Oklahoma is attempting to pass a bill that would ban explicit romance novels. Authors, narrators, and sellers could all face fines of up to $100,000 and up to 10 years in jail for each instance.
If you live in OK, call your representative and tell them this bill should not be allowed to pass.
This is likely a test case. Republicans will try to pass it in OK and if it passes other states will likely try to pass similar laws.
In the meantime, get physical copies of books you like. Download those pdfs. Archive your AO3 stories and keep them on a physical hard drive. (Storing those files in the cloud could be problematic in the future as the company managing the cloud service can see what your files are)
i really don’t like the whole “tell your parents off and call them out when they’re being racist/homophobic/etc even if it gets you in trouble with them” argument especially when it pertains to minors and people who still rely on their parents financially. you can’t morally advocate for a minor to tell off their parents when it involves them risking their own safety and well-being. and you’d be surprised how many people i’ve seen on this godforsaken website doing just that.
Holy **** oh right okay. So I was about to make a post about how using speech to text has already been a game changer for me but as you can see by the line of asterix at the start of this post the bloody thing auto censors swear words. (Yet bloody got through, ig Because it is a description and also British slang.). Hint: the word I was trying to say there starts with F and ends with K.
Oh and guess what else you can't say you can't say? **** [Nipples]. had to type that myself. penis is ok but **** [clitoris] isn't, and all my attempts to say "clit" were Misunderstood, which may just be my speech but at this point I am not willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Vagina is OK too but every time I say it there is a moment when an * shows up on screen first before the full word does. this doesn't happen when I say the word penis.
It is completely heinous. Anybody who needs speech to text is immediately forced to comply with the rules set out by people in a position of power and then enforced by a machine — a machine that is a very powerful accessibility tool. Imagine trying to dictate a letter to a doctor or fill in an E consult with speech to text, only to have words of your anatomy censored as if they are taboo. there is already far too much stigma around genital physical health — and note that I could say genital but can't say **** [clitoris] — for it to be okay for these words to be censored.
And even if somebody just wants to swear In a message to their friends or write smut/**** [pornography], they should be able to. There is no justification for this feature. No reason for it to be default.
I'm trying to find a way around this. There is a settings icon on the little speech to text bar that comes up, but this only gives me options For the speech typing launcher, auto punctuation, and to set the default microphone. it's making me extremely angry
this may be an Unpopular Opinion (even on tumblr) but like the 8-hour workday is just Too Gotdamn Long
like even sitting in an office for eight hours a day isn’t particularly pleasant (or healthy, as we are beginning to see) but when we’re talking about doing *actual work* for that same amount time it gets pretty fucking brutal
doing literally *anything* (even leisure activities) for eight hours straight tends to be less than enjoyable but when we’re talking about things like construction, landscaping, factory work, and hell, even foodservice and retail, eight hours is a fucking ETERNITY
i might just be a lazy weak-willed bitch but honestly i think i’m not entirely wrong
Fantasy books written by women are often assumed to be young adult, even when those books are written for adults, marketed to adults, and published by adult SFF imprints. And this happens even more frequently to women of color.
This topic’s an ongoing conversation on book Twitter, and I thought it might be worth sharing with Tumblr. And by “ongoing,” I mean that people have been talking about this for years. Last year, there was a big blow up when the author R.F. Kuang said publicly that her book The Poppy War isn’t young adult and that she wished people would stop calling it such. If you’ve read The Poppy War, then you’ll know it’s grimdark fantasy along lines of Game of Thrones… and yet people constantly refer to The Poppy War as young adult – which is one of its popular shelves on Goodreads. To be fair, more people have shelved it as “adult,” but why is anyone shelving it as “young adult” in the first place? Game of Thrones is not at all treated this way…
Rebecca Roanhorse’s book Trail of Lightning, an urban fantasy with a Dinétah (Navajo) protagonist has “young adult” as its fifth most popular Goodreads shelf. The novel is adult and published by Saga, an adult SFF imprint.
S.A. Chakraborty’s adult fantasy novel City of Brass has “young adult” as its fourth most popular Goodreads shelf.
Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, an adult fantasy in a world based on Mughal India, has about equal numbers of people shelving it as “adult” or “young adult.”
Book Riot wrote an article on this, although they didn’t address how the problem intersects with race. I also did a Twitter thread a while back where I cited these examples and some more as well.
The topic of diversity in adult SFF is important to me, partly because we need to stop mislabeling the women of color who write it, and also because there’s a lot there that isn’t acknowledged! Besides, sometimes it’s good to see that your stories don’t just end the moment you leave high school and that adults can still have vibrant and interesting futures worth reading about. I feel like this is especially important with queer rep, for a number of reasons.
Other books and authors in the tweets I screenshot include:
Witchmark by C.L. Polk
A Ruin of Shadows by L.D. Lewis
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
The Day Before by Liana Brooks
A Phoenix First Must Burn edited by Patrice Caldwell
Shri, a book blogger at Sun and Chai
Vanessa, a writer and blogger at The Wolf and Books
TLDR: Women who write adult fantasy, especially women of color, are presumed to be writing young adult, which is problematic in that it internalizes diversity, dismisses the need and presence of diversity in adult fantasy, and plays into sexist assumptions of women writers.
yo being black and depressed is hard as fuck. being black with anxiety is hard as fuck. being black with a chronic illness or disability is hard a fuck. everybody expects you to be ‘strong’ at all times and no one sees black people as complex or nuanced enough to be capable of suffering. no one ever thinks we could possibly need help. and if you’re a black woman, the moment you stop thinking about others and try to tend to yourself you’re a selfish lazy ungrateful bitch.
support black people, esp women, who need help. don’t just call us strong or tell us we’ll get through it, help us. protect us. uplift us. allow us to be beings capable of suffering. give us the same space you’d give white women to express our pain and be there for us like you would for anyone else.
Reminder that it really doesn’t matter what ways you’re marginalized, if you’re not black you’re just as capable of anti blackness as white cishet people. No amount of “but I’m gay!”, “but I’m trans!”, or “but I’m not white!” changes that.
And being neurodiverse/disabled isn’t an excuse for anti blackness either.
i am russian and i am scared. contemplating dropping out of university and running away from the country because i have no idea what to do. PLEASE SHARE THIS. NO ONE OUTSIDE OF RUSSIA KNOWS ABOUT IT. PLEASE.
Redditors crashed the website with donations over $25k and 0 wishes left. via /r/MadeMeSmile
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