@thebibliosphere seems like this would be in your wheelhouse
Just saw a tweet like "REAL libraries check for quality!" as some kinda gotcha at AO3?? But I'm a librarian, so... heads up that "quality checks," AKA "weeding" or "pulling," means looking for damaged books or ones that haven't circulated in a few years to clear up shelf space. We don't Quality Check for if the library books have nontoxic romance or good grammar. :U I assure you every library in your area has absolute ABOMINATIONS of bad storytelling as well as your favorite pop lit.
Also books that we bare our teeth at every time we see them on the shelf and quietly chant to ourselves "freedom of information access is more important than the fact that I hate you, freedom of information access is more important than the fact that I hate you - "
Like we have 1.7 million+ items in our collection do you think that a staff of 50 actually has time to even physically page thru or run thru every one of them? If every single staff member were only taking one hour to look through every single book or other collection piece (movies, games, whatever) (which: an hour would NOT be enough even to look at every single part of most of them, but okay fine, an hour), that's still 1.7 million hours divided between 50 people. That's 34K work hours, which at 35 hours a week is more than 971 weeks, aka and that's with all of us doing nothing else, at all.
That would be 18 years just to give each single solitary book an hour, reviewing full time, 35 hours a week, with 50 staff only doing that. And we're a small, single-branch library.
Don't be silly.
Also also (forgive my tangent, OP) it is as a librarian/information-services professional, honestly, that I will cut you over AO3. As a pure end-user/fan/etc are there things about it that are not my favourite/I wish were different? Yeah, sure.
As a public-facing information professional whose education and preferred career path involves the impossibilities of classification and cataloguing and subject-heading and "community-led collection and program development" and all that shit that is also what everyone at AO3 has to do daily for like millions larger community than I do, I will throw down right here and right now, man. You could literally not pay me enough to take leadership role in a community-led collection for our fuckheaded fan community, I know us way too well. We are worse to deal with than a municipal community, we are literally everything you could point out about the most fractious possible arts community with everyone absolutely sure that their preferred way of doing things is the obvious mass will of the community (while being diametrically opposed to the way that an entire other huge chunk of the community wants) - you could not PAY ME, and it's mostly being done out of love, for free, on a budget a fraction the size of what my (small, municipal) library works with.
Good grief.
Spider & Jake grew up in Pennsylvania, surrounded by Revolutionary War messaging. It's pretty clear that we are in a time when Join or Die fits the queer/LGBTQIA+ community as well. The infighting is endless and pointless, and the people who don't want us to continue to exist? They're not fighting amongst themselves.
So here's Join or Die -- because sometimes Spider comes up with an idea for something at noon, and by dinnertime it's on the site. Use code JOIN23 for 20% off this new design until April 24th, 11:59PM PST.
And before anybody asks (as if this isn't the perfect proof of concept), Spider is a butch lesbian and here's his statement on the lesbian flag which they choose to use for his art.
Mini Movie Poster Patterns still rolling out! Now available: Vertigo, The Shining, The Blow, and Jaws!
Use code JUSTBEACUSE for 20% off!
Check out the shop: https://teashopcrafts.bigcartel.com/
Local peak lords somehow accidentally manage to snatch and wife icy demon goth king, has two half-human half-demon children together. Wife says more are on the way.
The original goods, the OG, god's unwilling vessel, the man of the hour, Shang Qinghua. For if his life hadn't been unceremoniously cut short, his ambitions would've brought him to the top.
Bless all the fanartists that make the silly looking joke characters look cool in fanart haha
blackheart-biohazards
😈 You are not bound by the Hays code.
😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who are not punished by the narrative by the end of the story.
😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who win.
😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who make evil look fun and cool.
😈 You are allowed to make your fun, cool evil character the protagonist.
😈 You are allowed to glorify, romanticize and eroticize evil characters and villainous acts.
😈 You are not obligated to teach your audience a moral lesson.
😈 You are allowed to slap it,
only once.
In all seriousness, as evidenced by the original tags on this post:
This post is meant to conflate writing "proship" fanfiction to rebellion against societal concepts that lead to the creation of the Hays Code (which, by the way, regulated film, not literature).
In fact, literature involving power dynamics within romantic relationships has been on the rise. "BookTok", a trend of certain kinds of romantic novels being heavily advertised on TikTok, has frequently pushed novels involving power dynamics, such as having a relationship with your employer, or a mob boss. This trend has been so prominent as to have dedicated sections in retailers such as Barnes and Noble. "Fifty Shades of Grey" set records as the fastest-selling paperback in the United Kingdom.
There is no large, active, cultural / political attack on the fanfiction (or published fiction) championed under the "proship" label. There have been no political movements with momentum within the US to crack down on literature romanticizing incest, csa, or abuse.
As far as the Hays Code goes, the sympathy from writers and the general audience towards villains has been quite high for a while now, with films such as Maleficent and Cruella seeking to humanize popular villains previously shown in an unsympathetic light. Films featuring morally dubious protagonists, such as The Suicide Squad, are also fairly popular and recieve large marketing and merchandising pushes from their publishers (Warner Bros., In this case).
The ideology behind the Hays Code is associated with US Conservatives, and yet relatively little pushback from conservative groups has been seen concerning these media trends. What has been seen is a political push against literature with gay or trans themes, sex education topics, and which tackles the history of race & white supremacy in the US. A library in Llano County of Texas has threatened to cease operations after being ordered to return books which were illegally removed without notice, such as "They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group."
When you see posts like these, consider whether the OP is talking about a form of censorship which exists in reality, or whether they may have run into someone who didn't like their fanfiction on AO3, and spun a narrative for themselves.
Nah fam, this is about the kids on this app telling others to kill themselves over fictional content and harming actual SA survivors via watering down terms like pedophilia.
As an artist from the country that coined the term "degenerate art": This is ufortunately way too familiar and I'd suggest looking into (art) history (lmk if i can provide ressources, happy to help!).
Side note: There's a difference between causing discomfort and actually harming someone. Most antis don't see this, but i hope you do.
Fiction, on its own, can't harm. It can be _used_ to harm (but there has to be an intention behind that), or it can be viewed by people whose parents didn't teach them media literacy. Which is why we say:
If you see content that makes you u uncomfortable, you have to simply use the block button. The internet is not your safe space.
“I’m not trying to ban books, I’m trying to ban gross fanfiction”
Are you hearing yourself?
Im here to remind you, that AO3 was banned in our country 🥴
I’m here to remind you that many if not all the bans currently happening on queer literature in the U.S. do not outright explicitly say that intention but instead USE THE LANGUAGE OF ABUSE, PORNOGRAPHY, SEXUALLY EXPLICIT, PEDOPHILIA, GROOMING AND PREDATORY BEHAVIOR to justify their removals.
Which is why you cannot draw that arbitrary distinction in your purity culture war on fan fiction that makes you uncomfortable despite it being properly tagged and you clicking on it anyway. Because that distinction does not exist for fascists. That distinction is meaningless. They can, have in the past, are now, and will in the future use those words you claim are the ones you’ll accept as being justified to censor and eradicate in order to harm real life queer people and non white people. Period. That is behind the censorship currently, and they are directly using the rhetoric YOURE HANDING TO THEM ON A PLATTER in order to do so.
Just because the laws don’t use the word “proship” does not mean you are not playing by their exact handbook and the consequences of your stubborn crusade will not be exactly the same in real life as those bans. You need to reconcile that for yourselves. Or don’t, but don’t be upset when people call you exactly what you are then—fascist, puritan, and an active enemy to marginalized peoples.
Condom machines off for the royal period of mourning💔💔💔
ritsu is the funniest fucking character in this show without even trying like. whats up w him
I was looking at sex toys on aliexpress (like you do) and it suggested I get a 45cm (17″) Black Tourmaline Hexagonal Obelisk. I don’t think that’s a good idea
FINALLY, WE CAN TENTACLIZE THE CLOUDS THEMSELVES!
and now I found the “realistic torture/execution devices for dolls” section.
aliexpress is seriously the best place to look at sex toys because they can’t show nudity so they have to finding other ways to show off the use of the toys.
This results in a LOT of abused food, which is always hilarious.
that’s not what I was searching for and frankly at this point I can’t really remember what I was searching for
oh baby, slide into my chrysanthemum for some novel gameplay!
one of my favorite things is when they decide to give you the whole hard sell.
instead of just being like “hey this is a good sex toy”, they instead try to explain why you’d even need a sex toy, from first principles. and that principle is usually “your boyfriend/husband sucks”. or doesn’t, I guess.
they always end up looking like a r/wheredidthesodago commercial for lesbianism
so the sound of this sex toy is between a flower and a clock!
wait, a flower? do… do flowers make sounds?
I’ve posted about the Hammer Sex Toy before, but it turns out it’s not alone. There’s also…
THE WRENCH!
now that is a fucking slogan
one of my favorite things is that when they’re showing off that sex toys have a bluetooth+internet thing so people can control them remotely, they always show a world map and two points labeled with city names and they’re ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE NEAR THE ACTUAL CITIES.
sex toy or vulcan starship?
OH MEHR SPIELMÖGLICHKEITEN!
this will give you the biggest orgasm of your life, but your mother will die. Oh well, there’s other parents.
In the quiet night all you can hear is your rapid breathing
Couldn’t resist the urge to calligraph this.
nice! I knew it felt like a poem. now it looks like one too!
I was working on a history paper today and found a book from 1826 that seemed promising (though dull) for my topic, on an English Catholic family’s experience moving to France.
And it ended up not really being suitable for my purposes, as it goes. But part of the book is actually devoted to Kenelm, the author’s oldest son…and man, his dad loved him.
Kenelm seems to have had a fairly typical upbringing for a young English gentleman, although he is a bit slow to read. At twelve he’s sent to board at Stoneyhurst College—often the big step towards independence in a boy’s life, as he’ll most likely only see his parents sporadically from now on, and then leave for university.
When he’s sixteen, however, his father moves the whole family to France, so Kenelm gets pulled out of school to be with them again. Shortly after the move, his dad notices that he seems depressed. Kenelm confides in him that he’s been suffering from “scruples” for the last eighteen months—most likely what we’d now call an anxiety disorder.
And his dad is pissed—at the school, because apparently Kenelm had been seeking help there and received none, despite obviously struggling with mental health issues. So his dad takes it seriously. He sets him up to be counseled by a priest—there were no therapists back then—and doesn’t send him away to be boarded again, instead teaching him at home himself.
And his mental health does improve. His dad describes him as well-liked, gentle, pious, kind and eager to please others; at twenty he’s thinking about a career in diplomacy or going into the military—which his dad thinks he is not particularly suited for, considering his favorite pastimes are drawing and reading. He’s excited about his family’s upcoming move to Italy, and he’s been busy learning Italian and teaching it to his siblings.
Henry Kenelm Beste dies of typhus at twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. That’s how his dad records it. That’s why his dad is telling this story. It’s not an extraordinary story—Kenelm’s story struck me because he sounds so…ordinary, like so many kids today. And he was so, so loved. His dad tried hard to help him compassionately with his mental health at a time where our current knowledge and support systems didn’t exist. You can feel how badly he wanted his son to be remembered and loved, to impress how dearly beloved he was to the people who knew him in life.
I hope he’d be glad to know someone is still thinking of Kenelm over 200 years later.
Anyway, that’s why I’m crying today.
so I fell down a Google rabbit hole a little bit. the whole book OP is describing is on Project Gutenberg (it's called Four Years In France and the bit about Kenelm's education starts at page 282), but I really wanted to focus on that bit because I think it's remarkably understanding of mental health issues given the time period:
Scruples are, by no means, of the nature of religious melancholy; they are not inconsistent with the Christian grace of hope: they suppose innocence; for the sinner may be hardened, may be penitent, may be wavering, but cannot properly be said to be scrupulous: scruples not only preserve from sin, but have also the good effect (the gift of divine mercy,) of purging the heart from all affection to sin, as was manifested in the future life of Kenelm. Yet this fear, "the beginning of wisdom," acting on an ill-informed conscience, is hurtful, as it indisposes to a cheerful energetic performance of duty. I said to Kenelm, "If there are beings, (and we are told that such there are,) who are interested that man should do ill, they could by no other means so effectually obtain their purpose as by fixing our attention on that by which we may offend." A priest, whom I had known in England during his emigration, and whom I had the advantage of meeting again at Paris; a man whose sanctity inspired Kenelm with respect and confidence,—said to him, "Unless you shall be as sure that you have offended God in the way in which you apprehend, as you would be sure of having committed murder, I forbid you to mention it even to me in confession."
Just for some context and to translate this into simpler English: Kenelm developed these "scruples" after a serious illness which, among other things, tanked his grades and meant that he didn't win an academic award he'd been trying to achieve. His dad directly links that illness with his mental health issues.
His dad describes "scruples" as Kenelm being afraid of accidentally sinning, and he's so preoccupied with it that he spends all his time thinking about how to avoid sin than, like, socializing with other kids or spending time with loved ones or actively trying to do good. It's coming from a good place, but it's preventing him from living his life (and also ignoring God's mercy/the concept of confession, but like, it's very clear that the dad's most concerned with how it's affecting the kid in general, and the religious stuff is how he's able to explain it).
And I really like the priest's "unless you know you sinned, on purpose, in the same way you would know if you murdered someone, you have done nothing wrong and therefore you have absolutely nothing to confess to me about."
But what's really interesting here is that the dad distinguishes scruples from "religious melancholy" – what we'd probably now call intrusive thoughts. Kenelm is afraid of accidentally sinning and is trying so hard not to that it's interfering with his life; people with religious melancholy are being bombarded with thoughts of sin and are convinced that they are beyond salvation because of those thoughts.
But what's REALLY interesting is a sermon I came across while Googling religious melancholy:
I come now to the last case I proposed to speak to, which doth relate to these unhappy persons, who have naughty, and sometimes blasphemous thoughts start in their minds, while they are exercised in the worship of God, which makes them ready to charge themselves with the sin against the Holy Ghost, to pronounce their condition to be without hopes of remedy, and to fear that God hath utterly cast them off [...] That their case is not so dangerous as they apprehend it, I shall endeavour to show by the following considerations. 1. Because these frightful thoughts do for the most part proceed from the disorder and indisposition of the body [...] 2. Because they are mostly good people, who are exercised with them. For bad men, whose heads are busied in laying one scene of wickedness or other, how they may gratify their malice, or execute their revenge, or over-reach their neighbours, or violate their trusts, or satisfy their beastly lust, rarely know any thing of these kind of thoughts, or use to complain of them. But they are honest and well-meaning Christians of unhealthy constitutions, and melancholy tempers, who are so miserably harrass'd by them; who above all things earnestly desire an interest in their God and Saviour, and for that reason the least dishonourable thought of him, which insinuates itself into their minds, is so dreadful unto them. 3. Because it is not in the power of those disconsolate Christians, whom these bad thoughts so vex and torment, with all their endeavours to stifle and suppress them. Nay often the more they struggle with them, the more they increase [...] It will be therefore much to your detriment to hide yourselves from your friends, and to quit the calling wherein you were exercised; in that people of dejected tempers never fare worse than by themselves, and when they have nothing to do [...] When you find these thoughts creeping upon you, be not mightily dejected [...] Neither violently struggle with them; since experience doth teach that they increase and swell by vehement opposition; but dissipate and waste away, and come to nothing when they are neglected, and we do not much concern ourselves about them [...] It is not therefore a furious combat with melancholy thoughts, which will but weaken and sink the body, and to make the case worse, but a gentle application of such comfortable things as restore the strength, and recruit the languishing spirit that must quash and disperse these disorderly tumults in the head.
To translate into simpler English:
- Your intrusive thoughts are not a moral failing; it is a disease you cannot control.
- The fact that these thoughts disturb you is a sign that you are a good person: you're not imagining sin in order to plan doing it, it's just coming into your head without you wanting it.
- It is counterproductive to isolate yourself (since it cuts you off from support) or to just try really hard not to think about that thing you're thinking about. Trying really hard not to think about it just means you're thinking about it more.
- Instead, remember that the thoughts are only thoughts (and won't do anything without you acting on them) and perform gentle self-care.
This is from 1692. THE SAME YEAR THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS HAPPENED, JUST FOR A POINT OF REFERENCE.
Yo I feel like the idea that the only historical women who counted are the ones who defied society and took on the traditionally male roles is… not actually that feminist. It IS important that women throughout history were warriors and strategists and politicians and businesswomen, but so many of us were “lowly” weavers and bakers and wives and mothers and I feel like dismissing THOSE roles dismisses so many of our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and the shit they did to support our civilization with so little thanks or recognition.
YES. This is such an important point. Those ‘girly’ girls doing their embroidery and quilting bees and grass braiding were vital parts of every domestic economy that has ever existed.
This is precisely what chaps my hide so badly about the misuse of the quote “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” because this is precisely what the author was actually trying to say.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a domestic historian who developed new methodologies to study well-behaved women because they were
1) so vital, and
2) their lives were rarely recorded in the usual old sources.
“Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven’t been. Well-behaved women seldom make history; against Antinomians and witches, these pious matrons have had little chance at all. Most historians, considering the domestic by definition irrelevant, have simply assumed the pervasiveness of similar attitudes in the seventeenth century.”
Original article: “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735” (pdf download from Harvard)
If you didn’t know: Abagail Adams (John Adams’ wife) led a very successful effort to fund the American Revolution. How did she and her tiny army of women do it?
They made lace, and sold it to the aristocrats. Real lace (the stuff you see on old outfits in museums, not the machine-made stuff you might be familiar with from today) is stupidly difficult to make, takes a lot of time and skill, and, well:
If you watch this through, you’ll hear her say this is DOMESTIC lace. This is not fancy, this is for household objects. You can imagine what it would take to make some of the elaborate pieces you see on old aristocratic clothing, and see why it was so expensive and valuable. (Incidentally, if you’ve ever heard the music from the musical 1776, in the song where Abagail and John are trading letters and he’s like “ma’am we need saltpeter” and she’s like “dude we need pins,” THIS IS WHAT THEY NEEDED THE PINS FOR. That song was based on real letters between the two.)
And this is all those revolutionary Revolutionary women did, every free moment of every day. They pulled out their pins and their bobbins and they made lace until they couldn’t see straight, and they sold it to revolutionaries and royalists alike, anyone who would pay. Yard upon yard upon yard of lace to earn cash to translate into rations and bullets.
The war was won by a women’s craft. Not even a “vital” women’s craft like cooking or cleaning. It was won by making a luxury item whose entire purpose was to say “look how wealthy I am, I can afford all this lace.”
Lace was not the only source of income for the Revolution. But it was a major one, and it is extremely fair to say it turned the tide.
And until this post, I bet you didn’t know.
My newest song collaboration with Itoki Hana has been released.
Please watch the video. It was created by Bani-chan (who created UNDERTALE fan animations a long time ago) entirely by herself over a period of two years. I’m extremely proud of this.
(Warning: Contains graphic imagery.)
I love how Defunctland is like "in order to describe the history of this one specific dark ride, I think I will recount the entire history of dark rides as a whole, starting with the American picnic trend in the 1800s" and I am like "oh YEAH let's have it!!! Gimme that information"
For those that don't know, Kev has also done documentaries on:
- Searching for the composer of the four-note Disney Channel jingle. (Feature length.)
- The history of a Star Wars-inspired band that played at Disney one year, HALYX. (Feature length)
- Queuing theory and Fastpass and why Fastpass sucks. (Feature length)
- Coney Island and how institutional racism affected the whole area.
- The bizarre trend of Santa Claus themed amusement parks and how they fizzled out.
- Muppet Babies
All of these documentaries are legitimately riveting. Even the one on Fastpass of all things.
The moment I saw he made The Fastpass documentary I knew it was going to blow my mind with facts... but nothing prepared me to what he had in store with that surprise reveal on the second half.
His series on the history of Jim Henson and the Muppets had me bawling and feeling inspired to create something meaningful with my art.
Years ago, before I left my parents' nest, I was standing in front of a refrigerator, looking inside. My mother approached and said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Looking for the ketchup. I don't see it."
My mother reached behind a couple of bottles and took out the ketchup.
She said, "If you don't see the ketchup, why don't you move things around and look behind them, instead of just standing and staring into the refrigerator? Do you think the ketchup is magically going to appear if you stare into the refrigerator long enough?"
And lo, the light went on over my head, and I said: "Men are hunters, so if we can't find our prey, we instinctively freeze motionless and wait for it to wander into our field of vision. Women are gatherers, so they move things around and look behind them."
Now this sort of thing is not scientifically respectable; it is called a "just-so story", after Kipling's "Just-So Stories" like "How the Camel Got His Hump". The implication being that you can make up anything you like for an evolutionary story, but the difficult thing is finding a way to prove it.
Well, fine, but I bet it's still true.
(source)
I bet it's not
There have been very occasional times, in evolutionary psychology and elsewhere, that some theory is so elegant that I think “That must be true!”, sort of like Einstein’s claim that if relativity wasn’t true, then he was right and God was wrong. The last time I felt this way was about the theory of anger as a way of precommiting to punishing people, just because anger otherwise doesn’t make a lot of sense and this is such a brilliant way to create a successful game theoretic agent that it would be really strange if evolution didn’t latch onto it. But I agree I’m on dangerous ground here.
(source)
it wouldn't be that strange for that not to be the only or even main selection pressure on anger related instincts
these are just so specific... I don't know anything about hunting, and I'm not gonna believe a story from someone else who doesn't know anything about hunting about the selection pressure it exerts on searching related instincts. Like there's really a lot of possibilities here, and no reason to expect an uninformed shot in the dark to succeed
@theunlitpath said:
Anger has got to be about punishing agents, right? What's a plausible explanation that doesn't involve retribution?
could be about status, could be about creating common knowledge about who is causing harm so they can be coordinated against, could be not "about" anything in particular and all these are selection pressures pulling the behaviors triggered through the same hormonal pathway in different directions
i wouldnt say these "dont involve" retribution but rather that the selection pressure is not by way of the threat of retribution altering the behavior of the object of anger (the "recalibrational" theory that i assume scott is referring to)
Chemotaxis. You move around more and are likelier to do something new or leave when you are angry. Therefore when conditions are poor you become angry, and in your agitation may move to a new place or into a new configuration in which things are better and you become less angry, at which point you settle down. Germs can do this.
Actually germs might do the exact opposite of this lol I forget whether maintaining straight line motion vs random tumbling was the one they did when they were—no okay when they move up the gradient towards the good stuff they don’t tumble, when they find themselves moving down the gradient, they tumble more often I think…
My personal one of these is “sleep primarily was developed and maintained to keep us out of trouble.” We can gather enough resources to survive sleep, so we do, and then sleeping reduces our exposure to further risk, so we only have to adapt ourselves to half of the planet’s day/night cycle… IT ALL JUST FITS…
my brother plays a game where whenever a just-so-story like this comes up in conversation he'll play along and lay out an argument for why it makes sense and then halfway through stealthily reverse positions until he's laying out an equally compelling argument for the opposite and then just continue flipping positions back and forth to see how many time he can change the point he's making in one conversation
(we call the game pink-and-blue, because it arose after seeing a really stupid evopsych claim about why women and men preferred those colors as hunters and gatherers)