Well. It's been an intense few weeks, but I have finally finished the Tome of the Womb Wizard. It's been fascinating, following Staph's early, fiery days and her tempestuous marriages, and her later experiences as a divorcee and herbalist. It's remarkable how she has been a passionate activist for so many things but has an in depth understanding of nothing. Absolutely no insight into anything ever. She mouths the slogans and repeats the chants. Her spell work is a motley bastard work of things she randomly took off of the television. Her politics is a simple "Orange Man bad". She has learned to keep a minimal amount of information to herself over the years, but otherwise there has been no growth intellectually or emotionally.
I have brewed my own quiet theory that I haven't seen anyone else suggest so far, re: Staph's relationship with her parents, specifically her mother. I think that her mother may actually be the reason Staph is still living with her parents. General opinion seems to be that out of the goodness of their hearts, the parents are supporting their sped daughter, but I suspect that her mother has actively encouraged her dependence on them. Why? Because her mother has her own screws loose, and doesn't want an empty nest. As a sped myself my mother did all she could to ready me for the world outside her house. She did her best to teach me how to dress, how to negotiate, how to see shades of grey, how to have a certain flexibility of mind in order to learn from mistakes... all things that Staph lacks and that a mother generally attempts to impart to her offspring. Instead Staph sits on her childhood bed making the same mistakes over and over again, and it's hard not to wonder about her mother's role in it all.
