman author to the list and he fidgeted uncomfortably because it was obviously true 

Don't worry; the replies are full of people telling her how wrong she is and there were many other threads started.

This is the grace I will give vocalcry: there are many different potential syllabi.  

Pride and Prejudice would be a good fit for many. If you are learning about the development of the novel, Austen was a key figure in building on realism, the use of dialogue, and social observation. Most of the other authors I can think of who did second- or third-person narration well did it several years later. 

Yesterday I wrote about how sometimes we are hurrying to try and approach equality and don't do a great job. If someone whose previous view only included old white men as great authors of great books started to realize that was a problem, adding Pride and Prejudice would be a reasonable start, though it wouldn't eliminate attitudes like this one.

If you were writing about the Romantic era, you would probably not read Austen unless you read Northanger Abbey to get an idea of the sentiment and reception. If the class was about examining social issues through literature, I'd lean toward Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton.

There would also be people would would argue that if you are going to add something written by a woman for a "Great Books" class that it should be George Eliot's Middlemarch, though that really runs up the page count.  

I suppose one additional argument -- beyond mere sexism, but related -- is that a book that deals with ordinary people and ordinary problems does not count as "great" when that could be something that deals with existential crises and life and death, like Moby Dick 

I think that understanding human nature is worth something, and you are going to spend more time with other humans in settings like parties and visiting at home than you will in the doomed pursuit of a white whale.

Maybe Pride and Prejudice is more useful.

I enjoy reading Austen's books. I admire that she had characters that could be so different from each other and yet so interesting and relatable, going on two centuries later.  

There is also a lot that you can learn from them, about people and about prose.

Also important nowadays, her work can withstand some questionable adaptations. 

Death, life, and legacy

In Tuesday's post I referenced hyperbole and United Farm Workers. 

They were separate thoughts, but there was a connecting thread that relates to how we remember the dead.

That will be another multi-post issue, but I want to tackle something a little to the side today, encouraging us to not react too quickly.

(Also yesterday's post mentioned learning from discomfort -- which I have written about before, but not recently -- so it all connects.)

Labor rights activist Dolores Huerta recently revealed that she was among the women and girls sexually abused by César Chávez. There is now a rush to cancel celebrations, rename things, and take away the honor that has accrued to this man. 

https://apnews.com/article/latino-leaders-speak-out-about-chavez-allegations-f1b24d3c6bdf71b326b63d51f80ea957 

There are the usual points being brought up: why did they wait so long to come forward and are they lying on the side of misogyny, as well as some people a little too eager to tear down the work he did, probably mostly because of racism but maybe also because of worker rights and unpopular things like that.

There are questions about whether you still give credit for the work he did; does this ruin it all?

I am writing this post because the apparent rush by some to rename the days and streets and things after either Dolores Huerta or United Farm Workers feels like a rush to get over this bad news. 

We might grow more if we don't rush. 

How much we want to honor an imperfect person is worth considering in this time of cult-like partisanship. It is not the only thing worth considering.

Chavez died in 1993; most of the honors came significantly later. Portland's own  César E. Chávez Blvd was not named that until 2009. There would be a lot of things to rename and change because historically we have not been great at honoring people who were not rich white men. Attempts to fix that may have also been a little rushed, so 

Chávez got used a lot, even though he was not the only prominent person checking his specific boxes. For some more context, Portland got Rosa Parks Boulevard in 2006, Harvey Milk Street in 2017, and Martin Luther King Blvd all the way back in 1989.

(See also https://erdavis.com/2022/04/14/only-6-streets-in-portland-are-named-after-people-of-color/.) 

I'm not saying that's not a reason to rename, but there is a pattern to the way we have done things. Changing the names will not automatically change the patterns.

Here are some other areas to ponder.

Regarding Dolores Huerta (who has done great work for decades, so honoring her is perfectly reasonable), there were two things that stuck out to me.

First, she did not know there were other victims back then. I believe her, but one sad thing I have learned by now is that as much as sexual abuse makes people feel isolated, they aren't. I hope there is enough understanding now that if he is doing it to you, he is doing it to others. That doesn't make coming forward easy, but we should know enough to make it easier; have we?  

You know we haven't. 

Secondly, one reason she did not speak up until now was her fear that it would damage the movement. Would the public back then have used it to discredit the movement? Yeah, seems likely. 

Have we progressed beyond that, where we want good things for people and progress so that we will not let the failures of one person get in the way?

For another train of thought, a few years back there was a movement to remove more Confederate memorials and memorials to people who profited from slavery. If we were to go through and remove and rename anything related to a rapist, how much would that change things? Would maps become useless? Because it's been pretty common.

Our country has twice elected a confessed sexual assaulter found liable for rape and is allowing him to delay investigation of likely evidence that he is a pedophile while wreaking havoc internationally and domestically. Maybe we should sit with that for a while.

Maybe we should abolish the tendency to look for a "great man." One individual may be very inspirational or organized or have a lot to offer, but there are always others planning and carrying out and carrying on. Focusing too much on that one minimizes the work of others and allows him a latitude that can easily cause harm.

Let's not get over this quickly. 

Related posts: 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2022/10/three-reasons-to-embrace-discomfort.html  

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2019/02/sitting-with-uncomfortable.html 

 

Apologies

When going over Davidson's original apology, I mentioned some issues with it, but there was one I did not address: his mortification was if people thought the outburst was intentional, rather than the problems caused by the outburst itself.

That continues with the issue of him not de-centering, but also focuses on intent, which is not particularly helpful. 

If you are following "I am sorry" with "if" or "but," you are doing it wrong.

Now on to the second apology. Notice this headline: 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/tourette-s-campaigner-john-davidson-refuses-to-apologize-following-bafta-racial-slur-incident/ar-AA1XwAll?

That's a bit sensationalized, given the actual statement:

"Whilst I will never apologies for having Tourette syndrome, I will apologise for any pain, upset and misunderstanding that it may create.”

The press continues failing across multiple fronts. 

We should also note that no one has asked him to apologize for having Tourette's.

One bold assertion I saw in the defense of John Davidson was that if a blind guy had spilled someone's drink in a bar, no one would have been upset.

I'm not sure that's true. Maybe it depends on whose drink it was, and how many they'd already had, but I think there could be some complaining and maybe even some fighting.

Another question asked multiple times in posts defending Davidson was whether you would expect an apology from someone in a wheelchair who ran over your foot.

Yes. Absolutely. That's the bare minimum of human decency.

These were hypotheticals posted as if the answers were obvious; people with disabilities have no responsibility for the ways in which said disability affects their interactions with others.

That is simply not true. Nor should it be. 

Two examples were given (multiple times) from the film I Swear, which I have not seen.

One claim was that when Davidson was made an MBE, he said several inappropriate things on the way in and to the queen herself. 

The posters using this example said that he apologized and then the queen said he didn't need to.

I have seen articles about what he said and that the queen was gracious, but none confirming that he apologized first:

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a70693855/i-swear-true-story-john-davidson/ 

(Two other articles gave the exact same level of detail.)

It might be easier to be gracious when the other person makes the first step.

The other part referenced was that a young Davidson was constantly apologizing, making him depressed and suicidal. Because of that, a mentor told him to never apologize. 

I know many people (and have been one) -- usually women -- who apologize for everything, taking responsibility for things that are not their fault. I think this is more of symptom of low self-esteem than a cause, but it's not helpful. It can be something to work on.

It is also important to note that you can cause harm without having bad intentions. Being able to recognize that and acknowledge it is a good thing. 

It's hard to imagine that anyone other than a white man -- even one with a disability -- could think that never apologizing is a good path forward. 

There is a wide range between what is within your control, and outside of it, and the differences between ignorance and flagrant disregard. It is nonetheless a good and human thing to understand when you have had a negative impact on someone and to try and rectify that. 

Maybe one concern about apologizing is that it accepts responsibility. If you have caused harm but your intentions were pure, a continuation of that purity seems like it would require trying to fix the unintended harm. 

Maybe you did not cause harm, but you were benefited by harm caused by others. For example, I am in a better position socially and economically because of the oppression of other groups. I should work for equality.

That gets into dangerous territory, because then there might be an acknowledgement that our lives (especially the good parts) are not simple matters of merit. 

There is a humility that can come with acknowledging harm, whether it was intentional or careless or completely accidental. It allows healing and growth, but yeah, there can be discomfort with it.

That tends to be how healing and growth work. 

One more little complaint about Davidson; in the second apology he mentioned reaching out to Jordan and Lindo privately... the outburst was public, and I think he could have done better publicly. 

Some of his defenders mentioned that if he had tried apologizing right then there would have been more outbursts. That is probably true, but a prompt, better statement could have really been helpful. It could have been a blow against both racism and ableism.  

There was a lost opportunity here, but there is always the opportunity to do better next time. 

Related posts:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2026/03/learning-from-mistakes.html