#classism in publishing industry

[m-c-easton]

Submission Spotlight: The Chicago Review

Submission Spotlight this month at The Trailer Park MFA: The Chicago Review. They've been around since 1946, are affiliated with the University of Chicago, and will definitely bump up your rep—but you won't earn a dime. Your call. #publishing #writerslife

Their door is open for fiction and poetry submissions until June 15 (nonfiction submissions are open year-round), so if you’re looking to publish a story, now’s the time! The Chicago Review accepts work through their Submittable page, where you can also set up a free Submittable account if you haven’t got one already. The downside? They charge a steeper-than-industry-standard submission fee of…

[rollercoasterwords]

fanfiction being bad is actually a good thing

sorry that one post has just put me into a musing mood abt like. the way people respond to "bad writing" in fanfiction. so i have written a little essay xx

anyway. first off, any measure of "bad writing" is going to be inherently subjective, whether or not people want to acknowledge that. no matter what critera you use to try and claim that ur measure is more "objective," you will still be able to find published fiction that does not meet those criteria, which is part of the reason that i think it is ridiculous in the first place to act as though "book" and "fanfiction" are two diametrically opposed categories of literature in which "book" = good writing and "fanfiction" = bad writing such that the only way to express a book is bad is to claim it's "more like fanfiction than a book" and the only way to elevate fanfiction is to claim that it's "more like a book than fanfiction." and of course there are all the underlying issues with classism racism ableism etc when buying into the myth of the meritocracy of publishing.

but even acknowledging that any measure of "bad writing" is going to be subjective, i don't think it's unfair to cultivate your own standards for what makes writing good versus bad. everyone is going to do that anyway, so what's more important to me is that a person understands what factors are influencing their measurement and acknowledges the subjectivity inherent to this sort of critique. and i do think, generally speaking, that media which exists within a profit economy is fair game for critique as to whether it is "good" or "bad," as i have talked about before on my blog. and i think depending on what criteria you are using to define bad, there will be instances where it makes more or less sense to make normative judgments about the popularity of such media. for example--if someone says "marvel movies shouldn't [normative judgment] be so popular because the writing is cringey," i find that a less compelling argument than "marvel movies shouldn't be so popular because they are military propaganda."

but i don't think that sort of critique about whether writing is "good" or "bad" has a place in fanfiction spaces. aside from the fact that fanfiction exists primarily outside of any profit economy, the reason that you will likely encounter more "bad" writing in fanfiction is that it's a space where many people are actively learning how to write--and that's a good thing. the only way for someone to become a good writer is to do a lot of bad writing first, so i actually think it's great that there's a bunch of shitty fanfiction out there on the internet--every bad fic u come across is a developing writer who's honing their craft, and they've found a perfect space to do so.

and yet i see "bad writing" get brought up a lot regarding fanfiction in two specific ways.

1. the idea outlined above, where people devalue fanfiction as a whole and act as though "fanfiction" is synonymous with "bad writing" or somehow an inferior medium.

i see this happening both with people who scoff at fanfiction and with people who try to redeem or elevate fanfiction by placing it in closer proximity to published books (i.e., THIS fic isn't like those other, shitty fics! this one is as good as [insert classic novel/published author/etc here]!!").

quite frankly i think this is evidence that these people have bought wholeheartedly into the publishing industry's myth of meritocracy, something that we should seriously question. but if anything, i also find it sad because i think it is a very limiting way to view fanfiction, which is its own unique art form in my opinion. fanfiction has its own conventions and strengths independent of published fiction, and there are many stylistic and structural elements unique to fanfiction that just don't really work in published books. for example--those 15k oneshots you'll come across every so often with lowercase song titles and prose that kicks your teeth in. that is a style of writing that is pretty unique to fanfic. or those sprawling, 400k+ works where tons of time is spent meandering through characters' lives and relationships--those, too, are somewhat unique to fanfiction, as in published books stories tend to get pared down more. i think those who want to convince people that fanfiction is good should spend less time trying to place it in proximity to published fiction and more time considering how fanfiction functions as a unique art form that is worthy of merit thanks to its uniquity

2. people who throw a fit when they see a fanfic with "bad writing" get attention and praise. usually i see this happen if a fic gets some measure of popularity--suddenly, people will begin to pop up talking about how the fic has "bad writing," and therefore shouldn't be popular.

i think that what gets me with these folks, aside from how obviously their own subjectivity regarding what makes writing good or bad has gone unexamined, is how....vindictive they seem. as if the idea that something they deem "bad" writing could ever be widely enjoyed is personally offensive to them. and i just think this sort of behavior is so stupid for two reasons--first, of course, there is the obvious issue of subjectivity. even if you think something is badly written, your opinion isn't somehow more important to the world than everyone else's. if other people are enjoying a fic, clearly they do not agree with your subjective opinion, and that's fine! you don't have to read a fic if you don't like it, and you can let other people enjoy the story. they are reading the exact same writing as you, and they can draw their own independent conclusions about how good or bad they think it is.

but second--you are not doing anyone any good by screaming about how bad a fic's writing is. like. i think there is perhaps this idea of like "oh this writer is bad but their writing is popular and everyone is telling them it's good, which means they are going to think their bad writing is good and keep writing badly forever." which, again, disregarding the obvious subjectivity, i just....don't think is true. like--if someone is writing badly, and people are going "hey i like this story keep it up!" what will most likely happen is that that person will keep writing, developing their skill the more they write and becoming a better writer. like, it's pretty difficult for writing to just remain stagnant; your writing will change the more you write, inevitably. especially when it comes to fanfiction, where many people are, again, developing their writing skill. but if someone is writing badly, and people are going "boo this sucks!" that writer is much less likely to do the actual thing that would make their writing better (keep writing) and instead more likely to just. stop altogether. in which case it's just like--congratulations on removing some more art from the world! cunt.

anyway. the conclusion i am trying to get at here is that i think people need to stop being so preoccupied with "bad writing" in fanfiction spaces. it's impossible to objectively measure the "goodness" or "badness" of writing in the first place, and trying to do so for any purpose other than making personal decisions about whether you want to read something or like, discussing in private groupchats with friends, usually just results in driving developing writers away from writing entirely and promoting the myth of meritocracy in publishing such that we reify the book/fanfiction dichotomy in which fanfiction will always be assumed to be inferior.

[kingocats]

I just think about how people really do look down on service workers and assume that if you work in the service industry that you must be unintelligent/ uneducated/ unambitious OR you must really want to work somewhere else and this couldn’t possibly be a fulfilling career for you when in fact I know plenty of bartenders/ hosts/ servers who use their intelligence and creativity to excel in their fields and are actually making more money than a lot of office workers.

And say you do have an ambition outside of the industry. People will assume you have already failed in that field and will never actually fulfill those outside ambitions because restaurant/ bar work is a “dead end job”

I think of stephanie danler when she published sweetbitter, everyone was so shocked that a server could have published a book and they genuinely believed it was successful because of her looks, it’s so insane. Sexism and classism rolled into one

[adamantineheart]

still thinking about that classism in "ownvoices" authors thing because i really, really, really think everything to do with publishing all the way to READERS is skewed that way. who has time to write and read for leisure, who has time to pay for new books and therefore influence the publishing industry... it all goes together. and it's just. the reality is so many ppl aren't wealthy. they just aren't. so these stories can be so far from their realities.

i really do think fanfiction is filling a gap here and when i say that i very much include or even put wattpad fic first. like just a quick glance at wattpad and so many of the top stories are millionaire or even billionaire romances because that's such a huge wish fulfillment thing.

this fic has 50 MILLION VIEWS. like??? and look at it! look at it

yet looking into the author for just 1 sec and she has a gofundme for her mom's cancer treatments :(

her latest tweet was this!

like. this means something.

+ now imagine this for poor people who are marginalized in various ways writing something that is niche or looking for niche content. how people can't support buying so many niche magazines and shit. how people need to write things that make money. how lowbrow/highbrow tastes can be so wildly different and how that is so often class related.

anyway idk where i'm even going with this other than i am so often bored by mainstream fiction and childhood dream was to be a writer. lol.

[biographydivider]

*whispers* genuinely don’t know if this info is wanted or needed but my autistic lil brain won’t leave it alone. The “lesbian necromancers in space - need I say more?!” BS with book blurbs is the natural progression of “this book is Bridgerton meets Star Wars”, and it’s literally how books are marketed from the second an author first queries their manuscript to an agent - you are expected to have something like this as part of your pitch, as much as a synopsis or a bio. There are entire online pitching events based around this and a tweet-based summary. If your book doesn’t fit one of those X meets Y sentences, you better have a quirky one-liner to sum it up so you can grab the attention of the agent of your dreams who is looking at literally thousands of other books in your genre.

But then at some point it permeated how booksellers and bloggers and Booktokkers and whoever else actually market their books to their readers, potentially in part because of that other bad habit publishing has picked up; using fanfic tropes to pitch books. I have literally caught myself doing this at my job - I pitched a book to a reader the other day as “enemies to lovers in a bookshop”. It’s quick, it’s punchy, it sells a book effectively when you have a million other books to sell that day, but it’s not very healthy for the publishing industry as a whole.

You know - like the classism and the racism and the transphobia and the reliance on big chain bookshops and celebrity authors pushing out boring as shit children’s books and

[rotationalsymmetry]

1. WE believe that fat people are fully entitled to human respect and recognition.

2. WE are angry at mistreatment by commercial and sexist interests. These have exploited our bodies as objects of ridicule, thereby creating an immensely profitable market selling the false promise of avoidance of, or relief from, that ridicule.

3. WE see our struggle as allied with the struggles of other oppressed groups against classism, racism, sexism, ageism, financial exploitation, imperialism and the like.

4. WE demand equal rights for fat people in all aspects of life, as promised in the Constitution of the United States. We demand equal access to goods and services in the public domain, and an end to discrimination against us in the areas of employment, education, public facilities and health services.

5. WE single out as our special enemies the so-called “reducing” industries. These include diet clubs, reducing salons, fat farms, diet doctors, diet books, diet foods and food supplements, surgical procedures, appetite suppressants, drugs and gadgetry such as wraps and “reducing machines”.

WE demand that they take responsibility for their false claims, acknowledge that their products are harmful to the public health, and publish long-term studies proving any statistical efficacy of their products. We make this demand knowing that over 99% of all weight loss programs, when evaluated over a five-year period, fail utterly, and also knowing the extreme proven harmfulness of frequent large changes in weight.

6. WE repudiate the mystified “science” which falsely claims that we are unfit. It has both caused and upheld discrimination against us, in collusion with the financial interests of insurance companies, the fashion and garment industries, reducing industries, the food and drug industries, and the medical and psychiatric establishment.

7. WE refuse to be subjugated to the interests of our enemies. We fully intend to reclaim power over our bodies and our lives. We commit ourselves to pursue these goals together.

[whiskeyterrafoxtrot]

I've officially started making money from my debut novel, Sydney West!

For those who are new here - I'm a self-published author, mainly because of things I know about the traditional publishing industry. Particulars when it comes to agent behavior, publishing house exploitation, and the rise of cost-cutting using AI trained on art theft and violation of intellectual properties.

I'm Blackbird Parlor and Whiskey Terra Foxtrot because I refuse to dilute my work simply to make it "palatable" or to make corporations money they can use to exploit other people, to make more money. I went full-time in my storefront after being targeted for union-busting by a manager who knew I have PTSD, and used it against me + threatened all my coworkers and got them to throw me under the bus.

I've also been threatened with litigation from a previous manager, because of my disabilities making my job with him not a good fit, and he lied to court that I had lied about having disabilities (involving a bit of classism and "I don't see how a middle class suburban --" you get the picture. Then he admitted he lied to court and I submitted his emails to them lol).

I cannot work for anyone else anymore. I can with with, but the "for" is something I'm simply not capable of. It's not "doesn't play nicely," but that I don't fuckin play.

But back to Sydney West. Every cent put toward publishing came out of my own pocket. Every bit of formatting, cover design, and the majority of the editing (I occasionally luck into existing acquaintances being revealed as industry professionals who are into indie work, but that's another post entirely) is also my work.

And because of your support, that's come back to me, so I can finally start working on paying bills with my work.

This is my full-time career, and I've had to be clever about it. Even in viewing myself in the same field as other artists of various types, I'm still... different. In a lot of ways.

Thanks for helping me realize that's not so bad.

if novels are in your media of choice, you can hit the link above and find an indie bookstore that can get you Sydney West, or you can currently order it directly through me, here:

[vergess]

Reading. Fanfiction. Is exactly as much practice. As reading mainstream publishing.

I don't know where the actual everliving fuck you people got the idea that reading is all it takes to become a writer, but I'm sick to death of seeing it, especially from egregious cocks so disconnected from the reality of both writing and publishing specifically, that they'd forget about FUCKING PRACTICING YOUR CRAFT BY ACTUALLY WRITING.

You utter DIPSHITS have gotten so far up your own asses about how mainstream publishing is Better than that nasty ooky fanfiction because you're fucked up on capitalist propaganda about how the only real art is the art you pay for.

To the extent that you've confused step one (honing your critical eye) for EVERYTHING, to the point that instead of encouraging beginning writers to ACTUALLY WRITE, you fuckheaded nitwits are demanding they STOP READING.

No, you cunts are NOT demanding they 'readore.' You're demanding they pay more for products that used to have structural support to actually make them higher quality than the average free work.

There haven't been properly paid and scheduled staff editors (the people actually responsible for teaching good writing habits unlike you runny shits) for decades at this point.

Yet you still insist with all your hearts that mainline publishing is "better."

So much better that it can not only replace works made freely for and by marginalized people without capitalist manipulations... but that it can replace ACTUALLY WRITING

You FUCKING TWATS ARE THE VERY PROBLEM OP IS DESCRIBING.

The rule for getting good at art, any art, THE rule is to PRACTICE AND IMPROVE.

But you've replaced practice (writing) and improvement (editing) with "obey me like a scared child, buy the special totems I declare holy; pay now or forever hold your tongue."

This post is fucking sickening. Not the OP, which is fine or whatever. But the people straight up LYING about whether ACTUALLY PRACTICING YOUR WRITING is as good for you as reading their preferred genre of under edited, expensive drivel instead of your own preferred genre of underedited, inexpensive drivel.

Fuck these pigheaded, classist* morons so brain-riddled with capitalist propaganda that they forgot that the "vulgar" arts of the people,the "folk" arts of the unvarnished worker classes, ARE. STILL. ART. Just as complex and evocative as whatever expensive assed ivory tower bullshit you're in love with.

So they come up with comical garbage about how it's too character driven (like mainstream romance?). Or doesn't build rich enough worlds before occupying them (like mainstream spec fic?). Or that, somehow, WRITING FOR TV THE LITERAL PROFESSIONAL FANFIC CIRCUIT is magically different despite having the exact, and I do mean EXACT same "constraints" re character and world introduction.

Take your pigheaded classism and FUCK OFF INTO THE SUN.

And for the rest of you? Write the everliving SHIT out of your fanfics.

Because ACTUALLY WRITING (and editing your work) trumps any reading you can do, in terms of Actual Practice And Skillbuilding. Even the holy and sanctified reading of late capitalist publishers.

*I can only prove classism: hatred of a free artwork in favour of an equivalent paid one. But let's be realistic here; mainstream publishing also hates queers, POC, women, the disabled, and more! Propping up a failing and bigot laden industry that has been actively pumping out worse and worse product for 20 years because the free shit gives you cooties.

fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden

[blacktoothcomics]

problem with being mixed is we don't really get to belong anywhere. I can't write for an "us", only a "me", because each mixed kid's experience is wildly different from t'other, even within similar demographs.

i'm a quarter (eight 🎱?) indigenous american, stricken with auto-immune issues resulting in pretty severe vitiligo in early childhood, triggered by extreme stress (we lived in isolation and poverty, our white mom excluded from community support on both sides, and i lost a sibling to rape and murder before i was out of diapers).

state schooling was hell. abrahamic saturation in popculture, deeply unsettling. peers and classmates inexplicably cruel, when they weren't white kids trying to obsessively monopolize my friendship and esteem based on my heritage, they were brown kids pushing me out of the lunchline accusing my grandparents of colonialism.

at age 13 i tried to enroll in algonquin language classes, the maiyami language smothered by colonial catholics, and was promptly bullied out by browner students with better monied parents. trying to explain my vitiligo was no use -- instead of support and acceptance i found the exact same amount of abelism and classism and racial supremacy rhetoric as some white communities tend to foster; worse for me because there was no definition for this kind of exclusion -- it wasn't racism exactly, and i didn't have anything for any of these kids to be jealous over but that was the only answer i was ever given, that the browner and better monied tribal american kids were envious.

as a teenager i was approached by another racial supremacy group, a second-gen korean woman who agreed with my ha'native dad that their races (??) needed reproductive preservation. (barf.)

my dad, along with permission from my mother, had frozen and sold the eggs of my murdered sibling. in the name of racial preservation, this happened, the reproductive choices of a toddler, stolen, her body harvested for parts so monied white women could exorcise some of their guilt and collect some little brown babies on the way (y'know, for social clout, and bcos birtherists are fukken creeps).

the woman who approached me with ideas of racial preservation knew me through my dad, or rather through my dad's choices and the media bruhahaha that arose when mom tried to sue for money owed (she had only agreed to the harvest of her dead child for lack of ability to pay for hospital and funeral fees).

the second gen ha'korean woman was also an ecofascist, and shared her aspirations to genocide white americans the same way tribal americans had been genocided.

and i, mixed race but pretty thoroughly hatecrimed by adults and teens of both (and all) races by then, knew this woman for a crock of shit who needed to be stopped. i wasn't desperate enough for community to fall for violent extremism, despite the accidental death on my record from an industrial accident that white-ass mormon media had published as purposeful sabotage.

if ever you're curious, investigate "anna fox" of east leroy, athens, or battle creek michigan. you might find her headstone, and media records for "anna's law", which specifies that organ donations from unconsenting minors never include reproductive parts, cos baby harvesting is fucking ghoulish and racial supremacy is goddamn gross.

so anyways, i stoolpigeoned on the ha'korean supremacist and her entire toady operation of terrorists, because what the fuck else was i going to do? fight the moonies alone?! white supremacists were scary obsessives and tan supremacists probably weren't going to be any less violent or controlling or rapey (re: reproductive pressures lain against erryone, disabled or queer or regular asexual).

as i never thought to guess, this 'betrayal' of a group of obsessives projecting allyship on me, uh, didn't turn out so well for me or my family down the line. harassments from outside the neighborhood were seasonally random but constant, paired with a growing meth crisis and opiod epidemic recruiting the resentments of the "white trash" that i had stood up for in the first fucking place. survivors are the worst to other survivors.

also, that open-faced drainage ditch was going to catch fire eventually, sheer coincidence it was my cousinage's fireworks to land the hit, mmmmaybe we don't leave flammable industrial waste running freely through residential neighborhoods, even if the community is mostly latinx. (won that fucking lawsuit, too, but as ever the real harm came with the media coverage of the entire thing, which drew local eyeballs and fanned the flames of extralocal rumormongering.) ha'korean moonie loonie got the idea somewhere that i was an ecoterrorist, because this was a useful brag to the ecofascist my dad had married, a woman who later would try to freeze and harvest my surviving sister's eggs in her teenaged years, because money and human trafficking.

so, i dunno. all this happened under every different kind of president this country ever had in my lifetime. mom was still sexually assaulted by dad's CO, dad still told mom to just roll over and take it, we were still too poor to afford safe or decent housing when mom fled and was rejected by her catholic parents for leaving the marriage, nevermind healthcare or nutrition. white parent still ostracized by both white and brown sides of the family, hashbrown parent still a shitass homeopathic grifter getting labortrafficked by his shitlib second spouse.

my sister was still raped, my twin still murdered, my classmates still unimaginably cruel and my peers still unreasonably selfish; the white music teacher at verona elementary still raped my white hashbrown sister and later my classmate and always his own daughter; i still stabbed the music teacher and he still never saw jailtime (and last i knew still got to work in education).

the immigrants to this land still don't know how to fukken act right, and the indigenous to this land still consider themselves beyond goddamn reproach.

and all through childhood and teenhood i couldn't be fucking bothered to choose a side. both sides sucked in the exact same ways, fortunate survivors lashing out in confused grief, pissbaby bawling 'bout land and economy, narratives soured by the refusal to name the *actual* enemy to us all.

like, look, very few classmates believed me about my native heritage, which was fine because we didn't really have much social justice clout before the widespread accessibility of the internet and whitepipo tend to get xtra rapey when they suspect minority status (my first personal actual sexual abusers were white girls, while the meth'd up teens to kill my twin and rape our white sister were hashbrown boys, there is literally zero difference between the axes).

and still, the only connection to my native heritage i have left is a few scattered secondary relatives, which i don't speak to re: lingering issues with cultural supremacy and general lack of interest or effort on their side. and a few artifacts, heirlooms even, which have gone missing piece by stolen piece and year by displaced year. and stories, i have stories. memories. training. the anonymity of the manapogo aunties, their warnings that not every tribe in america was the same, that we didn't all get along and that the schism of capitulation to colonialism still remained between us all -- maiyami, as was explained to me by my oldest and most demented greatgrammaw, maiyami were considered "uncivilized" by white settlers and reservation-locked indigenous tribes both. on account of all the ? miscegenation? idk the word for it, basically we was gypsy trash who openly and easily married french bohemes freshly escaped from their pressgangs, which "watered down" uh "the bloodlines" but on educated hindsight probably actually just saved my ancestors from localized vulnerability to le plagues 'n such.

i'm saying immigration is good, actually!

colonialism = bad, capitalism = bad, but accepting refugees and immigrants = very cool and beneficial and even fun if it's done respectably.

maiyami tribe's greatest sin, at the time of exclusion from reservation displacement (we wasn't even ON the trail of tears lmao)? LEARNING. LANGUAGES. FOR TRADE.

what's one of my casual interests that i do for fun? is it languages, real or imaginary, lettered or mathematical or code? isn't it!

and maiyami, see, they easily lost their french-algonquin pigeon because, uh, hurrdurr being allowed to STAY ALIVE tends to matter more than what sounds are coming out your mouth in which order. it wasn't this great betrayal of history or honor or ancestry to let the maiyami tradespeak wither under the stones of the catholic church, it was just survival.

and fellow survivors are the worst to others lucky enough to survive.

i am mixed. i don't have a "we" or an "us" to speak for, even if my experiences weren't that far removed from other little white kids, other brown teens, other 'mixed' persons. black and brown tribes across the seas aren't a monolith, either, not even in the cultural deadlands carved out by slavery, or imperialism. we're all mixed.

i can't speak for an "us" because i can't speak for everyone in my nation, in my tax bracket, in my generation.

but i am more native to america than (checks notes) absolutely fucking anyone else i personally goddamn know, so i do feel entitled to say this:

you are a guest. yeah, you. you are a guest to your neighbors, to your country, to your lands; because we are all of us, guests, to this planet. we are guests to each other, and we need, us, we, together, need to goddamn remember that. you are a guest.

you're a guest to your tribe, your heritage, your family. the people who fucked to make you, they invited you to this world and you were not given the chance to decline and you were not given the chance to consent, but you are a guest just the same.

i never owed deference to my parents just like the maiyami never owed deference to the algonquin or pottowatomi; we were all just guests to one another, and owed each other nothing but consideration, a chance to goddamn consent. immigrants are guests no matter where they (or you) are from, no matter where we land, where next we might need to flee.

i am comfortable with displacement because it's something my immediate family has had to do, because it's something the family in their past has had to do, because their ancestors also had to flee to survive, also had to uproot and lose connections and make new lives with new neighbors and missing heirlooms and et c.

and i'm not any less native for being white, and neither is the european quadroon fresh in from a shitty island somewheres. we're all native to this planet; and the #1 difference between settlers and indigenous americans was mypipo had the good goddamn sense to pack up and fucking *leave* when the weather turned.

oh i left michigan as often as financially possible. besides the klanadians, the mormons, and the neonazis in from whiteflight detroit, my neighborhood also struggled with abrahamic cults in black and brown communities, and pressurized class violence which almost always saw women murdered and children raped all up and down every tax bracket (THANKS, CAPITALISM).

and me still mixed, still without definitive community, still dodging attention-hungry church leaders and their viciously desperate victims, still inexplicably popular and well-received at random (brutha i had to get good at all kindsa languages, not least the codes with the switching thereof). still harassed by victims-turned-villain, still assaulted by girls and women both in my peer group and older and MUCH older, all of them white and all of them perceiving me as Not White.

while all the brownpipo accused me of whiteness, the way the violently displaced yet racially preserved "civilised" tribes accused the maiyami of ?? we still don't know what, survival maybe. the fur trade had something to do with it all, and maiyami the name even pigeon french with "ami" as in friend, and more than a few tribal collectives more like trade unions than families, as varied were their members, and probably plagues just fucked everyone up for lack of gradual exposure, and yeah probably the dirty frogfuckers caught blame for surviving that too.

i'm not catching blame anymore. i'm not even going to let it fall at my feet. i am stepping over blame's listless corpse, and walking the fuck forward to punch the next goddamn nazi in line.

the reskids called me Buffalo, when i busted in that trailer door to get at the bullies sending dogbites after my little brother.

you know what a *white* buffalo means, to the viciously civilized tribes who have spent 200 years lashing out at fellow survivors?

change.

[wovetherapy]

How do I know if I have a Mental disorder?

Have you ever noticed it often takes a diagnosis for yourself or anyone else take your symptoms seriously? Have you ever paused to question what a diagnosis even is, who defines it, or where it comes from? It’s not as objective as you may have thought. Race, class, sex, gender. It all matters.

Present day late stage capitalism (fueled by the legacy of colonialism and slavery) makes it all too easy to fall into the trap of consumerism, even when it comes to matters of health. The medical industrial complex convinces us that our symptoms are personal flaws and offers solutions with a hefty price tag.

Healthcare is not immune to socially constructed ills, and we need to acknowledge the intersectional impacts. Mental health is absolutely prone to racism, classism, and all the -isms that plague our society.

Recently, biological anthropologists have questioned the wisdom of modern medical models to address mental health. As intersectional therapists, we always ask our clients: What if it's not the person, but the system that's broken?

In an article for Forbes, Alison Escalante explores this question based on the published peer-reviewed journal article, “Mental health is biological health: Why tackling ‘diseases of the mind’ is an imperative for biological anthropology in the 21st century,” by researchers Kristen L. Syme and Edward H. Hagen.

Hagen & Syme say, "Mental disorders, by comparison, are still shrouded under a dark curtain, and there has been little, if any, improvement in public mental health. The worldwide prevalence of mental, neurological, and substance abuse disorders, heretofore mental disorders, remained steady between 1990 and 2010." Building on this, Esclante writes that "Labels are something we internalize to define who we are and what we are capable of. All too often, labels limit us. And that’s why reconsidering how we label anxiety, depression or ADHD is important. Does someone have depression, a medical disorder of their brain, or are they having a depressed adaptive response to adversity? Adversity is something we can overcome, whereas a mental disorder is something to be managed. The labels imply very different possibilities."

What are your thoughts? Are some disorders adaptive responses to adversity?

If you are dealing with a mental disorder, please let us know. Together with our team, we will come up with a plan that works for you. Click here to get started now.

[shoeshineyboy]

None of this is *specific* to novels and book publishing so please take it with a grain of salt, but in general stuff like marketing the stuff falls together much easier once the thing is done? In terms of like, towards publishers and stuff. Your elevator pitche, loglines/taglines for advertising, quotes that are gunna draw people in, it's all easier to put together when what you've made is done! I realise that's not very comforting because that means you have to finish it (and it doesn't stop you worrying about it), but that's kind of the thing - what you've written will do the heavy lifting. What you're writing is worth telling, worth putting in people's hands, and you will Not Be Alone in loving the final product. I know none of that changes anything about the odds being stacked against you, or the power of mediocre famous people sucking up all the fucking oxygen in the room, but you're the only person in the world who has what you have to offer and I promise you it will find its way to the right people. Booktok is good, you're on the right track and doing everything you can, and if it really has to come to it (or even if it doesn't) I will personally kill Richard Osman with my bare hands. But right now you're doing a great fucking job

oh I am going to finish this thing if it kills me, I've told too many people about it to not finish it and I would also like to do One Thing that would make my younger self happy. I think it's something that will resonate with an albeit niche, but significant audience. it's getting finished

I fully agree with what you've said about it needing to be finished for stuff to fall into place - I'm not about to throw a half-finished manuscript at anyone, this thing is undergoing at least 2-3 full rewrites before it goes anywhere near an agent. booktok is a blessing (and I need to make a dedicated booktok account) in that it is filled with the exact sort of people who will read it, if they find out about it. I think, the thing is, for me, this is something of a make or break situation. if this doesn't do it, then I won't publish anything. this is The Book, because it has to be - I've accepted that the finishing stages especially will be equivalent to a full-time job, and I can't spend my entire life on both my books and my day jobs if nothing is coming of it. it's not possible

[redgranola]

Image description below

fat liberation manifesto

1. We believe that fat people are fully entitled to human respect and recognition.

2. We are angry at mistreatment by commercial and sexist interests. These have exploited our bodies as objects of ridicule, thereby creating an immensely profitable market selling the false promise of avoidance of, or relief from, that ridicule.

3. We see our struggle as allied with the struggles of other oppressed groups, against classism, racism, sexism, ageism, capitalism, imperialism, and the like.

4. We demand equal rights for fat people in all aspects of life, as promised in the Constitution of the United States. We demand equal access to goods and services in the public domain, and an end to discrimination against us in the areas of employment, education, public facilites and health services.

5. We single out as our special enemies the so-called "reducing" industries. These include diet clubs, reducing salons, fat farms, diet doctors, diet books, diet foods and food supplements, surgical procedures, appetite suppressants, drugs and gadgetry such as wraps and "reducing machines." We demand that they take responsibility for their false calims, acknowledge that their products are harmful to the public health, and publish long-term studies proving any statistical efficacy of their products. We make this demand knowing that over 99% of all weight loss programs, when evaluated over a 5-year period, fail utterly, and also knowing the extreme, proven harmfulness of repeated large changes in weight.

6. We repudiate the mystified "science" which falsely claims that we are unfit. It as both caused and upheld discrimination against us, in collusion with the financial interests of insurance companies, the fashion and garment industires, reducing industries, the food and drug establishments.

7. We refuse to be subjected to the interests of our enemies. We fully intend to reclaim power over our bodies and lives. We commit ourselves to pursue these goals together.

FAT PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE.....

--Judy Freespirit and

Aldebaran

November, 1973

For more info write Fat Underground, P.O. Box

5621, Santa Monica, CA 90405

Below this there is a simple, black on white line drawing of a seated, nude fat person

Freespirit, J., & Aldebaran. (1979). fat liberation manifesto. Off Our Backs, 9(4), 18–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25773035

[gideonisms]

I hate feeling like an ad so I will only say this once but if any of you has any experience with self-publishing, I would love to hear from you!! Can be an informal chat on here in the replies or you can dm me. I'm writing an article for one of my courses arguing for the validity of self-publishing, and kind of tying that into a conversation about the demographics of the publishing industry which can be skewed due to racism, classism, etc. so I would love to hear some accounts of how self publishing has gone for people!

[nico-di-genova]

The nytimes opinion piece that was just published defending Jeremy brings up some interesting points. Like the idea that some people view Jeremy’s approach to acting as “too much”, and how that can almost be rooted in classism sounds so far fetched, but also actually makes sense. Like yeah, Jeremy isn’t coming from a privileged position of nepotism or money, he had to work his way up in the industry, and thus his work ethic largely defines his approach to acting.

The idea that working too hard can be seen as something negative in some circles is so bizarre to me. Outside of Jeremy, I like that the article also brought up overworking yourself for a company vs striving for something more. It’s an interesting read, and offers a view on the New Yorker profile drama that I hadn’t thought about yet.

read here

[belle-keys]

Kinda hilarious that y'all criticize Aster and Aveyard for "behaving badly" but stan the queen of cyberbullying, scams, plagiarism and incest Cassandra Clare 🙈 not one original bone in her body, recycled plots and characters + horrible human being but that's ok somehow?

Mate, I’m not condemning Aster or Aveyward for “bad behavior”. Their own behavior isn’t even in question. I just don’t like the nepotism, the classism and the whiteness of the Western publishing industry that’s aided by booktok.

Moreover, I don’t “stan” or “anti” Cassie as a person. I enjoy her writing and her characters and the Shadowhunters world, and that’s about it for me. I barely know jack shit about her personal life or her publishing journey to form critical opinions.

[angelsaxis]

(please don't do anything but like and/or reply to this post k thanx)

You do like an ounce of digging into anything in American history and you're like damn everything really is racist huh. Tips started because of racism. If there are two towns divided by a river or some other natural border chances are it's because of racism. The medical field is racist. The voting laws and constitution were based in racism (and classism). Even things like sunglasses not fitting the noses of folks who aren't white. Folks in the industry just. Never bothered to consider faces that weren't their own.

And it's like a range of things from big to small and everything in between. The way the makeup industry is still struggling to have shades of foundation that match dark skin. The way that even things like lotions, deoderants, and sunblocks are made and tested on white people primarily, so it's not evident that these things dry white until someone with dark skin uses them. Hair products being geared for white people's hair and advertised as being universal when they're not. Anything from lack of consideration to outright antagonism. The war on drugs and the war on crime is racist. The prison system, American politics, the education system, academia, the justice system, the police and military are all racist. Media and entertainment, publishing, and music all have glaring and subtle issues with racism.

And you look at all the various presidents and political leaders and u really see how they all perpetuated it in some way. White society was created specifically to hold down Black people. White people invented race and then weaponized it literally any way they could think of.