Never ever be normal about fictional characters but please GOD be normal about the people who play them, I am begging you

the way some people reacted to David Jenkins and Neil Gaiman saying their shows would only have 3 seasons is so funny because I saw so many feeling devastated while I am so relieved and relaxed about it. don’t get me wrong I love getting more content with the characters I love but… normalize cohesive storytelling. normalize ENDINGS. do you REALLY want another s*pernatural????

Just saw the most chronically online take of the year of someone ranting unironically that you should look up every single artist with a song you enjoy to make sure they are unproblematic. And if you don't do this them you are as bad as the controversy associated with the artist, for being 'willfully ignorant.' They literally talked about how they went through more than a thousand artists they listened to and whittled it down to 200 this way. This is obsessive and they need help

3 year cake!! 🫶🫶

monarchy has no real purpose and should be abolished irl but im a slut for royal families in fiction. the politics. the intrigue. families divided by the eyes of a nation. the pressure of children told from birth that they are born to rule, born for only one purpose. the stifling of empathy and real bonds and love. the loneliness when all eyes are on you. it’s so inherently tragic and yet everyone involved is terrible because that’s all they can be. gimme.

Do they not have that in the States? As far as I'm aware in Canada (or I guess I should say Quebec since education is a provincial purview), if you homeschool your kid you are responsible for making sure they hit certain milestones/pass certain evaluations and if they find out you're not actually educating your kid, they'll step in and force you to send your kids to school.

It is still rife for abuse (my cousin's uber-Christian wife refuses to send her kids to school lest they be exposed to "un-Christian" ideas, but she still has to ensure they are following a specific provincial curriculum and able to pass specific exams to ensure they are receiving an education), but at least there's some kind of oversight.

It could be way better tho, no argument. Like they should have a bunch of invigilators specifically to go around on a monthly basis and check in to see what the kids are learning.

Like, I want to homeschool my kids if I ever have them. Not for religious reasons, just because the education system is shit and I want them to actually learn how to think, not just tick off boxes on an exam sheet. But a) I have actual teaching experience and would be able to do that myself and b)if I didn't I would hire someone to do it and constantly be checking in. And I would welcome someone else coming in to make sure they are on track, even if it would be a pain in the ass and be as much an evaluation of me as of them, because at least it's a sign that someone cares enough to make sure the kids learning at home are actually getting some kind of education and not being kept "barefoot and stupid" by their parents.

But yeah, oversight in homeschooling is a major thing that needs to happen. Considering a major point of education is to teach a kid citizenship, that's where the private citizen's "rights" to teach their kids bullshit or not teach them at all needs to take a backseat .

John Oliver is right. Families shouldn't be allowed to "just do whatever".

Children are their own people with rights and needs and families shouldn't be allowed to mistreat them.

We as a society must hold parents/caretakets accountable. Through government enforcement if necessary (like in cases of child abuse, but also to ensure educational standards)

The number of times I’ve seen strangers on tumblr receive an ANONYMOUS message about someone they reblogged from, often to as vague a tune as “just so you know xyz on that last post is a bad person”

And the secretive whisper campaign recipient responds “omg thank you I’m sorry please don’t hurt me I don’t know anything about that person of course I’ve deleted it”

Is so wild to me

And frustrating

And also there’s this tiny, evil little voice in the back of my brain going “wow, this is so exploitable, you could exploit this, you could spam so many random messages about literally everyone until everything fell to chaos and maybe someone would even learn something”

Except obviously you can’t and shouldn’t fight abuse by replicating its tactics and that would inevitably do harm even if it is really tempting and also I wonder what would happen if someone made a bunch of bots for even more chaos

Tumblrinas interacting with people offline

Please, for the love of god, please don’t be this person. No matter how long it’s been since an update, no matter how many unfinished stories are sitting on their account, no matter what - do not be this person.

Not only is it insanely rude, but you also do more damage than you think be being such a self-entitled ass about something someone created for free and for fun. “This author” can see what you say.

RIP decency indeed.

I keep seeing posts talking about the WGA/Sag-Aftra strike, which yes, good, but in all this "support writers" sentiment I'm seeing no one talk about book writers, which I think is something people should know more about right now.

We are at an all-time high for book bans, namely targeting queer & PoC-authored books. This means that a lot of schools and libraries are no longer stocking diverse YA books, and if you're not in publishing, you may not realize this but school & libraries are by far one of the biggest markets for diverse YA books.

This means that in 2023, YA book sales are down. This is also in part because Barnes & Noble (the largest physical book retailer in the U.S.) is no longer really stocking YA hardcovers. This means that marginalized authors and debut authors are struggling to sell books.

But it's a LOT worse than that. In the past couple of years, marginalized authors are *really* struggling to get new book deals. Most books are acquired by a publisher about 2 years before they release to the public, so this isn't all that noticeable yet, but a LOT of marginalized authors I've spoken to (myself included) have been unable to sell a new YA book since 2020. So while I had a book out last year, even if I sell one right now, you won't see it until 2025-2026. That's three to four years without a new release or the income I get from publishing those books.

On top of that, Big 5 publishers have started closing imprints (namely their diverse imprints) and have started telling their marginalized YA authors to just go. I've had multiple authors tell me their publisher basically said, "eh, we don't care to put in the work for you anymore. You can just go somewhere else". Of the authors who *are* getting offered new contracts, we're being offered pay far below the cost of living and we're being handed contracts that split our payments 4 or 5 ways and require we sign over our work to be used to train AI so they can replace us a few years down the road.

Authors are freelancers who own our IPs, which means we can't unionize the way Hollywood writers can, and despite authors showing up in droves to support HarperCollins employees when they went on strike for fair wages, we're being hung out to dry when it comes to our own rights.

If you enjoy diverse books, especially diverse YA, please understand that many of the authors you loved over the past 3-5 years are being forced out of the industry. We're being exploited, and we have no way to defend ourselves. Our books sales are drying up thanks to anti-queer legislation, our rights are being eaten up by AI, and our publishers are degrading us while profiting of us and refusing to share those profits with us.

Within the publishing industry, we've all been watching this decline happen over the last decade, but outside of it, I know most people have no idea what's going on so please spread the word. And if you care about diverse books especially in YA, please support marginalized authors in any way you can. The industry needs to be reminded that it needs us before we're all eliminated from it.

I would literally be unstoppable if I didn’t have that persistent pit in my stomach that everyone in a room is just a little bit annoyed by my presence

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

Of all the people who have beef with Columbus, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.