“If minorities are box office risks, what accounts for the success of the “Fast and Furious” franchise, which presented a broadly diverse team, behind and in front of the camera? Over seven movies it has grossed nearly $4 billion worldwide. In fact, a recent study by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that films with diverse leads not only resulted in higher box office numbers but also higher returns of investment for studios and producers.”
“
“If minorities are box office risks…”
IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THE “BOX OFFICE RISK” HERE IS MINORITIES, FAM. LOOKS LIKE IT ACTUALLY MIGHT BE WHITE WASHED FILMS, MY GUY.
word
FUCKING THIS. YAS. GLORY TO GOD. AMEN. SAY IT AGAIN. ONE MORE TIME FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK.
someone hiring me for work I willingly choose to do is not the same as someone violating me
even if they were violating me (which can only happen if my consent is not respected!) they would NOT “own” me after the violation.
I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people have sexual pictures or videos of me.
I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people have sex with me.
I am still my own, and not anyone’s property, if people give me money for choosing to provide them with sexual images, phone sex, or actual sex.
I am still my own if the money I choose to accept for sexual acts is pivotal to my survival.
If you refer to sex work as “buying women”, if you say that by doing sex work I “become a product”, you are dehumanizing me. My job - and the fruits of my job, like porn clips - do not dehumanize me. Being sexual for a price does not dehumanize me; I am still a person, choosing to be sexual for a reason that you don’t choose to be sexual for. People like you contribute to a culture that encourages people to see people in my line of work as less than human.
Scapegoating frequently-objectified women for the objectification all women experience at the hands of men is patriarchial respectability politics. It is victim-blaming. And does not teach anyone to treat sex workers or anyone else with real respect.
I’m offended both as a sex worker and as a rape survivor at the idea
that choosing a job that departs from your misogynist ideas of sexual purity is somehow morally equivalent to being abused against my will.
I’m appalled as a rape survivor and as a sex worker that you consistently imply that I no longer belong to myself after having sex for pay or selling cam sessions, and list your inaccurate rape equivalence as the reason. Do you not see how disgusting that is, to say that rape means you now somehow belong to the rapist? Your ideas are rotten all through.
tl;dr: I do not become a product when I do this work, I am a person providing a service. Encouraging others to think of me as a product instead of a service provider contributes to my dehumanization and the dehumanization of all women who dare to be sexual in ways that threaten the heteropatriarchy.
Hi, I'm 25 and debating starting male-to-female HRT. However, I'm scared that HRT won't help me at all. It seems like HRT does so little after puberty, especially by the time one gets in their 20s. I'm really scared that I'll just end up being someone in a male body, but with breasts. Is there anything you can say to someone having this fear? Thank you, and sorry, I suspect this is a silly question.
Actually, the claim that HRT doesn’t do much after puberty is a myth. I started when I was 31 years old and now I’m 35. =)
i was emotionally abused in school as a small child, but strongly supported and validated at home; as a result, instead of coming to believe i deserved to be dehumanized and scapegoated, i developed a reactive stubbornnes where everyone who hasn’t earned my trust over a course of years is on probation and everything they say has to pass a gamut of skeptical analysis.
now, don’t get me wrong, this has caused a lot of problems for me in my life. my intimacy issues are breathtakingly bad. BUT it does have the followiing benefit: abusers testing for victim potential push me once, then run like hell.
what occurs to me after reading about the way abusers systematically erode your boundaries and use the frog-boiling method to make abuse seem normal, is that the general public could perhaps benefit from my experience, and learn that there is a simple first line of defense against abusers:
politely refuse the first request a new friend or date makes of you.
that’s it. that’ll weed out a whole lot of the assholes without you ever having to lift a finger to eject them. decent people will accept your refusal – they might be a little confused or hurt, but they won’t PUSH – and abusers will either show their true colors, or run like the cowards they are.
now, it might take a bit of cleverness to refuse the literally first request if it’s something like ‘please pass the salt’ that no sensible person would ever refuse, but if your hands are conveniently buttery you can do it. otherwise, wait for the first actual favor that requires effort, or just bluff it out – give them a cheerful nope and watch how they react.
because, in case you didn’t know this, a real friend will NOT throw a shitfit if you tell them you can’t drive them to work tomorrow, or you don’t want to lend them your jacket, or you’d rather they don’t take the last soda from your fridge. they really won’t. they’ll still be your friend. they won’t make a big deal out of it. i promise, abusive behavior is NOT normal, no matter what someone in your life may have told you.
don’t tell me you can’t use physics in your daily life, once I realized that the marshmallows in Lucky Charms are less dense than the cardboard cereal they reside in, I figured out that stimulating motion (shaking the box) would cause marshmallows to rise to the top of the cereal before I poured it into my bowl = more marshmallows for me and a pissed off brother who can never figure out why all the marshmallows are gone when he goes to eat his cereal
It’s not that I can’t figure it out, it’s just that it’s annOYING AS FRIK AND YOU NEED TO STOP
that awkward moment when you forget your brother follows you on tumblr
(Because oh my god, it’s so hard, and everyone’s all like stop feeling so bad about yourself and it’s like how???)
Be naked. A lot. Sleep naked. Have sex naked. Eat cereal naked. (Or naked and wrapped in a sheet. Favorite thing.)
Follow beautiful, confident, (un-photoshopped) body-positive babes on the Internet. Unfollow anything that makes you feel insecure. Exposure is key. You’re not going to get it if you don’t seek it out, because the media sucks and wants us to feel like shit about ourselves so they can take our money. (Some hashtags to follow: #effyourbeautystandards #bootyrevolution #blackisbeautiful #transisbeautiful #wheelchairlife #fatkini #fatshion)
Lingerie. Next best thing to being naked.
Self care, babe. Different for everyone. (Me? Showers, books, shaving my legs, nature walks, dark lipstick, good playlists, clean rooms, candles, sexy time.)
Get ready in your underwear. Boobs = happiness.
Self portraits. Be pro-selfie. Take a million selfies. Take sexy selfies. Take no makeup selfies. Take bad angle silly selfies. Take artsy tripod selfies. Take everything-is-on-point selfies. You’re gorgeous; document your gorgeousness. You don’t even need to post them.
Stop with the self deprecationnnnn. Pleeeeaseeee. It’s hard to control your thoughts love, I know, but you can control what you say. NEVER insult yourself out loud. Dare I say compliment yourself out loud? (And if you can, do your best to try to body-positive-ify your thoughts too.)
Sex (including solo sexy time), wine, and chocolate. In that order.
Share the body love. Compliment your girlfriends. Cultivate a nonjudgemental, supportive, lift-each-other-up “we’re so cute” friend group. Everyone’s insecure. Compliment your besties. And strangers, too. Be that person that makes everyone feel good about themselves when they’re around.
Good luck gorgeous. It’s a battle. We gotta unlearn all this societal bullshit.
okay, most of what i do re: harry potter is criticism, and hp is flawed in such a number of ways, but sometimes i just sit here and
i mean, you all have a comprehension of just how drastically harry potter changed literature, yeah? like. it revitalized it. it blew the literary scene apart. the new york times had to create a separate bestseller’s list for children’s lit just because harry potter existed. harry potter changed reading.
so many people on tumblr were born in the ‘90s. when the first book came out, most of us couldn’t read. but we grew up in a world where everyone, everyone, everyone was reading harry potter, no matter how old they were; we grew up in a world where the most popular story in the entire world was a fantasy children’s book.
it’s sort of difficult to grasp, sometimes, the extent to which harry potter is not just a book. the extent to which what is basically a series of fun, interesting, and fairly good novels is such an enormous, enormous part of our lives, a cultural touchstone, a truly universal reference point, something so many people have shaped their lives around, a foundation for all of the stories we would read and watch for the rest of our lives– for so many of us, the first books we ever loved
the extent to which so many of us can’t call ourselves “fans” of harry potter, because it would like being a “fan” of, like, having lungs.
it’s not even about liking it or disliking it. it’s just a part of us.
This is actually exactly what I tell adults who ask why I still like “a kids’ series” so much. First of all, I still read fucking Animorphs and watch Disney movies, if I want to be a fan of a kids’ series I’m damn well gonna be (and like HP doesn’t really strike me as kids’ books, but whatever). But more to the point, it’s not really…a question. I like having an appendix, or a spleen, or arteries, too.
At first, Finn doesn’t understand what the problem is.
The base on D’Qar moves to a different heartbeat than
Starkiller: more chaotic than ordered, with an inconsistent stream of missions
and refugees and impromptu meetings in the war room early enough for his eyes
to still be tacky and blurred. He tries his best to slide into the place left
behind by the countless bodies left in the wake of the Hosnian system, even
though he swears the General will glance in his direction and just stare
straight through him, as though witnessing a phantom.
Finn isn’t sure he wants to know what she’s actually seeing.
So he works, and he gives quiet advice, trying to keep his
head down, cause yeah, he’d excelled at being a Stormtrooper, at tactics and
standard recon and procedure, even though by the end of it Phasma’s vaguely
proud turn had turned sour when he had refused to leave anyone behind. On some
fundamental level, Finn knew the Resistance didn’t operate that way; General
Organa’s quiet joy when her pilots returned as a whole, with no men lost. When
they find a complete family adrift in the wreckage of the New Republic. When
another soldier stumbles from the medbay with his head still attached to his
body.
Finn likes to think that he’s helping. Poe says it often
enough, but Poe also enjoys protein bars and standard maintenance, so Finn is
starting to think that his advice is a little dubious.
It seems like the first rule of magic, or at least the first limitation mentioned, is usually ‘you can’t bring back the dead.’
And I know it makes sense from a writing standpoint, but I also wonder if it comes from somewhere else. If that’s just the first, most common human response to hearing that magic is possible.
Maybe the first question was, ‘Are the dead still going to stay dead?’ for so long that people stopped needing to say it, that it just got answered right away. Yes, the world will still hurt. Chin up, you can make fire from your fingertips. Maybe you can hurt it back.
just because you don’t look like somebody who you think is attractive doesn’t mean you aren’t attractive. flowers are pretty but so are christmas lights and they look nothing alike
Why is Thomas Jefferson getting a ton of heat lately? He's my problematic fav
i mean, lately, it’s presumably because the hit broadway musical hamilton is out there reminding everyone that tjeff was The Worst. but i’m gonna take this opportunity to give you a run-down of every historic reason why tjeff was The Worst
i could end the list at “slave owner”
furthermore, he was even more racist than most 18th century racists. i don’t have the time or energy to list all the racists things he did, but there are a lot, just google it
like when his pal tadeusz kosciuszko died he stipulated that the money from his american estate should be used to free and educate jefferson’s slaves and in response he was like. “i can’t read suddenly. i don’t know”
he was a huge hypocrite who claimed to support the ~small independent farmers when the only interests he really cared about looking out for were - you guessed it - the interests of wealthy plantation owners, which is probably his biggest contribution to the legacy of american politics tbh
also, remember how he wrote the declaration of independence - including the original draft where he waxed philosophical about how slavery is an abomination - even though #1-3
sally hemings
he had no idea how the economy works. a good deal of his political career was spent arguing with the federalists about why taxes are bad and banks are scary. one time he tried to ban exports, like, entirely, because he just didn’t foresee any negative consequences to that brilliant idea, apparently
he was a generally obnoxious person who not only spewed baseless accusations against his enemies every time he was challenged on all his horrible ideology, but he didn’t even have the balls to do it himself, he usually employed a whole gang of followers to do his public shit-talking for him
he actually kept a burn book where he collected rumors about people he didn’t like. i wish i was making this up lmao this actually happened!!!
a big fan of indian removal and/or forced assimilation
there’s gotta be a lot else i’m forgetting right now, i’m just thinking off the top of my head
basically he sat around at monticello spinning around in his swivel chair while his slave-concubine brought him bowl after bowl of mac and cheese, meditating on liberty and equality with so much moral myopia he could’ve been the antihero protagonist of an amc prestige drama
i’m too tired to source any of this hate right now but i can and will elaborate if anyone deems it necessary
crying males: “disney is destroying star wars with female leads”
“rogue one also has a female lead? ugh”
“great another mary sue”
me:
I don’t mind if Star Wars has a female lead, as the Star Wars franchise has always been home to strong female characters, I do care if she is another giant Mary Sue like Rey was. Rey was so Mary Sue that it became distracting to the movie. A character with no force training takes down a trained Sith Knight, she flies a freighter designed for two pilots with no help despite the fact she had never left the planet before, and she can also repair said ship with no problem because she had spent years salvaging parts off of a broken star destroyer? The only thing she didn’t do was have all of the male characters try to romance her at once and I thank the force for that small concession.
The only good new character in episode 7 was Finn. The rest of the characterization fell flat or was just used to make Rey ascend to Mary Suedom.
anakin built the worlds fastest pod racer and c3po when he was nine
the first time luke flew a spaceship he destroyed the fucking death star.
Kylo Ren: Not a Sith. Not fully trained. Also? Injured by a bowcaster that we’d seen could take out several stormtroopers at a time.
Rey: Literally spent all of her downtime flying a flight simulator to the point that it could no longer throw anything at her she couldn’t handle. For all kinds of ships. Nor did she solely scavenge star destroyers. She spent her entire life scavenging every imaginable wreck on Jakku, and her survival depended on her learning what ships had what parts and what was valuable. This, while competing with other scavengers, most of them working in teams.
Which meant she had to learn how to fight, or else she wouldn’t have gotten out of childhood.
Basically, Rey had way more in-canon reasoning to be as good as she was than Luke Skywalker did–who basically went from never flying much out of atmo to piloting an X-wing under combat conditions and rocking it… apparently just because of genetics and the Force. Who then went on, only half-trained, into a fight that even YODA thought he was going to die in, and survived, against a man literally birthed by the Force, trained as both a Jedi AND a Sith, with about 25 years of combat experience under his belt, whereas Luke had had a lightsaber for about 3 years. What a Mary Sue he was, huh?
Rey had more reason to be what she was than Anakin Skywalker, who accidentally wound up in a fighter and accidentally destroyed a droid ship. Anakin who was such a Mary Sue he was LITERALLY A VIRGIN BIRTH. How Mary Sue is THAT?
The creators, in short, HAD TO GIVE REASONS for every single thing Rey knew how to do, because of assholes like this person, who would take any special skill she had as proof that she was a “Mary Sue” just because she was a female character. No one bothered to give those reasons to Luke or Anakin. Because they’re the hero. OF COURSE they can do the impossible. But Rey? Jesus, what a Mary Sue.
Reblogged for excellent commentary.
(I’d thought the Rey-hating twerp up there was like sixteen, in which case I’d cut them some slack, but nope turns out they’re in their 40s.)
On top of all that, with a single exception, all of Rey’s extraordinary feats are stuff we explicitly see folks with no Force training do in the original trilogy.
Pulling a lightsabre to her hand? Luke did it before he ever met Yoda. Granted, Luke had a visibly harder time of it, but as he was concussed and suffering from mild hypothermia at the time, he jolly well should have.
Firing ranged weapons with uncanny accuracy? Luke again, in his famous trench run - and again, he was untrained at the time.
Resisting mental manipulation? Freaking Jabba the Hutt pulled that one off, and not only is he not trained as a Force-user, as far as we know he’s not even Force sensitive.
(Yes, the EU tries to wave that last one away by asserting that all members of Jabba’s species are naturally immune to mind control, but come on - that’s the same EU lore that insists that Rodians are literally a culture of bounty hunters because the single Rodian we see on-screen is a bounty hunter.)
Of course, there is one exception - one feat of Force manipulation that we’ve never seen an untrained wielder pull off before: Jedi mind tricking the First Order storm trooper. You know, a brainwashed child soldier conditioned nearly from birth to display reflexive and unthinking obedience to authority - the writers could scarcely have given her an easier target.
In sum, the stunts Rey pulls off are entirely within the demonstrable capabilities of an untrained Force user. You’d think these jokers had never seen the original films!
Exhibit 948374858383 demonstrating that a woman has to work twice as hard for half the credit. Even fictional women.
I love how that dudebro said “sith knight” also
Random Dude Bro No.9828718738371: Rey is a Mary Su-
I feel like the “makeup is oppressive” crowd and the “makeup is empowering” crowd are referring to two completely different concepts, and it would be helpful to tease them out.
I think those who claim the former are thinking of the “no-makeup makeup” that a lot of women are pressured into wearing just to look presentable. Foundation, concealer, etc. And if we’re talking about that, then I actually agree! There is nothing wrong with wearing it if you want to, but it’s fucked that anyone should be expected to change the way their skin looks just to be considered a respectable member of society. This kind of makeup is also more about adhering to a certain baseline than about expressing yourself creatively, which I imagine must be exhausting: who wants to spend half an hour in front of the mirror only to look like you haven’t done anything at all?
On the other hand, those who claim the latter are thinking of very obvious makeup. Of plummy lips and winged liner and dramatic contouring. If we’re talking about that? Then no, I don’t agree that that’s oppressive. No one spends hours bluing sparkles to their fingernails because they want to fit in with the status quo. That kind of makeup is a very deliberate artistic statement, and it’s demeaning to elide the differences between it and the baseline makeup people wear just to fit in.
i don’t care if the artist’s comments consist of keysmashing
i don’t care if the artist’s comments consist of a single emoticon
i don’t care if the artist’s comments consist of “im hungry”
i don’t care if the artist’s comments consist of the entire first chapter of “war and peace”
if you remove them i will fart on all your kitchen appliances and cutlery
Fyi, Tumblr calls it misattribution and non-attribution, and you can be reported for it. This includes adding your own promo link to an artist’s work and reposting an artist’s work.
My tired gay eyes just had to read the phrase “compulsory homosexuality” as though this is some bullshit a real, legit, living person actually believes is a thing. I asked for a quick death, not this.
I immediately lost a follower when I posted this so I’d like to make it ultra clear: if you think for one second that anyone has ever been pressured by society into “being gay,” please follow suit and also unfollow me.
I just remembered that everyone in Pacific Rim would’ve seen The Force Awakens and I just
> Newt lets Hermann borrow his jacket one time because it’s cold and Hermann forgot his. Hermann goes to give it back later. Newt looks him dead in the eyes. “Keep it. It suits you.” Silence follows. Newt can’t keep a straight face. Hermann walks away with the look of a man who has suffered through fifty Star Wars references this week already, and will likely suffer through fifty more before it’s over.
> Tendo opening awkward conversations with “So, who talks first? Do you talk first? I talk first?”
> Back when he was working the Wall, Raleigh sometimes muttered “one quarter portion” when he got his ration card at the end of the day.
> “The garbage will do” becomes a running gag among the Jaeger program has they have to resort to jury-rigging shit and settling for things that better fit their increasingly diminishing budget.
> Mako has all the blueprints to make a fully functioning BB-8 replica. She just never got around to building it. She was totally going to enlist Hermann to help with the programming, too.
> Newt referring to the increasing size and power of the Kaiju as “some Starkiller Base overkill bullshit.”
> “THAT’S NOT HOW THE DRIFT WORKS.”
I still haven’t seen it and I need to jump on the pacrim/force awakens bandwagon fast.
??? someone broke into my grandmas house while she was gone & shaved the matted fur off her cat
i want to emphasize that the cat was the only thing altered here
would also like to add that this occcurred sometime between 11 pm & 9 am. we have no leads. the cat is fine & probably appreciates not having a huge mat on his neck, but, like, that’s a really weird kind of vigilante justice, still
That being said, could you please have some courtesy for those of us who a) hate the smell of weed and b) are getting over a bad cough and c) have enough of a sensitivity to the smell of weed to suffer a coughing fit under the best circumstances. That means please do not make the dorm reek of weed.
On a related note, if you hire someone as a tutor and you leave ‘just to grab food real quick,’ you better at least send that person a message if you decide to fuck off and get high so that you don’t leave them waiting for an hour and a half.
trashcans and ashtrays exist for a reason. properly dispose your shit please
And not ever in my fucking garden!! Cigarettes can spread Tobacco Mosaic Virus which attacks a surprising amount of plants. Don’t be rude, dispose of your rubbish considerately.
think of the lil animals… it doesn’t take much to hold onto ur cig butt for a lil while or even just put it back in your pack cmon
and for god’s sakes stop throwing them out of the windows of moving cars
psa if you ever meet me in real life I am really sorry for how much I swear like it’s really not a joke I have a mouth on me like a fuckin sailor and I can usually turn it off around adults but if you’re under thirty five I will likely throw one ‘fuck’ in for every three words that leave my mouth it’s shocking
post apoc media is always banging on about the necessity of macho survival skills but frankly it’s the gardeners/farmers who know 150 preservation techniques for winter beets and who understand the art of good pH balance in compost who will survive on our non energy dependent farms while you all butcher each other with katanas in burnt out shopping centres
Harriet Tubman was cynical, she would force people to escape against their own will with a gun to their head. She has more flaws than you think.
YEAH, YOU CAN MAKE ANYONE SOUND TERRIBLE IF YOU STRIP AWAY ENOUGH CONTEXT!
YOU MAKE IT SOUND LIKE THERE WERE HAPPY SLAVES WHO WOULD HEAR A CLICK BEHIND THEM AND TURN TO SEE HARRIET TUBMAN SAYING “ESCAPE OR DIE, JERK, YOUR CHOICE.” THAT’S NOT HOW IT WENT DOWN.
HARRIET TUBMAN WAS A CRIMINAL, WHICH I’M OKAY WITH BECAUSE THE LAW SHE WAS BREAKING WAS UNJUST, AND THAT’S WHY SHE PACKED HEAT. IF SHE WAS CAUGHT, SHE’D STAND A FIGHTING CHANCE OF DEFENDING THE PEOPLE SHE WAS ASSISTING.
NOW, AS FOR “FORCING PEOPLE TO ESCAPE AGAINST THEIR OWN WILL.” THE PEOPLE SHE PULLED A GUN ON WERE ALREADY ON THE RAILROAD WITH HER OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL. THEY WERE PEOPLE WHO WERE TRYING TO ESCAPE, AND WHO KNEW ONCE THEY SET FOOT OFF THE PLANTATION THAT THERE WAS NO GOING BACK. THEY DIDN’T HAVE TO LEAVE THE PLANTATION WITH HER, BUT IF THEY DID, IT WAS “ESCAPE OR DIE TRYING.”
HOWEVER, IT WAS NOT UNCOMMON FOR THEM TO TRY AND TURN BACK ANYWAY. TRYING TO ESCAPE WAS DANGEROUS AND MISERABLE, AND STOCKHOLM SYNDROME IS A THING. MANY OF THEM GOT COLD FEET WITH THE PROSPECT OF THE UNKNOWN STRUGGLE OF A FREE PERSON IN THE NORTH, WHICH FOR ALL THEY KNEW WOULD BE WORSE THAN THE FAMILIAR STRUGGLE OF A SLAVE IN THE SOUTH. MANY OF THE OTHERS FIGURED THEY’D BE CAUGHT AND RETURNED ANYWAY AND THAT THEIR PUNISHMENT WOULD BE LESS SEVERE IF THEY TURNED THEMSELVES IN AND BLEW THE WHISTLE ON TUBMAN AND THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. EVEN IF THIS WASN’T THEIR PLAN, ANYONE WHO’D SEEN HOW THE RAILROAD OPERATES WHO RETURNED TO THE PLANTATION WOULD BE TORTURED INTO GIVING UP THAT INFORMATION.
ANYONE WHO WENT BACK TO THEIR PLANTATION PUT THE REST OF THE RUNAWAYS, PRESENT AND FUTURE, IN DANGER, AND TUBMAN COULDN’T ALLOW THEM TO BLOW HER COVER AND GET ALL THE PEOPLE SHE WAS TRYING TO PROTECT CAPTURED OR KILLED. SO YES, WHEN SOMEONE ATTEMPTED TO TAKE SENSITIVE INFORMATION ABOUT THE METHODS OF THE RESISTANCE BACK INTO ENEMY TERRITORY, SHE’D PULL A GUN ON THEM AND GIVE THEM THE CHOICE BETWEEN GETTING TO “LIVE NORTH FREE, OR DIE HERE.”
BUT I WANT YOU TO STOP THINKING ABOUT HARRIET AS A CIVILIAN FOR A MOMENT. SHE WAS A SOLDIER, A SPY, AND AN INSURGENT REVOLUTIONARY IN A WAR THAT STARTED CENTURIES BEFORE THE SOUTHERN STATES SECEDED. THE RUNAWAYS IN HER CARE CARRIED INFORMATION THAT WOULD ALLOW THE ENEMY TO WIN THE WAR, AND I’M CURIOUS AS TO WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE HER DO.
SHOULD SHE ALLOW PEOPLE WHO KNEW ALL THE RESISTANCE’S TRICKS AND SECRETS TO ALLY THEMSELVES WITH THE ENEMY BECAUSE THEY’D LOST FAITH THE WAR COULD BE WON? SHOULD SHE HAVE SENT THEM HOME WITH A BAG LUNCH FOR THE ROAD AS LONG AS THEY PINKY-PROMISED THAT THEY WOULDN’T TELL?
BECAUSE REALLY YOU ONLY HAVE TWO OPTIONS: WOULD YOU RATHER “HARRIET TUBMAN OCCASIONALLY PULLED A GUN ON PEOPLE ATTEMPTING TO BETRAY HER AND THE PEOPLE UNDER HER PROTECTION TO PEOPLE WHO WOULD ENSLAVE AND MURDER THEM WITHOUT LOSING A WINK’S SLEEP,” OR “THE SLAVE STATES LEARNED THE SECRETS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, RECAPTURED THE RUNAWAY SLAVES, AND KILLED HARRIET TUBMAN SO SHE COULDN’T LEAD ANYONE ELSE TO FREEDOM?”
I KNOW THERE’S PROBABLY A MIDDLE GROUND, BUT I’M TELLING YOU AS A HISTORIAN THAT THE LATTER IS THE MOST LIKELY SCENARIO, AND WHEN YOU’VE LIVED THE HORRORS HARRIET TUBMAN HAS LIVED, YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO TAKE THE CHANCE THAT YOU MIGHT GET LUCKY AND THINGS WON’T GO WRONG.
gentle reminder that mother’s day is not for all moms. it’s for good moms. abusive and neglectful moms do not deserve to be celebrated on this day. and if you are the child of one of those moms, you should feel no guilt in ignoring the day altogether. I hope you can stay strong kiddos! ♡
Anonymous asked: “What would be the best way to write a character who develops PTSD? She was abducted for a couple of weeks, and I thought it’d make the story more realistic. She’s a pretty strong character, but I’m also stuck with how her colleagues, especially one who’s particularly close to her, could help her.
This is a very good question. Writing a character with a psychological disorder can be confusing and difficult at first, it is definitely not impossible.
A tip you often hear is, “Write what you know.“ That’s great, but sometimes you want to write something that you don’t know. Rather than producing a very inaccurate/unrealistic depiction of a serious mental disorder, it’s best to learn everything you possibly can about it. That said, I’m glad you asked!
I want to give you something to chew on:
Fiction is the means by which we can escape reality by immersing ourselves in it.
You are taking on the task of creating a character who develops a very human disorder, because you want it to be true-to-life, to be realistic. Great! Realism is a worthy aspiration. I’d be worried if a character who was abducted for two weeks showed absolutely no signs of damage from the experience.
The first thing I would encourage every writer to do—no matter what kind of character you are creating—is research. Always, always, research. We have an article pertaining to writing mental disorders. Hopefully that can answer some parts of the question, so once you’ve read that, proceed (or ignore us and proceed anyway)!
In this article, we will try to examine writing PTSD specifically, starting with how to research psychological disorders. Yes, that was plural. It is possible for a person to have more than one psychological disorder after experiencing a trauma. That is why it is important to brush up on a variety of disorders related to PTSD. You want to pinpoint the character’s symptoms so you can best depict her experience with the disorder.
Find someone qualified. Do you know anyone (family/friend/acquaintance) who is a qualified social worker/therapist/counselor/psychologist? If you do, reach out to them. They not only possess experience in working with people who have psychological disorders, they can fact-check the realism of your story.
Find someone who lived/lives it. If you know someone who is willing to talk about his or her PTSD, that person would be a terrific resource for you. Be very careful, however, of the way that you approach the treatment of a person’s mental disorder, especially in a dialogue face-to-face. Prepare specific questions, vet these questions through another person who knows your resource personally to be sure that they don’t cross a line, and remember that, while you strive to write something fictional, your resource actually lived/lives their trauma. Behave yourself and be respectful.
Google! Search terms like “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” “Mental disorders,” and “Survivors of assault”. It’s important to learn about the disorder itself, and the people who actually experience(d) it. There are support groups online. We don’t want to say infiltrate them, but there are good resources and first-hand accounts of experiences with it that may benefit your writing.
Read up. Books covering a wide range of mental disorders can be found in most any book store–the most famous being the DMS-IV-TR. Self-help books are also a valuable place to look, although PTSD is best when treated with help from a trained professional. See also: Every TV show that brings in counselors after a traumatic event occurs. Not everything you see how TV is accurate, but that part is at least worth watching.
Researching the disorders in question will allow you to consider your character more realistically, which leads to more realistic writing.
Secondly, you need to research your character. That must sound odd, because unless this is a fan fiction piece and you can look up a backstory or biography, your character is original, a.k.a. created by you. Trust me, you’ve got plenty to do.
Questions to ask yourself on this front:
What was the character like before the abduction? Was she very outgoing and gregarious? Shy and reserved? Understanding your character is key in terms of understanding how she will react to trauma. Let’s take a look at the meaning of psychological trauma, as explained by Dr. Kathleen Young:
Psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security and result in you feeling helpless, alone and vulnerable in a dangerous world. (x)
This is important because experiencing trauma in any case causes a change in the victim. It can impede the emotional development in adolescents, and snap an adult into a depressed, sometimes child-like state. You want to show that change in the character. Perhaps, your character is facing the hardships of piecing herself back together in the aftermath of the abduction – being “strong” as she was, the experience will undoubtedly be a blow to her perception of herself.
What’s the character like after the abduction? How do you show these changes? In many cases, the effects are obvious (anxiety, nightmares, etc.) There will be more subtle differences as well. For example:
Eva Mendez Kor, a Holocaust survivor (check out the documentary, Forgiving Dr. Mengele.) She experienced PTSD after her experiences in Dr. Mengele’s despicable twin research endeavors. Friends and family notice long-term effects from the trauma she sustained at Aushwitz. These include: a heightened sense of resourcefulness and never leaving her plate with food left on it.
So, maybe your character is more alert of her surroundings, more jumpy, very sensitive to what are called “triggers” or, things that can set off the disorder such as; yelling, being touched, hearing about abductions, hearing a phrase or term used by her abductors, etc.
Now for that close friend of your character’s. Support is very important to the recovery from a disorder like PTSD. I would encourage you to go through the same research process that I outlined for researching the disorder to find resources on what a loved one can do to help a friend coping with PTSD.
A couple of suggestions:
Can this person be a confidant? Maybe he/she is the first person your character really opens up to about the abduction – that’s a great way to show that there is trust in the relationship.
Is this person silently observant? Maybe this person takes special note of the changes in her character after the abduction and they have some kind of “unspoken trust” about it, where the moment she begins to falter, the friend is at her side.
Or, of course, whatever you think of as an alternative.
Once you are equipped with all of your shiny new knowledge about your character and PTSD, the next feasible step is to write! Implement what you learn into your story.
IMAGINE HEARING ABOUT THE DUDEBRO LIVING NEXT TO U IN THE DORMS “yah dave dropped out cuz he built a fucking person”
victor frankenstein was a little bITCH and he had no degree at all, he was at college for like, a year and then he was like “lol these bitches ain’t got nothing on me” and he just got an apartment and stopped going to school so he could build a person. i don’t think he even formally dropped out, he just kind of disappeared and nobody even questioned it because that’s what you expect when some cocky asshole comes to class like “i know more than everyone in this school and one day i’m going to prove it by ending dEATH ITSELF”
fucking bullshit victor, come home and eat some goddamn soup you wussass teenager
fucking trashass motherfucker 19 year old sin machine
go get ur liver pecked by birds u mess of a human being
i am never going to let the world forget that victor frankenstein spent 90% of the novel moping instead of doing literally anything else. actual quote from emo kid victor frankenstein “my only solace was silence - deep, dark, deathlike silence” like HOW EXTRA
You’d almost think Mary Shelly was taking inspiration from someone she knew….
Memento mori: (Latin: "remember (that you have) to die”) The medieval Latin theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.
Mono no aware (物の哀れ): (Japanese: “the sensitivity to ephemera”) The awareness of impermanence (無常 mujō), or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life.
L’appel du vide:(French: “call of the void”) The psychological phenomenon in which people, with no desire to die, find themselves faced with a steep cliff and experience a strong desire to leap.
Amor fati: (Latin: “the love of one’s fate”) An attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good; or, at the very least, necessary.
L’appel du vide is the mostinteresting phenomenon, though, because it appears to be almost universal, to some degree or another. (By degree, I mean: my dad only gets it if he’s really high up, whereas anything more than a story gives me that murmur in the hollow parts of my chest.) The theory is that it’s the instinct to make a decision, do something really conclusive, in a situation where your brain feels in limbo, and at the top of a tall edge, there’s nothing more conclusive than jumping off.
Although I may not know you personally, I sincerely wish whoever reading this a great day. Despite whatever you’re going through right now, I hope today treats you well. 🌱
Crowley: Aziraphale, I have to say – of all the deceitful, unprincipled, corrupt things I’ve done in my entire life, nothing is as bad as… Aziraphale: Politics. Crowley: I can’t even say it.