white women are always like “more strong kickass female leads!” and when i say i want to see a black female love interest who is allowed to be girly and fall in love they give me weird looks and say that i’m supporting gender stereotypes and heteronormativity but what a lot of white women don’t get is that black women we’ve had hundreds of years of having our femininity ripped from us, of being deemed unworthy of male (especially non-black male) attention. black women in media are never allowed to be the “cute” ones or the love interest, we’ve always been the “strong kickass street smart woman” trope that white women want so badly. so basically if a black girl says she wants to see another black girl fulfill the role of “love interest” there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that and it isn’t a hindrance to feminism
Here’s your very LOUD AND NOT SOFT REMINDER that it is not okay to repost my work (or anyone’s work) here or on other websites without crediting the author/artist!!!!! And it should go without saying, but plagiarism is also not okay!!!!! Taking the entire concept of a poem and changing a few words is plagiarism!!!!! Using entire lines from my work (or anyone’s work) in your own writing is plagiarism!!! Don’t pass off other people’s work as your own!! Not only is it not chill and frowned on heavily in all writing/artistic communities everywhere, it’s friggin illegal, my dude!!!!! It’s a copyright violation!! I’ll fight you!!! I’ll fucking fight you, pal Fists Up let’s party let’s fucking go
let’s fucking go to Google and use the reverse image search or the regular freakin SEARCH BAR and type that shit in if you don’t know the author and you’re not intentionally trying to be A Huge Asshole
if you’re not trying to pass it off as your own work and you’re just trying to add content to your blog or your twitter, you still have to provide a source for content that doesn’t belong to you!!!
ALSO when you see writing/content stolen from artists you know, call people out! remember that you don’t have to be mean about it because not everyone is intending to be malicious!!!!!! just pointing out stolen work to the original content creator is good but it’s just not always enough and it’s often REALLY emotionally exhausting to have to fight with people on the internet every day and file copyright infringement claims. when you point it out to me, it just ends up on a list of twenty other posts I’m trying to get credited for or taken down so I really appreciate when other people have my back on this stuff!!! support the creators you like and admire!!!!!!!!!!!! support creators in general!!!
I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal because people post uncredited quotes from movies and songs and stuff all the time!! but it’s really disheartening for new and emerging writers to have their work not attributed to them (aka stolen)!! also again, it’s not legal and I’ll fight you
I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car (OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!), she piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (“Wooooosh” she says, making a wave gesture with her hand)
Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favorite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.
Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.
He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, bodily takes them out of her hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with a intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says “you need chocolate.” She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.
He keeps asking her “why are you doing this?” She responds “Do you like Harry Potter?“ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.
Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:
“It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.”
The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: “My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.”
I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.“ And leaves.
And that is the story of the best customer I’ve ever had. Be kind to somebody today.
When your best friend also happens to be your favorite writer.
Moran ( @words-writ-in-starlight ) hates when I compare her writing to Robin McKinely’s because McKinely is one of Moran’s favorite authors. She’ll just have to suck it up, since I have no intention of ever stopping.
Here’s the one thing you need to remember about Rey: she grew up alone and starving, lonely and unloved, desperate for companionship, hungry for family. She remembers catching sight of her reflection at eight or so: a collection of bones and skin with scabs at the corner of her mouth and dust clogging her hair and bruises on her hands and split-open red knuckles from beating up a thief who tried to make off with her haul (no haul, no food; you die if you don’t eat. She knows this better than anything, she’s seen it happen, she knows what it is to starve
Anyway: this is a girl who never had a childhood and the instant she meets a child, an actual honest-to-Force child, with big dark eyes and soft skin and chubby cheeks (why does she want to pinch them? is this a normal reaction) she is overcome by a surge of feral, ferocious protectiveness. She wasn’t protected as a child, not ever, and now she’s damned if she’s ever going to let another little one end up with red knuckles and skin stretched hard over the angles of their ribs.
She says to Leia: I was hurt when I was little, left on my own, left – and the word abandoned stutters against her teeth. And I don’t ever want anyone to suffer like that, not ever and Leia thinks that once there was a boy who felt unloved and alone and drew the absolute opposite conclusion (I am suffering; thus, everyone else must also suffer)
And, eventually, she learns of the tragic tale of Anakin Skywalker, he who became Darth Vader, and she feels pity for him, for the Force is a cruel mother, and her favour comes with a steep price. And Rey knows what it is to feel the pulse of the universe in your bones. She knows what it is to be so full of power you choke on it, she knows how addictive it is to see injustice and think if I ruled this place, I would be better.
She knows, that’s the point. And she pities him, and she understands, and then she has a spare evening and plunges into the data-records of the Old Republic and she reads about the massacre at the temple.
Little ones. Lonely ones. Little ones stolen from their families and given weapons to hold instead of hands, asking Master Skywalker there are too many of them and little ones who didn’t expect to be protected, little ones ready to fight, and did they have bruises on their knuckles as well? Rey understands that training is imperative, that children who are strong with the Force need guidance, but –
They were children. In his care. He killed them.
That’s the story, the whole story, and nothing before or after can justify the single evening in the temple. Did he hold his wife after, did he touch her pregnant belly, did he tell his twins he loved them?
Luke tries to speak of redemption. Rey spits on the floor, because she’s an ill-bred desert girl who would die ten thousand deaths before lifting her lightsabre to an innocent. And good is not always nice, and she tells Luke to his face that his father was a monster and ever shall be. Little broken bodies, she says. Her eyes flare. The Force, around her, crackles with anger: the shining heat of the desert.
That night, Luke dreams of his father. I’m sorry, he says. Your granddaughter hates you – but Anakin Skywalker smiles.
Good, he says.
After years of gushing about how touching this, I realised something that makes it so much worse.
Think about this for a moment. Think about how hard it must have been for him to say those words.
‘He’s not your son.’
Like no no no, Molly, this is my Harry. My kid. James and Lily’s son from his appearance right down to the way he writes the alphabet and protects his enemies. I’ve known the kid literally since he was born. I know what James and Lily wanted for him. They’d want him to know what he’s getting into. They’d want him to know that we trust him. And Lily would skin me alive if I let her son face the “chosen one” scenario without knowing what it means. James and Lily Potter gave their lives as a result of this Prophecy and you’re telling me they would want to keep him in the dark? He is my godson, Molly. I would do anything to keep him safe. I’m the one Harry wrote to nearly every day for months and I know what he needs. I know what happened in the damned graveyard. I know what Harry’s been through and I know what his parents would want us to do. HE’S. NOT. YOUR. SON.
‘He’s not your son,’ said Sirius quietly.
Sirius is canonically the sort of person who’d get increasingly louder and angrier over the course of an argument. But no. Molly wants Harry to be a child. Her child. And all he can think of is Lily. Her grit. Her principles. The way she’d have laid the truth out before Harry and then taken him out to a Quidditch game or something.
He never gets to say any of that. There’s Molly’s below-the-belt Azkaban taunt and Sirius just retreats into his guilt about not actually being there for Harry… not being able to protect him last year… not keeping James and Lily safe.
