My mother had three pregnancies, and two children. She had a miscarriage, between my brother and I, in that four year span between our births, there was another pregnancy, another child desperately wanted, who didn’t live to term.
My mother had her pre-natal care, and her post-miscarriage care, at Planned Parenthood.
Because it was the best place for her. Because at the time, she had a two year old child and a bike and they were living just around that nice little sweet spot between ‘desperately poor’ and ‘almost have enough to consider a savings account.’ And when you are poor, and female, and need health services, Planned Parenthood is there.
And my mother walked past the protesters, walked past the people who screamed at her about not killing her baby, about how she was a whore, and she was going to hell. My mother, in mourning for a child that she had lost, blaming herself, hating herself for failing at this most feminine of things, walked through that, to care for herself, to get the medical care she needed. So that someday, two years later, she could have me.
I cannot speak to the courage that must have taken. But that path is walked by thousands of women. Every single day.
She donated to Planned Parenthood until her death. And she said to me, that the people who screamed at her saw her only as a vessel for a baby. They didn’t care about her, they didn’t care about her baby, either. They were pro-birth, not pro-life, because none of them would be there after her baby was born, to offer help and support and care.
The protesters didn’t care about her. And the medical professionals inside did. It is the right of every woman to have access to safe, affordable, quality health care, no matter where she comes from, what her income is, or what choices she makes with her life. And that is what these kind of bills are attempting to take away.
Ok Snape, Voldemort and Harry are the three brothers but do you realise that Dumbledore is Death ? He greeted Harry at King’s Cross and was the one behind Snape and Voldemort’s death.
*epic jaw drop*
old friend
Fuck man
He’s the one who gave Harry the invisibility cloak too
For fuck sake
And he had the stone and the wand too
HOW IS THIS BOOK SERIES STILL FUCKING ME UP. ITS BEEN YEARS. WHEN WILL I HAVE MY FREEDOM BACK JOANNE? WHEN????
Force kids in school to read crappy, overrated books that are “the best books ever written” solely because they’re “classics” and then call those kids idiots because those aren’t the kind of books they like to read and sit back and wonder why we have a nation full of multiple generations worth of people who willfully and proudly refuse to read.
hello
I read every day in elementary school. I ate books up like they were the best thing in the world. Then middle school happened and they forced me into reading the books they thought were more important. Some of which are jn my opinion some of the worst books I’ve ever had the misfortune of laying eyes upon. They completely ruimed my interest in reading and only after high school have I managed to start reading books again.
Oh, and don’t forget trying to cram as much meaning into those “classics” as possible. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
what are the worst classics?? in your opinion?
Honestly fuck the great gatsby
Lord of the flies. I get it you’re clever and white people are awful now learn to fucking write dialogue and create characters I give two shits about.
Most classics are the epitome of “makes u think” honestly
Fucking catcher in the rye
The Grapes of Wrath. I swear to Christ, I wanted to light that book on fire.
The whole idea of “just copy the notes from someone else” always kinda frightened me because personally I take notes in a shorthand language that makes sense to exactly no one except me. Like I’d feel awful for anyone who tried to copy my notes when they’re just
Story time, When i was in highschool i got in trouble a lot from people copying off me (Yeah love those school rules, someone else cheats without my consent and I get in trouble) so i started taking my notes in a mixture of french, english shorthand, and irish, all of which was written not with the latin alphabet, but the derrillian alphebet that i created in middle school for the language i was making. In short they were a fucking mess and only comprehensible to me. I’ll look later today after i get some sleep and see if i can find my old notebook
wicked
I wrote down my locker combination in binary all throughout high school. Kept it displayed on my assignment pad for whenever I forgot it. Not that anyone was actively trying to break into my locker, but it was something.
Y’all work too hard.
Took all my notes in high school and college in cursive and textbook shorthand. Made a kid cry when I offered to lend her my notes.
this is your psa to NOT USE AO3 TAGS the same way you would use tags on tumblr! AO3 goes through a lot of effort to create and track tags, whereas tumblr is freeflow and blog-respective. please only use AO3 tags that have story relevancy, NOT AS PERSONAL TAGS.
I’ve read multiple posts from ao3 mods saying this is not true.
FROM AO3′S OWN TUMBLR:
“The kind of one-off commentary tags that are frequently referred to as Tumblr-style tags do not put any kind of extra strain on the database, or require more work from the wranglers than any other Additional Tag, such as Romance or Angst or Pretzels. Even the fact that there are a lot of them isn’t really an issue.”
“It doesn’t create more work for the wranglers than the simple act of wrangling already does. And trust us: the wranglers really, really like organizing your tags in the background.”
AO3 mods have confirmed themselves that there is nothing wrong with people rambling in tags. It doesn’t strain the database, it isn’t any harder on the wranglers than any other tag. In fact, rambling tags are probably easier for them to chuck into the freeform or additonal category than someone who accidentally tries to create a new tag for a ship or kink or something.
Don’t tell people they can’t express themselves in the tags. It’s not just “ummmm lol so yeah” kind of stuff, some of it expresses things that are hard to tag for but the readers might want to know about the fic ahead of time. For example one of mine: “this is really just fluff + flirting and implied stuff at the end” or “X embarrassing Y and annoying the hell out of Z”. Should that stuff be in author’s notes? Probably. Am I going to put it there? For various reasons, no, the main reason being that you can’t see author’s notes from the outside of the fic.
In general, just stop spreading misinformation please, it took me two seconds to look up AO3′s actual opinion on rambly tags instead of assuming.
Welp, looks like I’ll have to do a mea culpa here. Did not bother to do recent fact checking since I knew in the past it was not an encouraged thing to do. However, I now stand corrected. It’s not my personal favorite thing to see, but as I abuse tumblr tags, I can’t hold it against people for using it.
Carry on, fic writers/artists/podficcers.
It just looks really obnoxious though so I wonder why people do it anyway, even if it doesn’t really cause any strain on the servers. I understand making new tags for new ships or odd little fandom names for certain concepts, or even the occasional tag that’s some inside fandom joke, or using them to post trigger warnings with other important shorthand info about what the fic is about, like that other tumblr user above pointed out they use them for.
But sometimes it’s just straight up rambling and if someone has a whole paragraph of tags that has cutesy commentary, that’s pretty much a guarantee I’m skipping the fic. The tags are there so people can get the quick and dirty on the important parts of a fic, like ships, kinks, etc. And there are a LOT of not-so-great fics to wade through to find the good ones. I’m not gonna wade through a paragraph of tag essays trying to pick out what’s important.
So people can do it if they want but the messier it gets, the more likely you’re going to lose some readers because you’re just rambling along. It’s messy and gives off the same “My writing isn’t good enough to stand alone with tags only about what the fic is about and a normal summary” vibes that the old “R+R, no flamez plz” stuff in summaries give vibes of on FF.net. Whether or not it actually causes problems for the Ao3 tag wranglers doesn’t change that the format is different, that it’s not your personal blog, and the READERS sometimes like that to just be a quick view of the most important things in the fic. That can sometimes mean non-standard tags like “this is just fluff” like the user above said but the ramblier you get, the more likely someone’s eyes will glaze and glance over. (Also, I mean, there is a “fluff” tag, so that doesn’t need to be a whole sentence fragment, honestly).
When I’m looking through a database to find things, I’m looking for things to be concise, well organized, and clearly labeled. That’s the difference between Ao3 and tumblr. Tumblr is social media where I’m specifically looking for people’s silliness and their thoughts. Ao3 is a database where I’m looking for specific things, and visually scanning for specific labels. It’s one of those self-indulgent things that sometimes benefits the writer’s ego more than the readers trying to find fic, if you use it a certain way. On the internet, it’s good to always consider the experience of the person trying to find something easily and quickly when you’re trying to get people to read, look at, or buy your stuff.
See, I see why you have your preferences, and understand that, but I will fully admit that I love certain types of rambling Tumblr-style tags on AO3 for the sake of finding things to read.
If I’m browsing a fandom or tag, which is often the case, freeform tags serve as a combination epigraph, blurb, and occasionally even flavor text (I could explain that last one, but it would take hand gestures and possibly a whiteboard) for their story. I’ve found some of my more enjoyable blind reads because their freeform tags grabbed my attention. They didn’t tell me a hell of a lot about the stories, but they did tell me enough about the authors’ tastes and senses of humor for me to give them a shot.
But I when I’m browsing AO3, I’m also treating it less like using a database for finding things (unlike when I want to find specific things, where I use the canonicals and search to dramatically narrow my scope) and more like wandering through a bookstore hoping something catches my eye, so we’ve got a different use case. Something tagged with strictly canonicals is going to look like every other book in the shop to me, where something tagged with ridiculous freeform conceits is going be unnecessary noise to you.
So they’ll gain some, lose some, and it probably, if previous discussions* I’ve had about it are anything to go by, evens out.
*(This is a discussion that I’ve had regarding freeform tags a few times, and it’s an interesting (to me) split, where about half of us in any given discussion found them helpful for finding things, and the other half found them irritating and only of use for winnowing. I’d be curious to see a survey on it.)
OMG, thank you, Min, I’ve been trying and failing to come up with a way to express all the things the random, rambly freeform tags do for me, and you just hit it out of the park.
I’ll add one: They can be a fantastic way to give me an idea of whether the author is ‘my kind’ in terms of how they read the characters/what tropes they think fit the characters best/what tropes I can expect that aren’t easily quantifiable.
Like, a story with a tag that says ‘Bruce Wayne is completely incapable of taking care of himself’ or whatever is probably gonna be my jam, but a story with a tag that says ‘somebody save Timmy’ or the like, even if all the other canonical tags look just right, will, I know, send me screaming into the night. Could those concepts be expressed with canonical tags? Eh, depends on the story.
But a) you’ll need more than one, b) you’ll probably be spoiling things you don’t want to spoil, and c) you won’t have caught my eye (and my gratitude) quite so quickly.
So, you know, I grok when people hate the freeform tags, I do, but there are a whole mess of stories which don’t use ‘em.
I wish I could remember the specific one that, yonks ago, solidified my views on freeform tags. All I remember was that it was an incredibly obscure reference that, after I laughed for several minutes straight, made me click on the story.
Thinking more about it this morning, when I would be lying if I said I were any more awake than I was last night (ah, sleep, I miss you, please come home), freeform tags can, and ideally do, tell us a lot about how the author views a specific piece of canon/worldbuilding/fandom trope (this would be what I mean by flavor text, really). I’m a huge fan of stories that take common tropes, esp. problematic ones, and turn them on their head. It’s very hard for me to get from the canonicals if an author’s attempting to do that with their story, but relatively easy to get it from the freeform tags.
I am, as I think I indicated in my tags in my original reblog, actually historically a pretty crap tagger for various reasons. I’m attempting to change that by keeping running tags lists while I’m writing–tagging in post is a pain in the ass for me, especially when importing older content–so this is something that I’m spending a lot of time thinking about from an author’s POV in addition to the reader’s POV above, given how valuable I find the damn things for finding reading material myself. With a freeform, if I use a freeform, what do I want to convey? What sort of thing do I want the reader to go into the story aware of that’s not exactly a spoiler for the story, but cannot be adequately captured in canonicals and doesn’t fit in the summary? (Note: I’m even worst at summaries than I am at tagging.)
Thus my decision to add “Parental Neglect Level: John Winchester” to the running tags list for the damn Push fic. While obviously not everyone in fandom is going to have watched Supernatural, it’s a juggernaut fandom, so a lot of people will understand straight off what that means either through having watched it or through fannish osmosis. There are canonicals I could use, but they don’t have the same nuance, and using the freeform allows me to say both what the canonical would (that there is child neglect involved) and what it wouldn’t (that it’s complicated and external forces are at work, which explains but does not excuse, and is going to fuck a body up), and allows me to do it all in five words and a colon.
I was all ready to agree with one side and then I discovered that I agree with the other side as well until I realized that neither side has fully discussed how much of a ramble is a rambly tag.
Frankly I love the little asides or fandom in-jokes and authors senses of humor, but frankly when there’s over maybe 10 solid lines in ao3 (about two inches on my screen) that are pure author’s notes I just can’t read that much underline I’m sorry.
Imagine if Dudley did have a magical child though.
He and Harry haven’t spoken since ‘I don’t think you’re a waste of space’ and he’s matured enough to realise his parents were not good to Harry, especially since the birth of his own little girls because God forbid anything happened to him and they were treated like Harry was.
On Daisy Dursley’s eleventh birthday theres a knock on the door and his wife, Anita, just stares and he feels his stomach drop because the stern lady on the doorstep is wearing a cloak and pointed hat.
They listen to the woman - Professor McGonagall - explain and Anita is surprised but receptive, Daisy is excited and Dudley is terrified of what this means.
It’s a surprise to his wife and little girl when at the end of her explanation, while Daisy’s flicking through a book with moving pictures and Anita peers over her shoulder, Dudley blurts out ‘it’s safe now then? Your world?’
Professor Mcgonagall gives a wry smile and assures him that the magical world is indeed safe. It dawns on him that she was expecting this, that she’d perhaps researched him and was aware of his relation to Harry.
He then admits to Anita and Daisy that his cousin is a wizard, before turning to the Professor and asking if she by chance knows a Harry Potter. Looking amused, professor Mcgonagall acknowledges that she does.
’D'you know where he lives?’
That does surprise her a bit, and she tells him that yes, she knows and that though Daisy’s acceptance into the school has been confidential up until this point, Harry would likely not mind a visitor if he wanted a word.
Daisy begs to come along and he relents eventually, bringing Anita and their youngest, Poppy, along.
All four of them stand on the doorstep of a modest house that Dudley would call nice if there weren’t squat little creatures snickering and running around the front garden.
The door is opened by a slouching boy with turquoise hair who arches a purple eyebrow at them. He yells over his shoulder for someone named Ginny and steps back to let them in, and, when he notices Daisy staring at his hair, he smirks and a second later it’s bubblegum pink.
Daisy squeals in delight and Dudley is still trying to get his head around that when young girl and boy around Daisy’s age with bright red hair and thick brown curls respectively, hurtle down the corridor.
‘Teddy you promised you’d practice the sloth grip roll with us!’ The girl yells in an accusatory tone.
A woman with hair the same shade of flaming red as the little girl appears with what Dudley recognises as a wand in her hand as the boy with blue hair flashes a grin at them before chasing the two younger children outside to a shout of ‘No higher than the treetops Teddy!’
Harry is much like Dudley remembers him, lanky with a pointed face, straight nose and mess of untameable black hair. It’s awkward, but, apparently forewarned, Harry greets him pleasantly and introduces his wife before Ginny goes outside to reign in a gaggle of children he assumes aren’t all Harry’s.
A woman with thick, bushy hair pulled into a messy bun with a wand stuck in it smiles and makes an effort to talk to Anita. She’s not too strange, he thinks, and reassures them that her parents were just as baffled when they found out she was a witch.
‘Why don’t you take Daisy outside to see the broomsticks, Al?’ Harry suggests to Daisy’s obvious delight and Dudley swears Harry’s trying not to laugh.
By the end of the visit Dudley is more informed about the wizarding world than he ever thought he would or wanted to be. Daisy, with a bruise on her forehead and scraped knees, because despite both his and Harry’s warning she hadn’t been able to resist trying to fly, is bouncing off the walls because ‘daddy how could you not tell us?!’
They visit Harry’s a lot over summer and Daisy befriends Lily Luna Potter and Hugo Weasley. Dudley doesn’t feel up to the trip to Diagon Alley but regrets his decision to not go when Daisy comes back with two owls, ‘uncle Harry bought the second one for me! So you can write without having to wait for me to send my owl!’
Petunia Dursley faints when she finds out, and Vernon spends a good half hour cursing and brandishing things aimlessly before retreating to his shed.
Dudley being introduced to what he calls ‘all those bloody gingers’ some of whom are only just on the right side of civil to him (one cheerfully introduces himself as someone who once visited his childhood home in a flying car and asks if he’s going to need to do the same for Daisy or will she be allowed to attend without punishment).
Daisy is shocked to find out Harry’s famous, and finds out as much as she can about him during her first term, which she relays to an increasingly guilty feeling Dudley, who’s gradually coming around to the idea.
It’s not as bad as his parents made out it was. He’s learned to understand Daisy’s ramblings about her subjects and spells and is proud of her achievements at school. He’s met a handful of witches and wizards through Harry and the world that he’s always been told is terrible doesn’t seem too bad anymore, after all, how could it with his little girl in it? He is prepared come excitable little Poppy’s eleventh birthday, for her to join her sister at Hogwarts instead of standing jealously on the platform as she leaves.
Poppy Dursley never gets a letter.
I TRUSTED YOU
No, but imagine. Three generations later, this family FINALLY gets the one wizard kid/one Muggle kid thing right. Poppy is never made to feel less, even though she’s disappointed. Daisy is never made to feel like a freak. Poppy is accepted by Harry’s kids, they play with her and she doesn’t need magic to play wizard chess or toss gnomes and Teddy takes her flying sometimes (she becomes a hell of a Quidditch referee and strategist with Ginny’s help, though she never plays).
Anita and Dudley talk to Poppy about what she’d like to do for school and she goes to a prestigious Muggle school, and as it turns out she becomes really, really good at tech and coding. She takes lots of time off to visit Daisy at Hogwarts where she becomes a favorite of McGonagall (so many clever questions). Eventually she meets Luna and spends most of a summer with her, following Crumple-Horned Snorkacks with the help of some trackers Poppy built to work around magic. Everyone is terribly impressed, and although Poppy tries to be blasé about it, she’s actually really proud.
And soon enough Daisy is graduating and working at the Ministry in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office with Arthur Weasley, who has been working on loosening some of the legislation, and when Poppy graduates she has a marvelous idea. She and Daisy open a shop in Diagon Ally for all these Muggle technologies that Poppy has fixed to work around and with magic. Dursley’s Muggle Magic, they call it.
And suddenly wizards are running around with iPhones and Kindles (Hermione made a digital copy of Hogwarts, a History RIGHT AWAY) and everyone is catching up on decades of video games and a century of movies. Scorpius Malfoy has an Apple Watch. And it’s all thanks the Poppy Dursley, the Muggle.
So I’m doing a Fanfiction 101 panel at a local mini convention and I’m trying to get a bunch of advice that all novice fanfic writers could use. Care to share some important tips?
Honestly, my #1 tip: LEARN HOW TO WRITE LIKE A GROWN UP. Learn punctuation, and use it in the right spots. Capitalize, use commas and quotation marks in the right spot, use paragraph breaks. I don’t care how amazing and original and incredible your story is, I won’t read it if it’s full of distracting ugly errors. I just can’t handle it. Typos happen, of course, but it takes two seconds to google ‘how to punctuate a sentence’, like seriously. Or just, you know, pick up a book and look at it and see where the punctuation is…. Getting a beta reader is super helpful for this, also, especially if they’re a better writer than you are. You’ll learn a lot.
Grammar and punctuation are crucial and a great start. I think I might also suggest:
- Write something you want to see. If you’re just writing to be “popular” you’ll quickly burn out. Write something you’re passionate about, and people will find it. I’m not saying notes and reviews aren’t important, because they are, but don’t write something you’re not interested in just to gain them. Be enthusiastic about what you’re doing and engender enthusiasm in others.
- Which goes hand in hand with being as good a reader as you are a writer. Engage with other people’s stories. Learn from them, beta them, and review them. DEFINITELY review them. Fanfiction is a great community, and it is always so encouraging to receive a review (as you’ll see!) and leaving them in return is absolutely essential for being a positive part of that community.
- Keep track of what you write and where you publish it. You can write on as many platforms as possible, but it’s a great idea to keep track of it all, perhaps especially chronologically. That way you can look back on previous works and see how much you’ve progressed.
- Tag smartly. Tag accurately. You want people who would be actually interested in your story to find your story, so use the tags that will guide them there. The more accurate your tags, the more likely the readers you want will discover you.
I would add: learn homophones and apply spell check. It sounds like a tiny nit-picky thing, but I can’t express how helpful it is in both feeling confident in your own writing and reading someone else’s. It’s humiliating to have someone point to that one misspelling in your writing (and there will always be that one asshole), and it’s hard to get through a fic full of spelling errors/syntax errors. For example: there, they’re, their; ore, oar, or; and (for those of you writing smut) wanton and wonton is a vital difference, because I’m assuming you are not writing about East Asian dumplings.
That time when Snape was hiding out of sight in the bushes to spy on Lily and Petunia instead of happening to be nearby
That time when Snape dropped a tree branch on Lily’s sister
That time when Snape defended the use of Dark Magic as a laugh and redirected the conversation to someone else’s actions
That time Snape responded to humiliating and awful but non-violent hexes by giving his opponent a bloody gash to the face
That time when Snape called Lily a Mudblood
That time when Snape threatened to sleep outside Lily’s place of dwelling in the castle in spite of knowing she did not want to speak with him
That time when Lily pointed out that Snape called people Mudblood all the time
That time when Snape was the one who conveyed the prophecy to Voldemort that put Lily in danger in the first place
That time when Snape’s only moral objection to endangering a baby came from his attachment to the mother
That time when Snape didn’t say ‘hide them all’ initially but told Voldemort to kill the father and infant son but spare the mother -and only asked to hide them all after Dumbledore told him he was disgusting
That time when it was Sirius who discovered the Potters and rescued Harry from the ruin of Godric’s Hollow
That time when Snape singled Harry out in a room full of people on the first day of class for not having extensive knowledge not required of them at that point - even deducting points for Harry not monitoring someone else’s potion
Those times when Snape lashed out at Harry for a grudge against his father who had died ten (to sixteen, in HBP) years prior - who Harry couldn’t even remember
All those times when Snape responded to seeing Neville Longbottom struggle in his class by calling him names like ‘idiot boy’, demeaning him, and deducting points when Hermione helped him
That time Snape screamed at a 13-year-old Hermione and called her ‘STUPID GIRL’
That time when Snape was unconscious for Lupin’s transformation and it was Sirius actively forcing the children away from Lupin
That time when Snape lied to the Minister about Sirius confunding the trio - or else lied about being able to recognize it
That time when Snape burst into hysterics after Sirius (rightfully) escaped death
That time when Snape outed Remus as a werewolf (having been attempting to do so for quite some time) and caused him to resign from the only employment that would accept him
That time when Snape made a teenage girl feel even more insecure about her appearance in the face of her being attacked
That time when Snape frequently goaded Sirius for being unable to be useful to the Order in spite of actively contributing to besmirching Sirius’s name so he could not be cleared
That time when Snape didn’t just tell Harry to get out when he was embarrassed, he also told him to never visit his office again in spite of Harry needing Occlumency lessons for his own safety
That time when Snape gave Harry detention every Saturday for the rest of term because he wouldn’t show him his potions book
That time when Snape broke into Harry’s dead godfather’s house to rip apart a picture from Harry’s first and only birthday with his parents
Albus Hagrid’s Flobberworms Potter: Still a better name than the one he had.
That time when 13 year old Neville feared Snape, a fucking teacher, who should have fucking nurtured him like good teachers do, when 13 year old Neville feared Snape more than the fucking woman who literally tortured his parents into insanity.
And he grew up in the magical community, remember, so he’d fucking know what Lestrange looked like, what her name was, before he could wipe his own arse.
Also, remember the time when Snape to time in class to read out a slut-shaming article in a gossip magazine to embarrass two of his students? Yeeaaah…
It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?
I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.
Totally.
A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.
(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise - female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)
Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship - and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios - this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:
Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36
TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66
Thus, assuming - again, for the sake of simplicity - that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.
The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom - and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women - for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?
THANK YOU. Could that person with the statistics degree put those calculations on the internet maybe please and thanks?
SCREAMING BECAUSE I JUST FOUND OUT THAT PETUNIA PLANNED LILY AND JAMES’S FUNERAL. OH MY GOD.
-IMAGINE REMUS FINDING HER ADDRESS AND POPPING OVER ONE DAY BC HE REFUSES TO HAVE HER MESS UP THE ARRANGEMENTS AND DISHONOUR HIS FRIENDS.
-PETUNIA OPENING THE DOOR, FLUSTERED BC SHE HAS TWO SCREAMING BABIES AND HAS NEVER BEEN MORE STESSED EVER AND HAS DUDLEY IN ONE ARM AND HARRY ON HER LEG AND THERES A STRANGE YOUNG MAN WITH GRAYING HAIR AND A LOT OF UGLY SCARS ON HER PORCH
-HARRY RECOGNIZING REMUS AT ONCE AND LETTING GO OF PETUNIA YELLING “UNC-OO MOO'Y! UNC-OO MOO'Y!” AND REMUS AUTOMATICALLY REACHING DOWN TO LET THE TODDLER LATCH ONTO HIS NECK LIKE HE ALWAYS DOES. HARRY QUIETS DOWN QUICKLY AND JUST CURLS UP BC IT’S SOMEONE HE KNOWS AND UNCLE MOONY!
-PETUNIA BEING FLABERGASTED AND FINALLY ASKING, “HOW DID YOU DO THAT? I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO GET HIM TO STOP FUSSING SINCE HE GOT HERE.”
-REMUS EXPLAINING THAT HARRY HAS DONE THAT SINCE DAY ONE AND ASKS POLITELY TO COME IN BC HE HAS SOMETHING TO DISCUSS WITH HER
-PETUNIA ALLOWING REMUS IN AND STATING SHE’S GOING TO PUT DUDLEY DOWN FOR A NAP AND TO PLEASE MAKE HIMSELF COMFORTABLE IN THE SITTING ROOM
-REMUS SITTING AWKWARDLY ON AN ARMCHAIR AND HARRY LOOKS UP AND ASKS “UNC-OO MOO'Y, WHERE MUMA? WHERE DADA? WHERE PA'FU?”
-REMUS NOT KNOWING HOW TO SAY THEYRE DEAD BC SIRIUS SO HE SAYS “HARRY, I NEED YOU TO BE A BIG BOY. MUMA AND DADA… THEY LOVED YOU LOTS AND LOTS BUT THEY HAD TO GO BYEBYE.”
-“WHEN MUMA AND DADA BACK?”
-“HARRY, I’M SORRY BUT THEY HAD TO GO TO HEAVEN.” AND REMUS IS CRYING BECAUSE IT’S SUDDENLY REAL AND HIS FRIENDS ARE ACTUALLY FUCKING DEAD AND IT HURTS AND IT HURTS SO MUCH HE WISH HE COULD RIP HIS HEART OUT AND NEVER FEEL AGAIN
-AND HARRY IS CONFUSED SO HE GRABS REMUS’S NOSE IN ATTEMPT TO COMFORT REMUS AND STARTS BABBLING ABOUT MUMA PLAYING PEEKABO AND DADA HIDING UNDER A BIG FLAPPY CLOAK AND A GREEN LIGHT AND UNCLE MOONY ITS JUST GAMES
-PETUNIA COMING BACK DOWNSTAIRS TO SEE REMUS SOBBING AND PETTING HARRY’S HEAD AND TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT MUMA AND DADA CAN’T COME BACK BUT REMUS IS CRYING SO MUCH HE CAN BARELY SPEAK SO SHE OFFERS A HANKERCHEIF AND ASKS WHAT HE CAME FOR
-AFTER HE CALMS DOWN ENOUGH HE FLAT OUT TELLS PETUNIA THAT HE IS GOING TO HELP WITH THE FUNERAL
-SHE’S ACTUALLY RELIEVED AND SAYS SHE HADN’T THE FAINTEST TO INVITE SEEING AS SHE WASN’T CLOSE WITH LILY (AT THIS REMUS SNORTS) AND COULDN’T JUST ATTEND HERSELF
-SKIP TO THE FUNERAL. IT’S AN OPEN CASKET AND DUE TO MAGIC BOTH LILY AND JAMES ARE IN THE SAME CASKET AND THEIR HANDS ARE INTERRWINED AND IT LOOKS AS THEYRE SLEEPING IN THEIR FINEST CLOTHES (LILY IN HER WEDDING DRESS, AS IT WAS HER FAVORITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING AND NOT LONG OR OVERLY FANCY AND JAMES IN A SUIT BUT INSTEAD OF A SUIT TOP HES WEARING THAT RIDICULOUS SHIRT HIM AND SIRIUS MADE THAT HAD “I HAVE THE WORLD’S HOTTEST WIFE” PRINTED ON IT)
-REMUS IS SITTING TO THE RIGHT OF PETUNIA WITH HARRY IN HIS LAP AND ALICE AND FRANK ARE TO THE RIGHT OF HIM
-THE SERVICE IS GORGEOUS WITH DUMBLEDORE CONDUCTING IT IN THE RIDICULOUS PURPLE ROBES WITH YELLOW STARS THAT JAMES ABSOLUTELY LOVED
-WHEN IT’S TIME TO GO UP AND VIEW THE BODIES, PETUNIA LINGERS A SECOND LONGEUR THAN HER HUSBAND BUT QUICKLY MOVES
-REMUS GOES UP WITH HARRY
-HARRY MANAGED TO ESCAPE REMUS’S ARMS AND LANDS IN THE COFFIN YELLING, “MUMA! DADA! WAKEY!” OVER AND OVER AND HE’S SO CONFUSED AS TO WHY THEY AREN’T ANSWERING. FINALLY HE TURNS TO REMUS, CONFUSED, AND ASKS, “UNC-OO MOO'Y, PEEA'BOO?”
-EVERYONE IS FROZEN, WATCHING THE TINY BABY POKE AND PROD HIS PARENTS. MCGONAGALL IS CRYING AND REMUS IS SOBBING AGAIN AND HE’S TRYING TO EXPLAIN TO HARRY THAT THEY CAN’T
-DUMBLEDORE SWEEPS IN ALL MAGESTICALLY AND HARRY SHRIEKS “DUBLDOR!” AND DUMBLEDORE IS ABLE TO EXPLAIN THAT MUMA AND DADA ARE GONE IN THE NICEST WAY POSSIBLE BUT SO HARRY UNDERSTANDS AND HARRY STARTS CRYING AND SAYING HE WANTS MUMA AND DADA
-REMUS GRABS HARRY AND BEGINS TO SHUSH HIM AND LETS OTHER PEOPLE SAY GOODBYE TO LILY AND JAMES AND SUDDENLY PETUNIA AND VERNON ARE OVER AND HARRY IS BEING RIPPED OUT OF REMUS’S ARMS AND BEING TOLD THAT REMUS IS NEVER ALLOWED TO COME OVER AGAIN AND IF HE DOES THE POLICE WILL BE CALLED AND REMUS IS NOT ALLOWED TO EVER CONTACT HARRY OR THE DURSLEY’S AGAIN
-REMUS JUST STARES NUMBLY AS THE DURSLEYS STOMP FROM THE HALL WITH HARRY CRYING AND SHREIKING, “UNC-OO MOO'Y! UNC-OO MOO'Y! I WAN’ UNC-OO MOO'Y!” AND SUDDENLY REMUS IS CRYING FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE THE MILLIONTH TIME AND IT FEELS LIKE LILY AND JAMES DIED ALL OVER AGAIN AS HARRY’S CRIES FADE AND HE FALLS TO HIS KNEES AND HE’S SCREAMING IN PAIN BECAUSE IT’S TOO MUCH AND HE DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS AND HE’S DEMANDING TO KNOW WHY THIS HAD TO HAPPEN
-REMUS LUPIN IS 21 AND HIS ENTIRE FAMILY HAS BEEN TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM WITHOUT MERCY
“You know what I have? I have a 24-year-old genius with a smartphone and a problem with authority. You really never stood a chance.”—Nate Ford (Leverage 3x16, The San Lorenzo Job)
okay my teacher wanted a story that’s gonna shock him
so i wrote him a cute little story about a couple fletcher and mia falling in love
and the last sentences of story are
“so… what is your full name? i mean what is mia short for?”
“michael”
because my teacher is kinda homophobic, i am gonna force him into enjoying a fluffy love story with no gender pronouns and well what a shame you liked a story about a gay couple sorry man
If you were ever told or were made to learn cursive writing when you were in grade school.
I wanna see how many of you suffered like I did.
“Oh , you need to know this. Everything in high school needs to be turned in In cursive.”
I mean…I exclusively took notes in cursive for all of freshman and sophomore year of high school and college because it stopped people from asking to photocopy my notes.
-seriously from california to new mexico is terrifying like it’s eight straight hours of pale red desert and the sky is so large that everything, even your car, even your hands, looks like a tenuously small and fragile diorama placed on an endless pale red table and left there to dissolve.
-a gas station that for some reason has large dinosaurs made out of scrap metal. they are 1000% awesome. sometimes they move. take a million pictures.
-a fruit stand that sells the best fruit you have ever eaten. later you won’t quite remember which fruit. strawberries, maybe? peaches?
-small black birds, subtly different in every state. some have gold eyes and some are a little iridescent and some are black from beak to toes. the sparrows they compete with for crumbs look exactly the same wherever you go.
-a completely empty rest stop. no one eats at the concrete tables. no one plays in the tiny strip of grass or gravel. you will find a small and beautiful stone.
-a hawaii license plate, somewhere around ohio. i still don’t know how they get the cars across the ocean. i don’t know why anyone would leave hawaii for ohio. i don’t know why anyone lives in ohio.
-an incredibly weird duck. you had no idea ducks could look so incredibly weird, and you wish you were still ignorant of how incredibly weird ducks can, apparently, look.
-a small folksy roadside waystation that sells fudge and incredibly tacky statues of eagles and wolves and cowboys. if you like fudge, eat the fudge from here.
-a lizard doing pushups. if you are particularly fortunate: many lizards doing pushups.
-approximately one gajillion starbucks shops. don’t bother counting them. it will make you angry.
-a storm somewhere around oklahoma, if you’re lucky. the clouds tower up in fantastic fluffy castles miles and miles into the air and are painted pink and gold and purple and the sky turns a dozen impossible shades of blue and when the rain comes down over your car it sounds like the world is ending.
-weird burrs will stick to your legs. you’ll flick them out of the car eighty or eight hundred miles from where their parent plant was grown, and not be sure whether you should wish the little hitchikers well or not.
-a dog wearing sunglasses with his head hanging out of a car window. this will be the high point of the trip.
-the world’s most depressing restaurant. you will know it when you wind up there and have to eat the terrible food, and listen to the terrible music, and look at all the listless waiters and want to tell them get in my car, for god’s sake get in, i’ll take you out of whatever crapsack little town this is that you can’t get out of on your own. but you won’t say that because it’s rude. maybe they have family here. maybe they even like it here.
-a painting of a sailboat in a motel located at least a hundred miles from any significant body of water.
-several genuinely hilarious postcards. buy them.
-a cat that will not let you pet it. this will be the low point of the trip.
-corn. so much corn you will get scared. who the fuck is going to eat all this corn?
-a small stream in some small woods and the light will come down perfectly and the water will be beautiful and the grass will be beautiful and there will be flowers maybe or the leaves of the trees are starting to turn gold and there are birds chirping and it will be so perfect you will want to stand there and stay forever and live in this little magical painting off the side of the highway and be some kind of highway druid. but instead, you’ll get bored after a while, and get back in the car.
if anyone ever wonders why i love america so much despite its many political and cultural flaws, this is why. this post explains it perfectly.
Yes but this barely even covers the east cost bc you will experience great things such as -a highway that is so desolate, all you can see are trees. You will have to pee, but the next exit won’t be for another 20 miles so have fun -bridge after bridge after bridge. Who even builds a road over all these rivers and streams and stuff? -so many deer. They just want to cross the road, but instead they will just stare at you and will be content to do for another half an hour -restaurant after restaurant painted with little lobsters wearing chefs hats, apparently cooking other lobsters -more trees. Trees everywhere. -what state are we in? It doesn’t matter, you’re in New England, you will be in a new one soon -you will learn to hate the beach because for some reason, people really like the ocean and have to get there, so you will be stuck in traffic for hours and hours just because it’s a nice beach day. It doesn’t matter how far you are from the coast. If you are in a state that touches the ocean, you will experience the beach traffic -A road that probably hasn’t been paved since it was made, so you make a humming noise just to hear your voice shake with the bumps - so many trees. All you can see are trees. Trees everywhere.
Also if you’re road tripping through New England get in touch with your inner Stephen King because you will encounter:
- an abandoned playground with one swing creaking along dismally - a creepily cheerful town that is certainly hiding something because of the sheer insistence that it is hiding nothing (there is a town near where I live that gives me the screaming meemies, I can admit that) - an abandoned tricycle with one wheel creaking along dismally (I shit you not) - fogs that wisp in from nowhere and settle down like it’s their sole desire in life to blind you - an abandoned house with at least two extensions stuck one in front of another, possibly with someone living in the latest extension while the roof of the original creaks dismally (there’s one down the street from me) - at least one Christine-style car a day - pseudo-abandoned boats creaking dismally in the harbor if you’re on the coast - a road paved with such obsessive regularity you may wonder if there’s a body or some other secret that potholes might uncover underneath; alternatively, roads that have potholes so big they could feasibly swallow small children and pets - And last but not least - bring a map, because there are a lot of roads that look completely different depending on which direction you’re driving (and let’s face it, that advice the old man at the diner gave you of “it’s right past the big barn that burned down five years ago” probably isn’t that helpful, now is it)
Seduce me with hilariously awkward stories from your life
Oh have I got one for you.
So, I grew up in a financially strapped household with lots of kids. So we were always buying in bulk. Cheap bulk. It lead to us getting things like this, a 6 lb can of cheap peanut butter:
Now, we’d always had this in the house since a main staple was PB toast, PB sandwich (no J sometimes cause we didn’t have it) and just spoonfuls of PB to help with acid reflux, sore throats, quick snack or just a way to keep 4 hyperactive kids quiet for a few minutes in the same manner of watching a dog lick the roof of it’s mouth for a while after giving it a glob of the PB.
Ever since I was about 6 or 8, I’ve always had a certain urge every time I saw a brand new can of this opened (Which was roughly once every two months) and that was to just shove my whole arm into the can. At that age, it would have easily gone up to my elbow. I don’t know why I felt this urge, but I did. Luckily, I suppressed it….Until I was 14.
I’m 14, home alone after school and making some PB toast for a snack when lo and behold…I get to peel open a brand spanking new can and mar up that perfectly smooth surface. This was a rare occurrence and I wanted to savor it. What would I write in it with the knife for the next person to find? Do I try to carve something into it? Then I remembered my childhood urge of wanting to just shove my arm into it.
I do it. I don’t point my fingers to make it easy, no, it’s open palm hand print with fingers splayed as I shove my hand into a cardboard can full of 6 lbs of PB and it is glorious. I didn’t care that physics dictates that stuff and mass means that PB was being pushed up and out. It was fairly viscous and stuck mostly to my exposed arm. I got almost all of my forearm in this and wiggled my fingers. I pulled my arm out and looked at the massive blob of PB and giggled thinking of the old classic movie “The Blob”. I didn’t use a knife and just rubbed the toast on my PB gauntlet and that’s when I heard it…
A key unlocking the front door.
OH SHIT. I was scrambling to get my hand back in the can to scrape off the mass of peanut butter and clean up this mess. I don’t register the multiple voices until I hear my mom call my name and I look up. She was standing there with her friends that she had invited over looking at her eldest and first born, 14 year old, 3.5 GPA rocking daughter trying to scrape 6 lbs of PB off her arm and into a can.
There was no talking my way out of this or explaining any of it. We stared at each other for what must have been a solid minute before she just guided her friends out of the kitchen and left me to finish cleaning up my mess.
We stopped buying the 6lb cans of peanut butter after that.
Remus Lupin fought alongside Frank and Alice Longbottom in the Order of the Phoenix. He probably knew their fate, how they were tortured into madness and forced to leave their son in the care of his grandmother.
Lupin probably guessed that Neville’s biggest fear would be similar to what he guessed Harry’s would be- Lord Voldemort, or in Neville’s case the death eater who tortured his parents - and was planning on stepping in before Neville faced the boggart so a bunch of 13 year olds wouldn’t see Bellatrix Lestrange cackling and spitting curses in their classroom.
But then Severus Snape insults Neville in front of his class, tries to shame a 13 year old boy in front of a new teacher, and Lupin is so angry. Because he had hoped that after 13 years, now they were adults, maybe Snape had gotten over himself a little and realized that he was a teacher and responsible for these kids, but apparently not. Apparently Snape was still the same petty, angry ,bitter child that he’d been in school, except now he’s bullying children half his age instead of yelling slurs at classmates.
And so Lupin sees the terror in Neville’s face and realizes that, oh my god he fears his potions teacher more than the people responsible for his parents. And Lupin is so indignant and outraged that he KNOWS he has to give this kid some leverage, some way to stand up to his tormentor, and gives that to him. Lupin stands up and tells Neville EXACTLY how to conquer his fear and, moreover, how to do it in front of all his classmates who laughed at him for being scared.
Remus Lupin starting off the school year by letting his students confront their biggest fears, so nothing else they face that year will be as scary. If you can beat your biggest fear, how bad can a test be? Or a big quidditch match? Or being rejected by the girl you ask out?
Remus Lupin truly, deeply, cared about his students. And Snape got him fired.
FCUK THIS IM SCREAMIGN
FUCKING SHIT WHATS THIS MADNESS IM SO HURT
The best thing about the Boggart scene was that Remus finally succeeded in doing in adulthood what he had failed to do in his adolescence - he stood up for a bullied kid and gave him the power he needed at the expense of the bully, even though he had a reason to let the bully’s actions slide.
people’s opinions on book five harry are what make and break a relationship tbh
How people handle different opinions on book five Harry are what make or break a relationship tbh
no. i shouldn’t have to ‘handle’ or tolerate people dismissing the effects of child abuse or post-traumatic stress by labelling them as dramatic or rude. he watched a friend die the previous year, he was close to being murdered by the man who killed his parents, he was being ridiculed by the community for telling the truth. people called him an attention seeker, people he thought were friends didn’t believe his story and he had to go to school with the children of death eaters who stood by as voldemort tried to kill him. he was almost expelled and dismissed from the wizarding world for protecting himself and dudley from a dementor, which the ministry refused to believe. he was essentially tortured by umbridge, being forced to lie about all the horrific things he had experienced. and while all this was happening, he was also being mollycoddled by the order, kept in the dark about plans and blatantly ignored by dumbledore when all he needed was for his pain to be realised. i am not going to tolerate anyone insulting harry during ootp because they cannot understand the effects of abuse, neglect or PTSD.
Especially since child abuse/neglect and depression and losing friends and being publically humiliated for protecting yourself (don’t believe me? two words: victim shaming), et cetera, et cetera, all actually happen in reality. Harry might be a fictional character, but there are plenty of people I know who read that book and went “Hey, I remember screaming at friends because they were just the last fucking straw and I felt bad about it later but at the time I just didn’t know what else to do.” I was one of them, round about the tenth time I read the books. Rereading the books now, after a couple go-rounds on the ‘I was assaulted in public and when I punched the guy in the face/kicked him in the balls the room full of witnesses laughed at me’ ride, I’m still one of them. People’s opinion about book five Harry tells me what their opinion about me three, four, five years ago will be. And believe you me, that can make or break a relationship damn quick, so how about you silencio your ass.
Relatedly, anyone who tells me that I need to stop reading these books as I get older is going to take an Avada Kedavra straight to the fucking face. These books mean something to me.
Or that she was a vibrant, interesting, caring, funny person.
And also an Auror, which is basically a Dark Wizard-catcher which is like the most badass career you can have in the Wizarding World except for, I don’t know, dragon-wrangling probably. She was the last Auror trained by Alastor Moody before he retired and she was actually quite good at her job, btw.
Also her hair was not a fucking mood ring. She was a metamorphmagus, which means that she possessed a rare and special brand of magic that allowed her to change her appearance at will.
Except when she temporarily lost that power while she was suffering through a period of bleak depression in the middle of a war that she had chosen to fight despite the fact that the government, whom she worked for as the youngest and newest Auror at the Ministry, didn’t want to acknowledge and so she risked losing her job (at the least) for her efforts on behalf of the Order but fought for them anyway. This happened after the death of her cousin, Sirius, whom she didn’t really know well because he’d been in Azkaban most of her life but they were both members of the ancient and noble House of Black that had kicked them both out for breaking their pure-blood rules (although in her case it was her mother who had been disowned; she had never been accepted into the family in the first place) and so they probably bonded over that a bit and of course she had been the one dueling her Aunt Bellatrix before, so she was probably a little guilty for not taking her down, too–never mind that Bellatrix Lestrange was on the top-ten list of “most dangerous Dark Wizards” and the mere fact that she survived a fight with her deranged auntie was fucking impressive and it wasn’t her fault that Sirius didn’t. He had also been best friends with the dude she fell in love with, this Remus Lupin guy, a shabby professor with a massive inferiority complex and a case of lycanthropy who rejected her because he was didn’t think he was good enough for her, and to be fair she was risking social ostracization by dating a werewolf but she didn’t care and said as much without hesitation, and the two of them got married just as full-war broke out and then he panicked and ran out on her again when he found out she was pregnant but he came back and she forgave him and they were a happy family for like two seconds before they both died in the last battle against Voldemort and they left their son to be raised by his grandmother, the aforementioned witch who was kicked-out of the Black Family for marrying a muggle-born, a.k.a. Tonks’s dad who had died just a little bit earlier and who they named their son after.
Oh and she was clumsy, like seriously clumsy, like that one glimpse you get of Tonks tripping on her way into the meeting with the Order of the Phoenix at the start of the fifth movie? Yeah that was it, that was Tonks. That was pretty much the only proper moment with her we got. (Even the “don’t call my Nymphadora” bit was botched, ugh.) And the really baffling part is that they cast an actress who pretty much is Tonks and then managed to…not have her be herself? Somehow? Because David Yates is an amazing director. As in, I am constantly amazed by him.
Also she usually had bubblegum pink hair when she was happy–because she liked the color not because she was a fucking mood ring. Just for the record.
harry potter is one of those fandoms i always think i’ve gradually moved on from… but then i’ll hear someone say “you know, i think snape was a great guy” or “all slytherins are evil” and i’ll literally vault over three tables and a small elephant to debate them face-to-face
hi. I’m nor, I’m an agender disabled trans sex worker & for the past few months I’ve been having a really rough time financially. Due to health issues, having to drive long distances to get reasonable trans and otherwise health care, having multiple serious injuries, household & out of household abuse, and pursuing getting a diagnosis for my arthritis & inflammatory physical issues, I havent barely been able to make enough money for survive & I am about $1000 in the red over medical bills, parking tickets, back rent & utilities, among other things. & the fact that I’m selling what I own of any value on eBay is not making any dent in that at all.
i would find a way to live in my car or travel constantly, but it’s extremely important that I stay in my current home and pay rent to both financially and emotionally keep my trans queer family afloat.
it would be tremendously helpful if you could donate (via the PayPal donate button on my blog) even just one dollar. If you can’t do that, it would be really helpful if you could reblog this post. Thanks
Hey so rn I’m at about $370 && it would also be helpful if I could get $150 to help Nicky make her rent this month (we’re sharing a paypal acct)? So that’s
370/1150. Thanks a ton so far for donations & for all yr signal boosting!!
However, I would really like to meet that goal so if anyone could donate like even $1 (& if not like please signal boost if you can), like anything or like if you have money in Amazon gift cards you could send it to me on amazon(inbox me ab that) its rlly easy to turn that into food among a lot of other things (gas, etc).
No one has donated in like 4 or 5 days at least & no one is really reblogging it. I don’t want to be unappreciative, but I rlly rlly need your continued help at the moment.
tampons/pads marketed to young kids who just started getting their periods
should be a thing
wrappers with dinosaurs and planets and glitter and cats and sea creatures
make kids feel comfortable about something natural that happens to their bodies.
and for goodness sake
don’t sexualize it
No. Actually. Why do you need this? You don’t. Getting your period means you are starting to mature, which means you need to drive them AWAY from needless things like that. Also, you all bitch enough as it is about paying for these things, imagine how much more money companies will charge for those things? Or, maybe EDUCATE them, so they will already feel comfortable about it. Jesus fucking christ.
Tell that to ten-year-old me, who still hadn’t had the period talk yet in school. I was crying and freaking out because I thought I was dying. Then my mother comes up to me and says with a smile “You’re becoming a woman!” I didn’t want to grow up yet. I was ten. Fucking ten and was told to start to grow up. My mom wanted me to get away from silly little kids things because I’m fucking bleeding out my goddamn vagina.
Also some people are children at heart and like to be silly and having a dinosaur-patterned maxi-pad would be pretty fuckin’ hilarious and I’m sure there’d be a huge market for that.
Not all people with vaginas are stoic and serious and want the same frilly, swirly boring-ass pads and tampons.
Plus if you’ve been having a miserable day and say you bought the character variety pack of pads. Sitting in the bathroom stall wanting to stab everyone and you open up some baby dinosaur pads. You’ve got dinosaurs in your underwear. No ones gonna ruin your day now.
U by Kotex has these, Tween pads. Sparkly box, cute designs on the pad and wrapper. There are even “period facts and myths” in each box, and the inner wrapper has instructions for how to use a pad properly. What’s more is they are smaller than standard pads. (I use these pads because I’m a petite person). Best part? Everywhere I buy them, one box of pads is less than $5.
^^^^^^^ THESE ARE THE BEST BTW. VERY SOFT AND FUN AND COLORFUL. DID YOU KNOW THAT EVEN SEEING PRETTY COLORS CAN LIFT YOUR MOOD? I DIDN’T. NOW I DO.
BUT REALLY THESE ARE THE BEST OK
BECAUSE WHEN MY TEN-YEAR-OLD SISTER GOT HER PERIOD SHE WAS SUPER SCARED BUT I GAVE HER MY PACK AND SHE’S LIKE THIS LOOKS KINDA COOL AND NOW SHE THINKS SHE’S SO AWESOME AND COOL BECAUSE SHE WEARS COLORFUL PADS WITH SHOOTING STARS AND HEARTS ON THEM AND SHE’S SO CONFIDENT IT’S SO AWESOME
SO YOU TRY TELLING ME THAT SEEING A TEN YEAR OLD GIRL DEPRESSED AND ASHAMED OF A NATURAL BODY FUNCTION IS PREFERABLE TO SEEING HER SHOWING OFF HER UFO AND SHOOTING STAR-PATTERNED PADS TO HER BFFS
YOU WOULDN’T GIVE A FOUR-YEAR-OLD BOY A BORING BEIGE BAND-AID NO YOU’D GO OUT AND BUY THE HECK OUTTA THOSE SPONGEBOB AND TOY STORY SHITS BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM HAPPY DON’T MAKE YOUR GIRLS GROW OUT OF THINGS THAT MAKE THEM HAPPY BEFORE THEY’VE EVEN LEFT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Ok but U by Kotex has got all of our backs. This brand dose great and empowering things for all women and even girls :)
Why are people with vaginas expected to be grown ass adults at 10 but people with dicks aren’t expected to act like adults until their 20’s??
Actually I’m p sure men aren’t expected to act like adults ever and that’s really fuckin sad tbh
Cause as soon as a man/older boy doesn’t something stupid it’s ‘oh boys will be boys’
One of my friend’s mom still says that about her 30 something year old when he gets to drunk
OKAY I WORK IN A FABRIC STORE AND ONE TIME THIS LITTLE OLD LADY CAME UP TO ME AND SLAMMED THE INDEPENDENCE DAY ONE DOWN ON THE COUNTER AND SAID, “THIS. THIS IS WHAT OUR COUNTRY NEEDS.”
I had an older man come into the fabric store that I used to work in and dropped 3 bolts of the firefighter one on my counter and said, “I need this. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it, but I need it.” a man behind him then yelled, “Pyjamas!” and the first man said, “My husband recommends pyjamas.”
My favourite thing about the orgy scene is that while Will is understandably slightly confused by the whole situation, Wolfgang is just sitting there like, Yes, spontaneous mental orgies happen to me all the time. Must be Thursday.
