Dear tumblr, have we heard about the sweeping reforms announced by the new LA DA?? Because I read a thread by the guy this morning that actually made me weep.

Here it is if you haven’t seen it yet:

This is amazing.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/us/los-angeles-da-criminal-justice-reform/index.html

https://www.bet.com/news/national/2020/12/08/la-district-attorney-george-cascon-policy-changes-criminal-justice-reforms.html

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944396495/george-gascon-implements-sweeping-changes-to-los-angeles-district-attorneys-offi

Gif stands for Graphics Interchange Format. when graphics is pronounced “JAFFICKS” Then I will pronounce Gif with a “J”

^ This

It’s followed by an R of course it would be a hard g. But Giraffe is a soft g. Genius is a soft g. Gin is pronounced with a soft g too. GIF is I following a g, it would be pronounced with a soft g.

It aint Jif peanut butter though.

It would still be pronounced like that. The general rule is if the g is followed by an e or i, it’s soft g. U or a consonant is generally a hard g.

I will DIE WITH MY HONOR

Gear =/= Jear

Get =/= Jet

Gift =/= Jift

Give =/= Jive

In English, words with a ‘G’ followed by an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ can be pronounced with either a hard ‘G’ or a soft ‘G’.

Words with Germanic roots such as ‘gear’, ‘get’, ‘gift’, ‘give’ (see above) are pronounced with a hard ‘g’ while words with Latin or Greek roots such as ‘gem’, ‘general’, ‘giraffe’, ‘giant’, are pronounced with a soft ‘g’.

So no, it’s not exactly a “general rule” that ‘g’ followed by an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ makes a soft ‘g’ sound. 

Additionally, “GIF” is an ACRONYM starting with a word that begins with a hard ‘g’ sound, so “GIF” is therefore pronounced with a hard ‘g’.

We fight with honor

via @greenwoodthegreat. I could not have said it better, my friend.

Thor agrees.

This is a perfect compromise, it makes everyone unhappy.

There is a parallel universe where...

Bucky likes Deadpool’s wife

Captain America seduces Peter Quill’s ex

Everett Ross and Doctor Strange are best friends

Tony Stark has relationship with aunt May in Rome

Spider-man and Thor goes to sea hunting whales

Pepper is dating Hulk

Old Spider-man tries to be part of  the Avengers

Vulture is a superhero (None other than Batman)

And Natasha and Steve are happy together

Ultron & Tony used to play in an 80’s band together

Tony also used to hunt the Zodiac killer with Hulk

Ronan used to date Lois Lane

Fury was on a SWAT team with Bullseye

And Hawkeye and Falcon used to work bomb disposal together

Ego and Ultron used to be bros

Hulk used to date Electra

Clint used to be married to Janet

Falcon used to work with Aldrich Killian

Clint and Batman used to be blood brothers

Claire Temple used to date Bullseye

Clint and Bullseye used to be cop buddies

Pietro and Wanda have a kid

Clint and Wanda hunt killers in the Wyoming ice desert

and Gamora got engaged to Cassian Andor

Loki and Wanda were married and sang country music together

and Loki also hooked up with Ayesha

Meanwhile Fury, Rhomann Dey and Loki went looking for Kong…

… along with Carol Danvers

Stephen Strange and Loki fought together in WWI

Thor and Zemo raced cars

And Bucky did too

Bucky thought Jane was beautiful.

Steve, Gamora, and Heimdall were mercenaries

I WAS WAITING THROUGH ALL THE ADDITIONS FOR THE LOSERS TO SHOW UP Y’ALL.

omfg that is just too adorable

holy shit literal children should not be taught abt sex and preteens that do experience sexual attraction have no privilege over their peers who might experience it later or not at all

ok but leaving the discourse behind, sex education is actually really important though??? i mean, my elementary school taught that so sex wouldn’t be a stigmatized thing for in the future

literal children are already taught about sex, i don’t understand. in my elementary school, in 4th grade we were taught about “”“male and female”“” development and “urges” we would feel. in 5th grade, we saw actual pictures of naked adult bodies, and in 6th grade we were taught about “types” of sex and protection and pregnancy.

my parents gave me a book targeted at 7-12 year olds that also taught about sex and the body and sex organs and shit like that, like. this post is objectively bad. education from a young age is good and important for the destigmatization of sex in society. i don’t understand, is there a point you hadn’t made clear that i’m misunderstanding, maybe?

let’s not show nudes to ten year olds what fucking school did you go to

learning abt puberty =/= learning about how to fuck and 110 versions of asexuality

I… wha… where the hell were you raised that you think there’s something wrong with kids knowing what a naked body looks like? What century is this?

Sex education isn’t just learning about puberty; it’s learning about sex, relationships and consent, and it’s goddamn important even for children.

I started having sexual fantasies when I was 4 years old; I just didn’t know what they were at the time, or why they made me feel strangely good. My Mum gave me my first book on sex and sexual health when I was 8, but by that time I’d already heard years’ worth of playground rumours about “sex” ranging from the improbable to the downright terrifying, and had at least one inappropriate physical encounter with another child. It’s much better for kids to be taught healthy and safe attitudes to their own sexual development – physiological and mental – than for them run off fifth-hand misconceptions they pick up from equally clueless kids.

I’m not saying we should be teaching five-year-olds about reverse cowgirl. I’m saying it’s never too early to teach kids messages like, “If she’s not having fun you have to stop.” I’m saying most kids have some awareness that sex and sexuality exist, even if they don’t fully understand what those things are. I’m saying some kids have feelings about getting physical with other people from a very early age. I was particularly precocious, but the average age people start experiencing sexual attraction is 10 years old.

And I’m saying that all of these things are why it’s crucially important to give kids the tools and information they need to contextualise and process their understanding of sex and sexuality, both in terms of their own possible sexual identities (all possible sexual identities), and of course in terms of consent and bodily autonomy. 

Apart from anything else, we’ve seen proof that this makes kids safer in terms of identifying and reporting sexual abuse. The puritan myth that kids live in some magical fairyland isolated from any conception of sex or sexuality literally causes harm to children. You’re not protecting them from dangerous information, you’re depriving them of information and support they need to safely contextualise their experiences and feelings.

Teaching kids about sex is not the same thing as encouraging kids to have sex. That is literally the exact same bullshit argument that religious fundamentalists use to try to justify abstinence-only sex ed.

(Some sources nabbed from @lauralot89‘s masterpost here)

Studies show that teaching kids about sex actually delays their sexual debut as well as reduces the risk of STDs and unwanted pregnancy. The more you teach kids about sex, the less they actually have it.

Children live in a sexualised world. All 10-year-olds have already been exposed to sex in advertisements, on TV, and on the internet. If they don’t know what sex is, only that it’s this secret, shameful, dangerous thing they’re supposed to want and which will make them cool and successful people if they have it, they’ll explore their own sexuality in ignorant, harmful ways. This is why the USA have the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the developed world:

The only way to keep children safe is to empower them with the knowledge to make informed decisions about their own sexuality. No one was ever protected from something by keeping them ignorant of it! And no information is actually harmful if presented in age-appropriate ways – which, by the way, also doesn’t mean what antis and Americans think it means.

My school showed us a video of what was essentially softcore porn at age 10. I mean full on nudity, an erect penis, how to roll on a condom, a man and a woman having gentle sex, and then how to remove the condom and tie it off. It completely undid the ~mystery~ of sex and made us go ‘huh, that’s it? nah, not really interested actually.’

You can watch the sex ed video here on the Danish National TV’s web archive; it’s in Danish, but you can jump to 10:10 for the sex scene, although honestly I think you’d find the whole video fascinating even if you can’t understand what they’re saying.

Also “let’s not show nudes to kids” they’re clinical photos? About as risque as something you’d see in a fucking doctor’s office. Aside from that, you realize there are societies worldwide where it’s perfectly normal for parents and children to do stuff like bathe together, right? Nudity isn’t inherently sexual and shameful; sex ed lessons help make it so through basic understanding.

I watched the video out of curiosity, and it is FASCINATING. It’s often hard for Americans -- being a country with truly Puritan ideas about sex and sexuality -- to understand just how different attitudes about sex are in other countries. I think it would be very difficult to present sex and sexuality in the way this video does basically anywhere publicly funded in the United States, which is unfortunate because it seems to be handled very well and in a matter of fact manner.

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t nervous as a parent about talking to my kids about sex, but that’s only because it’s really important to me to make them feel comfortable and safe. I had a good example in my mother in this regard, but she was very conservative still, and a good sex talk doesn’t end with the mechanics of the act -- I want my kids to understand safety and consent, caring for a partner, knowing and asking for what they want, non-heternormative sex, and so on. Obviously, this isn’t just one conversation, it’s a whole bunch of conversations as well as, in a way, a lifestyle. I have to set an example over time, and that’s daunting (but then most parenting stuff is).

There’s this idea that more knowledge is harmful, and I just don’t understand that. And this mindset is so out of touch, because here’s the thing: the internet exists, and children and teens have access to it. I don’t want my sons and daughters learning about sex only from porn, or from other kids who’ve only watched porn (and they do and will watch and talk about it) because oh my god is that unhealthy in so many ways. Porn certainly will play a role, but if that’s all (or the first) education they get about how to have sex? They’re in trouble.

At least I know that the information coming from me is as accurate and respectful and well-meaning. Hopefully once they start having conversations with peers, they’ll at least be able to weigh that information against what I’ve given them, and hopefully they’ll also feel comfortable talking to me when they have questions.

Anyway, if you need resources for talking to your kids about sex and sexuality, Planned Parenthood has an awesome website on this (of course they do!): https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/parents/sex-and-sexuality

whats your hoard

from iguanamouth

I’m hoard of knives, books, and art supplies!

@machawicket! A hoard of nail polish! 😜

Guys, I’m not going to ask for your prayers - I myself am not religious, but I am going to ask you to signal boost this. Marawi City in the Philippines has been invaded by ISIS, they are bombing the city and a school zone, and setting detainees free from prisons. 

They say that this is a jihad, but anyone who even has a small understanding of Islam knows that Islam is not violent. 

This is terrorism.

The world needs to know. 

Update 1: They’re exchanging fire from both sides. Electricity is down. Friends are reporting that ISIS members are spotted in the schools and are giving them a few minutes to evacuate before they take over. Filipino media is silent. 

Update 2: Christian teachers are being held hostage. 

Update 3: Hospital staff being detained, ISIS flag has been raised in the city hospital. The fighting occurred not in the outskirts of Marawi, but on its streets, around the city hall and public market.

I’m sorry, I’m stringing together what information my friends are still giving me. I don’t know how long they can keep this up - a lot of them are saying that their phones are dying. 

Update 4: Armed Forces of the Philippines telling people to go underground, airstrikes coming. Mortars are being prepared too.

UPDATE 5: The Philippine President and his family are in Russia. The Palace remains silent. The military is trying to invalidate ground reports to cover up their fuckups. 

UPDATE 6: Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines are not responding or have deployed extremely delayed support, according to the Marawi City Mayor in a phone interview. 

UPDATE 7: CNN Philippines has a livestream covering the entire thing, eyewitness reports are in, Military is still saying “we’re in full control” when that’s obviously not the case. 

https://web.facebook.com/CNNPhilippines/videos/1933243386915551/

UPDATE 8: reports in that terrorists are targeting cell towers now. 

UPDATE 9: GENERALS POINTING FINGERS AT EACH OTHER INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY TRYING TO HELP PEOPLE.

UPDATE 10: ARMED FORCES STILL LYING ABOUT THE SCALE OF THIS ATTACK. THEY SAY 15 MEN, WHEN ALL CORRESPONDENTS ARE SAYING THERE ARE AT LEAST 200.

UPDATE 11: generals trivializing the situation, saying “they don’t feel like it’ll last the night,” when people are literally saying that the fighting still continues. CNN just cut their livestream, will be back in 30 minutes, most are being left in the dark about what’s going on. 

at this point, i’m at a loss for words. most friends have stopped updating 30 minutes ago. sporadic updates remain. 

Update 12: NEW CNN LIVESTREAM LINK

https://www.facebook.com/1515763818663512/videos/1933414370231786

UPDATE 13.

REPORTS FROM LOCALS:

“They’re beheading the teachers from Dansalan College and displaying their heads in the highway.”

Numerous other tweets suggest the same thing. 

UPDATE 14: 

DECLARATION OF MARTIAL LAW FOR THE ISLAND OF MINDANAO CONFIRMED.

source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/898913/duterte-declares-martial-law-in-mindanao

i am terrified. our country’s history with martial law is dark, and i never thought i’d live to see this day. 

MARAWI CITY IS A MUSLIM DOMINANT CITY. THESE TERRORISTS PEOPLE ARE ATTACKING MUSLIMS RIGHT BEFORE RAMADAN. SHUT THE FUCK UP. THIS IS NOT ABOUT ISLAM BEING EVIL. ISLAM IS NOT EVIL. PEOPLE ARE EVIL. 

IDEOLOGIES, GOOD OR BAD, ARE ONLY IDEOLOGIES UNTIL SOMEONE DECIDES TO ACT ON THEM. YOUR ISLAMOPHOBIA IS DISGUSTING. 

Upate 15: from correspondents on the ground. Same guy CNN Philippines interviewed a while ago. 

At this point, I don’t care what they call themselves or what people want to call them. Maute Group, ISIS Sympathizers, not part of ISIS - fuck that shit. If they fight for the same flag and disgusting ideology, they’re exactly the same as ISIS as far as I’m concerned.  

You Are Entitled to Your Opinion (But Don’t Be A Dick)

So this is something that I’ve been toying with writing out for a while, and now seems like a good time to get my thoughts onto paper (so to speak).

A few weeks ago, I was looking at reviews on someone else’s fic (as I often do, I’m nosy like that), and I saw one that stuck with me. In it, the reviewer asked the author, “Why are you doing this?”

Now, this chapter wasn’t exceedingly angsty, didn’t hold any twists or turns that would lead a reader to have a visceral reaction of “why would you do this to us?!” or the like. It was simply a normal chapter in a normal story, and this reviewer, apparently, had decided they didn’t see the point.

As a reader, as a human, you’re entitled to your opinion. You don’t have to adore everything you read, and you don’t have to smother an author in endless effusive praise if you’re not feeling it. But you know what? Your opinion shouldn’t be a weapon used to dismiss the long hours and the hard work someone has put into their stories.

No, you don’t have to love it. No, you don’t have to even like it. But for the love of all that’s good, shut up instead of tearing someone down and diminishing them because you didn’t. If you can’t provide a polite, non-passive aggressive, constructive comment to explain your feelings, close the fanfic and walk away.

There’s been talk lately about how the amount of fic being posted is declining, and yeah, that’s true. Without new show material, people do move on to other projects or look for inspiration elsewhere. So why would you go out of your way to essentially tell someone that their efforts to keep these characters alive aren’t appreciated or welcome? ‘Cause here’s the thing: If you ask an author “why are you doing this?” enough, eventually they’re going to ask themselves that, too. If your criticism is so caustic and unhelpful that it causes an author to doubt their abilities, eventually they’re going to decide they’re not presenting something of quality and stop.

No, you don’t have to love everything you read, but don’t disrespect the people who are trying to keep fandom alive by diminishing them and their efforts.

ETA: I’m not disagreeing with OP! I’m taking the argument further because it seemed related to me, but I’m not responding to their very reasonable, polite post because I disagree. I just want to make that clear. :)

I realize I may be in the minority here, but my position regarding fanfiction feedback has long been that if the only relationship you have with a writer started when you clicked the link to open their story, then you have have no business leaving a public negative comment on their story. If you’re a reader and you have nothing good to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all. And in the times of AO3, when it’s a lot harder to contact a writer privately, that may mean that you don’t leave a negative comment at all – that’s just how it goes.

It’s not that writers are delicate and in need of confidence (although this may be true, especially if the writer is young, which in a CW fandom is fairly likely), it’s that there are a number of realities about fanfiction that converge to make leaving negative feedback publicly poor etiquette.

1) If you don’t have any kind of relationship with the author, you have no business leaving negative feedback on their story. The writer doesn’t know you from Eve, so you have no credibility with them, and there’s no good way for them to know the intentions behind your comment.

There are any number of people who are welcome to give me criticism about my work, but that’s because I know them well or they’ve served as betas for me at some point. I know they know what they’re talking about, and I know they only have my best interests at heart.

2) Back in my day (sorry, I’ve been aching to say that), it was pretty much always poor form to leave negative feedback for all to see. Feedback should come from a mindset of trusted mentorship, which requires a) a relationship between the ‘mentor’ and the author, and b) an equal conversation between both parties. That’s just not possible in the comment section of a fic, since you’d be talking *at* the author instead of with them, and you’d potentially be embarrassing them in front of everyone else reading the comments. Constructive criticism is only constructive if the writer is open to the criticism and trusts it.

3) I can’t stress this enough: fanfiction writers are not being paid, which means that YOU ARE NOT PAYING THEM. This means that absolutely no one is forcing you to read a story, and you’ve lost nothing by reading it. If you’re not being forced to read a story, there’s no reason you should feel put upon for reading a story you don’t like, and if you’ve lost nothing by reading it, then the author doesn’t owe you anything.

The only form of currency writers exchange with their readers is comments. Think of fanfiction and comments like you’re taking out trial period on a service. You’re getting something for free so that you can try it out – if you like it, you’ll keep it, and maybe you’ll continue to use the service if you really like it (i.e., leave a nice comment and read more stuff). If you don’t like it, you don’t pay anything and cancel the trial (i.e., YOU STOP READING AND DON’T SAY ANYTHING).

Now, if you’ve read all this and are thinking: “Well, do I just never get to share my opinion about anything?” and my answer to you is: if you don’t know the writer and your opinion about their story is that there’s something you don’t like: YES. You’ll just never share it. Your opinion is not God’s gift to the world. Not everyone needs to hear it.

“But Genie, if I don’t share my opinion, how will the writer get better?” I don’t know! It’s not my business to help a writer get better unless they specifically ask me to help them get better. It’s not your business either, unless they ask you. If you really think their writing has promise and think you can help, find them and build a relationship with them. Offer to be their beta reader. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship, and I hope it is.

But unless it is, you have no business leaving negative comments on their work, period.

He remembers.

His expression killed me when he was looking around…

Fuuuuuuuck!!! This is what I’ve been waiting for! He played this so well. Stopping to take that beat where he obviously looks around the home they used to share.

I DID NOT SEE THIS HOLY COW

I did ! I saw that.. wait go back did you see her when she closed the door.. She leaned in gathering her courage before turning round! @klarolicityswan can we get a gif of that?

do you mean this @almondblossomme?

There was a meta about Kara Thrace some years ago, and I've lost the link, but it was brilliant. Basically the crux of it was that the reason (BSG spoilers ahead) Kara ran off to marry Sam after hooking up with Lee and promising to be with him is because she believed, on a level that Lee couldn't understand, that people like them didn't get to have the things they want. And that it was better to ruin it quickly than suffer through being happy and then have it all fall apart slowly. For someone like Kara, loss after happiness was more excruciating than loss piled on loss, because at least with the latter you know there's no hope.

I've come to think that Oliver is essentially Kara Thrace, but with inverted logic. If you ignore the OOCness and ridiculousness of the William storyline (which you have to do or risk going crazy), the second time he proposes to Felicity is a good example of this.

He knows about William, and he knows Felicity. He knows that keeping this secret will devastate them, and he knows she's going to find out eventually (Felicity figures everything out eventually). Because he loves Felicity, and because he can't bring himself to end things (because Oliver is, understandably, something of an emotional coward), he tries to bind Felicity to him by marriage. He tries to beat the clock. He thinks: if I can just marry her before she finds out, we'll have something permanent, and something permanent can't end.

The thing is, Oliver always believes that everything will end. He's been conditioned into that default. So Oliver holds on to things with both hands, even as he's sabotaging himself because he believes that at some point he's going to have to let go. Oliver doesn't make decisions for the long term, for the future, because he's never been able to believe there *is* a future. Even when there was a future with Felicity, he never trusted it. For Oliver, all good things must come to an end, it's just a matter of when.

Viewed through that lens, even Oliver's recent decisions to try to force Felicity out of Helix and back into the mental conceptual box he built for her make more sense. Unlike Kara, who pushed Lee away because she couldn't bear to really have him and then lose him, Oliver would rather keep Felicity as close as possible for as long as possible before he inevitably loses her.

He just doesn't understand that that same approach won't work this time (not that it really ever has), partially because he's a Big Dumb Walnut Who Refuses to Talk About His Feelings, but mostly because he thinks that controlling her in the same way he's tried to control everything else will delay his inevitable loss. It clearly won't, but he can't see that because he's Oliver, and he's a Big Dumb Walnut.

Anyway. I saw this excellent gifset of him looking around the loft, and it made me wonder if he thought about all the decisions he made to take himself out of it.

are you ready for the latest in research-based [ingroup] demographic stereotypy? this one’s a doozy.

yes. so. how would you like a summary of my educational career?

that’s not all.

and now?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh fuck me it’s my life @mckitterick

GPO-frakkin-Y over here, too, @aprillikesthings ! I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until my mid-40s… (Though those closest to me said, “Of course. We all thought you knew.” Anyhow.) The message I always got from society: “You can’t have ADHD. You’re too smart and successful to have a mental illness.” I call BS on that.

I sometimes grieve all the lost opportunities I suffered over the years before I started getting treatment and medication. The opportunities I still lose now, because my job and service to the SF field (especially via the Gunn Center for the Study of SF) have grown so complicated and stressful that I seldom have anything left for self-care, much less for my writing career or for new opportunities.

Note to all who see yourself in this post: Get checked out for ADHD, no matter your age. It’s not like life gets easier as you grow older and acquire greater responsibilities, so take care of yourself. We can’t continue to “push harder” intellectually and physically forever. Eventually, we reach our limit and break.

And to those of you with the diagnosis: I don’t care how smart you are (I’m pretty damned smart and creative-minded, but I’ve suffered all my life, anyhow), seek treatment. And take the meds that are prescribed, if you can afford them; if you can’t afford it, seek help in paying for them.

Treatment and self-care are not just helpful, they become life-and-death as you age.

Great discussion in the notes, too - check them out if this is something that speaks to you.

Many also reported that they often demonstrated considerable prowess in performing specific tasks in which they had little positive personal interest but did experience considerable fear of immediate negative consequences if they did not complete that particular task by some external deadline. This so much. Fear of letting people down. Fear of getting in trouble for not doing something. Strict adherance to routine or else spend the day wandering around without ever actually finishing anything, like getting dressed. Never actually getting a diagnoses because of the stigma attached to ADD/ADHD back when I was a child. Luckily I liked school and forced myself to take the most challenging classes I could to keep interested, then had to learn how to manage university after failing half of first term (don’t study in the library - the books are sirens, etc.etc.etc). Spent this morning looking up information on bats because it was vitally important. I’m in IT. We don’t deal with bats.

March for Science Masterpost

Please let me know if you know of any others that can be added to this list! (For the most current list, please go to http://prochoice-or-gtfo.tumblr.com/post/159388873362/march-for-science-masterpost)

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan

Minnesota

Mississippi

Missouri

Montana Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

Oregon:

Pennsylvania

Rhode Island

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Wyoming 

District of Columbia

Canada:

IT’S NATIONAL LIBRARY WEEK

HUZZAH! It is National Library Week, bookworms and library cats!! 

And that means it is the perfect time of year to show some love to your local (and not local) Libraries, both in person and online. So, just as we took time to make a special post on Follow a Library Day last year, we’ve created ANOTHER master post to honor all the libraries we know so far on tumblr so that you can #followalibrary!! 

Check out their tumblrs below and show them some love, bookworms! (Alphabetical by url)

@alachualibrary (The Alachua County Library District)

@alt-library (By Sacramento Public Library)

@aplibrary (Abilene Public Library)

@austinpubliclibrary (Austin Public Library)

@badgerslrc (The Klamath Community College’s Learning Research Center)

@bflteens (Baker Free Library’s Tumblr For Teens)

@bibliosanvalentino (Biblioteca San Valentino [San Valentino Library])

@biodivlibrary (Biodiversity Heritage Library)

@bodleianlibs (Bodleian Libraries)

@boonelibrary (Boone County Public Library)

@brkteenlib (Brookline Public Library Teen Services Department)

@californiastatelibrary (California State Library)

@cheshirelibrary (Cheshire Public Library)

@cityoflondonlibraries (City of London Libraries)

@cmclibraryteen (Cape May County Library’s Teen Services)

@cobblibrary (Cobb County Public Library System)

@cpl-archives (Cleveland Public Library Archives)

@cplsteens (Clearwater Public Library Teens)

@darienlibrary (Darien Library)

@dcpubliclibrary (DC Public Library)

@decaturpubliclibrary (Decatur Public Library)

@delawarelibrary (Delaware County District Library)

@detroitlib (Detroit Public Library Music, Arts & Literature Department)

@douglaslibraryteens (Douglas Library For Teens)

@dplteens (Danville Public Library Teens)

@escondidolibrary (Escondido Public Library)

@fontanalib (Fontana Regional Library)

@fppld-teens (Franklin Park Library Teens)

@friscolibrary (Frisco Public Library)

@gastonlibrary (Gaston County Public Library)

@glendaleteenlibrary (Glendale Public Library Teens)

@hpldreads (Havana Public Library District)

@hpl-teens (Homewood Public Library For Teens)

@kingsbridgelibraryteens (Kingsbridge Library Teens Advisory Group)

@lanelibteens (Lane Memorial Library Teen Services)

@lawrencepubliclibrary (Lawrence Public Library)

@marioncolibraries (Marion County Public Library System)

@mrcplteens (Mansfield/Richland County Public Library Teen Zone)

@myrichlandlibrary (Mansfield/Richland County Public Library)

@necclibrary (Northern Essex Community College Libraries)

@novipubliclibrary (Novi Public Library)

@nplteens (Nashua Public Library Teens)

@orangecountylibrarysystem (Orange County Library System)

@othmeralia  (Othmer Library of Chemical History)

@petit-branch-library (Petit Branch Library)

@pflibteens (Pflugerville Public Library Teenspace)

@plainfieldlibrary (Plainfield Public Library District)

@royhartlibrary (RoyHart Community Library)

@safetyharborpubliclibrary (Safety Harbor Library Teen Zone)

@santamonicalibr (Santa Monica Public Library)

@schlowlibrary (Schlow Centre Region Library)

@smithsonianlibraries (Museum Library System)

@smlibrary (Sheppard Memorial Library)

@southeastlibrary (Southeast Branch Library)

@tampabaylibraryconsortium-blog (Tampa Bay Library Consortium)

@teenbookerie (Erie County Public Library For Teens)

@teencenterspl (The Smith Public Library Teen Center)

@teensfvrl (Fraser Valley Regional Library)

@teen-stuff-at-the-library (White Oak Library District)

@therealpasadenapubliclibrary (Pasadena Public Library)

@ucflibrary (University of Central Florida Library)

@uwmspeccoll (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Libraries Special Collections)

@vculibraries (Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries)

@waynecountyteenzone (Wayne County Public Library’s Teen Space)

@wellingtoncitylibraries (Wellington City Libraries)

@widenerlibrary (Harvard’s Widener Library)

Whew! There’s a LOT of you. :) But we now this list is just getting started! Feel free to keep the library love going by adding any libraries we missed/don’t know of yet! (And if you’re not following US already, well, what better time to start than this week? ;) Eh? Eh?) And, of course, never hesitate to visit your Library in person. We love seeing you! :) 

Happy National Library Week, library cats!

@cincylibrary @providencepubliclibrary I’ll add more later ;)

Such a great list! Thanks, @osceolalibrary. :)

Check out other ways to celebrate National Library Week here.

Sorry for this Long thread, but it’s so important for you to see every single word this person said, because this is our history. And it’s also important for every white person to understand this and never ever again tell us to stop being so aggressive about the representation of black people in the Media.  This is most enlightening thing i have ever seen. This happened not 200 years ago. It’s still happening now.

Source

on fanfic & emotional continuity

Writing and reading fanfic is a masterclass in characterisation. 

Consider: in order to successfully write two different “versions” of the same character - let alone ten, or fifty, or a hundred - you have to make an informed judgement about their core personality traits, distinguishing between the results of nature and nurture, and decide how best to replicate those conditions in a new narrative context. The character you produce has to be recognisably congruent with the canonical version, yet distinct enough to fit within a different - perhaps wildly so - story. And you physically can’t accomplish this if the character in question is poorly understood, or viewed as a stereotype, or one-dimensional. Yes, you can still produce the fic, but chances are, if your interest in or knowledge of the character(s) is that shallow, you’re not going to bother in the first place. 

Because ficwriters care about nuance, and they especially care about continuity - not just literal continuity, in the sense of corroborating established facts, but the far more important (and yet more frequently neglected) emotional continuity. Too often in film and TV canons in particular, emotional continuity is mistakenly viewed as a synonym for static characterisation, and therefore held anathema: if the character(s) don’t change, then where’s the story? But emotional continuity isn’t anti-change; it’s pro-context. It means showing how the character gets from Point A to Point B as an actual journey, not just dumping them in a new location and yelling Because Reasons! while moving on to the next development. Emotional continuity requires a close reading, not just of the letter of the canon, but its spirit - the beats between the dialogue; the implications never overtly stated, but which must logically occur off-screen. As such, emotional continuity is often the first casualty of canonical forward momentum: when each new TV season demands the creation of a new challenge for the protagonists, regardless of where and how we left them last, then dealing with the consequences of what’s already happened is automatically put on the backburner.

Fanfic does not do this. 

Fanfic embraces the gaps in the narrative, the gracenotes in characterisation that the original story glosses, forgets or simply doesn’t find time for. That’s not all it does, of course, but in the context of learning how to write characters, it’s vital, because it teaches ficwriters - and fic readers - the difference between rich and cardboard characters. A rich character is one whose original incarnation is detailed enough that, in order to put them in fanfic, the writer has to consider which elements of their personality are integral to their existence, which clash irreparably with the new setting, and which can be modified to fit, to say nothing of how this adapted version works with other similarly adapted characters. A cardboard character, by contrast, boasts so few original or distinct attributes that the ficwriter has to invent them almost out of whole cloth. Note, please, that attributes are not necessarily synonymous with details in this context: we might know a character’s favourite song and their number of siblings, but if this information gives us no actual insight into them as a person, then it’s only window-dressing. By the same token, we might know very few concrete facts about a character, but still have an incredibly well-developed sense of their personhood on the basis of their actions. 

The fact that ficwriters en masse - or even the same ficwriter in different AUs - can produce multiple contradictory yet still fundamentally believable incarnations of the same person is a testament to their understanding of characterisation, emotional continuity and narrative. 

So I was reading this rumination on fanfic and I was thinking about something @involuntaryorange once talked to me about, about fanfic being its own genre, and something about this way of thinking really rocked my world? Because for a long time I have thought like a lawyer, and I have defined fanfiction as “fiction using characters that originated elsewhere,” or something like that. And now I feel like…fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters because then we can really get the impact of the storyteller’s message but I feel like it could also be not using other people’s characters, just a more character-driven story. Like, I feel like my original stuff–the novellas I have up on AO3, the draft I just finished–are probably really fanfiction, even though they’re original, because they’re hitting fanfic beats. And my frustration with getting original stuff published has been, all along, that I’m calling it a genre it really isn’t. 

And this is why many people who discover fic stop reading other stuff. Once you find the genre you prefer, you tend to read a lot in that genre. Some people love mysteries, some people love high-fantasy. Saying you love “fic” really means you love this character-driven genre. 

So when I hear people be dismissive of fic I used to think, Are they just not reading the good fic? Maybe I need to put the good fic in front of them? But I think it turns out that fanfiction is a genre that is so entirely character-focused that it actually feels weird and different, because most of our fiction is not that character-focused. 

It turns out, when I think about it, I am simply a character-based consumer of pop culture. I will read and watch almost anything but the stuff that’s going to stick with me is because I fall for a particular character. This is why once a show falters and disagrees with my view of the character, I can’t just, like, push past it, because the show *was* the character for me. 

Right now my big thing is the Juno Steel stories, and I know that they’re doing all this genre stuff and they have mysteries and there’s sci-fi and meanwhile I’m just like, “Okay, whatever, I don’t care about that, JUNO STEEL IS THE BEST AND I WANT TO JUST ROLL AROUND IN HIS SARCASTIC, HILARIOUS, EMOTIONALLY PINING HEAD.” That is the fanfiction-genre fan in me coming out. Someone looking for sci-fi might not care about that, but I’m the type of consumer (and I think most fic-people are) who will spend a week focusing on what one throwaway line might reveal about a character’s state of mind. That’s why so many fics *focus* on those one throwaway lines. That’s what we’re thinking about. 

And this is what makes coffee shop AUs so amazing. Like, you take some characters and you stick them in a coffee shop. That’s it. And yet I love every single one of them. Because the focus is entirely on the characters. There is no plot. The plot is they get coffee every day and fall in love. That’s the entire plot. And that’s the perfect fanfic plot. Fanfic plots are almost always like that. Almost always references to other things that clue you in to where the story is going. Think of “friends to lovers” or “enemies to lovers” or “fake relationship,” and you’re like, “Yes. I love those. Give me those,” and you know it’s going to be the same plot, but that’s okay, you’re not reading for the plot. It’s like that Tumblr post that goes around that’s like, “Me starting a fake relationship fic: Ooooh, do you think they’ll fall in love for real????” But you’re not reading for the suspense. Fic frees you up from having to spend effort thinking about the plot. Fic gives your brain space to focus entirely on the characters. And, especially in an age of plot-twist-heavy pop culture, that almost feels like a luxury. “Come in. Spend a little time in this character’s head. SPEND HOURS OF YOUR LIFE READING SO MANY STORIES ABOUT THIS CHARACTER’S HEAD. Until you know them like a friend. Until you know them so well that you miss them when you’re not hanging out with them.” 

When that is your story, when the characters become like your friends, it makes sense that you’re freed from plot. It’s like how many people don’t really have a “plot” to hanging out with their friends. There’s this huge obsession with plot, but lives don’t have plots. Lives just happen. We try to shape them into plots later, but that’s just this organizational fiction we’re imposing. Plot doesn’t have to be the raison d’etre of all story-telling, and fic reminds us of that. 

Idk, this was a lot of random rambling but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. 

“fanfiction has nothing to do with using other people’s characters, it’s just a character-driven *genre* that is so character-driven that it can be more effective to use other people’s characters”

yes!!!! I feel like I knew this on some level but I’ve never explicitly thought about it that way. this feels right, yep. Mainstream fiction often seems very dry to me and I think this is why - it tends to skip right over stuff that would be a huge plot arc in a fanfic, if not an entire fanfic in itself. And I’m like, “hey, wait, go back to that. Why are you skipping that? Where’s the story?” But now I think maybe people who don’t like fanfiction are going like, “why is there an entire fanfic about something that could have happened offscreen? Is anything interesting ever going to happen here? Where’s the story?”

i’ve often thought about how interesting it would be to write a novel about a group of characters in a particular genre, like high fantasy— and then instead of a sequel, the next book takes those characters into steampunk or space opera or goth western, and plays out another genre’s plot. over the course of three or four books you could see what worlds cause which characters to bloom or wither or be twisted into evil or to rise to glory, which circumstances suit which character best. it would be the literary equivalent of monet’s series works, to make a new painting of the same subject in different lights. 

Not that everything needs to be unified, but I think there’s a connection here.

Fanfic is often about the interstitial spaces left by the canon text. For example, last week’s “Arrow” ended with Oliver in dire need of medical attention (and basically having a mental breakdown). A dozen fics popped up of Felicity and Digg, who are his two closest friends, taking care of him. That scene didn’t happen on the show - we got a brief shot implying it had occurred off screen - but for this particular trio of characters, that moment is important. And it’s a meal for fanfic writers. 

I can enjoy pro!fic and media that leaves those moments open for me, and I think the basis of good writing is doing that. Create the world, draw the characters, make it a place the reader wants to go, but don’t fill in every space. Leave room for the reader to crack things open in their own heads and flesh it out more, if they want to. But if those spaces aren’t there, if the world isn’t somewhere I’d want to hang out (*coughDCmovieversecough*) or the characters aren’t solid enough, I’m not going to enjoy it.

I completely believe that fanfic readers engage with media differently than non-fic readers, which is fine. People do watch movies and tv shows for plot, or for special effects, or read mysteries to find out who dun it. One way is not better, but reading and writing a lot of fic may very well shape our way of engaging with the text more extensively than anyone has realized.

PS - anyone else out there who, like me, worries about their original writing not being plotty enough or not having an original enough plot, it’s worthwhile to remember how many “fake relationship” AUs (or whatever your trope of choice is) you’ll read. The plot can be simple and predictable, especially in genre fiction, because everyone’s there for the characters. Make them the focus, don’t stress so much about the plot not being enough.