slightly furious reminder that fish do in fact feel pain and do in fact experience fear and distress when in pain since people seem to love spreading the myth that fish don’t feel pain. what is it with people assuming a creature is incapable of feeling pain or emotion just because it doesn’t have complex facial muscles. come on gang
As my main income, I work with fish in a specialty pet store that’s privately owned (so I’m allowed to say no and be stern to customers when it’s needed).
You learn really quickly that not only do fish have individual personalities and emotions but they also have memories and recognize people! There are certain fish who will only come out for me and hide for everyone else. The pufferfish spits at me because she gets pissy that I haven’t fed her. The flowerhorn bites everyone but me and my coworker when we clean his tank. I trained a fire eel to come up and eat directly out of my hand.
Fish are beautiful complex creatures and I thank the universe everyday that I get to work in a place where I’m encouraged to tell animal abusers to fuck right off.
Thinking a lot about Mrs. Brisby. She’s one of my favorite fictional characters of all time, and even more so after becoming a mother, myself.
She’s such an incredibly well written character, and so many things about her are symbolic.
Like… she doesn’t even have a name. Which, normally, is a trope that bothers me when it involves characters that are mothers, because we so often get deprived of our individuality and get reduced down to our respective caregiver role. It often feels regressive and dehumanizing.
But in this particular film, I think that choice was deliberate and thematic. Other characters just address her as Mom or Mrs. Brisby, or even Mrs. Jonathan Brisby. She’s been stripped of her own identity and reduced down to her husband’s name and to her role as a mother.
She’s also dealing with the grief of losing her husband, trying to care for a very sick child along with three other small children, all while dealing with harsh criticism from other folks and living completely in her husband’s shadow—and then, on top of that, discovering that her husband was living a double life and hiding a great and terrible secret from her because he thought she couldn’t handle the knowledge of what he was.
Jonathan Brisby was practically a figure of legend in the film. Every animal seemed to know his name, his secrets, his deeds, and his ties to the rats of NIMH. Everyone, that is, except for his wife. Mrs. Brisby was left ignorant “for her own good,” which is such a cutting metaphor for how women are often excluded from knowledge and agency, infantilized by the assumption that they “can’t handle it,” or that it’s “over their head.”
But when she was thrust into a crisis situation, she proved that what she lacked in genetic modification and brute strength, she made up for with sheer determination, force of will, and love. She didn’t need to be a super-mouse to achieve great things. All she needed was her love for her children, her innate intelligence, and her stubborn, stupid courage.
And quite honestly, one of my favorite aspects of Mrs. Brisby is that she is terrified the entire time. She never conquers her fear. No, she acts while still deeply, deeply afraid. Her courage manifests in showing up for her children despite her fear. She is trembling and exhausted, all while negotiating with creatures that could eat her in one bite. She sneaks into the farmer’s home to complete her husband’s unfinished business, and literally moves her entire house to save her sick child.
And she does all of that without the injections. All while being ordinary. The rats of NIMH are super geniuses, but their intelligence bred corruption, infighting, and struggles for power. Mrs. Brisby, on the other hand, embodies the unenhanced courage and love that the rats, for all their intelligence, have completely lost sight of.
Ugh. I love Mrs. Brisby. I love her because she’s afraid, and lost, and naive. But she’s also incredibly brave, and resourceful, and she shows up for her children, doing whatever it takes to help them survive. She didn’t have the injections that her husband and the rats had gotten, so she wasn’t gifted with super intelligence. She didn’t have any of those advantages.
I’ll never forget the time my parents said they were going out for a few hours, and left my siblings and me at home by ourselves (ages 9-14), and instead of going nuts or just sitting around, we all rushed and did our hair and makeup and got dressed as fancy as we could; sister pulled out the wine glasses and grape juice and made an hors d'oeuvres platter, another googled how to play poker, pulled out chips from a different game, dimmed the lights, and we set up a fancy 4-person gambling den at the kitchen table and played until my parents said they were on their way back with dinner. Then we quickly picked everything up, washed our faces, changed back into our casual clothes, and pretended nothing ever happened. They never found out.
This is legit great because it shows that it’s not the cat that’s the problem, it’s the broom. The cat just needed someone to make an accommodation so they could fly too.
