I had a dream that I won some competition for which the prize was a taxidermy weasel. Turned out it was actually a weasel taxidermy DIY kit for which they supplied the raw materials only (one live weasel).
I think the impulse to identify burial customs you’re unfamiliar with as “cursed” is sort of a racist impulse even when it’s applied to Western European cultures that are too far back in the past to be recognizable. Is there really any human culture that is SO alien to us that we have to explain their behavior with Curses and Ancient Evils? Or do people have shifting cultural norms about the handling of human remains, which may lead a tomb to be a site of reverence for generations and later be sealed? Are human bones INHERENTLY CREEPY? Human bones in a grave? A grave is like the number one most statistically likely place to find human bones!
The context was a very xenophobic post about Neolithic European archaeology. Archaeologists have many discussions about the handling of human remains but human remains are located in many places, especially places inhabited by humans, so there are a myriad of reasons why they are dug up as well. Sometimes it is to build a car park. Sometimes it is for the pursuit of knowledge. Sometimes it’s to prove a political point. Some reasons are good and some are bad. Some digs are done in consultation with living descendants and some are not. Feeling Like There’s A Curse is however not a good reason to do or not do anything particularly, especially when there is no reason to believe that the culture the burial is from had any fear of contact with human remains
during the writing process all authors should be asking themselves “does my character belong to a genre of character that exists in naruto?” and “am i executing said genre of character worse than kishimoto did?” and if the answer to both is yes they should do some revisions. this does not need to be legally or contractually mandated because the embarrassment of doing something worse than kishimoto did should be enough motivation in and of itself.
i think every publisher should have to institute a ban on books that fail what i’m calling the “little life” and “what else?” tests
for reference.
"When I taught creative writing at Princeton, [my students] had been told all of their lives to write what they knew. I always began the course by saying, “Don’t pay any attention to that.” First, because you don’t know anything and second, because I don’t want to hear about your true love and your mama and your papa and your friends. Think of somebody you don’t know. What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a Grande Madame in Paris? Things way outside their camp. Imagine it, create it. Don’t record and editorialize on some event that you’ve already lived through. I was always amazed at how effective that was. They were always out of the box when they were given license to imagine something wholly outside their existence. I thought it was a good training for them. Even if they ended up just writing an autobiography, at least they could relate to themselves as strangers."
-Toni Morrison in an 2014 interview with NEA Arts Magazine
Dreamt about a little trash-picking huligan named Yapper (ironic nickname, he didn’t talk) who believed that Lawyers were a sort of supernatural power and had decided he was going to become a Lawyer but he didn’t know basically anything except pick up useful trash off the train tracks so he just started leaving trash gifts outside this one lawyer’s window like a tame corvid and because of this also he overheard them discussing state secrets so now he has knowledge that is essentially a bomb. And he has to decide whether or not to detonate it. But he is 13 and has no general knowledge. This is what Mags would be like if the books were good
“Then come out,“ said the king, “knowing you’ll never die of a fall unless the god himself drops you.”
A papercraft of Eugenides, from the amazingly wonderful Queen’s Thief series! The Thief has been one of my favorite books since it first blew my mind in elementary school, and it’s been such a joy following the subsequent books all through teenagerhood and into adulthood. The author Megan Whalen Turner was at a nearby YA book festival yesterday, and I made this artwork to give to her as a thank-you for the years of incredible stories!
Mercedes Lackey forgot to establish that Mags is good at climbing (a skill there’s no particular reason for him to have, as he spent his first thirteen years of life lying down in a hole) so he just becomes really good at it between books with no explanation and my theory is that she just copy pasted some notes about Skif into the Mags books because she doesn’t give a shit
The demand for more f/f fic (written by people who aren't turned on by it) has been going on online for decades. In the LiveJournal days, writing and reading f/f was called "eating your vegetables." You weren't supposed to like it, but it was morally suspect if you didn't do it. Like, callout posts would be made for fic writers who had never written f/f.
Obviously, this strategy worked very well to encourage f/f fics, and everyone was happy forever.
That's hilarious actually. Wildly superficial engagement with text, treated as a solemn duty.
The ask wasn't joking?
Also I love the derogatory slang term for this more general phenomenon, "dutyfic"
It should be called yuri duty.
eternally painful that you can't socialize without people expecting you to talk. sometimes I just want to be around. like a cat
The fisher is a large member of the mustelid family and the only extant member of the genus Pekania. ©BIORecord23
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