A fish has a part of their body – their physical, incarnate body, what they were born with – that makes them very happy and that they are very proud of. They also have an unfortunate habit of thinking that they are better than other fish. That part isn’t good, and causes the other fish to be unhappy with them and avoid them.
The fish is now very sad. The only person who likes the fish anymore tells him to go to the octopus, the animal framed as the adult in the story.
The octopus tells the rainbow fish that they have been a snotty jerk and that the only way to make people like them again is to take off their scales and give them away. That in order to have any friends and make up for their behaviour, they have to rip off pieces of their own body and self and give them away to other people to make the other people happy and make up for their transgressions.
And the rainbow fish is upset. And then another fish comes and asks them for a scale. And the rainbow fish takes off a piece of themself, their body, the thing they were born into, and gives it away. And now that fish likes him, and is materially benefitted by this piece of another fish’s actual body that has been given to it.
And then the other fish come, and the rainbow fish rips off more parts of its body – all of the parts that used to make it happy and that it was proud of – and gives them to the other fish, because it’s not fair that the rainbow fish’s body was so much nicer. And when the rainbow fish has ripped all but one scale off, tearing out of themself all but one of the things that they possessed in their self that made them happy, then all the fish are friends with them! And everything is great! And everyone has a fair share.
Of the rainbow fish’s, and I do quite mean to keep hammering this point, own body.
What the book says is:
1. if you are born with something nice – like, for instance, an attractive body or a clever mind or a talent or whatever – and it makes you happy and proud, you are a horrible person and deserve to be shunned. Absolutely no line is ever drawn between Rainbow Fish’s self, their actual own body, and their behaviour. In reality, it’s their behaviour that’s the problem: they are mean and aloof to the other fish. This could be the case whether or not their body was all covered with magnificent scales. However, the book absolutely conflates the two: their behaviour is framed as a natural and unavoidable outcome of being happy about and proud of their special, beautiful body. So don’t you dare ever be happy or proud of anything you have or can do that everyone else doesn’t have exactly the same amount as, because if you do, you are horrible and by definition snotty, stuck up and mean.
2. That in order to make up for the transgression of having something about your actual self that makes you happy and proud (which, remember, has automatically made you selfish and snobby, because that’s what happens), you must rip pieces of what makes you happy out of yourself and give them to other people for the asking, and you must never ever EVER have more of that part of – again, I hate to belabour except I don’t – your self than other people have, and that makes you a good person that people like and who deserves friends.
To summarize, then: to be a good person you must never have something about yourself that makes you happy and proud and if you happen to be born with that something you must absolutely find a way to give it away to other people and remove it from yourself, right up to tearing off pieces of your body, in order to be a good person who deserves friends.
This, I am absolutely sure, is not what the author intended: the author definitely meant it to be a story about sharing versus not sharing. But the author then used, as their allegory/metaphor, the fish’s own actual body. Their self. It was not about sharing shiny rocks that the rainbow fish had gathered up for himself. It wasn’t even about the fish teaching other fish how to do something, or where to find something.
The metaphor/allegory used is the fish’s literal. body. And so the message is: other people have rights to you. Other people have the right to demand you, yourself, your body, pieces of you, in a way that makes absolutely sure that you have no more of anything about your body and self that is considered “good” than they do.
And that might just suck a little bit except, hah, so: Gifted adult, here. Identified as a Gifted child.
This is what Gifted children are told, constantly. All the fucking time.
(Okay, I overstate. I am sure – at least I fucking HOPE – that particularly by this time there are Gifted children coming to adulthood who did not run into this pathology over and over and over and over again. I haven’t met any of them, though, and I have met a lot of Gifted adults who were identified as Gifted as children.)
Instead of being told what’s actually a problem with our behaviour (that we’re being mean, or controlling, or putting other people down), or – heavens forfend – the other children being told that us being better at something doesn’t actually mean moral superiority and is totally okay and not something we should be attacked for, we are told: they’re jealous of you. That’s the problem.
Instead of being taught any way to be happy about our accomplishments and talents that does not also stop the talents and accomplishments of other children – whatever those are! – from being celebrated, we are left with two choices: to be pleased with what we can do, or what we are, or to never, ever make anyone feel bad by being able to do things they can’t. And the first option also comes with two options: either you really ARE superior to them because you have skills, abilities and talents they don’t (or are prettier), or you are a HORRIBLE stuck up monster for feeling that way.
(It is not uncommon for Gifted kids to chose either side, which means it’s not uncommon for them to choose “okay fine I really AM better than you”; this can often be summarized as “intent on sticking their noses in the air because everyone else is intent on rubbing them in the dirt”; on the other hand I have met a lot of Gifted women, particularly*, who cannot actually contemplate the idea of being Gifted because to do so is to immediately imply that they are somehow of more moral or human worth than someone else and this means they are HORRIBLE HORRIBLE SELFISH PEOPLE, and so will find literally any reason at all that their accomplishments are not accomplishments or that they don’t deserve anything for them.)
Instead of being given any kind of autonomy or ownership of ourselves, we are loaded down by other people’s expectations: we are told that because we can accomplish more we must, and that daring not to do what other people want to the extent that they want with what we are capable of we are selfish, slackers, lazy, whatever. We are taught that we owe other people – our parents, our friends, even The World – excellence, the very best we can possibly do, and trust me when I say people are ALWAYS insisting We Could Do Better. And we should, or else we will be disappointing them, or letting them down, because (because we are Gifted) the only reason we could possibly be failing is not trying hard enough.
We are, in fact, told over and over and over and over again, to rip off pieces of ourselves to give to other people to make them happy, because those pieces are valuable, but forbidden from enjoying the value of those pieces – pieces of our selves – for our own sake because that would be selfish and arrogant. And we owe this, because we were born a particular way.
Because, metaphorically, we were born with rainbow scales, so now we have to rip off those rainbow scales in the name of Sharing, and otherwise we are selfish and horrible and deserve to be alone.**
That is why I fucking hate The Rainbow Fish.
Because whatever the author INTENDED, the metaphor they chose, the allegory they picked, means that THAT is the story they actually told. (And is the story that child after child after child after child I have encountered actually takes from it.) I don’t hate the author; I’m not even mad at them. But I do hate the book with a fiery passion, and it is among the books I will literally rip apart rather than allow in my house when I have kids, because I’m not going to give it to anyone ELSE’s kid either.
*but, I would like to note, not UNIQUELY: this is something I encounter in Gifted men as well.
**I can’t remember who it was, in relation to this, put forward the thought: if people actually talked about the access and use of children’s bodies the way we talk about access to and use of Gifted children’s minds and talents†, the abusiveness would be absolutely clear? But they’re right.
†because sometimes it is Gifted children’s bodies in an abstract way, in that its their talent for gymnastics or their talent for ballet or sport or whatever, so I mean in a very raw way, the actual physical embodied flesh we are.
Ransom’s so high strung and Nursey values chill; even though they occasionally share eyerolls over White Nonsense, Nursey honestly wants to be more like Holster–smiling, obviously enjoying himself, confident in his weird interests and strident in his niche opinions. Ransom cares too obviously for Nursey’s comfort.
Dex sees Ransom having a panic attack under a table and crawls in beside him, knees tucked up to his chest. Ransom looks at him. “If I don’t ace this class my parents will be so disappointed in me.”
“Bro,” Dex says, and offers him a fist to bump.
year 1 jack: who are you
year 3 jack: im you but emotionally stable, happy, and in a loving and supportive relationship
okay so there have been a number of dexnursey fics involving nursey and his poetry? but in all of them dex figures out pretty quickly that they are about him, or nursey tells him? and I just like the idea that dex is completely oblivious to the fact that nursey is completely gone on him, and instead thinks that nursey must be crushing on someone else and so constantly chirps him about them. meanwhile poor nursey is doing everything in his power to keep his chill while desperately trying to keep dex from realising who they’re actually about?
YES!!! IM HERE FOR IT!!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!! (under a cut bc it got way longer than i intended???? im so sorry??? oh my god???)
he finds out that he’s on the ace spectrum like. right when he gets to samwell because shitty basically welcomes his republican ass with a gender/sexuality lesson that’s more threatening than educational, but a few months later when he’s kept himself up at night and swallows his pride and googles “ace spectrum”, and what do you know, things make more sense.
dex thinking he’s completely sex repulsed at first, because he’s had girlfriends, and he liked them, but every time things would go past light making out, he felt super uncomfy and uninterested and just generally kinda Not Good, because he felt like he had to keep going, because what was his excuse not to?
(this poor boy has never had anyone tell him that “i don’t want to” is a good enough excuse before samwell. listen. dex grew up in a not great environment that he left with a WHOLE LOTTA ISSUES and a MESS OF INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA)
him sorting his shit out a bit and being like “FUCK ok so im definitely queer, im ace, and i have a BIG FUCKING CRUSH ON DEREK NURSE” by their sophmore year, because at that point him and nursey are fighting a lot less and spending a lot more time watching movies and accidentally falling asleep on each other and distracting each other from homework by texting each other links to stupid vines and youtube videos even though they’re RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER and honestly they’re just big dumb idiots who are so clearly falling for each other, and dex has a mild freak out when he realizes, but mostly he’s just annoyed.
he emerges from where he was helping clean up the kitchen when he hears the tadpoles arrive, calmly makes his way into the hall, see’s the assembled mass, takes in all the faces, freezes, and walks backwards back in
ransom is like ??? bro what’s wrong
dex’s head turns, slowly, like something from The Ring
‘there’s another one’
Ok, but imagine Dex and Whiskey becoming really good friends???? Whiskey and Dex connect on a level in which they are just so done with everyone around them. Like, Nursey will tell Dex to chill and he’ll be like: fuk off m8, but Whiskey will say something and Dex’ll be like: yeah ok whatever.
Nursey hates it. I mean, Whiskey’s an ok dude, but him and Dex as friends just irks him. (The irony of that is not lost on him). So, whenever they’re all hanging and Dex and Whiskey are together, Nursey gets super tense and wired.
So, it kind of really bothers me when people write Nursey and Dex having real fights and genuine animosity toward one another more than a couple of months after they meet because it’s… not true?
Like, yes, at the beginning of their frog year, they can’t stand each other and fight a lot (and upset poor Chowder), but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Less than six months after Meet the Frogs, we have Shinny and this:
These are not people who dislike each other. These are not people who get into regular shouting matches. Dex is not even fake-annoyed at Nursey being in his space. They are friends.
just moving along like everyone else 