#i also feel like not enough people actually do research into the historical contexts of some characters

[jinxed-sinner]

Alright here's my full (possibly hot) take on redesigning Hazbin Hotel characters and making a video showcasing those redesigns while you criticize the official designs.

First and foremost, you are redesigning someone else's OCs. Hazbin Hotel is, in essence, a passion project for Viv. How she talks about it makes that incredibly clear to me. The only difference between Hazbin Hotel and, for example, the story I'm developing surrounding some of my D&D OCs is that Hazbin Hotel got picked up by a streaming service and is significantly more popular than most passsion projects get.

Personally if someone wanted to redesign my D&D OCs, I wouldn't mind it, in fact I'd probably think it was really cool that someone would want to redesign one of my OCs to be closer to their tastes in terms of what they like to draw. I would, however, be made incredibly uncomfortable if someone made a video redesigning them where they also pointed out everything they thought was wrong with the designs. I didn't design these specific D&D characters to be 1-to-1 accurate to their classes in D&D or to look professionally designed. I designed them how I wanted them to look for the story I'm telling because I don't plan to ever play them in a campaign. The main character Avlan is a paladin, and I can acknowledge that his design might not look exactly like a paladin. One of the tabaxi in the story (Ice) is a bard and the other (Spark) is a ranger, and I acknowledge that their classes might not come across well in their designs. The single tiefling I've designed for this story (Tragedy) is a cleric but might not come off as one in their design. But I specifically designed them to be easy for me to draw because I want to be able to tell this story through my art. Having someone say "oh, Avlan's armor isn't paladin enough!" or "Avlan's fur colors and patterns should be closer to a wild rabbit's because harengon shouldn't be based on domestic rabbit colors!" would fucking hurt (especially because I'm so attached to Avlan, but it would hurt just as much if similar comments were made about Ice, Spark, or Tragedy). I am so passionate about these characters and being told their designs are bad or wrong in some way would be like a stab in the heart, and it would still feel like a stab in the heart if this story ever got a massive fandom behind it. Giving Avlan more complex armor because you think it'd look cool or just want to see what it'd look like? Sure, if I could draw more complex armor I'd give him more complex armor too. Giving him more complex armor but also shitting on the armor I decide to draw him with? My motivation to draw him in his armor, potentially draw him period, would be dead for WEEKS.

Why is it suddenly okay just because someone's passion project was picked up by Amazon Prime? Why is it suddenly okay to be "fixing" someone's character designs just because the project has a much bigger budget than most artists get and is on a popular streaming service? It's not. I don't care if you're a professional character designer, or think a specific character would look better with certain traits, or just don't like the character designs.

Hazbin Hotel is still Vivienne Medrano's passion project, and redesigning her characters and making videos talking about everything you think is "wrong" with them is, honestly, disgusting. You can make videos explaining your choices in your redesigns without putting down the designs that already exist, whether you like them or not. Me thinking Lucifer looks better with his tail not restricted to his full demon form doesn't suddenly mean I don't like his official design, because I fucking love it. If you wouldn't do it to an artist whose passion project is just a webcomic here on Tumblr, don't fucking do it to an artist whose passion project got picked up for a cartoon by a big streaming service (or any company for that matter).

[five-rivers]

Changeling Chapter 4

Just realized I forgot to put this here! This and the other chapters can also be found on my AO3.

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Chapter 4: The Dandelion and the Dragon

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If Danny was going to use his new abilities for good, he had to understand how to use them.  All of them.  He sort of understood the illusions, the glamours, the way they almost seemed to bend the reality underneath him in a way they shouldn’t if they were just illusions.  The locked door thing seemed pretty straightforward – he just treated locks like they didn’t exist.  The emotions bit… Sam and Tucker were helping him with that. 

But the paths leading away from the real world, into what might be the land of Faerie?  That was something he had to explore on his own, something too dangerous to drag Sam and Tucker into unprotected.  Or, rather, protected by nothing more than his parents’ research, which was frustratingly hit-or-miss.  At least when it came to Danny, who probably wasn’t a standard example of a faerie.  Probably.   

He knew so little about what had happened to him.  It was aggravating. 

The… opening at home might have been the easiest to access, but Danny found himself unsettled by it.  Touching it was like touching a wound.  Whatever his parents had done hadn’t just shattered reality, it had left a scar on it, had broken faith with it. 

Also, that opening was where the octopus men came from, and he was far from ready to face them on their home turf.  He'd done what he could for their home, following his parents' research, but he didn’t know if they worked and most of them weren’t things he could bring with him. 

So, he was out in town, wandering on his own, following along lines that he felt should bring him where he wanted to go.  The feeling didn’t make sense, but very little about the situation did.

Sometimes, people would turn to look at him, an unaccompanied and rather small teenager walking through the oldest, most run-down part of town, but he pushed their attention away.  It wasn’t easy, but it was good practice, too.

In other cities, this part of town might have been part of Amity Park’s historical district.  The buildings here were old enough.  But they weren’t, and never had been, nice buildings.  The actual historical district was streets away.  This road was almost in Elmerton, which… well.  Amity Park was a nice place to live.  Elmerton… wasn’t. 

Now, Danny traced along a faint fracture in reality, feeling it out like a crack in the sidewalk.  It felt a little like the awful hole in the basement, but… more natural, maybe?  Less traumatic?  Less?  More?

He wasn’t sure.  That’s why he was following it.  To find out.  To learn. 

Most of the lots here were fenced off from the decaying sidewalk with towering chain link made opaque with a plastic weave.  Banners proclaimed the properties to be under development by Axion Construction. 

Axion, Axion…  He’d heard that before, somewhere else.  Different context.  Where?  Something to do with a classmate?

He dismissed the thought as unimportant when the fracture ran through one of the fences.  The flaw in reality existed even in his normal vision, a long dirty zig-zag of frayed plastic bisecting the banner and cracking the plastic parts of the fence. 

It was, Danny saw as he leaned forward, just torn enough to let him see beyond.  His fingers picked at the plastic, and he tried not to mind the dirt. 

(These days, he was oversensitive to dirt and grime.  Sometimes he was alright with it.  Sam had spilled some fertilizer on him the other day, and that had been alright.  But whatever this was, it felt bad.)

Behind the fence was a rotting church and graveyard. 

He’d been here before, if from a different direction.  He’d noticed… something.  There was something there, in the old graveyard, that didn’t fit in the mundane world described by the fencing and construction banner. 

He shouldn’t be surprised, then, that there was a—a path here, too.

The roof of the church had caved in, all the paint had peeled off the siding, the graves were overgrown and the stones broken, and there were construction materials – probably intended for the neighboring lots – alternately stacked and strewn all over.  It seemed incredibly disrespectful to Danny, but at least the graves themselves were mostly clear. 

He took a step back and looked up.  He could climb the fence, he was sure, but…

He held up one hand and imagined that it was covering a ladder.  A good, strong one, like what Jack used when he was doing work on the house or hanging things on the eaves for wards. 

When he dropped his hand, the ladder was there.  It was an illusion, sure, and one that would disappear as soon as Danny stopped paying attention, but Danny could still climb on it.  A ladder, after all, was a normal thing. 

He went up and swung over the fence, making the drop to the other side easily. 

Ahead of him, among the graves, was the gap in reality he’d been seeking.  He took a step forward and almost jumped out of his skin when a dog ran forward barking. 

The dog was big, black, and shaggy, its shoulders easily reaching Danny’s waist.  Danny fumbled for a glamour, but the images slipped from his mind before he could solidify them. 

The dog stopped several feet away, tail wagging furiously.  Danny traced a rope leading from the dog’s collar out of sight behind some graves. 

“Oh,” he said, “okay, then.”  Now that he had the time to get his wits, the dog didn’t seem particularly threatening or angry.  Rather than a guard dog, it probably belonged to some construction worker.  “Good… boy?”

The dog bounced at the end of the rope and then dropped down, tail still wagging. 

Danny eyed the… honestly, this close to it, it didn’t really feel like a hole.  Door, maybe?  Gate?  Well, the exact name for it didn’t really matter.  What mattered was that he could walk through it.  He knew he could walk through it. 

He looked back at the dog.  “Wish me luck?” he asked.  The dog laid down, dark eyes looking up at him expectantly.  “Right,” said Danny, uncertainly. 

Actually… 

Actually, even though the construction stuff here was newer than the church and graveyard, it wasn’t exactly new.  Nothing here seemed very occupied, not even as a worksite.  In fact, if it wasn’t for the dog, Danny would call the whole place abandoned. 

The dog was still there. 

Danny turned away from the gate and followed the dog’s rope.  The dog got up and padded beside him, eerily silent. 

The rope became progressively dirtier and more frayed as Danny traced it through the maze of headstones and construction equipment.  There were tooth marks in it, places where the dog had chewed it.  Some places had been patched with duct tape or with desiccated brambles.  On the whole, though, the rope was thick and sturdy, and even with the patches it didn’t seem likely to snap any time soon. 

Danny stepped into the shadow of the church and stopped.  The rope kept going, under the ground, under the corner of the building.  Under, Danny would bet, the foundation, the cornerstone of the church. 

No construction worker would repair a rope with thorns.  None would bury the rope they’d tied their dog to, either.  Danny took a deep breath and turned to look at the dog. 

The dog blended into the church’s shadow as if it was made of the same substance, or lack thereof, but its eyes burned with a bright, inner fire.  The rope around its neck, meanwhile, seemed to glow.  As it stared at Danny, it was horribly, terribly still.

“A church grim,” said Danny.  A church grim tied to an abandoned church that looked like it was moments from being condemned by the city.  What would happen to it, then?  Danny took another calming breath.  “If I untie you, are you going to try and kill me or end the world or stuff like that?”

The dog yipped and sat down, tail wagging again.  It felt like a promise. 

Danny sighed and leaned forward.  “Okay, then, Cujo.  I’m trusting you not to bite.”

The knot was wedged tight and crusted over with something dark.  He made a face.  It’d probably be better to cut it, but he didn’t have scissors…  Maybe he could conjure some out of glamour, but he didn’t think that would work very well, somehow.  Biting his lower lip, he found a likely-looking loop, grabbed it with his fingernails, and pulled. 

To his surprise, the knot came away as easily as breathing.  He stumbled back a step as the dog reared up, then pranced around, frolicking like a puppy.  Then he ducked when the dog leapt toward him.  But it soared far over his head, right into the doorway that lead to—to elsewhere.  To Faerie, maybe. 

The church walls creaked and one of them, the one that faced the street, collapsed inward, sending up a plume of musty-smelling dust.  Someone on the street shouted.  Then, a higher-pitched voice essayed a question about calling the construction company.  Or the police. 

Aw, heck. 

Danny didn’t want to top off his already weird reputation by being arrested. 

He dove for the doorway. 

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Sunlight filtered through tree branches high overhead and Danny blinked at them from where he lay, flat on his back.  He blinked.  Once.  Twice.  Then he sat up. 

He was sitting in the middle of a shaded forest path, carpeted with grass.  The path’s surface was curved – concave up, if he was remembering his math class right.  The space under the trees was crowded with rosebushes, each one laden with brightly colored flowers and sharp thorns. 

Cautiously, he pushed himself to his knees, then his feet.  This place…  It felt…  Bright was one word for it.  Except also… Dark?  Bolder, maybe.  Everything he’d been feeling, about things leaking through reality, about things under reality, was summed up here.  This was the place underneath places.  The- The foundation reality was built on.  All things rendered into their component truths and exalted to their ideal states. 

But not. 

It was more like a place pretending to be the foundation of reality.  Or a story about the foundation of reality.  Or even just a story about reality.  It was removed from everything real, everything true.  It was made up of nothing more than the glamour of the illusions Danny was becoming ever more skilled at. 

But also not. 

It was too real and too unreal to be anything but reality.  It was just a different one than Danny was used to.  A reality that was between the one Danny just left and some… other place Danny couldn’t name.  One that he instinctively knew operated under different rules.  One that a part of him felt very much at home in. 

Were his ears ringing, or was that sound bees buzzing in the roses?

He covered his face for a moment, trying to equilibrate.  Just a moment ago, he’d been in the churchyard.  The graveyard.  Shouldn’t there still be something of that?  Or—No, that logic didn’t follow, did it?  Was this a different universe, or Earth’s mirror?

He looked up again, peering into the golden and green shadows striping the spaces between the trees on either side of the path.  Then, he slowly turned around, and, oh, a few feet behind him was a bend in the path, and at that bend the path forked, one part of it leading to a ruin covered in moss and roses.  A tall tree grew through its roof in imitation of a steeple.  Next to it, bushes grew in a way that vaguely suggested a low, stone wall somewhere beneath them, and, beyond it, an enclosed churchyard. 

Danny would have thought that, given where he’d been on the other side, he’d have been in that yard.  If the churchlike ruin wasn’t just a coincidence, or something conjured up because Danny thought there should be something there.  Or maybe distance was also different, here.  Or maybe Danny was focusing on details that weren’t important.  He walked to the edge of the path, careful not to step over it, and looked at the roses. 

They were full, multi-layered flowers, not simple wild roses.  They reminded Danny of his attempts at glamour-roses, a little.  Each flower, each petal, was perfect.  Better than real.  But, unlike Danny’s, each bush, each flower, was different.  The way their petals cupped each other, the way the edges ruffled, how far open they were, the gradient of color—There was variation in all of these.  Not always very much, they were still the same kind of flower, but—How many of them were there, anyway?  Should he count—

“You there!”

Danny startled, pulling away from his examination of the roses and looking around wildly.  Was he trespassing?  Well, he had been trespassing in the churchyard, but he had the feeling that the same crime over here would be handled much differently. 

There was a young woman rushing toward him on the path, her blue dress held up out of the way of her feet with one hand.  Her hair was long, braided back, and the kind of vivid blonde that seemed almost unreal. 

“You there,” she repeated, slightly breathless.  Her eyes were yellow and slit like a cat’s.  “Have you seen my pendant?  It’s about this big—” She made a circle with her fingers. “—green, and ringed with gold, on a gold chain.  Even for news of a glance, and where, I would reward you.”

“No,” said Danny, edging away.  “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” asked the woman, suspiciously.  “Did you take it?”

“No.  No, I didn’t take it.  I’m just—It’s just too bad that you’ve lost it?”  He cringed internally.  This wasn’t a girl from his school – although she looked like she could’ve been, except for the eyes and clothing – she was a faerie or a goblin or something worse.  Someone who, according to his parents, would do anything it could to twist his words into a bargain he couldn’t keep, or steal him away, or simply do terrible things to him because it could. 

Danny watched the young woman in front of him, who looked only about as old and conniving as the seniors at Casper High, twisting her hands and picking at her sleeves and skirts, her face a mask of worry. 

He couldn’t see it. 

“Is it important?” asked Danny.  “The pendant?”

“Very,” she said.  “It was a gift from my parents, before…  Oh, how could I be so stupid?”

“Did you lose it around here?” Danny asked.  “I—” He cut himself off.  He shouldn’t say anything that could be construed as a promise, even something as banal as a promise to help her look for the necklace or to return it if he found it.  His parents had been very clear about the potential consequences of doing so, and they ranged from bad luck to being sold to literal hell.    

“Yes,” she said.  “I came to find flowers.”

“It seems to be a good place for it,” said Danny, encouragingly. 

“No, it is terrible.  My brother told me that if I could find him a flower unlike any other in all of the kingdom, he would let me hold my dance, but all of these…”  She gestured at the perfect, and admittedly very similar, roses.

“Oh,” said Danny.  “Why don’t you get a flower that isn’t from the kingdom?”  As soon as he asked the question, he knew it was a mistake.

The woman had gone still.  Her pupils narrow, she turned to look down at him.  “You,” she said, slowly, inhaling deeply.  “You are not from here.”

“I’m just a traveler,” said Danny, raising his hands and stepping away.  He mentally reached out, trying to find the edges of the doorway he’d come through.  “I don’t mean any harm.”

The woman, who had been leaning forward quite a bit, drew herself back up and smoothed her skirts.  “It hardly matters.  I must forget myself, talking to a human about this.  You are human, aren’t you?” 

Danny shrugged.  “I don’t know what else I am,” he said. 

She huffed.  “Your suggestion has some merit, I suppose.  But… you truly have not seen my pendant?  At all?  No sign or inkling of where it might be?  It’s worth is not in the gold, but the memories, and by all accounts you humans have little trade in those.  I could give you things you would find far more dear.”

Danny shook his head.  “I’d tell you if I did.”

“And I don’t suppose you know any dances?”

“None that I think would interest you, uh, ma’am?  Miss?”

“Never you mind what I’m called.”  She half turned away from him.  “I will simply have to find it myself.”  She marched up to the roses, then stopped, glaring at them. 

Danny followed her gaze.  His earlier look at the roses had focused on the flowers, but there were thorns in those bushes.  Long, blood-colored things.  Not the best for walking through, especially with a dress like the girl was wearing.  Especially if, like Danny suspected from how she was acting, she wasn’t really supposed to be here.

He shrugged out of his jacket.  It was just a windbreaker, and it was kind of ragged around the sleeves, but it wasn’t like she’d be wearing it. 

“Here,” he said, offering it to her.  “I don’t know if you actually need it, or anything, but you can, I don’t know, lay it down on top of roses so you can step on them, or step over them without worrying about the thorns?”

She regarded the jacket skeptically, and took it from him, holding it by the very tips of her fingers, like it was a disgusting rag.  Which.  Okay.  Fine.  She was a faerie princess or whatever.  Still, it wasn’t like it was that dirty.  Danny had made sure of it.  He couldn’t stand dirt anymore. 

Then, she flicked it, once, with her wrists, and it… rippled, changed, until it was no longer a worn windbreaker but a length of shimmering fabric that pooled at her feet, similar to the jacket only in terms of the colors used.  If it was the kind of illusion Danny could use, it was so much better than his that he couldn’t even see his former windbreaker beneath it.  She tilted her head at it, consideringly. 

“It will do,” she said, finally.  She looked back at Danny, then raised her hand to point back over his shoulder.  “There is a gateway to the human world, down the road that way.  Let this be enough to void any debt between us.”

“Sure?” said Danny.  “I mean, yes.”

“Off with you, then.  You would not want to be caught by my brother, or the hunter.  Not in this day, when things that are sleeping stir.”  She looked away, back towards the roses. 

Danny nodded, then, after a moment of hesitation, turned away to walk down the path.  It was in the opposite direction of the maybe-church, and therefore the way he’d come in, but he could tell when he was being dismissed, and he didn’t want to be caught by any hunter. 

If he couldn’t feel anything, he’d loop back around.  Unless spatial relationships here were as messed up as temporal ones were supposed to be, according to stories like Rip Van Winkle. 

He did feel something, though.  Nothing as strong as in the churchyard, nothing he would have noticed without looking for it, but still something.  Something more… solid… than the world around him. 

Under a rosebush, something flashed gold.  He knelt, looking.  He hadn’t promised the girl anything about looking for her necklace, but if it was really just right there…  The gold twitched, and before Danny could think twice about it, he lunged for the movement, catching the—Catching something.  But it pulled sideways in his hand, slipping out from between his fingers, and the next thing he knew he was face down in very earthy-smelling dirt. 

He was home again. 

He sat up and brushed himself off.  Ugh, he was dirty.  Gross.  And left over glamour or magic or whatever he should call it was caught in his eyelashes, dazzling his eyes.  Where was he?  There were trees and, appropriate to the season, wilting rose bushes, but other than that…  Well, he could’ve been in Europe, for all he knew. 

Maybe this trip could’ve been planned better.  Probably.  Most likely.  Definitely. 

He took out his phone and looked at the time – the same day, just a couple hours after he set off.  That…  He squinted, trying to remember when he’d gotten to the old church.  Had he gained time?  How long had it taken him to walk there?  And the location…  Good old Amity Park Park. 

Was that normal?  Could he expect this kind of thing, when walking around in the in-between?  Or was it a fluke?

Either way, he should get back home.  He’d pressed his luck enough today. 

He put his phone back in his pocket, and that’s when he saw it, glittering under a rosebush.  He glared at it for a second, expecting it to jump sideways, like the sparkles he’d seen before, on the other side, but it stayed still. 

Danny frowned and looked around, carefully, trying to look more, see deeper, but although there was a pathway behind-below-between, there was nothing like that under that particular bush, and no sign of glittering, tempting emotions, either. 

With a sigh, he got down on his hands and knees.  He was going to have to clean under all his nails, after this. 

Under the bush, next to a struggling and slightly crooked dandelion, was a pendant, just like the one the faerie girl described.  He reached out, carefully, and grabbed it, drawing it out to look at it under the autumn sun.  It was a simple enough piece of jewelry, but even Danny could tell that it was well made and it was heavy.  The gold of both the chain and the pendant itself had to close to pure.  Even so, what the young woman had said was right.  The greater part of its value was that someone cared about it.  It was important to someone.  Very important. 

Well. 

Danny grimaced.  He was under no real obligation to bring it back.  He hadn’t made a deal or accepted payment.  The girl had been so distracted and worried about it missing that she hadn’t even gotten out a whole offer.  Going back might be dangerous.  He might not be able to return to the here and now.  The faerie might somehow take offense that he’d touched something of hers.   Her brother or the hunter she’d mentioned might be there.  She might not be there anymore, for that matter.

There were many reasons for him not to get up, turn around, and walk right back through the door.  Most of them weren’t even related to greed or curiosity or the scraps of magic clinging to the pendant. 

He didn’t get up, turn around, and walk right back through the door. 

He picked the dandelion and then got up, turned around, and walked back through the door. 

Immediately, he knew he’d screwed up.  While not radically different to the path he’d left moments before, it still wasn’t the same path.  It was darker here, the roses not as thick, the trees not as widely spaced.  Even the scent of the place was different. 

He turned again, having decided to just go home after all and worry about the necklace later, but the gate he’d come through wasn’t there.  Or, at least, it wasn’t there in the same way it had been when he’d left through it before.  Kind of like turning on a faucet and getting a trickle instead of a steady stream.

In other words, he wasn’t getting home that way.

Great.  He was lost.  Lost in Faerie, or something close to it, because he couldn’t leave well enough alone.  That was going to be his epitaph.  ‘Danny Fenton: Died Doing Something He 100% Didn’t Have To Do.’  All caps.  Except no one would know that should be his epitaph, because he didn’t tell anyone what he was doing and they weren’t going to find a body anyway. 

He shook himself.  He wasn’t exactly in a different position than he’d been in when he went through the doorway in the churchyard, and he had neither panicked nor died then.  It was just that this would be a substantially stupider way to die now, having come back, then it would have been to die then, when he’d never been to this place before.  He just had to look around for another way back, maybe by starting with the impression of this doorway and tracing it…

A loud bark startled Danny from his thoughts, and he looked up to see two fiery eyes staring at him from a shadow just off the path.  He yelped and jerked backwards as the shadow surged forwards, resolving into… The dog. 

Okay. 

“You gave me a heart attack there, Cujo,” said Danny.  That joke was pretty cheesy, and he’d already used it once before, but he couldn’t think of any other monster dog jokes right now.  Something to do with Clifford, Maybe?  But this dog wasn’t nearly that big.  “I don’t suppose you know how to get back h—”  He paused, looking down at the flower and necklace in his hand.  If he was actually asking the magic dog…  “Can you lead me to the person this belongs to, maybe?”

The dog barked again and trotted off down the path.  Danny hurried to keep up, almost jogging.  Then definitely jogging.  Then running.  Sprinting, full out.  Trees whipped by them as they ran, and they were no longer under tall straight trees among rosebushes, but sunlight-yellow trees with weeping branches, and then gnarled oaks with falling bronze leaves, spaces wide open beneath them, men, or men-like beings on horseback riding parallel to their run, then splitting off, then a kind of vineyard, strung between old fruit trees, then roses again, their perfume heady and pink, trees in and of themselves, and more roses, winding around trunks and ruined walls, and then—

The dog skidded to a stop.  So did Danny, winded and not entirely sure if he’d seen what he had seen.  His lower legs were striped with thorn scratches.  The dog seemed unbothered, wagging it’s tail fiercely. 

“Good—” gasped Danny.  “Good boy.  Good boy, Cujo.”  That might as well be its name.  Danny didn’t think that ‘Clifford’ would do it justice, anyway. 

The faerie girl stared down at him incredulously.  “What—”

“I found this,” said Danny, holding up the pendant.  “And I don’t know if dandelions grow in your kingdom or not, but—” He shrugged, then tipped both the flower and pendant into the woman’s hands

The girl looked at the pendant and flower in her open hand, then closed her fingers.  “You are not human, are you?  But you are no goblin, either.  Nothing of the borderland.  But you would be known if you were—How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” said Danny, too surprised by the question to do anything but answer it.  “And—And I’m pretty sure I am still human, at least a little…”

“Fourteen,” repeated the girl, apparently ignoring Danny’s second statement.  “Fourteen.”  She looked back at her necklace.  “I find that I am in your debt, and there is no bargain between us.  What would you ask of me?”

“Um,” said Danny. 

“Surely, you had something in mind?” asked the girl. 

“I—Not really,” admitted Danny.  “Maybe, could you explain how the doorways work?  And point me back at the one you told me about before?”

The girl put on her necklace and tucked the flower into her sleeves.  “I can tell you what I know about the doorways.”

Danny nodded.  He could work with that. 

.

Danny managed not to fall flat on his face when he used the door back to the normal world this time, which did a great deal to soothe his injured dignity.  He was among trees and plants again, and it seemed very like Amity Park Park, but he didn’t think there had been this many flowerbeds there…  And his phone didn’t have a signal.  He could hear cars and see multi-story buildings, though, so…

“Use the necklace on it, Maddie!” 

That was his Dad’s voice.  And—Necklace?

Danny rounded a tree and almost ran into his mother, who was carrying something in her raised and outstretched hand.  Something that he did run into, with a yelp.  That hurt. 

“Oh!” said Maddie, both her eyebrows going up.  She dropped her hand, and Danny saw that the ‘necklace’ was a horseshoe on a length of iron chain.  Ugh.  No wonder it hurt.  “Danny.  I didn’t-- What are you doing here?”

“Um,” said Danny, still not entirely sure where here was.  Was he back in the park?  It looked kind of like the park.  “I was taking a walk.”  Technically true.  It’s just that he wasn’t taking a walk here, exactly.  “You know.  What are you doing here?”

“We’re researching disappearances in the area,” said Maddie, tucking the chain into her toolbelt.  “How do you feel?  Disoriented?  Are you missing any memories?  Where is your coat?  It’s cold out.”

“I—How would I even know?” asked Danny, not sure which question he was answering.  “What does a horseshoe have to do with it?”

“Well, if it is the neighbors causing the disappearances, it’s good to be prepared for them,” said Maddie.  “Cold iron is a good weapon against them.”

“And I’ve got the bait!” said Jack, jumping into view with a fishing rod in hand.  A doll hung from the end.  A doll with gold-colored plastic buttons.  The doll, Danny slowly realized, that he had lunged after.  The one under the bush in the in-between.  The Hedge. 

Oh, that was embarrassing. 

“Hiya, Danno!  Couldn’t resist watching your parents work?”

“Uh,” said Danny. 

“Well, I can’t imagine Danny coming to the rose garden for anything else,” said Maddie, with a tone of fond exasperation.  She patted Danny’s head.  “But you should really wear a coat out here.  It’s cold.”  Her fingers slipped down to tap his bare neck.  “And some talismans wouldn’t be a bad idea…”

“Maybe next time,” said Danny, glad to know where he’d… landed?  Emerged?  “I’m not in the way, am I?”

“Never!” exclaimed Jack.  “Oh!  I know, you can operate the new and improved Fenton Fae Finder!”  He pulled out a spindle-shaped pendulum on a piece of string and shoved it at Danny. 

“Um, is this for dowsing, or--?” 

“Yes!” said Jack.  “You’ve got it!  Now, onwards!”

Maddie patted Danny’s shoulder.  “I really am glad that you came with us.  It should be safer now that that one is gone, but that doesn’t mean that other ones can’t still do harm.  Please, try to be safe, Danny.”

Danny swallowed.  “I’ll… see what I can do.”

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I’m writing a story about a lady with Down Syndrome. I was wondering if you knew where I can find any resources about Down Syndrome made by people who actually have it, or any organisations that would be good to follow. Any resources made by people with intellectual disability would be really helpful as well.

I read your post about this and it was really helpful so thank you, I’m going to use it as a starting point for my research.

If you’d like some context about the story she’s literally a lady in the 1920s who’s trying to get control of her family’s estate from her brother. Shes underestimated for her disabilities and for being a women but I’m trying to not focus so much on the discrimination and work more on giving her an interesting mystery to solve with the detective she hired. I’d like it to be a bit lighthearted. Anyway, as she’s a main character I really wanted to make sure I wrote her well. Thanks!

Hey!

There aren't many resources out there unfortunately, but there is a page on the UK Down Syndrome's Association's website where members with DS share their opinions on representation in TV and film. You can read it here. For info on intellectual disability in general the best I can do is link some of my previous posts on it - there's close to nothing that's actually made by us unfortunately, everything that I was able to find is always made by someone who knows a person with ID at best. To be clear, not all of it is bad - I thought this interview (TW for abuse that happens in the movie's plot) about a movie starring actors with DS was pretty good - but it's still a sign that we aren't getting enough #OwnVoices representation. It's slowly changing though.

To learn more about DS I would probably recommend NDSS, it's one of the very few orgs that have people with Down Syndrome as board and team members (should be the bare minimum, but it unfortunately isn't). There's also information on things like preferred language and myths that often show up around Down Syndrome.

I'm not great with history, but in the 1920s she would be a subject to a lot more than just discrimination. Eugenics and institutionalization would definitely be present. Not sure what route you'll take there, but basically all the words around that time that she would be described with are currently considered slurs or pejoratives. The racist term for a person with Down Syndrome was officially used into the 60s, and the ableist one is still used legally in 2024. But if you want to skip past that, I think that's more than fine. You don't always have to aim for 100% historical accuracy, just be aware of the real history.

A detective story sounds very exciting. If you decide to publish it on Tumblr or other online site feel free to send me an ask with a link, I'd love to read it.

Thank you for the ask,

mod Sasza

I’m just popping in as a history fan for a couple bits of history notes — but again, like Sasza said, you don’t have to be 100% historically accurate if you don’t want to and if you don’t feel it’s necessary.

So, especially in the first half of the 1900s, a large part of disabled children, including children with Down Syndrome, were institutionalized very early in their life. Around this time the push that immorality caused disability was strong, and people were often convinced by doctors and professionals that the children’s needs would always be too much for them. Eugenicism was sort of reaching a peak around this time, as well—I would say it was at its most intense in the period of 1900-1940s.

Not all parents institutionalized their children, though. There was pressure to do so, but that doesn’t mean everyone fell victim to it. There wasn’t really any official support for parents who did this, and there weren’t official organizations for Down Syndrome. From my research, the current large DS organizations seem to have popped up in the 60s.

The term ‘Down Syndrome’ wasn’t in popular use until the 70s, and it wasn’t known that it’s caused by an extra chromosome until 1959.

Life expectancy in 1900-1920 for people born with Down Syndrome was 9 years old. Some of this could absolutely have been due to conditions in institutions, but likely even more relevant is that about 50% of people with DS are born with heart defects (also known as congenital heart disease) that can be fatal if not treated with surgery. Heart surgery wasn’t really feasible until the late 30s and early 40s. Another risk factor is a higher risk for infection, which isn’t easy to manage in a world that doesn’t yet have antibiotics.

I actually wanted to find pictures of adults with Down Syndrome pre-1940ish, though, to see real tangible evidence of adults being part of a community. First I found just one picture of a baby in 1925 on this Minnesota government website. But then I found a collection someone made of photos of both children and young adults, but they are not specifically dated. The first baby picture is from the 30s according to the poster!

Judging by the clothes I see people wearing in these photos, photo #4 (man with Down Syndrome in a suit next to a woman) seems to be from the 20s and photo #13 (young woman with Down Syndrome and very long hair) seems to be from about the 1910s. #18 (large family with a lot of sons, including one boy with Down Syndrome) could be from the 30s. Those three are the oldest people with DS in the photos, and they seem like young adults. A lot of these pictures show a community and aren’t just isolated kids, which I find nice.

It’s hard to find specific historical record of people with Down Syndrome from that period of time, but I wanted to show photos of real people in their communities to show, hey look! They were there, too!

Either way, I love detective stories and historical fiction and I’m glad you’re writing a story and that you care about your character’s portrayal but I totally know the feeling of that tricky balance between historical accuracy and modern acknowledgement that we should have been doing better.

— Mod Sparrow

[ulfrsmal]

just finished Assassin's Apprentice and I have thoughts about the Fool & Fitz's friendship, not just it being developed off-page but in general. no spoilers for the rest of the series pls i'm starting Royal Assassin today tl;dr: the Fool and Fitz are consistently, canonically othered by the people in Buckkeep in different ways, yet similarly enough so that we can say "like recognises like". they are friends because nobody else understands what they go through day by day -- because nobody else is othered like they are. they can be intrepreted as joining forces to remain more or less sane, and/or less lonely, in an environment that does not, nor wants to, support them. also they may both be queer in different ways

basically, their friendship was forged quickly and offpage in a way that can feel like a copout, but which to me was not. it makes sense to me! both are alone and lonely and othered by the people in Buckkeep, albeit in different ways, plus what we have of their characterisation supports this too. Fitz canonically is alone and lonely, and he canonically considers friends those he spends some time with. eg Molly, who i can't argue was a true friend to him, but whom Fitz def saw as that. Fitz and the Fool live in the same place (give or take a tower a stable or three), they saw each other semi-regularly at best, and for Fitz this Creates Friendship. The Fool also makes fun of Fitz in the same way he makes fun of everyone. this is important because most people look down on, and make fun of, Fitz specifically because he's Fitz The Bastard. he's set apart from everybody else in Buckkeep in this way. but the Fool doesn't do that: he treats Fitz in the same way he treats everyone else. for someone like Fitz who's only had negative attention, this neutral attention must feel like praise outright. thus: Friendship on the other hand: the Fool. his physical description sets him apart from the dark-eyed, dark-haired, ruddy-from-being-outdoors, people of Buckkeep (Farseer line especially). his profession also sets him apart from every other non-royal, non-nobility person. (i've done no research but i've been told that historically irl court bufoons had physical disabilities, eg dwarfism. i accept corrections & info about this, i know i could very easily be wrong). Basically, nobody sees the Fool for what/who he is, they only see his profession in the same way that they only see Fitz as The Bastard. no nuance. the Fool, by virtue of having lived in Buckkeep for longer (and perhaps being older and/or more developed than Fitz), must have recognised this similarity between them fairly quickly. plus he dreams about Fitz. Thus: Friendship

there's another angle i didn't touch upon for lack of info but here it is too: queerness.

to me Fitz read like aroace (he didn't get Molly's implying/expecting him to ask her to marry him, for example, nor the "catamite" reference which could've been understood by context if not through the actual word). Besides, the Wit can be taken as a Gay Analogy/Allegory, which would only add to his (canon) queerness! the thing is: idk about the Fool. not yet. so I cannot say if this plays a part into their shared bond/friendship.

but the Fool already has a very Gender Thing going on canonically, there's an italics at the beginning of a chapter that's basically him telling people to mind their own fucking business when asked what gender he is, so like. Fitz and the Fool are arguably part of the same community, aka they're both queer, just in different ways perhaps. will need to read more about the Fool especially to expand on this X)

[thenwethrowitonthefire]

hello, sparks-anon here. it must've been a long time since I hardly remember when was the last time we talked or what was it about. recently [mostly by accident] I listened to gratuitous sex album after such a long time, and it hit different than the first times. it was very interesting how the album made me feel strange mixed feelings together, in senseless violin there is intensity while it the song should be senseless, now that I own the BBC has joyful tone but the guy in song is freaking out or confused why they did that! the gratuitous sex feels uncomfortable and chill...it is interesting how they put this paradoxes together.

anyway what I meant to ask in first place before I carried away was hearing your take on "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil"

p.s any take on other song in album is welcome, hit me in

My favourite anon is back! 🌞

🎶 Throw in a-a-a-aaan… excellent ask! *saxophone solo* 🎶

(Yeah you've seen the album cover, I know. I just love it.) Long answer follows, so I'm adding a read more thingy.

Your ask was so excellent in fact that I've really had to think about this one and do some research because I never had given that song a lot of thought yet. I also asked a friend for their take on Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil, but their initial response was the same as mine: not actually knowing what the lyrics are because we just vibe to it + Russell's voice is nice to listen to. (Sorry Ron, man's out there writing brilliant lyrics and we never got past vibing with this one until now.) So yeah! Good question! I've read the lyrics a good couple of times now, started writing my thoughts down 5 times, made notes throughout the month since receiving your ask and read up more about the people mentioned in the songs. (Historical knowledge is not my strong suit, neither is researching, but Sparks are so cool for their cultural knowledge/references. The amount of stuff people have learned over the years because of Sparks…!) Anyway, I think I can finally write about the song in a comprehensible way now :) (It may still be incorrect or incomplete though, so if anyone wants to add on, please do!)

Let's start with the meaning of the proverb Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil. Here's two things taken from Wikipedia that put us in the right direction: "(it) is often used to refer to a lack of moral responsibility on the part of people who refuse to acknowledge impropriety, looking the other way or feigning ignorance", or more simply put, "(in the West) it is often interpreted as dealing with impropriety by turning a blind eye". The song relates this proverb to 3 women of historical importance, who must have been especially good at turning a blind eye as they held a lot of power and stood next to men who held a lot of power: the wife of Clinton, Madame Mao and Cleopatra. Let's go over all of the lyrics (I'm adding colour for the lyrics to easily distinguish the lyrics and my thoughts.)

"I'm the wife of Clinton / I don't have a problem with all of this / They come and go, of course I know, I know everything" …sounds like she knows things and does not give a shit. "You don't know my thinking, who I dream of, all the gifts that I bring" Is this her saying that there's more to her that people don't know, is this her defence for holding her tongue? "One thing is clear, the atmosphere is thin and it's cold" No doubt, but is that about the atmosphere she chooses to move around in, or is it about how she herself adds to the thin and cold atmosphere? *enter the repeating of Hear no evil (Monkey 1 says you shouldn't hear it) / See no evil (Monkey 2 says you shouldn't see it) / Speak no evil (Monkey 3 says you shouldn't speak it)* As to say, those are the rules she lives by.

"I am Madame Mao / Following the Tao to the extreme / I know the score, all this and more, they're still in their teens" Despite the fact that I've tried to read up on her, I don't have enough context when it comes to Chinese history, however it's sounding like there were very young people drastically impacted by decisions that had been made by her husband and/or her. Again, sounding less like purposefully looking away and more like being fine with what's happening, more like "that's a sacrifice we're willing to make to achieve the goal we're after". "You don't know my thinking, who I dream of, or the gifts that I bring / One thing is true, I won't leave clues to where I have been" Someone sounds like she's got her own agenda that she's secretly working on… Which is again followed by the chorus of the repeating proverb.

The next bit gives me visions of rulers doing a parade or standing on a balcony or something, happily waving at enthusiastic civilians, like "of course we love our country and the people in it, aren't we taking good care of you" - the two faced thing of letting harmful decisions be made/actively making them, but then giving a display of smiles, love and welfare. We don't speak of the evil things, what evil things, there's only good times here. Aren't we good. "We on the Potomac love good times / We on the Yangtze love good times / We on the Nile love good times / Can't get enough of good times" Good times for everyone or are you just taking care of your own interests and your own good times? "More than enough love to go 'round / More than enough power to go 'round" This is no doubt personal now, speaking about the romance and power shared between them and their partners who are world leaders "More than enough ids to be found" Is this about the ability to show multiple faces? The smiling pleasant wife, who's other face may be politically cutthroat, wielding the right face at the right time to achieve the goals they're after. "More than enough bids to go down"

*repeating of See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil once more*

"I am Cleopatra, Caesar's former lover, now I am yours" There's the romance and the power again. "Marc Antony, you're biting off more than you can chew" ...And here is the twist, here's the demise. He indeed bit off more than he can chew. There's no further lyrics about Cleopatra, just the repeating of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. This may allude to the fact that it doesn't end well. Cleopatra and Marc Antony lost it all, in the end both of them committed suicide to escape consequences.

Maybe the song was a critique on US politics at the time (maybe someone older than me has a better perspective on that idea), but maybe Ron would say it was just a song about power, romance and tragedy, exploring those themes. I think it's an interesting choice to ponder the lives of these women, questioning what happens behind closed doors, what they might have been thinking or feeling, illustrating the fact that we don't truly know what secrets they may have kept or what power they did or did not hold. It's a man's world out there (maybe a little less so in Cleopatra's case?), all the public would ever get to see is their smiling pleasantly and not saying a word. Fittingly, the sound of this song has always sounded very resigned to me. The sound is very much like "this is my place and that's just the way it is, it's my job to simply be present and stand here, observe and keep my mouth shut when people might hear it".

I love that you mention the mix of emotions you get from the songs on this album. It's one of those things that makes Sparks so special to me in general (not just on this album). They have this ability to create things that can be opposite things at the same time, without diluting either side of it. It's like they choose to paint things black and white at the same time and it then indeed is both those things at the same time, there's no gray. And it works.

...I had started writing this whole paragraph about the album and the themes on it and all that, but I am not getting my words to hit the way I want them to so I'll leave that for now. It's an album that you can analyse and enjoy a lot that way, but also it's an album where you can just... not do that and enjoy it a lot all the same. It's not surprising to me that this album is in many fans' album top 10.

I will leave you with a live performance of my favourite song from the album, without any clever words about it :) I'm a bit worded out but also I just feel this song, it's very "mm piano so good!" and "damn I LOVE those drums on this one specific live version!!" There's no separate upload of it but if you click here it should take you to the 1:17:20 point in the video, which is the start of the song :)

Putting the video below as well, though I don't think it'll start playing at the right time.

[disabled-dragoon]

Hello, would it be ok to use a walking stick/cane or is it not ok? I’d be a part time stick user and it would be used as 1/3 fashion accessory, like how people in 1800 England had sticks, 1/3 hiking stick/pole, and 1/3 part time aid for weight bearing.

for context on the aid part i have flatfoot and overpronation that causes pain in my heel and legs. I do have inserts that help enough and i do stretches and that helps too but I still have (sort of mild?) pain flare ups from time to time that can make me limp.

I’m asking because I don’t want to be ignorant towards ppl who use canes for a disability and I don’t want to come off that way… and I also think walking sticks are cool.

Hm.

This is a bit of a sticky subject.

There's some discourse about this that resurfaces every so often. Half of the argument is "using a cane for fashion/aesthetic purposes invalidates disabled people who actually need to use them" and the other half is "using a cane for fashion/aesthetic purposes might make them more mainstream and therefore accessible in the long run". I'm somewhere in the middle.

Canes are cool, I love mine dearly and I get incredibly excited when I see someone else out and about with one. It helps me feel better about using one, and that is something I have seen other people say as well. I also know that, historically, they have been and still kind of are popular accessories.

But, I have had people assume my cane and its predecessor were just accessories and I haven't been taken seriously because of it. A lot of people also treat them as disposable toys rather than an extension of their user, and I do worry that that attitude might only grow worse if they're seen as being "aesthetic" rather than a tool that many people physically cannot move without.

Also, using a cane when you might not need it, and without taking the proper time to research how to use one, can really damage your body in the long run. And while some canes are designed to be more weight-bearing than others, they're really more of a tool to be used for stability and relieving pressure on painful joints/muscles.

That being said, from a pain standpoint, if you believe it could help your flare ups, then a cane may certainly be something to look into. That is what they are designed for, after all. Just, again, make sure you look into how to use it properly, and maybe try and consult a doctor or a physiotherapist about it.

The fact you're taking the time to ask these questions instead of just plunging in shows me that you are being genuine when you say you don't want to come across as "ignorant", so thank you for being respectful, anon.

Have a good day/evening!

[eyeballtank]

I honestly think the current use of "Nazi" only undermines the actual atrocities of the Holocaust and WW2. Because at the end of the day, you're comparing actual horrors that affected people's lives to stupid culture wars and everyone going crazy. (Or worse, you're forgetting them) Like imagine someone saying they never got to meet their grandparents because they died in the 1940's and they're told "shut up, I had to put up with someone that disagreed with me on the computer". In fact, I except a Breadtuber to have a "mask off" moment where in a video he says "unfortunately, you hate Nazis the wrong way" or some shit like that. Because even people that are left leaning can still be labeled "Nazi" over specific opinions, since the word is used in a very black-and-white way. Even though the Nazis' actions do come from their politics and ideology, I feel like people need to remember other ideologies that also caused suffering and death, because of how they're established. (Looking at people who idolize Communism even though there's still people that were affected by it in recent times). Or even some historical context because there was always a time when Hitler wasn't thinking of hating Jews or when some people didn't know what would happen.

Basically, think of that time travel paradox of going back in time to kill Hitler: The Hitler before he became Hitler may be different enough that if you managed to kill him before he was Hitler, you didn't really kill Hitler... know what I'm saying? I know that HP Lovecraft thought "they just wanted to preserve their culture I guess" but felt disgusted hearing what happened later (Same guy that technically got less racist over time, whose cat got his name from his dad and only didn't change it because he felt it would be unfair to a cat). But Charlie Chaplin did dislike the Nazis and even got some people upset at him before he had a "I told you so" moment, sort of. (Again, research well what I'm bringing up). I'm also sure people will look up Miyazaki drawing fanart of a Nazi tank and I guess even meeting the guy that drove it, but not realize that his stance of Nazi villains in media correlates with his stance on Orcs in LOTR (Compare that to Extra Credit). What else can I mention? Azov Battalion? Kanye West? Israel? Stroheim from JoJo? We know Nazis are fun to have as villains in games and movies but the way how stuff lately makes a specific point of being "anti-Nazi" is goofy when you realize our current sociopolitical context.

(Specially with Millenials, who are noticed for being struggling adults, essentially getting into politics in a way that comes off as "TAKE ME SERIOUSLY I'M A GROWN UP"). Nazis have become historical characters to us and you're also giving too much credit to mister 1944BasedMAGAGroyper guys who talk about how anime is degenerate while making shitty comics with Wojaks, using AI art to replicate the "good Christian artworks" (Because they never took arts seriously, cuz I guess arts are a liberal thing to them) and maybe they do an "Anti-Woke" cover of a popular song.

And as for Musk, I do wonder if he did that salute just because he simply wanted to "own the woke for the lulz" without realizing it'd make him look worse than he already is. If nothing else, it distracted people from bringing other shit up like that photo of him with Ghislaine Maxwell or H-1B visa. He still has diehard cultist fans but I expect his stupidity to lead to more people turning against him. But I see people posting fictional characters beating up Hitler and it's not like you're doing this to respesct Holocaust victims or the Allies. It's because of a fat fuck in office who could probably die of a heart attack before he finishes his second term. Or maybe I've been exposed to too much Trump shit that part of me is like "heh, whatever" and forgetting how bad it can get. Perhaps it's the notion that most politicians have so much dirty laundry, it feels like people are going "we should've had this corrupt reptile instead" like dude, Trump was a buddy of Epstein and Biden's got a whole mess of a son. At that point, just bomb all of them, even the "lesser evil" ones.

Colonel Sanders gotta get it too (I honestly expect a point in 5 years where some people will go "uh yeah we always knew he was cringe" because nobody is honest or consistent anymore). But anyway, I see people bring up Superman and I'm like "are they aware of how most comic book companies used to screw up the creators of these characters?".

Years ago, we had Picasso coming up with Guernica or Orwell with 1984 and nowadays, some celebrity will post their brave opinion about Trump before checking how much they earned through NFT's.

At some point, John Oliver must've watched that Linkara bit on OneyPlays and feel jealous that Zach Hadel did a better Trump parody.

What else happened? The Netflix Castlevania "Apu, why do you sound like that?" guy likes Henry Kissinger?

[amphibious-thing]

Do you have any advice for historical fiction authors who want to try harder to use historical queer language without confusing the average reader? It's something that has been a challenge for me and I've been finding your posts helpful, but I was wondering if you had specific tips on how an author could write better queer histfic for the modern reader.

It can be difficult because it is a balance. You probably don't want to just dump a whole heap of molly slang on your reader all at once. But you also don't want your characters to feel disconnected from the real history of the period.

In regards to molly slang you do have to remember that it was somewhat unique to the subculture. Only people involved in the subculture would be familiar with a lot of the slang. So if you wanted to include a character that uses molly slang you could aways have a character who is not part of the subculture, or new to it, who would serve as and stand in for the audience. This way the explanation of slang words can be weaved into the story in a more organic way.

Of course 18th century queer language is much more than just molly slang. It's good to know what the words mean but also what kind of people would be using them and in what context. For example legal writings will talk about sodomy and sodomites while a casual conversation might be more likely to talk about mollies.

While you don't want to overwhelm the reader you also don't want to underestimate them. If you pepper in historical terminology most readers will be able to pick up on the meaning form context. I think the Montague Sibling series actually does a pretty good job of this and it's a YA historical fantasy adventure novel. If Mackenzi Lee can trust her teenage target demo to pick up what a molly is from context then you can certainly trust an adult audience to.

It's also important to remember that it doesn't have to be perfect. Historical fiction is first and foremost fiction. The most important thing in my opinion is to create the feeling of a full fleshed out world. And for queer historical fiction that should be a world that includes queer people and thus have at least some queer language. You don't have to fill a novel with molly slang to do this, just give a bit here and there where it makes sense in context. The best advice I can give is to do the research and understand the history. If you understand it you will be better equipped to figure out when it makes sense to use historical language and when it makes sense not to. If you understand the rules you will better understand when to break them.

I think this is one of the reasons I like the Montague Sibling series so much. Mackenzi Lee has studied history and while her books are historical fantasy that strong base of historical knowledge really helps bring the world of the books to life. Also I just like that she actually used the word mollies in her YA book!

[Spoilers for the Montague Sibling series ahead]

Though it's not perfectly historically accurate the following scene form The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue feels very grounded in the period. The conversation is between the protagonist Monty and his little sister Felicity. Felicity largely represents the perspective of the popular rhetoric of the day.

"Honestly, Monty, I've never quite understood who's really got a hold on you." "Do you want to know if I'm a bugger?" She winces at the crass word, but then says, "It seems a fair question, considering I've seen your hands all over Richard Peele and Theodosia Fitzroy." "Oh, dear Theodosia, my girl." I collapse backward into the sofa cushions. "I remain inconsolable over losing her." I do not want to talk about this. Especially with my little sister. I came down here for the sole purpose of getting drunk enough to sleep and avoid venturing anywhere near this subject, but Felicity goes on staring at me like she's waiting for an answer. I take an uncivilized swipe at my mouth with my sleeve, which would have earned me a cuff from Father had we been at home. "Why does it matter who I run around with?" "Well, one is illegal. And a sin. And the other is also a sin, if you aren't married to her." "Are you going to give me the fornication without the intention of procreation is of the devil and a crime lecture? I believe could recite it from memory by now." "Monty—" "Perhaps I am trying to procreate with all these lads and I'm just very misinformed about the whole process. If only Eton hadn't thrown me out." "You're avoiding the question." "What was the question?" "Are you—" "Oh yes, am I a sodomite. Well, I've been with lads, so ... yes." She purses her lips, and I wish I hadn't been so forthright. "If you'd stop, Father might not be so rough on you, you know." "Oh my, thank you for that earth-shattering wisdom. Can't believe I didn't think of that myself." "I'm simply suggesting—" "Don't bother." "—he might ease up." "Well, I haven't much choice." "Really?" She crosses her arms. "You haven't a choice in who you bed?" "No, I mean I haven't much choice in who it is I want to bed." "Of course you do. Sodomy's a vice—same as drinking or gambling." "Not really. I mean, yes, I enjoy it. And I have certainly abstained form abstinence. But I'm also rather attracted to all the men I kiss. And the ladies as well." She laughs, like I've made a joke. I don't. "Sodomy has nothing to do with attraction. It's an act. A sin." "Not for me." "But humans are made to be attracted to the opposite sex. Not the same one. That's now nature operates." "Does that make me unnatural?" When she doesn't reply, I say, "Have you ever fancied anyone?" "No. But I believe I understand the basic principles of it." "I don't think you really can until it's happened to you."

The conversation then goes into Monty feelings for Percy which leads to this exchange:

"What are your expectations, exactly? If Percy did feel the same way about you, what would happen? You can't be together. Not like that—you could be killed for it if you were found out. They've been sentencing mollies by the score since the Clap Raid." "Doesn't matter, does it? Percy's good and natural and probably only fancies women and I am ... not."

While its perhaps a bit of an exaggeration to say that they've "been sentencing mollies by the score since the Clap Raid". It works the word mollies, a word most readers probably aren't familiar with, into the story in such a way that the context makes the meaning pretty clear. While Clap Raid might go over some readers heads they will still get the gist of the meaning behind the conversation and perhaps even inspired some readers to look it up and learn some real history.

This scene also takes advantage of words a modern reader would know like sin, vice and natural. They're talking about queerness in a more-or-less historically accurate way without using too many unfamiliar terms.

The Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucy then gives us this fantastic scene that uses an 18th century euphemism:

He licks his lips, then nods. I reach for the buttons on his trousers, but he cries, "Wait! And I freeze, panicked I've done something else to muck this up, but then he says, "Just ... slowly, yes? Maybe not ... a full game of backgammon just yet." And then every inch of him goes red. "Percy Newton." I sit up over top of him and cross my arms. When he looks back at me with his eyes wide and innocent, I parrot, "A full game of backgammon? What erotic leaflet did you pick up that filthy vocabulary from?" "None!" he protests, but his mouth twitches. "Some." "Some?" Impossibly, he goes redder. "Some erotic leaflets." "May I have their titles? For purely academic purposes, I assure you."

Again the context allows for the readers to gather what is being talked about even if they've never heard the euphemism before.

And in The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy they even go to a molly house!

It is our only topic of conversation as the three of us walk to the pub in Shadwell called the Minced Nancy, which from the name alone brands itself a place where mollies like my brother and his beau can be together openly.

Tho I have to point out that while minced is 18th century language the earliest use of Nancy in this sense isn't until the 19th century.

[frogfishwastaken]

Fish are smart and social and have memories and feel pain and people calling them stupid and using that as an excuse to treat them less humanely than other animals makes me so sad :(

For context, a biologist named Culum Brown has been doing fish research for years and has found that they are simply deeply misunderstood because the way they’re adapted to their aquatic environment is different from how terrestrial animals are adapted to land environments. People just see fish doing thing and don’t understand that it’s useful for survival in the deep sea. They don’t bother to observe them enough because of preconceived biases constructed by society’s portrayal of fish and our experiences on land.

(This has connections to the Bible and the hierarchy of animals established in it as well. I don’t think we realize the extent to which Western culture and Christianity have consciously and unconsciously shaped science.)

Despite the widespread and deeply pervasive myth that fish are dumb they actually have been proven to have the ability to remember how to evade traps even years after first learning how to do it and they can observe and learn from other fish and they have cultural transmission and friendships with fish they recognize and I’m going to cry

There’s also very little concern for fish welfare, since they aren’t beloved flagship species like dolphins or whales or seals, and generally they’ve been so poorly understood that people basically think of them as having the same level of sentience as plants. That is NOT TRUE and the conditions fish are subjected to before they die are FUCKING AWFUL and nobody’s out here protesting against that when there have been so many efforts to reduce the suffering of farm animals. Nobody ever really labels a can of tuna “free range’ but they’ll label it “dolphin safe” bc we’ve always cared more about the species that are similar to us.

And! Hot take! Maybe we shouldn’t associate intelligence with value in the first place! That has historically had some pretty awful implications for how we treat other humans based on how they are perceived or presented by people in power!

All this definitely has some sociological ties and implications.

[hellsvestibule]

I miss academia only in the literary field tbh. Bc I always enjoyed reading and analysis but I kind of -need- to be prompted, I -need- other people to ask me things, bc otherwise I’m putting statements out there into the void unprompted vs whatever the spiritual successor is to your teacher handing you a sheet which says “what do you think this means” with the explicit understanding and willingness to offer you the grace your personal perspective on this author is going to be fucking limited, your intention to research them in their totality might be nonexistent. and this isn’t a moral defect, you just fucking want to read Something and talk about what you just read, 5 minutes ago. But you also aren’t seeking to be regarded as an expert, or someone who wants to read nonstop in perpetuity till you feel like you’ve learned Nothing, which is what I feel like a lot of people who read and discourse a lot about reading sometimes do.

Some people never stop they never pull back long enough to apply that knowledge to the present, which is why they exist in a sphere separate from normal people, who rightfully feel condescended to by this. Bc your basis and understanding of intelligence is “have you collected enough Information” to even be allowed to to perceive and form opinions on this isolated instance of what you’ve read. Instead it becomes a Sisyphyian task of further and further education which will lead you in circles and convince you that you can never know enough. Ergo you can never Be enough, to be worthy of stating your own opinions. Did you research the surrounding historical context? Have you read all of this authors works? Have you read the inspiring literature? Are you eager to provide in depth analysis and condemnation of this authors problematic opinions?

Wheras I want to sort of, beg to the importance and validity of sometimes having a limited perspective, and needing to clumsily navigate the learning process, rather than immediately being presumed one of 2 alternatives, an expert, or someone with no right to speak on a subject, period.

Can -you- the person who is more educated than me, summarize whatever makes this prolonged research and knowledge of the subject important, sustinctly, within reason, or are you presuming the need to engage with this thing in its entirety is necessarily meaningful to my capabilities as a human.

When engaging w someone less educated than you, on any subject, it’s your duty as the expert, within reason, Not to gatekeep people who are just passing through. I.e. when a non artist shows me a drawing, i do not critique them as someone who intends to spend 20+ years getting to the level of skill and understanding I am at, I speak to them as a person passively engaging with a hobby and praise them for their attempts, offering minimal advice if they are interested. Ask yourself. Are you actually keen on imparting this wisdom on others or are you just weaponizing it to make them feel stupid and morally deficient.

[bloodmaarked]

the first woman // jennifer nansubuga makumbi

first published: 2020 read: 14 june 2024 - 25 june 2024 pages: 437 format: paperback

genres: fiction; adult; literary fiction; african literature (uganda); historical fiction favourite character(s): nsuuta least favourite character(s): sio

rating: 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑 thoughts: i think i must've read a different book than everyone else as the reception has been very positive but my experience with the first woman was mostly boring and disappointing. there are certainly parts that i did enjoy that make me glad that i didn't give up entirely and DNF, but man was it a struggle to get through to those points in the first place. i really had to encourage myself to keep going back to the book. i was bored with the story, the messages are quite in-your-face, and the characters were very difficult to invest in.

let's start with what i did like. i really liked the cultural background that's woven into the story, which takes place in 1970s Uganda. i do not know much about Ugandan history and i feel i had a beginner's insight into the impact of Idi Amin and the Uganda-Tanzania war, especially how it impacted citizens in rural areas. i like that it's encouraged me to do my own research into the history. it also covered a little of the conflicts between different Ugandan tribes, which, again, was new knowledge for me.

i also really enjoyed the relationship between nsuuta and alikisa. the book is split into five parts and the entirety of part four is dedicated to the exploration of their friendship as children through to young adulthood. i do not exaggerate when i say this part was easily better than all four other parts that followed our actual main character, kirabo (alikisa's granddaughter). i actually found myself emotionally invested in the two characters in a very short space of time. i thought the messages that jennifer wanted to convey were more understated than they were through the rest of the story. the cultural background again started coming through a bit stronger, which i enjoyed. the way their relationship develops outside of part four was also so interesting. i wish this book had just been a story about nsuuta's and alikisa's lives.

now for what i didn't care for... i was so. bored. i know it's literary fiction but this felt directionless and meandering and the plot was non-existent. i just wanted something to happen and nothing did. the "supernatural" stuff that takes place with kirabo in the first part was entirely pointless, and i feel like if jennifer makumbi had wanted to use it as a vehicle for introducing kirabo to feminism, there were other ways to do it. going into this, from the description and other people's reviews, i thought this would be somewhat similar to the girl with the louding voice, another coming of age story about a young girl in nigeria navigating a world that was not made to care about her. but no, kirabo's story was miles away from being as charming and captivating as adunni's.

when it comes to the characters, there were too many of them and they weren't compelling enough. i could not keep track of all the names being thrown around, and a lot of them are very similar. there is a small list of character names at the back of the book, but it doesn't even cover all the main characters and eventually i gave up trying to figure out who the person was when a name i didn't recognise came up.

despite the good writing of history and culture, i didn't feel that immersed in the setting and couldn't really picture Kampala or Nattetta in my mind. there were a lot of Lugandan words used, and there is no definition for these. i spent most of the time not looking them up as i could sort of figure out what they meant in context. i did look up one and it seems that it's a word that the author made up (from what i can gather) to use in place of the word "feminist/feminism". i don't know how accurate this or the other words used are to the language. a small glossary would have been nice to have though.

i think overall this book just wasn't for me. there were some moments of good humour and again, i liked learning more of Ugandan history, but while i'm glad i made it to the end i'm also very glad that that means i don't have to read it anymore.

[phatburd]

3, 18, 30

3. What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)?

Counting Up, Counting Down. 😊. I was able to throw in so many ideas I’d been sitting on for years into this, and somehow still managed to make it all work. My first ship fic, also my first fic that contains any amount of smut.

18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?

NGL. It’s Napoleon Bonaparte. And he’s not even a POV character.

You think it would be easy, since there’s so many documented accounts about him and his behavior to draw on. That actually kind of makes it worse. Instead, it makes me feel like, “How the fuck do I even write that?”

I axed an entire chapter out of Once Was All There Was with him in it, because it was getting out of hand and overbuilt. He was being a power-tripping grade A asshole (which is not out of character), but I thought it was going on too long to come around to the point. I may still salvage it. I don’t want to do a Ridley Scott on him, accidentally or not. Naps has suffered enough indignity already.

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

That I’m doing RPF. Granted, it’s historical RPF and everyone is dead, but there’s a weird, vocal contingent of fandom that believes any kind of RPF is bad-wrong-perverted regardless if the subjects are alive or have been dead for thousands of years. I remember seeing someone on Reddit proclaiming they never watched biopics or watched/read historical fiction because it was bad-wrong-perverted in their POV to use real people in any fictional context at any time.

Like, WTF. I hope you like that view from your high horse, bub. And I hope they were just joking because, dude, how do they live? 🤯

With some exceptions (like Naps up in the previous question), I’m finding that writing RPF really isn’t that much different than straight up fiction. I also like that extra layer of historical research for authenticity.

Thanks for asking! 😘

[yllcm]

Someday, as a non-Romani white person, I would love to write a Romani character but do it right. 

It just feels like all my reading and sources are mainly coming from articles written by WHITE (oftentimes English) historians sociologists.

Below the cut is some thought vomit regarding this and what not...feel free to comment below/reblog with your thoughts+comments+concerns+feedback because I would love to hear other people’s onions particularly from tumblr’s Romani community. 

If you guys know of any good Romani-sourced articles, books, documentaries, journals or WHATEVER please let me know because it just feels like I keep getting the white narrative. Particularly, I’m mostly interested in their historic religious practices, folklore, and any truth to the idea that their ancestral religious practices are in any way related to the concept of “mysticism”. 

For context, I wanna write a book about magic and urban fantasy stuff and my story revolves around a group of witches (or magic practitioners), humans, and other supernatural entities from different cultures coming together to defeat “a big bad”. They all make up a council sort of like a United Nations of witches/magical beings kind of a thing. 

I know there are portrayals of characters who are Romani (such as Marvel's Scarlet Witch although that's probably a terrible example all things considered) but are also magic and have magical powers but, I also believe that writing a witch OC or these kinds of characters that practice "magic" as we see it in movies and TV (or in my case an ubran fantasy book) as Romani are just going to be considered derogatory and only feed into those harmful stereotypes.

I'm currently trying to learn more about Romani culture here and there by doing my own research where I can (which entails a LOT of reading, naturally) but MAINLY pertaining to what their religious practices entail, their folklore, how that feeds into the culture of what it means to be Romani, and how the stereotypes became down to the historical and factual context and so on.

Ironically enough, some sources say that many of the claims of mysticism regarding Romani individuals actually come from false narratives often perpetuated by non-Romani people. 

Today, a lot of Romani people, seeing as how many of their ancestors were initially from India, actually follow the Hindu, Muslim, and even Christian religions. Specifically, Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholic, or Muslim (also feel free to correct me if I’m way off base with this or any of this info). 

[skruffie]

actually fucking furious at an otherwise incredible genealogist right now who has done a lifetime's amount of work and research for Métis. She's pulled up the 1950 census that lists Buffy Sainte-Marie as Beverly J. Santamaria and is like "how sad this italian woman became a famous cultural icon"

You want to play that game? Let's fucking play the game.

1900 Census straight from Ft. Fucking Shaw Indian Residential School. Angela Nedow (Nedeau). Indian child aged 6. Names are misspelled all the time.

The same ancestor ten years later. Name misrepresented now as Angelina. Race listed as white.

Residential school did such a great job at assimilation it changed her entire race, right?

Ralph Huntley, mixed Yurok and Scottish. This photo was taken in direct sunlight next to his white wife Henrietta and you can observe with your eyes how much darker he was even while mixed. His father was brown enough to lie and say he was Mexican because it was safer for him to be seen as Mexican than as a Yurok man. Due to the terror and racism of being seen as Yurok I am honestly not sure if his father ever actually talked to him about how they were not Mexican and in fact from Northern California, but regardless Ralph is listed as white on census reports and on his draft card. White with a "ruddy" skin tone.

The shit that I've seen on census reports has been frustrating to no end. While casually trawling some of the earlier ones in Humboldt county page by page, you know what I saw when I got to the pages that were the communities largely comprised of Chinese immigrants?

Not a single name, sex, or age was listed accurately. The census taker instead wrote down a term I'm not going to repeat here and then just essentially went " " down the whole page. Is it much of a stretch to imagine the census takers being a little dishonest now and then? Is it a stretch to imagine a child adopted out of her community into a while family in Massachusetts, knowing nothing, would be listed as white when she has no other information available to her?

None of us know what is going to come out in this CBC report but at the end of the day the Piapot Cree still claim Buffy and this is only going to cause further harm.

"but if she wasn't actually born on the Piapot reserve--" I don't care. I do. Not. Care. She is a member now. She has family there. I still grapple with feeling like I don't have a dog in this race because of my own disconnection story but I don't really care about that at this point either. Gail Morin should know better.

Whatever comes out in this program is going to be a hot topic conversation for a while but it's only going to serve at silencing other people who are struggling to repair their broken connections. Tribal nations are going to be even more wary about people who have legitimate claims. Everything is already broken so why the fuck are we breaking it even more?

EDIT: I've seen the broadcast. Not at all surprised that Keeler and Tallbear were in it, and I'm also really annoyed that Talliet specifies online she's a niece of Riel but the stupid fucking broadcasters says she's a descendant. Louis Riel has no direct descendants. You put in all this time and effort into poking through someone else's history and trauma and don't even catch that in the final edit before you start the show? My original point here still stands because it is exactly people like Keeler that pull these tactics without digging into the historical context of why our ancestors would have been identified the way they are in reports.

[uncle-fruity]

Decided to read the article. I absolutely believe that what the author calls "male flight" has some validity to it, but it doesn't seem to be a reason men have given themselves, and it seems reductive to put the decline of men pursuing education solely on misogyny. Not to say that misogyny isn't a factor, because I agree that the article's thesis lines up with historical trends of devaluing anything seen as "feminine" work, and I know enough sexist men to know that many do have an aversion to being in anything they consider women's spaces. I'm not sure that I fully agree that the main reason men aren't pursuing education is the kind of direct misogyny described in the article, but I also don't have any evidence to the contrary lined up, and it's certainly within the realm of possibility.

Early in the article, the author lists out other reasons that have been cited to partially explain the decline in men's enrollment:

[Image Transcript: Other reasons I came across while researching for this article include:

-- Men can make more money without a college degree than women can, so women need college more.

-- Higher rates of alcohol, drug use, gangs and prison for boys negate college as a viable option.

-- Colleges are usually left-leaning, so right-leaning students increasingly don't feel comfortable there. And more men than women lean right.

-- Men join the military more than women.

-- A man will sometimes have to provide for wife/kids before he can finish college. /End transcript.]

Unfortunately, the author did not give citations for any of those claims, nor did she spend much time explaining why she thought these reasons weren't major factors -- or not as notable as the reason she gives: the rise of women in higher education. It would have been nice to see where that information was coming from. Particularly the point about higher drug and prison rates would be nice to have some context for. To be fair, there is a section just before the part that I cited that does give some sources for some of the other reasons people have attributed to the decline of male enrollment.

And, actually, to be extra fair, I'm gonna post that part as well, because it might be helpful. So this is the part directly before the passage I just cited:

[Image transcript: The Pew Research Center has found that boys are more likely to think they don’t need a degree for the jobs they want, and when they do enroll in college, work opportunities lure them away.

Ruth Simmons, president of A&M University thinks “the problem is the way we treat our boys in k-12. They turn away from school because of the negative messages they get at school… Behavior that is rewarded for boys doesn’t fit well with good student behavior.”

Another college president, Donald Ruff believes it boils down to money. “Honestly I think it’s the sticker shock. To see $100,000 that’s daunting.” /End transcript.]

I have little to add about this passage, I just thought it would be helpful to include.

The author also does not seem to consider race in her argument beyond drawing parallels between white flight and male flight. As far as I could tell, this article gives few statistics about the races involved. Is the influx of women predominantly white or predominantly non-white? When we talk about men not enrolling, is there any racial element being considered -- are non-white men enrolling at higher or lower rates than they used to? Are we talking primarily white men not enrolling, or is this male flight evenly distributed across racial demographics? How do these demographics play out? Because, to me, it seems like misogyny and racism could both be at play here. If more black women than ever are going to college, it is likely that male flight is in tandem with white flight, but to actually make that claim with any amount of credibility, we would need more information, which the article does not provide/is not focused on.

To be clear, I do not have the answers to those questions. I am merely speculating. This is one of those cases where I'd need to spend more time looking at other sources to get a broader view of the issue, including the sources the author included, the ones she used to support her claims, and the Freakonomics episode she mentions.

On that note, there's this interesting passage, which comes off as sorta... idk... I don't have the exact words for it. Undermining her own point a little? I'll analyze this feeling I have more after the image transcript. (Also, the "they" that is mentioned at the beginning of this passage is referring to the Freakonomics podcast.)

[Image transcript: They mentioned that there is one subset of men who out-enroll women. Which subset might that be?

Gay men.

While only 36 percent of US adults have bachelor’s degrees, 52% of gay men do.

"If America's gay men formed their own country, it would be the world's most highly educated by far.” - Joel Mittleman

At the Joel Mittleman quote in the podcast, I leaned forward…yes… surely now we will wonder why only straight men aren’t attending college… yes? /End transcript]

I feel like this passage gives a passing glance at intersectionality and then just hand waves it away to prove something about straight men. It just strikes me as something that should be explored more if the argument you're making is that men are leaving for misogynistic reasons. Because we should all know by now that gay men are perfectly capable of being misogynistic and that there are definitely gay men who don't want to share spaces with women. Is it that gay men overall tend to be more in touch with or comfortable with femininity, and are therefore less deterred by the presence of women in the classroom? I guess I'm honestly just confused as to how gay men factor into this conversation and why this deviance from the overall trend is not explored. It seems extremely relevant to the conversation?

Also, the article up to this point has been saying that men -- as a general category -- are choosing not to go to college. Is it true that the article is talking about straight men only, as this portion seems to imply? Are we considering gay men as somehow not men or unaffiliated with the rates that men are choosing college? Does the presence of more gay men in academia also mean that this "male flight" is also in part due to homophobia, or is homophobia not being considered as a factor the same way race doesn't seem to have been factored in?

Finally, how do trans men factor into this conversation? Were they counted as women or men? Were they considered at all? If they were, that certainly is not represented here.

So, I guess my overall impression is that this is an interesting and compelling thesis, but the specifics are missing in a way that makes the author's argument fall flat. I think this article would really benefit from a more intersectional approach. I also believe, as with all social issues like this, that the problem is never just one thing, but a combination of things, all of which need to be considered to address the underlying systemic issues that get us to this point. I absolutely believe the author is on to a big part of the problem, but I think her scope is limited and she needs a more solid foundation of information to build her argument on.

Idk. Read the article for yourself and see how it hits.

Why aren't we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping? (Celeste Davis, Oct 6 2024)

"White flight is a term that describes how white people move out of neighborhoods when more people of color move in.

White flight is especially common when minority populations become the majority. That neighborhood then declines in value.

Male flight describes a similar phenomenon when large numbers of females enter a profession, group, hobby or industry—the men leave. That industry is then devalued.

Take veterinary school for example:

In 1969 almost all veterinary students were male at 89%.

By 1987, male enrollment was equal to female at 50%.

By 2009, male enrollment in veterinary schools had plummeted to 22.4%

A sociologist studying gender in veterinary schools, Dr. Anne Lincoln says that in an attempt to describe this drastic drop in male enrollment, many keep pointing to financial reasons like the debt-to-income ratio or the high cost of schooling.

But Lincoln’s research found that “men and women are equally affected by tuition and salaries.”

Her research shows that the reason fewer men are enrolling in veterinary school boils down to one factor: the number of women in the classroom.

For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied.

One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition! (…)

Since males had dominated these professions for centuries, you would think they would leave slowly, hesitantly or maybe linger at 40%, 35%, 30%, but that’s not what happens.

Once the tipping point reaches majority female- the men flee. And boy do they flee!

It’s a slippery slope. When the number of women hits 60% the men who are there make a swift exit and other men stop joining.

Morty Schapiro, economist and former president of Northwestern University has noticed this trend when studying college enrollment numbers across universities:

“There’s a cliff you fall off once you become 60/40 female/male. It then becomes exponentially more difficult to recruit men.”

Now we’ve reached that 60% point of no return for colleges.

As we’ve seen with teachers, nurses and interior design, once an institution is majority female, the public perception of its value plummets.

Scanning through Reddit and Quora threads, many men seem to be in agreement - college is stupid and unnecessary.

A waste of time and money. You’re much better off going into the trades, a tech boot camp or becoming an entrepreneur. No need for college. (…)

When mostly men went to college? Prestigious. Aspirational. Important.

Now that mostly women go to college? Unnecessary. De-valued. A bad choice. (…)

School is now feminine. College is feminine. And rule #1 if you want to safely navigate this world as a man? Avoid the feminine.

But we don’t seem to want to talk about that."

[project-sour-grapes]

Feedback

Today, I got some feedback on the research paper that I'm about to publish. And I was put the fuck off by it. The guy who edited it rewrote entire paragraphs, stated that much of the context that I gave to readers was unnecessary, added one or two grammatical errors of his own, and one point wrote "Lol" in one of his corrections. It came off as pretty snarky. He is usually a really chill dude, but he has been stepping on my toes out of nowhere lately and is injecting his presence into my work.

I was going to send him an email asking if he was aware that he was coming off this way. It was actually the more tactful version of my original message, which was going to be, "Why are you being rude?" But you know what? Despite the massaging of my words into something more palatable, and honestly perfectly acceptable to say, I asked myself: what if I do what I usually DON'T do which is just say nothing and resolve to do better? Some of his criticism was legitimate, and I might be better off just taking his advice and spending my energy on simply improving.

Historically, people have called me whiny behind my back. It didn't really matter that my complaints were rooted in reality. It didn't matter that I put a lot of thought into the fairness of a situation before speaking out or that I tried to be gentle and considerate when doing so. Something about it rubbed people the wrong way.

My guess is that people's issue was two things: one, the frequency of the complaining and, two, the ratio of "getting stuff done" to "complaining." In a similar vein, it was probably that I wasn't solving the problem myself (the societally-accepted "masculine" approach). There was something to how much I spoke vs. acted that I think is key. My point is that, when it comes to this one situation with the feedback on my research, I don't have enough "action" under my belt to outweigh what would be seen as "whining." There is a time under the sun for just shutting up, taking action, and improving oneself. Sometimes, I can just fuck off.

There is also a tangential conversation here about how his feedback made me feel stupid, and how, if somebody's criticism hits a nerve with me, that may mean that my internal self worries there is truth to that criticism.

I'm trying to remember Steve Martin's imperative to "be so good that they can't ignore you." I'm imagining a young Steve Martin on stage in my mind. If I saw somebody come up to him and give him some feedback and then saw him be cynical and dismissive of that feedback, I'd lose respect for him very quickly. His image would be soured in my mind. A response that I would look up to and aspire to have is maybe one where he (and by extension, myself) really processes the feedback, takes what is useful, and shakes off the rest. Perhaps, if he thought that person's feedback was inappropriate or a waste of time, he wouldn't try to cut into them the first time, but only if it got repetitive and the person wasn't getting the message that feedback was unwelcome. Steve Martin could really stand in for any person who has achieved great things that you respect.

So for me, I don't have to snap at my coworker who is trying to help me. Sure, it might be correct on paper to "set boundaries" or whatever, which one might think needs to be verbal. But maybe the boundary is just letting the conversation drop and just focusing on my work. Sounds like a win-win, and it stops the inflammatory volleying back-and-forth of dick measuring and misunderstanding, especially because it's not a big fucking deal. So this is me NOT being so obsessed with verbal fairness and making sure everybody knows I'm not fucking stupid and, instead, just buckling down and doing the goddamn work. If I'm so great, then just be great. Stop being a whiny pussy, self, lmao. There is work to be done.