I am really baffled by the people attacking AO3 for hosting stories that involve rape, incest, pedophilia, and other dark things. Have…have they never been to a bookstore or library? People write stories about all manner of dark, horrible things. This is not remotely new. And at least on AO3 and other fandom platforms, the dark things are generally tagged. In bookstores and libraries, not so much.
V.C. Andrews was freaking popular when I was in jr. high and high school. Her books were in the school libraries. They needed to be stamped with trigger warning: EVERYTHING, but mainly things from the fun list of rape, incest, pedophilia, and child abuse. Her books are still sufficiently popular that there are new ones coming out despite the fact that she’s been dead for years!
Her books are in the library I work at. Her books are in most bookstores. Her books are probably still in the libraries of the jr high and high school I went to. Does that mean anywhere that has her books supports rape, incest, pedophilia, and child abuse?
That’s not how it works. Yes, there are occasionally things that a store or library will decide they don’t want to carry, no matter what. The first bookstore I worked at wouldn’t even special order The Turner Diaries. A lot of bookstores won’t even special order The Anarchist Cookbook. I’m sure there are other books out there that people are reluctant to touch, even with a ten foot pole. But, barring those few exceptions, most bookstores and libraries are not in the business of policing the content of the books they deal in.
Not because booksellers and librarians are all monsters who should be reported to the FBI, but because there’s a long history of censorship going very bad places very fast. Also, free speech is considered an American value. Hell, let me just link to the ALA page on censorship.
I don’t pretend to know why stuff like V.C. Andrews’ books, or the fics on AO3 that some people want to report to the FBI, are popular. I don’t get it. It doesn’t appeal to me. Yet I recognize that different dark things are in kinds of fiction that I do like – violence, murder, torture, war, other things that most of us really fervantly hope never to experience in our lives. I don’t know whether fiction is an outlet for whatever darkness lurks in everyone’s hearts, whether it’s a way of dealing with our fear of bad things happening, whether human culture just finds bad things fascinating, or what. Maybe humanity is just super fucked up and Pluto really is a warning buoy telling other civilizations not to go near the planet with the creepy mammal infestation on it.
But I don’t think going after fic platforms because some of the fic hosted there is disturbing is a solution to anything. (And if the people doing so are not also on an equivalent campaign against bookstores and libraries, I suspect that what’s going on is not what they claim is going on.)
VC Andrews was ABSOLUTELY the first thing I thought of when I started hearing about this, because hoooooo my god. And I definitely remember being able to get my hands on those at a young age.
There’s plenty of shit I don’t want to read on AO3. Luckily, that stuff – or at least most of it! – is TAGGED, so I don’t have to. That’s the ENTIRE POINT. It’s not breaking a law, and you are not being forced to read it.
Fandom purity politics are fucking tiring.
“Have…have they never been to a bookstore or library?”
This!!!
I work in a library. Specifically, I work in the children’s section. Obviously, that’s where we keep age appropriate books.
But nothing is stopping those children from wandering around the library and reading a graphic book. Nothing but their parents, that is, but let me tell you, people treat the library like daycare.
It’s not my job to watch over those children and hold their hand. It’s not my responsibility, nor do I want it to be, either in person or online.
You make your own fandom experience. At least fanfiction is tagged.
I worked at a book store. A kid wanted to read Steven King’s “It”. That book has abuse and sex and sex between children and isn’t appropriate for 13 year olds.
That’s not my call to make since it wasn’t my kid, but I did ask the parent if they’d read the book and when they said they hadn’t I did take the parent aside and let them know there is adult content. The parent then decided they weren’t comfortable getting them that book, so I suggested other Steven King books that are less graphic and more age appropriate for a kid that wants to read adult horror (Carrie, Pet Cemetery) and the Meddling Kids which has a similar plot like to “IT” (people who dealt with a monster as children return home as adults to deal with monsters again) but is more grown up Scooby Doo level stuff.
(Seriously, someone needs to write a YA horror series because kids need something between RL Stine and Steven King).
So the kid got three books instead of one big one, and still got what they were looking fo and I felt good about it but you know what – most book sellers would have probably just sold the book since the job is to make sales. And no library would have stopped a kid from checking “It” out.
But just because “It” is not for children doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be available for anyone. Because after the movie came out my store sold out of “It” for awhile and I had a man come in who bought that last copy in the store. He told me he’d never been in a bookstore before and he hadn’t read a book since he was forced to read books for school as kid.
So many adults just stop reading after High School.
And here is this man who is going buy and voluntarily read a giant book (“It” is a brick and could have been split into smaller books). That’s amazing!
Books are a good thing, even if they aren’t for children or aren’t for everyone and have disturbing things, people enjoying books doesn’t hurt anyone.
And if people are reading stories online instead of books, hey they’re still reading!
Using your brain faculties to analyse what yu read – or do not read and do not want to read – is a thing! Reading something does not equal either supporting that hting, wanting to experience the thing, wanting someone esle to experience the thing. We read – and write – a lot of things for a lot of different reasons that are not in an one-to-one correlation with reality. This is why it is called FICTION. A few facets and purposes of fiction is to allow or make you to think or experience emotions – also those that you might never encounter in reality, or analyse concepts that are safer to analyse in fiction. Dammit, why is it so hard to understand? Why does every generation get their own stupid Fahrenheit 451 zombie acolytes of ‘purity’?
reblogging for
“Fahrenheit 451 zombie acolytes of ‘purity’”
omg so yesterday i put a salt line on the pathway to our front door because i was fucking around and my brother was pretending to be a demon
and today we ordered pizza and the salt line was still there
and my brother went outside to sign for the pizza
and the pizzaman refused to step over the salt line, like he almost did and then he backed up and handed my bro the pizza and left; which is pretty ridiculous because it’s far from our door
so a heads up to everyone i’m pretty sure domino’s is actually run by demons??? kind of like how in men in black the post office is run by aliens
demono
((”Not just pizza”))
((”but eternal damnation”))
Alternate theory: It wasn’t that the pizza guy couldn’t cross the line of salt himself.
He just saw the line of salt and assumed that it was the only thing keeping you and your brother in, and he didn’t want nothing to do with your demon asses
Just by chance, I found out that the Wagner Free Institute of Science was offering a free course on the history of cartography—how maps evolved from second- or third-hand accounts of sundials to the gps math-sphere we know today, and how mapmaking becamea science, what that means, etc.
As someone who majored (partly) in the history of science and medicine, that stuff is my jam. I decided to attend, thinking that it would be fun even if it was just me and the professor in a library conference room.
Last night was the first class, and it was not just me and the professor.
It was me, the professor and fifty other people. They had to get chairs from other rooms! IT WAS STANDING ROOM ONLY FOR A LECTURE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF MAPS.
And to my complete delight and utter bafflement, we were an engaged crowd. The professor had to gloss over Ptolemy at the end because we kept badgering him with questions about the distinctions between art, diagrams, and maps, and where he was drawing the arbitrary line between them. Whether imaginal depictions of the world (Achilles’ shield) needed to correspond to reality, and if north was really on the top of the Greek maps or if that was just an assumption of the reconstruction.
I don’t really have a point to this, there isn’t some grand conclusion I’m taking away from that experience. But last night I sat in a somewhat-dingy library conference room with fifty other people—ranging from college students to young professionals like me, to middle-aged individuals (we had a couple people turn up in scrubs) and retirees—and it was standing room only at a lecture about historical maps. There are worse things.
y’all notice how black panther quietly but fervently rejects western assumptions about women in non-western countries by not only displaying Wakandan women in a variety of influential positions but by making clear that only outsiders question them
women are shown in all levels of Wakandan society – Ramonda as a trusted advisor for her son, Shuri as the country’s leading innovator, Okoye and the Dora as respected warriors, Nakia as a spy and philosophical compass, unnamed women who serve as tribal representatives and spiritual leaders. it is not at any point suggested that their gender is a barrier to achieving anything in Wakanda.
there’s a moment during T’Challa’s crowning that’s small but very good, when M’baku questions letting a child handle the country’s technological advancement. he specifically calls her a child, not a girl, questioning her youth and perceived lack of respect for tradition but not her gender, which flies in direct defiance of many western assumptions about how masculine non-western men like M’baku treat women and girls.
that moment, as far as I recall, the most any Wakandan man ever directly disrespects a woman. a lot has been made of how much faith T’challa places in his female relatives and warriors, so I won’t rehash that, but it’s Good.
Ross briefly insults Okoye with his assumption that she doesn’t speak English, but 1.) the narrative and the audience both understand this to be an ignorant statement on Ross’ part for which he is promptly put in his place by Okoye herself and 2.) Ross immediately learns and does better. when he wakes up in Wakanda his disbelief is only for the level of the technology, not that a teenage girl is the mastermind behind it, and during the final fight he defers to Shuri’s guidance despite his piloting expertise.
a lot of words have already been written about Killmonger’s treatment of black women: the casual murder of his partner, his disregard and abuse of a spiritual leader, the slaughter of a Dora. it’s just one of many parts of his ideology that mark him as fundamentally misunderstanding Wakanda and being an Other in the kingdom.
Wakanda is a futuristic fantasyland that makes absolutely no narrative room for men who don’t respect the authority of women.
In addition to the Killmonger point –
I love how it circles back to the cultural disparity between Wakanda and the Western world. It demonstrates how similar ideologies – the drive for resource sharing and international responsibly – can appear so vastly different (ie Killmonger and Nakia). It speaks to the cultural environment in which they existed. I believe Killmonger to be a reflection of the internalised toxic values Western society presents poor Black boys – essentially following the well trodden path from vulnerability to violence.
I wish you’d do some research before just spouting out any old crap. If you took two seconds just to LOOK at the picture, you’d see that it’s not a mother and her newborn. You can tell from the size and position of the rotors that it’s actually a hunting male. Also it’s a commonly known fact that whilst all helicopters are born with red tails, this fades to white in males, by the time they’ve reached adulthood. In females, the red has changed to a deep brown.
So this isn’t a lovely picture of caring parenting – in fact, this young ‘copter’s mother is probably dead, herself. There would be no way she’d leave her baby by itself at such a young age. The poor thing likely died mere moments after this picture was taken.
Have some respect.
You ignorant fool.
The common Red Tailed Boeing you’re basing your analysis on is endemic to Saudi Arabia, which has no climate zones even remotely resembling that in the picture. Helicopters being short range vehicles, there’s no way a Red Tail could be present in the picture above.
What you’re seeing is the red tailed variety of the Arboreal Russian UTair, which you’d know if you so much as looked at the distinctive markings on the parent’s flank.
The photo is a mother tending to her newborn as I stated, and you Sir have defamed the endangered helicopter with your inept observations. People like you who think Helicopters are dangerous hunting animals are why these noble beasts have been scrapped to near extinction. Arguments like yours are used to support the helicopter “blading” industry, in which millions of helicopters every year are deprived of their rotor blades and left to die of oil loss or starvation.
Support your local anti-blading protest group, and don’t listen to people like metalheadadam, if that’s even your real tumblr url.
No,it is you who are the fool here. You say it’s an arboreal helicopter, but no Russian Utair has ever been spotted out in the open in a tarmac environment before, and I think if this was the first photograph showing one, there’d have been some fanfare about it in National Helo-graphic.
I believe that what we can see here is the Lesser-Spotted Longbow, which, as has been very well-documented, has adapted itself superbly to urban life, and has also been known to disguise itself as other types of helicopter, in order to better stalk its prey. If you look at the smugness of the nose, you’ll see I’m right. Yes, the UTair is a peaceful contraption, but the LSL is a rapacious fiend, and should be removed from the world’s airspace completely.
You’re ignoring the clear signs here but the more important issue is your sickening disregard and characterization of the LSL as a “rapacious fiend.”
The LSL is a critical part of the airspace ecosystem. If there were no LSLs, then Piasecki H-21s would quickly grow out of control and soon the air would be downright cluttered with them. Do you want to live in a world where Piasecki noise sounds through the night at deafening levels? Where they land on the streets as you drive and on schoolyards where your children play?
Lesser-Spotted Longbows may seem dangerous but the fact is they kill less than five people a year across the globe. Piaseckis kill 80! And they crap all over the windshields of all those unfortunate enough to drive beneath them. Even still, we should not cull Piaseckis as some suggest, their meat is inferior and no significant research is to be done on their flesh. You’re operating from an old world point of view here, one that says mankind has the right, nay the duty to hunt and tame helicopters.
But the truth is, helicopters are our neighbors on this planet and they have every bit as much a right to it as we do. Support prohibition of industrial helicopter use, police helicopters and circus helicopters. Don’t eat helicopter meat. And donate generously to PETH, People for the Ethical Treatment of Helicopters.
Listen, PETH claim to be in support of helicopter freedom, but if you look at the statistics, you’ll see that is, in fact, a gigantic lie. People brought 652 sick helicopters into PETH’s “Care Hangars” last year, where PETH claim to repair and repaint them, and find them new owners. Of those 652, PETH dismantled and recycled 635 of them within one day, without even trying to find new owners for them.
You say we should support the prohibition of circus and police helicopters, but without the industries that have grown up around the many useful ways helicopters benefit our society, there would be many more wild helicopters, like the Piaseckis, in our skies, or roosting on the roofs of our homes and schools.
But that’s getting off topic. The LSL is still a menace, and although it helps to control the Piasecki population, there are other, more efficient ways to do that, without relying on the crudeness of nature.
Opening up factories to make clothes from helo skins, for example. Faux-helo has been all the rage on the catwalks for the last three years, and the designers have stated that they’d “love to get [their] hands on the real thing”. Paul McTarnabag said that “without the limitations of artificial fibres, [he] could create the most wonderful coats you’d ever see”.
Let’s be honest, here. Yes, it may involve some violent, painful deaths for certain, more… annoying breeds, but helicopters are basically vermin. Let’s make use of them.
“The crudeness of nature”
You lost me there. Nature is a perfect system where helicopters are concerned. It’s only humanity that throws the system out of balance. Before we came along, helicopters existed in equilibrium.
As seen in the opening of Disney’s “The Concorde King,” there’s a circle of life. Concordes and SR-71s prey upon the big 747s and Airbuses. Those in turn eat the Cessnas and puddle-hoppers, which feed on smaller helicopters and gyrocopters. When the Concordes die, they become fossil fuels which become jet fuels and which fuel the gyrocopters.
But when mankind tinkers with the system, it all goes haywire. A few rivet coats and meals of spicy Apache or Black Hawk aren’t worth it. And that’s not to mention the cruelty of foods like Chinook Gras, in which the noble aircraft are force-fueled to the point of illness so their filters can be harvested. Humankind needs to get out of the chopper business for good and focus on renewable sources of 3D printed parts and vegan alternatives, like Balloons, Zeppelins and Blimps. Human stomachs aren’t meant for heavier-than-air travel, as turbulence can convince anyone. Only lighter than air craft are meant for our fragile systems.
This is all a moot point for me as I don’t fly at all. I prefer a more natural means of transport- The whip driven dog-sled.
When my cousin Olivia was three, she started preschool and became best friends with a boy named Abraham. Most people called him Abe, even then, because Abraham is a mouthful for a three year old and, to most people, it’s the logical nickname.
Not, however, according to Olivia, who decided to nickname him Ham.
No one’s really sure whether she wasn’t totally listening when he was introduced and only caught the last part of his name, or if she decided Abe was too boring a nickname, or maybe she was just hungry, but the nickname has stuck for the last twenty years. Of course, Olivia was and still is the only person to use it.
When they were seven or eight, he decided to get back at her by calling her Olive. That nickname stuck, too, and they’ve been Olive and Ham since. But only to each other. They get highly offended if anyone else calls them that.
Last night was their seventh anniversary, and Abe proposed to Olivia, and she said yes. And how did she announce it on Facebook, you may ask?
People used to tell me “If you like ham so much, why don’t you just marry it?” So I am.
Shout out to Olive and Ham, who are still engaged and adorable and who are planning on getting married sometime next summer
americans think ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN of driving 7 hours. they’ll drive 7 hours just for dinner. they’ll drive 7 hours just for chips and dip
My friend in the UK told me that they only see their father like 2-3 times a year because they live so far away. When I asked how far do they live, they said that it’s a 45 minute drive……. my commute to work, five days a week is an hour.
Artisan Scribbles 