If any of you guys live in one of the red states, PLEASE call your Senators! We have until April 23rd to save Net Neutrality and it will only take one more vote to do so!
When Virginia Tech happened, I ran the public affairs shop for a national association of funeral directors and I managed the response. Sometimes I think we forget about the power of communal grief, of creating space to share anguish and sorrow even if your connection to what was lost is tenuous at best.
I’ve worked with DMORT teams and sheriff’s departments and DHS. I know what a body looks like when it’s been decomposing in water. I know what it looks like when it’s been harvested for organs and tissue, without the family’s consent. I know what it looks like after a suicide, and after it’s been riddled with multiple rounds.
When Sandy Hook happened, it felt personal in so many ways. Kid A was the same age as those kids. Later I’d learn about Dylan Hockley, a little boy with special needs who was very much like A, who died in the arms of the teaching aide he loved and it was like being one-step removed from a horror story, the roles cast with someone else’s child. I knew every funeral director who served those families, who did the best they could to put those tiny bodies back together. I still have nightmares about it, on the regular.
My mom taught school for 40 years. I remember, when Columbine happened. I was a senior in college and I told her I wanted her to be done and she told me to stop being so dramatic. When they started doing lockdown drills she knew her time was coming.
Vegas happened, and it barely held the front page for 48 hours and I thought, you know, I actually like shooting guns, I have the receipts, but what’s it going to take for any of us to say something here is so beyond fucked up we need to change.
Then there was Florida, the kids who were old enough they could speak for themselves. Speak for the dead, all those who had come before them. Call us to the carpet, the ones charged with protecting them. Call out the people elected to keep them safe, who failed them over and over. They won’t be quiet.
This time feels different.
I don’t want to go, baby New York to east California There’s a new wave coming, I warn ya We’re the kids in America (whoa)
If you’ve been noticing my absence over the past 6 months or so and wondering where I’ve gone, or if you’re a patron who has read my updates bemoaning dealing with the vague and amorphous “some health problems,” here’s what’s been going on with me.
Right now Amazon has the Kindle version of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s first volume of Black Panther for free. Hopefully its free on the European Amazon websites as well, because they pulled a lot of stuff (especially about the Dora Milaje: https://www.amazon.com/Black-Panther-Nation-Under-2016-ebook/dp/B01JT4A2DW
It’s not free but there is sale on comixology. Still, I’m sure people can find this link useful. Thank you for pointing me in good reading direction! marvel comics can be so overwhelming when you have no idea where to start 😀
I’d be super grateful for those links to making of too! I already spent the self appointed treat yourself b-day money so it will be a while before I can buy that artbook with clear conscience 😀
Here’s some of the best/most interesting of articles I’ve read so far (but I can’t wait to get my hands on the art book to read more)
While I understand this post from a human, and “sensitivity” and “let’s be diplomatical’ standpoint…As a writer, I don’t like the undertone of it. You are insulting writers, white, or otherwise, by telling them that they need YOU to meddle with their creative process to think on this properly before they start writing. You, are assuming that us writers, proper writers, would start on such a movie/subject without delving into any research, and that is aberrant.
So I’ll assume what you meant to say instead was: hey, you leisurely fanfic writers, this is a sensitive hero to write about, don’t be dicks about it kay? kay.
Nope! Don’t put words in my mouth. What I mean to say, which apparently sort of subtle for a lot of people reading this post, is “Don’t be a racist.”
This might come off as a little aggressive, but there’s a lot of hot takes on my post right now and I picked yours because it’s my least favorite. I do assume that many writers will not think their stories or meta through properly. I do assume that the worst hot takes will be from white writers who lack necessary knowledge and context.
Why do I assume this? Because last week I read with my own two eyeballs, a story about Tony Stark “saving” Shuri from being a “child soldier.” Because there are enough slavery!AUs, Jim Crow!AUs, apartheid!AUs, and Holocaust!AUs on AO3 that the tags fill themselves in. (There are also egregiously awful published books like this, so it’s not like fanfic authors are the only ones doing this.) I have read multiple stories that involve Sam Wilson as an actual, literal Magical Negro. Seriously, have you looked over at the Star Wars fandom in the last few years?
I’m an optimist by nature, so my hope is that a lot of mistakes will be unintentional, and made in good faith, by good people who don’t think their voices and thoughts and experiences are the only ones that matter. And if gently reminded that there’s an opportunity here to learn and do better, most people will take it. That was the point. Is that more clear to you?
I definitely don’t think they need ME PERSONALLY to “meddle in their creative process” – in fact, I’m literally saying the opposite, because I Am A White, and no one should be looking at me for opinions on this one. I wrote this post because I am a writer, and I do the work, and I believe in the value of it.
So quit going around assuming you know what people mean, and listen.
heaven forbid!!! we can’t all go around being “human,” “sensitive,” and “diplomatic.” hansbekhart, you absolute nut.
Yeah this SJW shit is out of hand #allstoriesmatter
This is Josh Thiede. He designs shoes in California and drives for Uber in his free time. He has two younger sisters, Melissa and Taylor, and a younger brother, Hunter.
He has been missing nearly a week. There’s not much I can do from Ohio but I can try to help spread the word. PLEASE if anyone knows him, saw someone who looks like him, ANYTHING please contact the LA Missing Persons Division.
Everyone else PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE like, reblog, share, etc.
This family is full of genuinely nice and empathetic people. Taylor is my best friend from college- I love her with all my heart. Please help me help her.
So Black Panther opens nationwide today. I saw it last night, and let me tell you: it’s absolutely incredible. It’s as good as you’re hearing. It’s gorgeous. It’s compelling. Everyone acts their faces off. It’s also, inarguably, the most complex movie in the MCU.
You might leave the theater super jazzed and wanting to write meta and fic about how beautiful Wakanda is, how badass the Dora Milajae are, or who the real villains might be and why, or over that little cameo at the end (no spoilers). And you’re not wrong – but if you’re white, pump the brakes on that feeling for a few days.
There’s a lot to take in, about Black Panther. It’s an intricate, incredibly well thought-out movie that covers a lot of ground in terms of thorny and important themes. It stares right in the face of generational trauma, the legacy of slavery, conflicts between the diaspora and Africans and what responsibilities and connections each feel to each other, how colonization continues today under different names, and on and on.
And you’re gonna be missing the context for a lot of that. So hit pause on that content creation for a little bit, okay?
There’s a lot of meta, fic, thought posts, personal experiences, and resources already being shared by Black fans. There’s gonna be a lot more. Take the next few days to read them. Get lost reading up on the historical and cultural touchstones that the movie draws from. Follow Black fans and reblog their stuff. Listen before you hit post on that fic or meta.
And maybe you don’t end up posting it at all. Maybe you learn the context of the characters and issues and history you saw up on screen, and that great idea you came out of the theater with seems more and more like a hot take. That’s okay. It’s totally fine just to listen.
I’m not saying that white people aren’t allowed in the Black Panther fandom. I’m not saying that only Black people can write Black Panther fic. First, that would be incredibly hypocritical of me; and Second, I think that white people not putting in the effort to humanize non-white people literally makes us worse human beings.
What I’m saying is, if you wanna do it: it’s worth putting in the work. Not just to create content that isn’t full of microaggressions and outright racism, but participation means you have to put in the work to do it right. If you’re not willing to wait, and listen, and learn, and work – then just don’t.
“Whether the Andrea Gail rolls,
pitch-poles, or gets driven down, she winds up, one way or another, in a
position from which she cannot recover. Among marine architects this is known
as the zero-moment point – the point of no return.” –Sebastian Junger, “The
Perfect Storm”
Posts like this aren’t my usual fare, but there’s a lot of
readers on Tumblr. So y’all might be interested – or, if not, you really should
be.
On Monday, this went down:
That’s the bloodless, matter-of-fact, ho-hum business event
way of describing it. Let me paint you a different picture.
On Monday morning, every single Barnes & Noble location –
that’s 781 stores – told their full-time employees to pack up and leave. The
eliminated positions were as follows: the head cashiers (those are the people
responsible for handling the money), the receiving managers (the people
responsible for bringing in product and making sure it goes where it should),
the digital leads (the people responsible for solving Nook problems), the newsstand
leads (the people responsible for distributing the magazines), and the bargain
leads (the people responsible for keeping up the massive discount sections). A
few of the larger stores were able to spare their head cashiers and their
receiving managers, but not many.
Just about everyone lost between 3 and 7 employees. The
unofficial numbers put the total around 1,800 people.
People.
We’re not talking post-holiday culling of seasonal workers.
This was the Red Wedding. Every person laid off was a full-time
employee. These were people for whom Barnes & Noble was a career.
Most of them had given 5, 10, 20 years to the company. In most cases it was
their sole source of income.
Some Belated Valentines 2k17 Highlights from Flower Land
– The giant Russian man who stormed through the door while we were quite busy and shouted “Whoooo is helping me? I need BEST FLOWERS in the WORLD because I have BEST WIFE!!”
– The old man who picked up his roses at 8 AM and when I said “I hope she likes them!” giggled and said “These oughta keep me outta the dog house for at least a week!”
– At 3 PM: “I need a delivery of tulips to the south side today.” “We aren’t doing any more deliveries to the south side today.” “I should tell you that this is on behalf of my client {Redacted Football Player} of The Bears and he is willing to pay literally anything.”
– “Hey, boss, I have an order from FootballPlayer of The Bears and he is willing to pay literally anything.” “Don’t you mean FootballPlayer of The Bears FOR NOW?”
-“Okay tell him we’ll do it but he has to buy all our remaining tulips.”
– One guy wanted to buy a teddy bear holding a real rose so I made a teeny tiny rose bouquet for the bear to hold and it is easily the cutest thing I have ever made.
– This same guy grabbed a 55 dollar arrangement from my table and brought it to me and said “Add flowers to this until it is 200 dollars.”
– Valentine’s Day makes some men crazy.
– When the last man came in to pick up his arrangement twenty minutes after we were supposed to close everyone who was working shouted his name in unison and it was Hilarious.
– All the parents sending flowers to their single professional daughters. Almost all of them made me teary. People from all over the country have daughters who live in Chicago and are single and they all wanted to send their single Chicago daughters flowers.
– “A man is calling and he says you are his best friend?” “What?” “He has an Eastern European accent?” “OH! It’s the man who has the best wife!”
– “I would like 100 roses.” “That will be 600 dollars.” “I would like 12 roses.”
Tumblr Exodus 