So majestic

One day we’re going to realize a lot of these black boys and girls that are “troublemakers” are just bored in class. The work is not stimulating them enough.

^^^

and we often get overlooked for adhd, autism and dyslexia which adds to the problem 

It Pairs Well with Oakleys

Averaged Faces of Members of the 116th United States Congress

It’s him, Gerry Mandering

The Soviet 2B1 Kompensator (компенсатор) Tank

1959. The Cold War raged beneath the surface of a world at peace. Secretly, The United States and Russia waged proxy conflicts, and began an arms race that created some of the most destructive nuclear deterrents ever made.

During this time, Freudian psychiatrist Sabina Spielrein analyzed the war effort for Russian Prime Minister Leonid Brezhnev and found that the conflict was in fact, in accordance with her Freudian background, a result of male sexual dysfunction: Americans feared that Russia was sexually superior and vice versa, resulting in a horrible animosity that infected politics, and thus resulted in “ideological” warfare.

Brezhnev decided that the best way to end the war was to crush America not with weapons, but with symbols. Thus was born the 2B1 Kompensator, simply the tank with the largest “barrel.”

Now, the Kompensator did not function. In fact, if its massive gun had ever fired, it would’ve shattered the internal mechanical workings of the tank. But its effect was severe. American president James A. Garfield was so terrified by the massive symbol of Russian sexual superiority that he began nothing short of the space race itself, in which each side attempted to launch larger and larger phalluses toward the classic symbol of femininity, the moon.

America would of course win the space race when three men penetrated the lunar gravity with their mighty Saturn V rocket. But the legacy of scientific advancement would change the world forever. And most oddly of all, it created the Soviet 2B1 Kompensator, human history’s most turgid example of Freudian weapons envy.

Notably, the space race ended shortly after the invention of the drug Viagra. In fact, once the drug was patented, rocketry was brought to a standstill and without impotence to inspire it, no significant space projects existed at all until men such as Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump proposed massive probes into the deep blue sky. Why these great big larger-than-life men felt the need to devote their administrations to create larger and larger rockets is of course anyone’s guess. But let us never forget the example of the Soviet SB1 Kompensator, the barrel of which stood tall and erect, but in the end could only ever shoot blanks.

COVID is straight up more deadly for people of color in the western world. Like we’re not going to be the ones screened. If you have mild symptoms they’ll say you’re overreacting. I know especially black people are more at risk because we have a 20% higher chance of having Asthma. 40-60% higher chance of having lupus. And Especially Indigenous and Black people have a History in the US of being denied healthcare

One of the things I’ve learned as a healthcare provider and a person of color is the strongest words you can use against any medical provider is “ I want it documented in my chart that you are refusing to test me OR that you deem this test unnecessary.” The most important part is getting a copy of your discharge paperwork with those words written. Everything in our notes is permissible in court and in healthcare we have a strong saying “ if you didn’t document it then it didn’t happen”. I’d love to say that 99% of physicians do believe they are doing the right thing or making the right judgement call and do not mean any malice or have ill intent towards any patient regardless of the persons race or socioeconomic status but we all know that shit just isn’t true. Trust your healthcare providers but if you don’t feel heard try explaing that to them and if not you can always ask to speak to another provider for a second opinion. We all have bosses just like you do.

Fantasy books written by women are often assumed to be young adult, even when those books are written for adults, marketed to adults, and published by adult SFF imprints. And this happens even more frequently to women of color.

This topic’s an ongoing conversation on book Twitter, and I thought it might be worth sharing with Tumblr. And by “ongoing,” I mean that people have been talking about this for years. Last year, there was a big blow up when the author R.F. Kuang said publicly that her book The Poppy War isn’t young adult and that she wished people would stop calling it such. If you’ve read The Poppy War, then you’ll know it’s grimdark fantasy along lines of Game of Thrones… and yet people constantly refer to The Poppy War as young adult – which is one of its popular shelves on Goodreads. To be fair, more people have shelved it as “adult,” but why is anyone shelving it as “young adult” in the first place? Game of Thrones is not at all treated this way…

Rebecca Roanhorse’s book Trail of  Lightning, an urban fantasy with a Dinétah (Navajo) protagonist has “young adult” as its fifth most popular Goodreads shelf. The novel is adult and published by Saga, an adult SFF imprint. 

S.A. Chakraborty’s adult fantasy novel City of Brass has “young adult” as its fourth most popular Goodreads shelf. 

Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, an adult fantasy in a world based on Mughal India, has about equal numbers of people shelving it as “adult” or “young adult.” 

Book Riot wrote an article on this, although they didn’t address how the problem intersects with race. I also did a Twitter thread a while back where I cited these examples and some more as well. 

The topic of diversity in adult SFF is important to me, partly because we need to stop mislabeling the women of color who write it, and also because there’s a lot there that isn’t acknowledged! Besides, sometimes it’s good to see that your stories don’t just end the moment you leave high school and that adults can still have vibrant and interesting futures worth reading about. I feel like this is especially important with queer rep, for a number of reasons. 

Other books and authors in the tweets I screenshot include:

TLDR: Women who write adult fantasy, especially women of color, are presumed to be writing young adult, which is problematic in that it internalizes diversity, dismisses the need and presence of diversity in adult fantasy, and plays into sexist assumptions of women writers. 

Never forget the amount of hate R.F. Kuang got for explicitly stating that The Poppy War, one of the most triggering books I’ve ever read, should never be shelved as YA. She did so out of extreme concern of the content getting into the wrong hands without warning.

And then two days later Jay Kristoff said the same thing about Nevernight…and nothing happened.

I’ll never forget taking a course on Sci-Fi, and my instructor brought up how he’d once gone in to a book store and was looking for a new Octavia Butler novel, one that had recently come out but was no longer on the front displays. He looked up and down the Sci-Fi section, then finally asked an employee. They found it in the African-American section. 

This is not exclusive to YA, either. If you’re a diverse author writing diverse characters, you’re shelved into your “category.”

witness

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I’m not attracted to spaceships but the ship from Alien is pretty hot. 

Nostromo.

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I’m so misunderstood

Dear diary, Mood: Apathetic

The whole world is against me. Just because i’m so popular. I’m spreading like wildfire and I am showing no signs of stopping now. Why do they want to flatten my curve. Why can’t I get the love I deserve.  If this were a job, they would fire us, but they can’t. For I am a virus.

I also enjoy chess and cheese