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bfpnola · 10 months

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Trans Reads is an ambitious project created by and for transgender people to openly access writing related to our communities. We believe education should be free and writing shouldn’t be behind a paywall. Transreads.org provides the opportunity to access, discuss, and distribute texts for free.

If you’re looking for books, chapters, texts, essays, or articles by, for, or about people who transverse or transcend western gender norms, you’re in the right place!

Trans Reads was formed through the work, consulting, and creativity of an anonymous group of trans people of various genders and races around the U.S. involved in organizing, academia, and trans liberation efforts. Trans Reads was launched in 2019 following increasing violence against trans people alongside the lack of accessible resources for trans people to learn about our own community.

There is a serious barrier for most trans people accessing content from our community. Trans people on average have less disposable income, time to read and purchase literature, and knowledge of the available texts. We created Trans Reads to address this problem directly. We offer the largest collection of free trans texts on the internet.

Get Involved:

Trans Reads is almost entirely generated through user content. By uploading, you can help a trans teen in a rural area learn about other girls like her. You could help a trans student who can’t afford a textbook easily pass their class. You can even share your own writing with the world on an easy-to-use platform exclusively for trans content. You can help grow our collection on our upload page. If you are interested in helping us upload texts for our collection, you can reach out on our contact page.

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We are faced with the common ethical question about hurting the sales of trans authors. However, the largest ever study on piracy actually found that the piracy of copyrighted books, music, video games, and movies has no effect on sales. In the case of video games, piracy actually helped sales. As far back as 2002, we can see piracy boosting sales of media. Trans Reads strongly encourages you to purchase the books that you enjoy here or find other ways to support the author.

Academic authors rarely – if ever – see income from sales of their books, articles, or chapters. Most want to remove the paywalls withholding their content. Trans Reads is open to collaborating with authors, publishers, and journals on making this a possibility through our website.

History:

In 2014, Leslie Feinberg published the 20th-anniversary edition of Stone Butch Blues, one of the most influential works of transgender literature. The novel was a way for trans, gender nonconforming, and queer people to realize ourselves. It told us we aren’t alone. However, when the publisher went bankrupt, Leslie had to struggle to regain ownership over hir own novel.

“I had to work to recover my rights to Stone Butch Blues. When the first publisher went into Chapter 11 court, I had to spend thousands of dollars of my wages on legal fees to recover the right to this novel… While very ill in Spring 2012, I recovered my rights again.”

Ze didn’t want the book to be released as a film adaptation exploiting hir story for straight fantasies. Ze also used the opportunity to make the book more accessible. First editions shot up into hundreds of dollars. The least expensive print versions are still over $30 on Amazon. This simply isn’t affordable to most queer and trans people. The fight ended with Leslie publishing hir novel on hir website as a PDF, a strategy of reclaiming transgender narratives from greedy publishes by collective ownership of the text.

Trans Reads is dedicated to the memory of Leslie and all those who feel alone. Most individuals don’t have institutional access and cannot afford to pay for texts. Transreads.org allows visitors to effortlessly read texts by, for, or related to trans people online for free as PDFs. Trans Reads is the space where anyone can easily discuss, add, or download trans content.

This project is intended to foster discussion around the current state of learning. We refuse paywalls and withholding education. Trans Reads provides the opportunity to access, discuss, and distribute texts related to our community on its website in a matter of seconds.

Knowledge, learning, and community must be de-commodified for our collective liberation. Take it from Leslie:

“And on the day those paper deeds of ownership are torn up, it won’t matter about protecting Stone Butch Blues anymore from commercial exploitation.”

Authors shouldn’t live in fear of their work being exploited or inaccessible. Trans Reads is just one small part of trans autonomy from corporate publishers. However, it is a necessary step toward engaging with our radical history, politics, and futures.

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#trans #queer #resources #educational equity #reaux speaks

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blubberquark · 10 months

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Why Not Write Cryptography

I learned Python in high school in 2003. This was unusual at the time. We were part of a pilot project, testing new teaching materials. The official syllabus still expected us to use PASCAL. In order to satisfy the requirements, we had to learn PASCAL too, after Python. I don't know if PASCAL is still standard.

Some of the early Python programming lessons focused on cryptography. We didn't really learn anything about cryptography itself then, it was all just toy problems to demonstrate basic programming concepts like loops and recursion. Beginners can easily implement some old, outdated ciphers like Caesar, Vigenère, arbitrary 26-letter substitutions, transpositions, and so on.

The Vigenère cipher will be important. It goes like this: First, in order to work with letters, we assign numbers from 0 to 25 to the 26 letters of the alphabet, so A is 0, B is 1, C is 2 and so on. In the programs we wrote, we had to strip out all punctuation and spaces, write everything in uppercase and use the standard transliteration rules for Ä, Ö, Ü, and ß. That's just the encoding part. Now comes the encryption part. For every letter in the plain text, we add the next letter from the key, modulo 26, round robin style. The key is repeated after we get tot he end. Encrypting "HELLOWORLD" with the key "ABC" yields ["H"+"A", "E"+"B", "L"+"C", "L"+"A", "O"+"B", "W"+"C", "O"+"A", "R"+"B", "L"+"C", "D"+"A"], or "HFNLPYOLND". If this short example didn't click for you, you can look it up on Wikipedia and blame me for explaining it badly.

Then our teacher left in the middle of the school year, and a different one took over. He was unfamiliar with encryption algorithms. He took us through some of the exercises about breaking the Caesar cipher with statistics. Then he proclaimed, based on some back-of-the-envelope calculations, that a Vigenère cipher with a long enough key, with the length unknown to the attacker, is "basically uncrackable". You can't brute-force a 20-letter key, and there are no significant statistical patterns.

I told him this wasn't true. If you re-use a Vigenère key, it's like re-using a one time pad key. At the time I just had read the first chapters of Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography", and some pop history books about cold war spy stuff. I knew about the problem with re-using a one-time pad. A one time pad is the same as if your Vigenère key is as long as the message, so there is no way to make any inferences from one letter of the encrypted message to another letter of the plain text. This is mathematically proven to be completely uncrackable, as long as you use the key only one time, hence the name. Re-use of one-time pads actually happened during the cold war. Spy agencies communicated through number stations and one-time pads, but at some point, the Soviets either killed some of their cryptographers in a purge, or they messed up their book-keeping, and they re-used some of their keys. The Americans could decrypt the messages.

Here is how: If you have message $A$ and message $B$, and you re-use the key $K$, then an attacker can take the encrypted messages $A+K$ and $B+K$, and subtract them. That creates $(A+K) - (B+K) = A - B + K - K = A - B$. If you re-use a one-time pad, the attacker can just filter the key out and calculate the difference between two plaintexts.

My teacher didn't know that. He had done a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation about the time it would take to brute-force a 20 letter key, and the likelihood of accidentally arriving at something that would resemble the distribution of letters in the German language. In his mind, a 20 letter key or longer was impossible to crack. At the time, I wouldn't have known how to calculate that probability.

When I challenged his assertion that it would be "uncrackable", he created two messages that were written in German, and pasted them into the program we had been using in class, with a randomly generated key of undisclosed length. He gave me the encrypted output.

Instead of brute-forcing keys, I decided to apply what I knew about re-using one time pads. I wrote a program that takes some of the most common German words, and added them to sections of $(A-B)$. If a word was equal to a section of $B$, then this would generate a section of $A$. Then I used a large spellchecking dictionary to see if the section of $A$ generated by guessing a section of $B$ contained any valid German words. If yes, it would print the guessed word in $B$, the section of $A$, and the corresponding section of the key. There was only a little bit of key material that was common to multiple results, but that was enough to establish how long they key was. From there, I modified my program so that I could interactively try to guess words and it would decrypt the rest of the text based on my guess. The messages were two articles from the local newspaper.

When I showed the decrypted messages to my teacher the next week, got annoyed, and accused me of cheating. Had I installed a keylogger on his machine? Had I rigged his encryption program to leak key material? Had I exploited the old Python random number generator that isn't really random enough for cryptography (but good enough for games and simulations)?

Then I explained my approach. My teacher insisted that this solution didn't count, because it relied on guessing words. It would never have worked on random numeric data. I was just lucky that the messages were written in a language I speak. I could have cheated by using a search engine to find the newspaper articles on the web.

Now the lesson you should take away from this is not that I am smart and teachers are sore losers.

Lesson one: Everybody can build an encryption scheme or security system that he himself can't defeat. That doesn't mean others can't defeat it. You can also create an secret alphabet to protect your teenage diary from your kid sister. It's not practical to use that as an encryption scheme for banking. Something that works for your diary will in all likelihood be inappropriate for online banking, never mind state secrets. You never know if a teenage diary won't be stolen by a determined thief who thinks it holds the secret to a Bitcoin wallet passphrase, or if someone is re-using his banking password in your online game.

Lesson two: When you build a security system, you often accidentally design around an "intended attack". If you build a lock to be especially pick-proof, a burglar can still kick in the door, or break a window. Or maybe a new variation of the old "slide a piece of paper under the door and push the key through" trick works. Non-security experts are especially susceptible to this. Experts in one domain are often blind to attacks/exploits that make use of a different domain. It's like the physicist who saw a magic show and thought it must be powerful magnets at work, when it was actually invisible ropes.

Lesson three: Sometimes a real world problem is a great toy problem, but the easy and didactic toy solution is a really bad real world solution. Encryption was a fun way to teach programming, not a good way to teach encryption. There are many problems like that, like 3D rendering, Chess AI, and neural networks, where the real-world solution is not just more sophisticated than the toy solution, but a completely different architecture with completely different data structures. My own interactive codebreaking program did not work like modern approaches works either.

Lesson four: Don't roll your own cryptography. Don't even implement a known encryption algorithm. Use a cryptography library. Chances are you are not Bruce Schneier or Dan J Bernstein. It's harder than you thought. Unless you are doing a toy programming project to teach programming, it's not a good idea. If you don't take this advice to heart, a teenager with something to prove, somebody much less knowledgeable but with more time on his hands, might cause you trouble.

#programming #cryptography #learn programming #teaching programming

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lotus-flower-writes-history · 7 months

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The Unofficial Black History Book

Huey P. Newton (1942-1989)

'The Revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.' - Huey Newton

This is his story.

Huey Percy Newton was born on February 17th, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. The youngest of seven children to Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, he was named after former Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long.

His family relocated to Oakland, California, in search of better economic opportunities in 1945. His family struggled financially and frequently relocated, but he never went hungry or homeless.

Growing up in Oakland, Newton recalled his white teachers making him feel ashamed for being African-American, despite never being taught anything useful. In his Autobiography, ‘Revolutionary Suicide’, he wrote – “Was made to feel ashamed of being black. During those long years in Oakland Public Schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire.”

He also had a troubled childhood; he was arrested several times as a teenager for gun possession and vandalism.

Huey was illiterate when he graduated from high school, but he taught himself to read and write by studying poetry before enrolling at Merritt College.

During his time there, he supported himself by breaking into homes in Oakland and Berkeley Hills and committing other minor offenses. He also attended Oakland College and San Francisco Law School, ostensibly to improve his criminal skills.

He joined Pi Beta Sigma Fraternity while still a student at Merritt College and met Bobby Seale, a political activist and engineer. Huey also fought for curriculum diversification, the hiring of more black instructors, and involvement in local political activities in the Bay Area.

In addition, he was exposed to a rising tide of Black Nationalism and briefly joined the Afro-American Association, where he studied Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong, E. Franklin Frazier, James Baldwin, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin.

Huey had adopted a Marxist/Leninist viewpoint in which he saw the black community as an internal colony ruled by outside forces such as white businessmen, City Hall, and the police. In October 1966, he and Bobby Seale founded The Black Panther Party for self-defense, believing that the black working class needed to seize control of the institutions that most affected their community.

It was a coin toss that resulted in Newton becoming defense minister and Seale becoming chairman of the Black Panther Party. Newton’s job as the Minister of Defense and main leader of the Black Panther Party was to write in the Ten-Point Program, the founding document of the Party, and he demanded that blacks need the “Power to determine the destiny of our Black Community”. It would allow blacks to gain “Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.”

The Panthers took advantage of a California law allowing people to carry non-concealed weapons and established armed patrols that monitored police activity in the Black Community.

One of the main points of focus for the Black Panther Party was the right to self-defense. Newton believed and preached that sometimes violence, or even the threat of violence, is required to achieve one's goals.

Members of the Black Panther Party once stormed the California Legislature while fully armed in order to protest the outcome of a gun bill.

Newton also established the Free Breakfast for Children Program, martial arts training for teenagers, and educational programs for children from low-income families.

The Black Panthers believed that in the Black struggle for justice, violence or the potential for violence may be necessary.

The Black Panthers had chapters in several major cities and over 2,000 members. Members became involved in several shoot-outs after being harassed by police.

On October 28, 1967, the Panthers and the police exchanged gunfire in Oakland. Huey was injured in the crossfire, and while recovering in the hospital, he was charged with killing an Oakland police officer, John Frey.

He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter the following year.

Huey was regarded as a political prisoner, and the Panthers organized a 'Free Huey' campaign led by Panther Party Minister Eldridge Cleaver. And Charles R. Geary, a well-known attorney who was in charge of Newton’s legal defense.

Newton was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter in 1968 and sentenced to 2-15 years in prison. However, the California Appellate Court ordered a new trial in May 1970. The conviction was reversed on appeal, the case was dismissed by the California Supreme Court, and Huey was acquitted.

Huey renounced political violence after being released from prison. Over a six-year period, 24 Black Panther members were killed in gunfights with the police. Another member, George Jackson, was killed in August 1971 while serving time in San Quentin Prison.

The Black Panther Party, under the leadership of Newton, gained international support. This was most evident in 1970 when Newton was invited to visit China. Large crowds greeted him enthusiastically, holding copies of "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung," as well as signs supporting the Panther Party and criticizing US imperialism.

In the early 1970s, Newton's leadership of the Black Panther Party contributed to its demise. He oversaw a number of purges of Party members, the most famous of which was in 1971 when he expelled Eldridge Cleaver in what became known as the Newton-Cleaver split over the party's primary function.

Newton wanted the party to be solely focused on serving African-American communities, whereas Cleaver believed the party should be focused on developing relationships with international revolutionary movements. The schism resulted in violence between the factions and the deaths of several Black Panther members. The Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) was one of several factions that had broken away from the main party.

Then, in 1974, Newton was accused of assaulting a 17-year-old prostitute named Kathleen Smith, who later died, raising the charge to murder. Instead of facing trial, Huey fled to Cuba with his girlfriend at the time, where he remained for three years. The key witness in the trial was Crystal Gray. And three Black Panther members attempted to assassinate her before she gave her testimony.

Huey returned to the States in 1976 to stand trial but denied any involvement. The jury was deadlocked, and Newton was eventually acquitted after two mistrials.

In 1978, he enrolled in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and earned his Doctorate in 1980.

"War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America," his dissertation, was later turned into a book.

On charges of embezzling Panther Party funds, Huey P. Newton was sentenced to 6 months in prison followed by 18 months on probation in 1982.

On August 22, 1989, Newton was assassinated by a member of the BGF, named Tyrone Robinson.

Huey was 46 years old at the time of his assassination. Robinson was convicted of Huey’s murder in 1991 and sentenced to 32 years to life in prison.

His wife, Fredricka Newton, carried on his legacy. 'Revolutionary Suicide,' his autobiography, was first published in 1973 and then republished in 1995.

Huey Newton was not perfect, but he did fight to protect the rights of the Black Community. The rights that we're still fighting for today.

Ruby Bridges

Henry "Box" Brown

___

My Sources

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botanyshitposts · 2 years

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incredibly sorry for the incoming 10 mile long block of text but im getting back into my niche farming history hyperfixtation where i just read a ton of history books and find that all my other hyperfixtations are somehow interconnected (long story) and i cant stop thinking about the american farm history class i took in college where we read 'dust bowl: the southern plains in the 1930s' by donald worster, a beautiful and thoroughly researched account of how US policy and agribusiness led to the dust bowl in the 1930s and how the people living through it were affected depending on their economic standing and the wealthiness of their communities, which ends with a well-written and well-supported chapter on how farm policy changes to prevent another dust bowl completely missed the point of why this happened and the only way forward to prevent another ecological disaster is to rip US farm policy up completely and redo it in a sustainable way or history is doomed to repeat itself, and then our professor must have been like 'oh shit this is too left wing we need at least one Conservative Voice' and the next book we read was 'fields without dreams: defending the agrarian ideal' by victor davis hanson, a greek scholar and raisin farmer who i think is the only person on the planet to die on the hill of 'farming is the best and most moral livelyhood like The Greeks/Romans and everyone who isnt a farmer sucks', which is probably why our professor chose it (the exact opposite viewpoint of worster next to the first-hand account of how the raisin market and 1983 crash has fucked him and his family over for decades, which to be fair is a legitimately valuable historical account), but i also could not finish the book even though im fundamentally against not reading the entire book when writing a book report because he kept going off on weird diatribes and included a weirdly long scene where he follows imaginary(??? god i hope it was because it was utterly unhinged) fat people around a local grocery store mentally ridiculing any food they chose to buy that wasnt raisins and then blamed the moral failings (no raisins and fat=evil, full of moral debauchery) of these poor people literally buying food at the grocery store for the raisin prices being so low and his family's diminishing wealth as a result but also said that the only people who eat raisins are granola-chewing libs (who he also hates) and the whole time i was reading it i was like 'oh god please dont be racist dude i cannot not read this book please just talk about your experience as a farmer without being racist' and then he would be racist or say something else absolutely wild (he doesnt believe that native americans lived on his land before him and doesnt care what evidence says otherwise and is SURE to tell us this) and then he bragged about building a physical wall around his home 'for defense like The Greeks/Romans' and anyway i just stopped reading and wrote the report and then went on his wikipedia page a few days later and was like yeah this tracks, this seems like the logical endpoint of this deranged california raisin farmer

#not plonts #books #fatphobia /

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hersie44 · 1 year

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Old Friends (Derek Hale x Reader)

Characters included: Derek Hale, Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall, Lydia Martin, Kira Yukimura, Malia Tate, Jordan Parrish, Noah Stilinski, Chris Argent, Peter Hale, Liam Dunbar.

Requested: No

Type: Reader insert (no use of y/n though), fan fiction.

Word Count: 3520 words.

warning: Strong language used.

Note: I did make the reader be originally from Greece but it doesn't affect the story much so feel free to change it in your mind. :)

Chapter One.

Being back in Beacon Hills felt weird, almost like a nightmare as I walked through the halls of the empty high school that I used to attend. I looked around curiously, the classrooms looked the same and so did the locker rooms. I smiled to myself seeing the boy’s locker room in the distance, memories of sneaking in there after everyone had left to talk to my best friend running through my mind.

“What are you doing here so late!?” I squinted my eyes as a bright light was shone directly at my face, I pushed it away and glared at the man standing in front of me. The coach.

“Oh, it’s just you.” He lowered the flashlight and gave me a confused look, like I was the only crazy person that was at the school late at night.

“Good to see you too coach, I was just leaving.” I moved around him, clutching my book bag close to my chest. I had just started teaching history at Beacon Hills High School yesterday, and this was already the second night that I had decided to stay late. I missed the library here much more than I expected. Especially seeing my initials carved on one of the shelves alongside my friend’s.

“You are seriously giving all the nerds bad ideas, what kind of teacher stays late at the school to read?” I let out an exhausted sigh, he had asked the same question when he caught me in the library last night. I put on a smile and glanced back at him.

“The kind that doesn’t want your players to fail a class, because if they do fail then they won’t be able to play, and we don’t want that now do we?” I turned back around and continued walking, knowing I had won the argument. I knew how much the coach cared about having his best players on the field, unfortunately for him most of them took history.

I would never fail a student if they didn’t deserve it, and I’ve been known to give plenty of opportunities to complete homework and assignments, but the coach has been pressing all the wrong buttons for the last two days and I just needed him to keep his mouth shut.

I guess I’ve changed a lot since high school, I would have never spoken back to someone like that in my teen years. If you weren’t close to me then I seemed like the quiet kid, you know the one that everyone just ignored and went about their day. However, if you knew me then I was the exact opposite. I would speak my mind, about anything and everything. I would babble on about the most random topics if you were willing to lend an ear, and that often ended up being my best friend’s ear.

I guess I should stop calling him that, we haven’t seen or spoken to each other since we were eighteen. He left Beacon Hills after an accident, he dropped all communication and left. I stayed here for as long as I could, waiting for him to come back so that I could talk to him and comfort him, but he never did come back.

When the summer ended, I left my number on the door of his house in case he came back, and he wanted to talk. Then I left for home, I went back to Greece and continued on with my life, got my degree in teaching and then travelled for a year or two with my grandmother. Once she was ready to settle down, we came back to Beacon Hills. She said that this place had always felt like a second home to her.

I snapped out of my daydream as I realised, I had made it out into the outside corridor, I should really start paying more attention when I’m somewhere alone in the middle of the night.

“KIRA!” I stared ahead in disbelief; three kids were laying on the floor at the end of the corridor battered and bruised. It didn’t look like they noticed me but something that was growling at them did. On instinct I ran forward, skidding to a stop in front of them. Whatever the animal was, it would have to get through me first. Which looking back on that decision, that was probably the most stupid decision that I had ever made in my life.

The situation was extremely surreal, there I was standing between three kids and two grown men wearing animal skulls that covered their faces. They were clearly strong, that was the aura they gave off as they stared me down. I had so much adrenaline running through me that I stared back at them, with a glare of rage.

“Can you three move?” I glanced down at the ground for a second, noticing a sword laying on the ground between me and the men. If I could just pick that up, then I might stand a chance against these guys.

“No! Run!” I faintly remember one of the boys screaming at me, a boy I now know as Scott McCall. I ran forward, grabbing the sword off of the floor and leaping into the air with hope that the momentum would pierce the bone armour that the men had on.

But instead of making contact I was grabbed out of the air, it felt like the world slowed down to a halt as it happened. My eyes widened as a familiar face appeared in front of him, one that should have been much older by now.

“Derek?” He acknowledged me with a glance before throwing me to the side, I’m sure he meant to be gentler, but my body hit the ground with a harsh thud and my head hit the railings. My vision became blurry as I watched the scene before me, Derek, my ex best friend who hasn’t seemed to have aged a day since I last saw him, was fighting off these tall men with his bare hands. The only thing was that he had sharp canine-like teeth and claws to match as he did so. I left the image up to the concussion I had before I crawled forward towards the kids, I tried my best to stand up.

“Come on, you need to run…” I had trusted Derek with my life many times when we were younger, so now I trusted that he could hold off the danger long enough to get these kids to safety. Then I could question him on why he doesn’t look a day over sixteen, and if he’d give me the location to the fountain of youth he had found. As they got up the ache in my head became apparent, I stumbled to the side and started to fall again. However, this time I had a much softer landing, someone had been kind enough to catch me and when I looked up, I saw the most handsome man that I could have possibly ever imagined.

“Wow…so an angel really does come get you when you die.” I closed my eyes, and I could faintly hear the sound of someone calling my name.

The memory came flooding back to me like it was yesterday, it was the finals for our basketball team. We usually never made it that far, but we finally had an ace on our team, Derek Hale, my best friend. The only thing was that no one could find him, we were all waiting on the courts for him to start the match, but no one had seen him. That is when I noticed his uncle skulking around before disappearing in the direction of the locker rooms.

“I’ll be right back.” I gave Kate a reassuring smile before following him, I didn’t trust Peter at all, so I hardly felt bad about this. He was always too hard on Derek, there had been many times where Derek decided to sleep over at my place just to avoid the douche. He didn’t seem like the supportive type either, so I don’t understand why he was here.

“Even born wolves have to learn control on a full moon, Derek.” I heard Peter’s voice echoing from the showers, I blushed at the thought of bursting into the room while Derek was naked. Maybe there was an actual emergency, and I should just go, let his uncle help him for once if it fell in the department of him being naked during the issue or maybe I should have sent Kate because she’s told me many times, she had a crush on him. But then…

“Yeah, but it’s supposed to be easier for us, why does it hurt so much!?” Hurt? That sent alarm bells going off in my head, Derek was hurting. I rounded the corner and stared in shock as Derek was on his knees, completely drenched from head to toe. I could only see the side of his face, but his eyes were glowing bright blue and he had fangs like a wolf. Before I could stop myself, I let out a scream, then there was a pressure on my neck before I passed out.

I woke up with a jolt, my eyes snapping open as I heard voices coming from the distance. I was in a room I didn’t recognise, the ceiling was high and most of the bricks were exposed. It was cold, sending a shiver down my spine. I sat up slowly, my brain pounding against my skull as I did so.

My ears were still ringing from earlier, my heart was still pounding in my chest from the adrenaline. Then I heard my name again, it didn’t sound like it had any emotion in it at first but as I looked in the direction of the voice I could immediately tell there was a slight worried undertone to it…just like I could always tell when he tried to hide it.

“Derek…?” Just as I thought, the man from earlier was Derek. He had grown so much, he was taller, more muscular, he had a beard and damn was he gorgeous. I took several deep breaths as three pairs of eyes fell on me, which didn’t help the growing nervousness in my stomach. Was what I remembered real? Was what I saw earlier real?

“That’s my cue to leave.” The woman spoke, she got up and left without even greeting them. The other man followed her, locking the door behind her as she left.

“Are you crazy!?” He sounded shocked and angry, the emotions clearly directed at Derek.

“Not now.” He got up and walked towards me, my spine immediately straightened, and my eyes went wide as he sat down in front of me. I wasn’t scared of him, but I suddenly felt alert in the situation, there were so many questions swirling in my head that it was almost hard to keep track of.

“What do you remember?” No “Hi, how you doing?”, no “Sorry I threw you which made you hit your head and pass out”. Nothing, just straight to what I remembered? Yeah, this was definitely Derek or should I rather say the ‘new and improved’ one.

“A lot, enough to know you’ve been keeping secrets from me before you even left.”

“It was to protect you.”

“Bullshit!” I stood up, staggering slightly which sent Derek flying to his feet to catch me. His hands landed on my waist, holding me up.

“It wasn’t to protect me! It was for your own selfish shit! You didn’t tell me things, you didn’t let me in on your little world and then you just left me! No good explanation, no good-bye just gone! I stayed here for months for you! Taking care of your family after the fire, I spent my summer hoping you would come back but you didn’t! You ass!” I hit his chest hard which for once made him flinch, but he still had a glare on his face as he stared down at me like a predator warning his prey.

“You didn’t stay either so how is it fair that you can be mad at me, but you weren’t here when I came back?” I glared at him, absolutely pissed that he would switch the blame to me so quickly.

“I left you a note with my number on it and my new address, I couldn’t stay when my whole family was leaving! I was eighteen without a job, how would I live here!?” I tried to push him off, but he just tightened his grip on me.

“There was no note.”

“That might have been my fault.” Our heads whipped to the other man in the room, he had a sheepish grin on his face, but he didn’t look sorry at all as he shrugged and crossed his arms.

“I took it off, didn’t want you to have stalkers back home.” I blinked in disbelief, it was private property so no one would have went there besides Derek's family.

“Peter?”

“In the flesh.” He did a small bow, now my blood was boiling even more. Of course, it was Peter who made sure we never spoke again, he never liked me since I always made Derek talk back to him, I made Derek stand up for himself against him. Rightfully so because he is an asshole.

“But how!? You were burnt and paralysed in the fire! I looked after you and Laura in the hospital for my whole summer!”

“Long story but thanks for that, cupcake.” My grip on Derek’s arms tightened, he took that as a sign that if he didn’t get me out of here that I would try to burn Peter to a crisp myself this time.

“I’m taking you home.” I screeched as he picked me up, something I definitely wasn’t used to. I was well aware that I probably couldn’t walk by myself, the longer I’m awake the more my body aches and pains. I let out a groan, closing my eyes as I decide not to protest.

“I hate you sometimes.” I heard a little huff, something he did when he was trying not to smile. Even though I was extremely mad at him right now, his warmth was welcomed. At least that hasn’t changed, he was still my personal heater.

“Just sometimes?” I opened my eyes as one of his hands wrapped around mine, my pain starting to slowly go away. I glanced down, there were black veins on his hand and arm where we were touching, another thing I suddenly remembered seeing before. Once we were outside, he put me in the passenger seat of a car, a car I was assuming was his.

“Derek, please talk to me. Explain this to me.” He sighed, I gave him my best pleading look which made him shake his head before he knelt down next to me.

“I’m a werewolf.”

“Yeah, I guessed.” I cleared my throat, my eyes meeting his. “I saw you before, before that basketball game when we were younger.”

“Before Peter knocked you out, I remember.”

“He is a royal pain in the ass, fucking asshole. But you know I wasn’t scared of you, right? I would have accepted you even back then.” I reached out for his hand and laced our fingers together, squeezing it tightly. His eyes flickered down to our hands, he seemed to be processing the feeling like no one has held his hand since he last saw me.

“I know, you were a weirdo that would have accepted me even if I had two heads.” I laughed at that, a smile growing on my face as I looked at him.

“Yeah, but your ego was enough to deal with.” He rolled his eyes at that, but I could see the smile he was hiding, beneath all the changes that he went through I could still see the old Derek. The person he was before all the pain. He took a deep breath and pulled his hand away from mine, the playful atmosphere now depleting.

“I wanted to tell you but the last person I told died, and then Kate…”

“Argent?” He nodded, then he began to explain what happened in the last few years. How Paige actually died, that Kate was the one who set fire to his house and killed his family because she was a hunter and that’s why she wanted to date him. He told me about when he came back to Beacon Hills, all the things that happened with a group of high schoolers he met. It was a lot to take in, but I paid attention, I knew he would never lie…well tell a whole fabricated supernatural story because he was never that creative.

“I’m sorry, Derek. I’m so sorry.” I leaned forward, hugging him with my arms wrapped around his neck. I could tell he wasn’t expecting it, he froze for a moment. Usually, I never cry about things but now that I knew the truth, I couldn’t stop the tears. The amount of times Derek could have died or was close to death while I wasn’t with him crashed down on me, I sobbed and hiccupped while holding onto him. That’s when his arms wrapped around me, holding me firmly to his chest as I cried.

I don’t know how long we sat like that, just on the side of the road in his car with his arms around me. The crying had given me a headache but being close to him felt good, being like this again felt good. My heart was beating a mile a minute.

“Please come home with me, please stay like you used to. I need you…” Another thing that was out of character for me, begging for someone to stay. I don’t know if fear had overcome me from realising there was a whole dangerous world of creatures that could kill me if they weren’t good like Derek, or if I was just scared that if he left me, he would leave again.

“Okay…okay.” His voice was soft, something that only happened when I was extremely upset about something. He got up, tucking me into my seat and putting on my seatbelt. Once he was in the driver’s seat I grabbed his hand again, holding it with both of mine. This time he squeezed my hand, starting the car with his free hand and then driving off.

Later...

When we arrived at my place Derek has decided that I still couldn’t walk on my own, he picked me up from the passenger seat and walked towards my front door. The little act of kindness made me giggle, knowing full well that if I ever asked to be carried again then he would say no.

“Welcome to my humble abode, my bedroom is upstairs.” He nodded, taking a quick look around my house before ascending to the second floor. I had boxes all around, not having unpacked anything besides my bedroom and the kitchen.

“Am I allowed to dress myself or are you going to strip me too?” He grunted, not enjoying my teasing as he put me down on the bed. He walked over to my closet.

“Still sleep in shorts and a tank top?” He barely asked the question before throwing those items at me, I laughed and caught them.

“Yeah, but only when it’s hot. Then again it should be very hot since my personal heater has returned.” He chuckled at this, looking at the wall as I got changed.

“I see you still have some of my sweatpants, I’m borrowing one.” I blushed and looked away as he changed, though I did take a glance as he took off his shirt. He had definitely worked out during the time we were separated and had gotten a tattoo on his back. It was safe to say he was an absolute catch. I shook my head, not believing my thoughts about a man that was my best friend for most of my childhood.

He walked over to me, he had opted to not put a shirt on which I was definitely complaining about.

“Where am I sleeping?” I patted next to me which made him raise an eyebrow, I guess now that we’re older it was a bit weird to share a bed as just friends, but I didn’t care. I had missed sleeping in his arms.

“Don’t question it, I missed you.” He sighed and laid next to me, I didn’t hesitate to crawl into his arms. When I pulled the blanket over us, I felt safe, it was just like when were younger again. Derek was my dream catcher, keeping the nightmares and bad thoughts away. Now being with him kept more than that away, I felt like as long as I was with him the new world, I knew about wasn’t so scary after all. His warmth made me sleepy, my eyes closing as I drifted off.

Just before I fell asleep, I felt his arms tighten around me.

#teen wolf #derek hale #derek hale x reader #teen wolf fluff #teen wolf fanfiction

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antifainternational · 1 year

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REVIEW: WE GO WHERE THEY GO: THE STORY OF ANTI-RACIST ACTION Shannon Clay, Lady, Kristin Schwartz, and Michael Staudenmaier 2023, PM Press Reviewed by K-Dog In February I read the excellent new book WE GO WHERE THEY GO - The Story of Anti-Racist Action written by Shannon Clay, Lady, Kristin Schwartz, and Michael Staudenmaier, with a cool graphic-style Forward by Gord Hill - and published by PM Press. This is the first-ever in-depth history of the influential direct-action anti-fascist youth movement - and the authors do a great job of trying to organize that story into chapters covering the defining struggles and evolutions of the network - including the turf battles between anti-racist skins and nazi boneheads, the protracted struggle against the Ku Klux Klan's organizing efforts, ARA 's innovative and effective work in Canada, and the fierce opposition to both anti-choice fascists and sexism within our movement. The book is driven by interviews with over 50 ARA veterans, fellow travelers or first-hand observers who provide quotes, reflections, and war stories - often with a biting sense of humor.

I spent a good part of my teens and twenties building ARA in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Detroit, Chicago and supporting other chapters across North America. It was my university. So it was fun and sometimes emotional to read stories of fights we were in or see quotes from friends who have put in the work and paid their dues in this movement. I always knew that what we did mattered - even if it wasn't often treated that way by the mainstream left - not to mention broader society. But I have to admit its rewarding to have the history treated as something significant, even crucial. More than giving props to the OG antifas tho - what's really meaningful is that this book will help a new generation, confronting new forms of the fascist threat, find inspiration and lessons in both our successes and failures.

A few things off the top of my head that I thought the book did well was: 1. Quantify the victories against the fash - a surprising number of fascist organizations went out of business after sustained campaigns by ARA - a material contribution to the fight against white supremacy 2. Deal openly and honestly and without hype with the question of political violence - both its efficacy and dangers 3. Emphasize the role of culture (not just the bands - but yes the bands) - the way the movement LIVED and FELT and WORKED 4. Skillfully review the disagreements and controversies within the movement without trying to score points or dismiss points of view 5. Argue for the need for movements that are both militant AND outward facing - radical AND popular 6. Letting the people speak! This isn't a book of academic citations or leftist rhetoric - its the voices of regular, mostly working-class people, mostly without college degrees sharing their thoughtful insights, compelling stories, and clever anecdotes

My criticisms of the book are really more criticisms of ARA. Did we really never articulate a thorough understanding of what fascism is? Or at least establish some solid competing positions? Did we never find a way to talk about strategy beyond the various direct action campaigns we were running? Did we never propose ways to further embed ARA within wider sections of the working-class - and especially relate to communities of color more consistently and systematically? Looking back, some of our short comings are embarrassingly obvious.

For me Anti-Racist Action was a real living example of a genuine "United Front" - the concept of different groups, tendencies, and individuals working together and having each others backs in struggle DESPITE many real and important differences. A United Front does not mean everybody is all happy with each other all the time - quite the opposite, it means we're all often annoyed, angry or arguing with each other - but we don't sulk away when we lose a vote or don't get our way or face some criticism. We do appreciate what other folks are bringing to the table tho, we give them their respect, and we recognize the common goals we are fighting for - because those goals actually fucking matter.

The other thing about ARA I'd like to highlight was the de facto method of leadership - the anarchistic "leadership by example". Instead of a top-down structure where a few intellectuals dictate strategy and tactics on the larger mass - ARA chapters made their arguments by producing real world examples of what they were talking about. Think we should all do Cop-Watch patrols? Show me what that looks like. Convinced we need to make feminism a core part of our culture? Build a crew that exudes that vibe. Want economic demands as part of the program? See how we are doing it in our town, etc. etc. etc.

I have a lot of love for the hundreds of young people who organized and fought for ARA; for the few elders from the 60s/70s generation who embraced ARA, helped build it and make it more sophisticated; and the bands that saw what we were doing and kney they could help by promoting the work on tour and on records. ARA was a militant movement - we took risks and took licks - and gave 'em back too. I remember once calculating how many arrests ARA had taken over the years and by my loose tally we were well into the many hundreds when I gave up counting. Many of us got stitches and casts, relationships got tested and burned, and two of us were murdered by nazis in the desert. Now in my 50s I'm still unsettled and angry about a lot - and I'm still active on a few fronts - will be 'til the day I die. But I have a calmness when I'm around my ARA homies with our jokes, arguments, scars, and PTSD. My people. Virtual book launch of WE GO WHERE THEY GO, hosted by Asheville, NC's Firestorm Books: Tuesday, March 28th @ 7pm. Register here.

#antifa #anti-racist action #we go where they go #pm press #never let the nazis have the streets #antifascist #firestorm books #antifascism #asheville

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lawyeronabike · 1 year

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Book Talk #2: The Mind of Jay Gatsby

A traditional reading of The Great Gatsby focuses on what the novel teaches us about class, bigotry, and the American Dream. It's an important reading, but one that is already well worn. I'm going to assume you are already familiar with it and/or can research it when you feel like it. But this post is not about that reading.

I want to talk about the characters of The Great Gatsby, not as devices to advance theme or plot, but as whole, fleshed out people who are still compelling a near century after being written. So I ask...

What makes Gatsby tick? Why is he the way he is? He has a perfectly normal problem: he wants this girl. He has an absolutely puzzling solution. Throw massive parties. Let’s investigate.

Some people think it’s just the premise of the book, and must be accepted. Some people take Nick Carraway’s view, that Gatsby’s gift for hope is to be romanticized, admired, and protected. I don’t. I think that Jay Gastsby is neither some tragic hero or a plot premise to remain unquestioned. Upon my most recent reading of The Great Gatsby, I discovered a new headcanon that better explains his behavior than any I’ve heard before.

Jay Gatsby is autistic.

Yes I’m playing armchair psychologist. No I’m not qualified. It’s fine, because this a fictional character. Also, it’s a good conversation starter. I’m not the first to think of this (shoutout to tumblr users @thegreatgatsbyglitters & @confirmedpsycho, and @thegreatsandwich on aO3) but it’s not often discussed. It gets far less discussion than the “Nick is gay” reading (which I also buy). So let’s see if we can remedy this.

So the CDC lists the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for autism. It seems as good as any place to start.

The three main requirements are as such:

Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, as manifested by the following, currently or by history (examples are illustrative, not exhaustive; see text):

Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging, for example, from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation; to reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect; to failure to initiate or respond to social interactions.

Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication.

Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, ranging, for example, from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts; to difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making friends; to absence of interest in peers.

And compare them against the evidence in the book

1. If throwing giant parties to attract the attention of your beloved isn’t “abnormal approach,” I don’t know what it. Furthermore, when Gatsby decides to escalate attempts, he decides to ask Jordan Baker to ask Nick if he will have Daisy over for tea so Gatsby can drop in.

Pictured Above: A perfectly straightforward and reasonable way to get a girl's attention

2. This is most prominently seen in chapter six. Tom and his two riding friends, the Sloanes, arrive at Gatsby’s house on horseback unannounced. Gatsby invites them inside, which is declined. Mrs. Sloane then invites Nick and Gatsby to a dinner party.

Gatsby looked at me questioningly. He wanted to go and he didn’t see that Mr Sloane had determined he shouldn’t.‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to,’ I said. ‘Well, you come,’ she urged, concentrating on Gatsby.

Here, Nick is flat out telling us that the invitation was only extended to be polite, and that Gatsby didn’t realize this. He heard the words, and failed to notice all the other social cues that were saying he shouldn’t accept. He accepts the invitation.

3. Difficulties in adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts. Gatsby has a hard time interacting in a friendly, social setting, and treats a lot of his encounters like business deals. Here’s a clear example.

Nick has just agreed to host Daisy for dinner, just as Gatsby requested. Gatsby then proceeds to offer Nick the chance to make some money. Gatsby sees this as repaying the debt he owes to Nick, and has a hard time comprehending that Nick is doing a favor for a friend.

‘Well, this would interest you. It wouldn’t take up much of your time and you might pick up a nice bit of money. It happens to be a rather confidential sort of thing.’

I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises of my life. But, because the offer was obviously and tactlessly for a service to be rendered, I had no choice except to cut him off there.

A diagnoses also requires two of the following four:

1. Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech (e.g., simple motor stereotypes, lining up toys or flipping objects, echolalia, idiosyncratic phrases).

2. Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior (e.g., extreme distress at small changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals, need to take same route or eat same food every day).

3. Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g., strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests).

4. Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment (e.g. apparent indifference to pain/temperature, adverse response to specific sounds or textures, excessive smelling or touching of objects, visual fascination with lights or movement).

Gatsby fits all four.

The strongest evidence I saw for this is that Gatsby says “Old Sport” a lot.

2. We find evidence for this right at the end of the book. Gatsby’s dad shows a schedule Jay made for himself as a teenager. It plots out his time from 6AM to 9PM.

3. This should prove to be the most controversial subclaim in this post. Some people with autism fixate on trains. Some fixate on dinosaurs. Many autistic people have a singular, overriding interest. I argue that Gatsby’s autistic fixation is Daisy, or rather, the idea of her.

4. Hypersensitivity to sounds. Gatsby spends a remarkably little amount of time at his own parties. He usually is happy to leave the raucous festivities to others. He just hosts. One way to interpret this is an aversion to loud noises, often common for people on the autism spectrum.

One other thing, Gatsby is a bad liar. Holes in in backstory emerge throughout the book as he tells it to Tom or Nick. Furthermore, he can’t even convincingly tell Nick that he was the one driving the car that killed Myrtle. Nick figures out pretty quickly that it was Daisy. This supports a reading of autistic Jay Gatsby because many autistic people don’t realize all the nonverbal signs that give away liars, so they can’t fix them in their own performance when they try to lie.

Why does it matter?

First off, representation matters, but it also affects the themes of the story. His pining over Daisy becomes much less romanticized and much more pitiable. In chapter one, Nick describes Gatsby -

It was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.

More objectively, it could be described as the curse of hope, haunted by a nostalgia for things that never were, and a future that can never be. It is a ceaseless need for the unattainable, a self inflicted torture that can end only varying degrees of sorrow. In this way, The Great Gatsby becomes not just a story of themes and ideas, but of realistic people.

It explains why Gatsby refuses to accept that the past cannot be repeated, that Daisy has a new life and is oblivious to the fact that Nick is in love with him (like I said earlier, this interpretation makes a lot of sense to me).

The first time I read this book, it was a story about the American Dream, about prejudice, and about love. It still is all that, but now, I also see a story about flawed human beings, and about how we all, for better or worse, run amok, changing the course of each other's lives. Seeing all this on a subsequent reading encourages me to read more carefully in the future, to distrust narrators (don't implicitly accept their point of view), and be more quick to notice what kind of people are involved in the story. There are queer and neurodivergent characters in places you might not expect, including the foremost novel of the jazz age.

And if you still don’t believe this theory, I encourage you to mindfully read the book again. It’s not long. You will probably even find evidence I overlooked. Besides, you’re probably overdue to reread it anyway.

#the great gatsby #nick carraway #jay gatsby #autsitic #autism #neurodiversity #neurodivergent #literature #erasure #representation matters #media representation #classic literature

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ink-stained-clouds · 8 months

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hi!! what are some of your favorite readings, books, essays, articles, etc on sociology? i’d love to maybe see what class readings you’re doing

Hi anon!

I have a whole bunch of recommendations, no books, unfortunately. Actually, scratch that, I have one but it's actually a history book! I found it to be sociologically fascinating, though. It's The Origins of the Modern World by Robert B. Marks. It's a really interesting take on decolonizing the study of history and our understanding of how the west became the global superpower

To be honest, I don't know what book chapters I was reading for my theory class, our professor only sent us pdf scans. If you're interested in the philosophic origins of sociology, I am happy to try to hunt down the reference for you. Personally, I'm not a big philosophy fan so I can't speak to how good it was lol

Scholarly articles

Clover, Carol J. 1987. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Representations, 20: 187-228. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928507.

Sowles, Shaina J., Monique McLeary, Allison Optican, Elizabeth Cahn, Melissa J. Krauss, Ellen E. Fitzsimmons-Craft, Denise E. Wilfley, and Patricia A. Cavazos-Rehg. 2018. “A content analysis of an online pro-eating disorder community on Reddit.” Body Image, 24: 137-144. doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2018.01.001.

Berbrier, Mitch. 1999. “Impression Management for the Thinking Racist: A Case Study of Intellectualization as Stigma Transformation in Contemporary White Supremacist Discourse.” The Sociological Quarterly, 40(3): 411-433.

Kwate, Naa Oyo A. 2008. “Fried chicken and fresh apples: Racial segregation as a fundamental cause of fast food density in black neighborhoods.” Health & Place, 14(1): 32-44. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2007.04.001. (I read this one in a class years ago and it's always stuck with me, highly recommend)

Snow, David A. and Leon Anderson. 1987. “Identity Work Among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities.” American Journal of Sociology, 92(6): 1336-1371. Doi: 10.1086/228668. (a really interesting application of identity work, which is one of my favorite sociological frameworks)

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender and Society, 1(2): 125-151. doi: https://www.jstor.org/stable/189945. (a classic! essential sociological reading, you may have come across it already)

Non-scholarly articles and essays (that are all very sociological in my opinion)

Being an Honorary White Person Doesn't Make Us More Powerful

How the '5-Minute-Face' Became the $5,000 Face

Why We Should Talk About What Kyrsten Sinema Is Wearing (Tressie McMillan Cottom is a phenomenal sociologist! I recommend all her writing)

Selfies, Surgeries, And Self-Loathing: Inside the Facetune Epidemic

“ain’t i a woman?” on the irony of trans-exclusion by black and african feminists (one of my personal favorites)

Poor People Deserve To Taste Something Other Than Shame (I return to this one often)

Violent Delights (a really interesting commentary on the cultural fascination with true crime)

Podcasts

Sage Sociology

Give Theory a Chance

Maintenance Phase (not technically sociology but very sociological in my opinion)

Unfortunately, I don't really have any books to recommend but if anyone else does I'd love to get some recs too!

I also try to post a round-up of all my reads under my monthly reads tag if you're looking for more suggestions, though it seems I haven't been particularly consistent ope

Thank you for the ask, anon. It was fun going through my notes and finding all these!! Please feel free to reach out with any recommendations of your own :)

#editing this for readability #titles now highlighted #ask #anon #inky speaks #reading list

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canyouhearthelight · 3 months

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Nihilus Rex, Ch. 12: Aftermath

Here we have what should be the last really technical chapter for...hopefully the rest of the book. Fingers crossed. Although I am sure we can sneak some more stuff here and there if someone asks for more technical stuff, just not so many unending chapters of it.

As always, on the even-numbered chapters, I wrote while @baelpenrose co-wrote and beta'd.

Some legends are told

Some turn to dust or to gold

But you will remember me

Remember me for centuries

And just one mistake

Is all it will take

We'll go down in history

Remember me for centuries

Fall Out Boy, “Centuries”

Lash

“I heard it was part of a bigger hack.”

“Everything I’ve seen about that goes back to some QAnon boards. They think everything is a conspiracy.”

My heart rate picked up just a bit as I looked over dozens of similar conversations across several message boards. It was entirely too close to home, but felt completely surreal at the same time - I had been part of a coordinated attack against major financial institutions, and no one even believed the scale of what had actually happened. Not even the people directly impacted, if everything from our botnets was accurate.

In the immediate aftermath, over truly horrendous spinach pie and far too many dolmades, Nils and I had kicked around what-ifs and half-assed contingencies. It had all boiled down to keeping an eye on our feeds, waiting for updates from Bishop if he caught anything, and laying low until the attack had aged out of the news cycle. If online communities started piecing anything together, the plan was to sow misinformation and redirect.

We had definitely called it on the news portion - pundits were still arguing over whether the slain men were heroes of the middle class out to free people from the bonds of financial indenture, or anti-capitalist villains trying to destabilize the global economy. Every late night show had a self-referential monologue about the deceased, followed by a person-on-the-street segment with split opinions like some ghoulish, real world version of the Boondock Saints. No one could agree if their goal had been just the one attack, or if there was a secret manifesto somewhere with their ultimate strategy. What everyone did agree on, however, from the Department of the Treasury, to the OCC, to all major news networks, was that the people responsible had been gunned down by police. Body camera footage had been released, sometimes uncensored, with all six men declaring loudly that no one else was involved, nobody had put them up to this, nothing had inspired them.

No One. Nobody. Nothing. Anyone who had interacted with Nils online and had two brain cells left to rub together would have known immediately.

Except… Our damage control had done its work for us. Every single time I had been alerted that someone was suggesting a larger plan, the same response had come: That’s QAnon nonsense. A conspiracy. I bet you think the moon landing was fake, too.

Nils had joked about his handle then. “Would you buy that my handle is also an Odyssey reference to be a contingency for exactly this?” He’d said, half joking.

I squinted, half smiling at the memory. “I bet your minion morons believe that. I do not. Especially not having seen how far back your handle goes, in some form or another.” She waggled a bite of food at him. “Nice try, though. The bravado almost sold it.”

“Fair enough. Speaking of handles, Lash. Can I get your real name?” He’d said, as they’d shared dinner after the fact. “I haven’t tracked it down as a matter of respect, but we’ve been friends for a while and I would like to know. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“You aren’t allowed to use it,” I had made him promise. Something about sharing my first name had always felt too… exposed. “Not in person, not via text, not at all.”

He’d given that weird smile that seemed almost like his signature, the one that seemed like he was laughing at something somewhere else, and said, “I promise. I’ll only call you Lash.”

“Then I will tell you when all this dies down and you can’t rat me out to the authorities.” He hadn’t been expecting that, and I winked at his shock. “Shouldn’t be too hard. Not like you would rat me out anyway.” Truth be told, I liked having him at something of a disadvantage.

He inclined his head at a little bow, “As you wish, Lash.” He raised a glass. “This was really fun though. Good working with you.”

Now, I was staring feeds on three monitors, a week out, watching the entire financial sector and public refuse to believe anything more serious had happened than six armed men breaking into a major bank Guy Ritchie-style. All three of us had expected some form of damage control, but there was nothing to control.

Almost like I had cursed myself, my phone started buzzing violently across my desk, sending me to my feet hard enough to almost knock my chair over. “Spam Spam” showed up on my caller ID - Bishop.

“Please take me off whatever list this is,” I answered carefully. Bishop did not call me. He messaged me through about a million proxies, but calling was a no-no. Paranoid did not begin to describe the man’s communication habits.

“Just a moment of your time, Miss,” the voice came through. “I am calling on behalf of Bloomberg to offer you a one year subscription for only $1 per week. That’s all your basic financial and stock news, for $52 a year.”

“That’s nice, but I’m broke,” I sighed, taking note of the site before hanging up.

My stomach sank when the phone buzzed again, this time a message from Nils. “Uh. Quick meetup somewhere secure. We may have overshot slightly. In a good way.”

Definitely not good. “Let’s meet at the usual spot. We need to talk about the project for class, anyway.” I sent the message and didn’t even check for confirmation before gathering my stuff with one hand while I checked my news skimmer with the other.

Well, fuck.

Nils was waiting at the shitty hacker cafe, and he looked tense, eyes sharp. He barely waited for me to sit down. “So. There’s a thing. Remember when we were making the worm? And we had to shave some stuff off to make it small enough to still function? And we had to simplify some of its seeking parameters? Uh…it…I just realized that everything in Blackbox…”

“Shut the fuck up,” I hissed, glancing around to make sure no one was paying attention. “You and B reached out within about five minutes of each other, and he managed to tell me to check the news. I saw. We overshot by a couple orders of magnitude, yeah.”

“Yeah. Explains why no damage control. Until someone leaked it, I don’t know that they were legally allowed to admit it could be hacked.”

“We need coffee,” I stammered out, running a hand over my head. “And B. But coffee first.” Without waiting, I bounced up and ordered for us both. When I came back to the table, he was bouncing a knee - not out of place in a place that specialized in caffeine addiction for the ADHD set, thankfully. “I don’t suppose you carry a flask or something? Could only make it taste better.”

“My flask is for energy drinks when I need caffeine in emergencies because my head is starting to hurt from withdrawals, so, no. It absolutely would not. I appreciate the suggestion though.” Nils’ voice was flat. “I’ll reach out to B and tell him to get over here. We have a bit of a security concern to address. A slimy, perverted security concern to address.”

“He doesn’t know my actual name or my face,” I told him pointedly. “I’ll drive the bus if you’ll do the throwing, it comes to that.”

“He knows your handle, he’s better than we are at breaking encryptions and worse about boundaries, he absolutely knows your name.”

“I don’t think anyone is going to trust any records scavenged from a defunct elementary school or a birth certificate. Those are the only places my actual name is listed. I don’t even drive.” I thought about it for a minute. “But backing up his stuff remotely to make sure we have any sex trafficking or worse would be a good idea.”

“Honestly I was thinking simpler. We have a crime that he was accomplice to, he can’t blackmail us without incriminating himself without claiming he didn’t know what it would be used for. He might get immunity for the tip, but that takes time. He’s attempted to solicit you for indecent shit a lot, and attempted to get me to engineer…basically letting him do sex crimes, a few times. I kept the messages after turning him down, you? If nothing else it kills his credibility as a witness and ruins any ability he has to get us convicted of anything.”

I gave him a dirty look. “What kind of amateur do you think I am? I have all my dirt on everyone backed up where no one can find it except me or my parents. External drives, somewhere safer than that server we just fucked up.”

“Of course, my apologies.” He looked a little calmer with the idea that Weasel was handled. “They’ll try to trace us but our databombs will have made such a brutal hash of anything they could trace that they won’t know where to start looking. At a guess they’ll move to a different system against future hackers - and I don’t envy the next suckers to try this.”

I tapped my chin, trying to think what Bishop would point out. Something simple we would be missing. I wasn’t good a peopling, but Bishop was surprisingly adept - “They have six dead bodies, a drive designed to fuck shit up, and six cell phones that had been in contact with you. So, first link is you. Let’s start there.”

“Burn phone, pre-paid, cash, with an out of state number, picked up ages ago for something else entirely, under an alias I no longer use, again invented for something else entirely, and called through wifi service using a vpn. Said burn phone has now been utterly destroyed with its remains scrubbed of fingerprints and the remains tossed into a dumpster, whilst I was not carrying my normal phone, on the opposite side of town from where we normally spend any time. I think that about covers it.”

“I don’t ever want to hear anyone say women watch too much true crime,” I muttered. “You literally could have just taken it apart and used a belt sander on it, handed the pieces to a makerspace. Or donated it to a Goodwill bin.”

“I’ll remember that for next time.”

Bishop showed just after that, making a point to ignore us while getting his coffee and sitting at a table two over from us, facing away.

“I knew getting involved with both of you at once would get exciting. So. We want to talk about what you little maniacs have been discussing before I got here so I can go over what you missed?” B’s voice was vaguely amused, and a little tense. “I should mention, I’ve already gotten a message from Weasel. He put it together. Hopefully you two have a contingency for that.”

“Oh, the usual,” I answered airily, arching a brow at Nils. “Blackmail and making sure there aren’t any other tracks to cover. Nils overdid it with his phone, but it should work.”

Harvey’s voice took on an amused note. “Alright then. I’ll tell Weasel to pound sand. Am I to take it you kids had fun the night of the job?”

“Food was hit or miss, and there was some half-delirious contingency planning around damage control.” I rubbed my face. That felt like a decade ago.

Nils was looking embarrassed and Harvey looked amused as the older man continued. “Pity. You two were getting really wound up and I was hoping you’d be able to take a load off that night. From the looks of things, Nils’ usual bullshit and choice of pawns is working out on deflecting suspicion against a bigger conspiracy - I think the feds are reluctant to give conspiracy wingnuts credibility.”

Someone isn’t paying attention to politics, I mused internally. On the surface, I just smiled and took a sip of my coffee, suppressing a grimace at how bitter and nasty it was. Cold brew…. How hard did you have to try to fuck up cold brew, I swear. “Either way, the damage had controlled itself so far. Any updates since you called? I checked my skimmers right after, but the news was sparse.”

“So far an announcement that 4Chan white supremacist boards are going to be looked at more seriously as a breeding ground for stochastic terrorism coming from the FBI, unsurprisingly now that they’re affecting rich people.”

Nils gave an evil chuckle. “Oh good, that’s a pot I was stirring a bit ago. Unmanaged retaliation against cops in a predictable timeframe for whatever happens to them and we can let the system eat itself and look away from us, thank you very much…”

The only reason my head didn’t bounce off the table when I dropped it is because my arms cushioned the fall. “Don’t get me wrong!” I held a hand up blindly. “After the revenge porn thing, yes, scrutinize breeding grounds. And at least everyone knows the guys who are currently taking the fall are not - “ I pointed at myself emphatically. “But I am not a fan of ‘unmanaged’ retaliation against a group with airtight legal protections and a poor track record of reading perp stats correctly.” It was the most polite way I could say ‘racist assholes’ without everyone in the cafe looking at me.

“Options: I have to actively take command of the right wing gun nuts a la some shitty real life Code Geass-ripoff shenanigans to manage them, or I let their anti-government shit lead them to fight actual problems for a change, or I let them continue believing that the Jews were running the world and that everyone who couldn’t pass a paper bag test were their foot soldiers in need of shooting - right as the ax was about to fall on them. Guess which option I figured involved the least collateral damage? If you prefer I decide to go whole hog on the aesthetic and try ripping off Lelouch vi Britannia harder, which to me seemed worse than telling them they were going to have a cop problem rather than a Jews run the world problem…” Nils response was less annoyed than exhausted, and unlike our previous conversation where it was clear that he hadn’t thought it out and felt bad about it, his tone indicated that he’d thought this one through and had simply picked the least evil available option he saw.

Thankfully, Bishop’s unending focus on ‘simplest solution is best solution’ saved me palm abrasions and an assault charge from strangling the cute but dumb motherfucker on the spot. “Since the heat right now is on an actual breeding ground for incels, alt right, and revenge porn entrepreneurs, we could just let them chase their tails and keep laying low. White collar crime is historically white, et cetera, ipso facto Columbo Oreo.”

“I like that idea,” I agreed, putting as much reluctance as possible behind the sentiment. Realistically, Nils as Commander and Chief of the Fucknuckle Wingnut Army was not giving me the warm and fuzzies.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #original fiction #nihilus rex #afterverse #science fiction #original science fiction #traumatized characters #modern dystopia #modern fiction #my writing #friend's writing

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brooxonianbek · 21 days

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A sample of my travails

I have an expression of interest or two for my posting the essays that I've been working on for my History of Art classes. I can't guarantee any real general appeal in them, but perhaps some may find them interesting, and I've been painfully silent on this forum for an extended period.

The first piece, below, is an art historical analysis of the approaches used in a chapter of E. H. Gombrich's widely-acclaimed book, The Story of Art, called 'Permanent Revolution: the nineteenth century'. I can't attach a copy of the chapter itself, but if you're really interested (and it is a very well-written book, and worthy of its reputation), then you can probably find a copy of the book at your local library. It will also give you context for the below essay. It does seem rather odd for me to publicise my university assignments, but the people have spoken, and I will appease my public.

E. H. Gombrich’s chapter, ‘Permanent revolution: The nineteenth century’, found towards the end of his master work, The Story of Art (1950), details the progression of art throughout the majority of the 1800s, through the various movements that arose in that time, and the development of thought that powered them. Through the last exciting efforts of the Romantics, the rugged truth of the Realists, to the glorious nature of the Pre-Raphaelites and, finally, the controversial rebellion of the Impressionists, Gombrich describes with enthusiasm the ebbs and flows of the art scene in Europe during this century of change, exploring the impact of the Industrial Revolution and the ways in which societies understood – or misunderstood – the work of these artists.

Gombrich actually specifies in his preface that since his intended audience are young adults, he intentionally avoids ‘pretentious jargon or bogus sentiment’ at the ‘risk of sounding casual’[1]. This casual attitude is visible in his writing style, as when he claims that something was ‘probably greater’[2] that it had ever been, and three times in the span of two paragraphs using the word ‘obvious’[3] which assumes points he hasn’t defended – although, this is not the most drastic of academic sins. Overall, his writing is very clear and readable, and his goal to write an enthusiastic and accessible, yet conceptually complex exploration of art history has certainly been achieved. The only concern might be that it is too short of a text to be called thorough, although that may be up to the individual to decide.

His overall approach whilst writing his artistic summary of the nineteenth century is a balance of social history, as is characteristic of art history scholarship in the early 20th century, with short biographical focuses. Breaking down the waves of thought into movements, rather than time periods, helps to concentrate his discussion on how artistic philosophies influenced changes in style, without falling into the fallacy of strict holistic periodisation. Within each movement, Gombrich selects two or three key figures who spearheaded the new artistic attitudes and spends some time describing their influences – past and present – and thought processes, their artistic values and the methodologies that went into creating something new. Avoiding, for the most part, elevating each artist above their surrounding community, Gombrich also effectively analyses the reception of each new movement, the conversations that were had as a result among the artists and their critics, and how those movements held some sway over the surrounding and subsequent ones in their social context. On the other hand, Gombrich’s technique of only concentrating on a few artists in each movement, for the sake of simplicity and clear reception, does tend towards implying a few solitary masters who orchestrated each artistic revolution from above, without the context of hundreds of other artists and craftsmen in studios and academies in the surrounding societies. This sort of Vasarian undercurrent is still subtly present when he refers back to fifteenth-century artists who were overshadowed by the ‘genius of Leonardo’[4] and likens this phenomenon to the impact that Renoir and the other Impressionists had on nineteenth-century painting, through Renoir’s ‘great artistic wisdom’[5]. Gombrich does point out, however, that for the most part, the artists who were popular in this period, are not the artists whom we remember[6]. As a result of this phenomenon, the artists whose so-called genius provided them with a legacy were those whose genius was recognised less by their contemporaries than by future generations, contrary to the cases of Leonardo or Michelangelo. This sort of approach focused on the individual is not an explicit aspect of Gombrich’s text, but it does sits quietly in the background; just enough to flavour his arguments without overwhelming them.

As far as historicity goes, overall, Gombrich spends most of his text comparing his artists to those who came before them, how their philosophical attitudes developed out of the previous ideas and practices, without falsely imagining that they were working towards a specific future. However, there are occasions throughout in which he seems to judge the artists’ critics of not seeing the bigger picture, so to speak, and not understanding what we now understand about their works. This isn’t necessarily an invalid position to take as regards criticism that wasn’t open to these upcoming art styles, but there is still a level of judgement felt towards the society of the time for not being advanced enough to ‘know how to look at such paintings’[7]. We might even say that Gombrich implies that certain of these movements were “ahead of their time”, which again, can’t be true; yet that remains subtle throughout. There is an interesting point that Gombrich makes in this chapter that the Impressionists began to paint nature the way they saw it, rather than what they know it looked like[8]. This concept of relying on seeing rather than knowing almost seems at first pass to be criticising the artists of the past for not understanding the visual world well enough to depict it accurately, but in reality, Gombrich explains that it is actually that they knew too much, so to speak, and that their head knowledge was getting in the way of what their eyes could see in the moment. He effectively illustrates how the development of artistic skills, to some extent, came about through a deliberate loss or chosen ignorance of what had come to be taken for granted.

Gombrich approaches the changes in the art world during this century by referring to an increase in choice of style and taste proceeding out of the Industrial Revolution, and while he describes the effects of the changes in taste, and the discrepancies between the taste of artists and their public, he seems to have missed a point in his narrative. He describes a loss of some ‘unity of tradition’[9], that perhaps may have been elaborated on in previous chapters of his book, but there is no clear explanation of what this unified tradition actually meant or consisted of, and thus we are left with a long chapter introduction that explores the effect of losing something that is essentially an unknown.

As for the effects of the Industrial Revolution, more credit could have been given to the invention of photography for altering the function of art. With the purpose of paintings and sculptures changing from records and descriptions to expressions and elaborations, Gombrich suggests that this century is the one in which a distinction is made ‘between Art with a capital A and the mere exercise of a craft’[10]. As conventions widen and expand in different directions, artists finally had the chance to express themselves in a way that they had not before – ‘where there is no choice there is no expression’[11], as he puts it – and the point he makes is that art’s progression through the nineteenth century is one of expansion, rather than a direct upward or downward trend. Art did not specifically improve or recede during this time, because the significant change was not in the area of style but of purpose.[12]

As he wrote the first edition of The Story of Art before the second wave of feminism in the 1960s, it might be too much to expect that Gombrich would mention and discuss the nineteenth-century women who contributed to the artistic canon, but nevertheless, his recurring manner of speaking of the artist as “he” is a sign of the time in which he wrote. When describing ‘what people who cared about art came to look for in exhibitions’[13], although gender is not his primary criterium, he illustrates an image of the worthwhile, sincere, artistic “man”. He does not mention a single female artist, in spite of the 1800s being a century of improved opportunity for women artists. A number of significant women were involved around the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who, as well as serving as models and muses for the men, were artists themselves, but they fail to merit an appearance in The Story of Art. The only mention of a woman in Gombrich’s whole chapter, beside the subjects of artworks, is in a quote from a critic in 1876 who degrades the Impressionists for having a woman as a founding member and critical part of their exhibitions[14]. While there is no sign of explicit degradation of women on Gombrich’s part in his text, their absence is still keenly felt by the reader who is conscious of these issues seventy years after it was published.

While not a perfect piece of art historical writing, with an unbalanced artist demographic and some non-historicist attitudes characteristic of his day, Gombrich succeeds in the primary goals of his text, and in this chapter considers a fair breadth of the important aspects of a century of art history.

[1] E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, London: Phaidon, 1989, vii.

[2] Ibid. 395.

[3] Ibid. 398-399.

[4] Ibid. 413.

[5] Ibid. 412.

[6] Ibid. 399.

[7] Ibid. 413.

[8] Ibid. 406.

[9] Ibid. 397.

[10] Ibid. 395.

[11] Ibid. 398.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid. 411.

#ibid #whatamarvellousword #justrollsoffthetongue #oxford #academia #history #history of art #art history #university

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thenowherejournal · 1 month

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A Chapter in Jelaine’s Life: Some things About being a Reader

An Interview Article by Francis and Nad (February 2024)

Readers have different approaches to picking up a novel and have varying tastes– and for a bookworm, you could imagine all the stories that had accumulated during their journey in the vast spaces of a library. Each shelf, rows and rows of stories that came from people all over history and realities. For this interview, we found someone who can share their experience with literature. Our resident bookworm for this article is Jelaine Dio.

BACKGROUND

The 25-year-old graduate of Bachelor of Science in Psychology found herself reading stories in her past time during 5th Grade. While the other kids in her class were playing outside during break time, she was exploring her English textbook for the short story collection; that is when the world opened up to her. Now, she reads novels from the likes of Sally Rooney, John Green, Jandy Nelson and Coco Mellors—some of her current favorite authors that she noted. Her current read is The Guest by Emma Cline, previously followed by Jenny Mustard’s Okay Days.

A lot of these books share a similar genre: Contemporary fiction. She stated that it was her favorite genre in fictional literature because she found herself easily visualizing the story if it is closer to real life or based on certain personality traits.

KEY EXPERIENCES

“Summer Time: A Book A Day”

Only after a few years of falling in love with the short stories, she managed to read over 7 books a week during her summer vacations. Although some readings are motivated by school credits, she still read an impressive amount during that time. She noted that she has read over 200 books since then. As life goes by, people get busy with their time. Even if life gets busy, she always tries to slip in a moment to read. She said “I read my book if I was waiting for something or if there’s a downtime—whether in public or at home. Because I do not have any cellular data on my phone when I leave the house, I always bring my book for times when I must wait.”

We asked her what was the first fiction she had read and she directed us back to her 3rd year of Junior High. She asked her classmate for a recommendation for a book to start reading fiction “She is also a bookwork and reads her book on an iPad. I asked her ‘What ‘s a good fiction to read first?’ and she let me borrow a copy of ‘The Little Prince’”. She noted that before that, she was not reading much then. After picking up the book, that is when she started being a book fanatic again.

On average, outside of summer time when she finishes a book a day, her average reading time then lasts for two to 3 days per novel. Now, she slowed down to finishing a book in a week but if she has work, then she finishes a book in a month. After she finishes a book, she takes a day to take a break and she picks up another book to start.

I’ll See It Through, Always

When she reads a book, she sees through it, even if it is average “It’s like in the movies, for example. I watch a movie and I find myself enjoying it but when I see some bad reviews, I don’t find it as a waste of time because I enjoyed the work”. She also added how she also thinks about the effort the author took to finish their story. That’s why sometimes when she finds a story in BookTok, a community in TikTok that shares content about literature, she reads it because of how it was marketed. Sometimes, she ends up reading erotic fiction without realizing it because of how the synopsis was advertised. During the interview, she laughingly said that she found that it was her guilty pleasure to read those types of stories

INSIGHTS

Eenie-Meenie-Miney Book!

When entering a bookstore, some people may feel overwhelmed when offered a lot of options. Jelaine is one of these individuals. Because of this, she has devised three ways to choose the next book she will indulge herself in. One is looking at its cover. As ironic as it is for a bibliophile, she does not really follow the famous saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover." When she sees that a book has an aesthetic and eye-catching cover, she will pick it up and read it. Though on some occasions, she will go through the book’s synopsis before buying it.

Another way is through recommendations in social media’s “BookTok". She follows countless book lovers on Instagram that post their recommendations in their feeds. When she sees these posts, she will buy two to three of those novels and put them on her shelf of books she will later read. Lastly, she picks up and buys the next novel that she will read by browsing the books of the same authors as the previously finished novel she enjoyed. With these three ways, she has fortunately bought novels that she considered a “good book".

"A Good Book"

It is fair to think that a bookworm that has read hundreds of novels would have a grasp of what makes a "good book". In Jelaine’s viewpoint, a novel that has a striking and grand plot is not important, but what is important is the story’s overall flow. She also added that “ A good book is something you can genuinely relate to the character even though that character has a different experience compared to you." Jelaine also mentioned that when she underlined and bookmarked a lot of lines and parts of a book that she is reading, then that novel is exceptional for her.

LESSONS TO SHARE

A Wider Vocabulary And Getting In Touch To One’s Feelings And Emotions

For almost half of her lifetime, Jelaine has been “sticking her nose" into numerous books in various genres and lengths. With all these consumed fictional works, she has gained extensive knowledge in vocabulary. She quoted, “Due to reading, my word bank is overflowing". As a result, she can understand words in novels that are unusual while also understanding each sentence that she reads quickly.

Reading has also helped her to become more empathetic, since she is able to know and feel what the characters are going through and understand them as the story goes on. Hence, when a person reads, they can be in touch with their emotions and process them in a healthy manner.

Something for Readers

Jelaine’s go-to book recommendation to whoever asks her is Celeste Ng’s first novel, "Everything I Never Told You". She deemed this as a good recommendation since it has themes that will make a person feel multiple emotions throughout its entirety. As she shares what the book is about, she mentions that it circles around the idea of family dynamics and how grief affects each member. She said, "This novel is heavy and heart-wrenching". Another book recommendation she mentioned was "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" written by Gail Honeyman, which is also a heavily emotional novel.

In addition, she mentioned a quote from one of the books that genuinely made an impact on her. The line was “They teach you growing up that you are only one thing at a time-angry, lonely, content--but he's never found that to be true. He is a dozen things at once. He is lost and scared and grateful, he is sorry and happy and afraid. But he is not alone.” This is from V. E. Schwab’s, "The Invisible Life Of Addie Larue. With these few pieces of line, she feels comforted and loved since it tells the reader that it is good to feel emotion and not to invalidate one’s feelings.

“When you read, it’s not just printed words on a paper, it is a mixture of the character’s experiences, feelings and views and in turn, you also experience what they have gone through and feel their emotions. With reading, you gain new experiences without physically experiencing them, but through words on a piece of paper." - Jelaine Dio

#booktok #bookworm #biblophile #literature #book recommendations #contemporary literatures #novels #fictional novels #cotemporary books

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khaleesiofalicante · 1 year

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Random questions about the daniverse bc your fics live rent free in my brain:

what does magnus teach at the academy in lbaf? Does he get paid?

do the kids at the academy get sex ed classes? i hope they do. (my school did not have it and so a lot of kids were severely misinformed. did your school have it?)

will we ever get to know why david and his dad look like raziel or it it just a random thing?

does arthur have any powers bc of David's demon blood?

who're your top thee fav female shadowhunters (from canon and your fics)?

I didn't get the whole Mallory's baby thing. Was she ever pregnant?

Did reading chot in any way influence the plot of lbaf v?

Didn't Achilles have a sibling? What are they up to?

I loved the scene from IALS alec's chapter with Arthur in the office and i even laughed when i first read it but i can't stop thinking about how terrifying that must be for arthur. I've never been in a situation when i couldn't communicate w others. I felt really bad for arthur.

What is the one storyline/idea you're the most excited to write about in lbaf v? (spoiler free obvi)

anyway you're amazing. i hope you get well soon.

love, Yana

ps. I CAN'T WAIT TO MEET LUCI!

This is my fave thing ever. Thank you <3

He does. He is a guest lecturer (similar to canon). He talks mostly about history and magic (such as portals and accords, etc). Fun fact: Since Lance and Arthur are not allowed in the Academy, Magnus taught them separately. There is a whole short story about this one!

They do! They have something called 'self and society' - which was inspired by a class I teach at one of the local unis. It's more about understanding different aspects of yourself and one of the classes (which I teach) is on sexual and reproductive health education + gender and society. In lbaf, they do have a class similar to this where they learn about different self identies (including that of downworlders and nephilim etc)

We might...

Yes. He can make amazing tiktoks :P

Ahhh can't choose three! Some of my faves are in TDA - Emma. Cristina. Diana. I love all the ladies from TID and LBAF hehe. It took a lot of effort to warm up to Clary and Izzy because i didn't like their characterization in tmi - but I learned to love them eventually :)

If you are referring to IALS, it was just a delusion. Just like the 'max actually loves me' thing. In LBAF, it's a rumor.

...Yes. You might see a reference to Paladins in lbaf v. We will also get more Iron Sisters and Silent Brothers content. Reading canon books always inspires me for lbaf :)

He has a younger sister called Aurelia (Rosales babies having A names my beloved). She is actually working closely with the Alliance (just like her parents). You will meet her in Alec pov, I think!

It is definitely terrifying. I could write an essay about arthur angst smh.

There is a date (as in a romantic date). It's one of the turning points in the story because what happens during the date results in a whole chain reaction of events that leads to so much! I can't wait! Also very excited to write about Lucifer. I'm still workshopping his characterization oof.

Thank you for this, bebe. I love you <3

#lbaf

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thegirlwhowrites642 · 1 year

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What made you start reading/writing fanfiction?

Well, funny story, it didn't start with Harry Potter. Fanfictions actually had a huge part in my history with writing.

When I was in middle school Wattpad was a very huge thing, you could say it was the golden days of Wattpad and all the girls in my class, including my best friend, loved One Direction and they read plenty of fanfictions about Harry Styles. So I got curious and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Now, I never cared about One Direction but I had a giant fixation with Ross Lynch, and as it turned out there were fanfictions about him too. They were all horribly written, at least the ones I read, they were all in Italian if I remember correctly. And so, because I've always been an arrogant fucker and I knew I was good at creative writing (my elementary school teacher used to make us write two stories a week), I decided that I could do better and write one myself. But I wanted to write the whole thing and publish it chapter by chapter, and this is why that story never saw the light of day. I wrote six chapters and then I was like, you know what? I'm really good at this, and I love writing, I should write an original story. And that's the story of how I started my first book.

I still have the fanfiction, and I've recently gone back to re-read it and it's not even bad? The plot is incredibly stupid but it's not badly written. That said, those kinds of fanfictions become the creepiest thing the second you turn older than thirteen.

Fun fact: the thing that I really could never stand was how bad the dialogues were, so unrealistic, it drove me insane. So I got an obsession for learning how to write good dialogue and to this day every publisher I've ever talked to praises as first thing my dialogue. As I said, fanfictions had a HUGE impact on my history with writing. As horrible as it may sound, it taught me a lot about how I didn't want to write.

Then a few years later I read Harry Potter and I started reading an unhealthy amount of jily fanfictions (I read hinny too, but mainly jily). That's when I discovered there could be well-written things that fell under the term fanfiction.

There's actually a hinny fanfiction on Wattpad written by me, that was meant to be a little stupid thing to write when I got writer's block with my original stuff. It's not finished, and it's horrible because I tried to write it in Italian but I don't have Harry and Ginny's voices in Italian pinned down because I've read the books just in English. I should erase it from the face of the earth but it really annoys me not having finished it.

That was all the fanfiction I had ever written for a long time. I read a lot of it but never really tried to write it.

As for the fanfictions that I write now... Around a year and a half ago, it was a weird transition period in my life and somehow that lead me to actually use my Tumblr account, which I've had for years. I was tired of the Marauders fandom, and before I knew it I was part of the hinny community apparently and I wasn't able to resist the temptation to write a couple of one-shots myself. I'm still not sure how that happened.

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redshift-13 · 6 months

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No other art movement has so profoundly influenced radical politics as the Situationist International. But beyond the clichés about its purported leader Guy Debord, the "society of the spectacle," détournement and dérive, lies a more complex story about key historical shifts in the composition of capital, work, labor, art, and revolutionary theory during the 1950s and 60s. With and Against reframes the history of the Situationist International as a struggle to come to terms with the then-emerging ideologies of cybernetics and automation. Through each of the book's four chapters, Dominique Routhier dissects Situationist pamphlets, documents, artworks, and objects that refract elements of a "cybernetic hypothesis": the theoretically hyperbolic belief that technological progress, computers and automation make class struggle and the idea of revolution obsolete. With equal attention to aesthetic detail and to the broader contours of political economy, this book serves as a critical intervention in art history as well a call to reconsider, more broadly, the contemporary lessons of the most political of all artistic avantgardes. https://www.versobooks.com/products/2954-with-and-against

Mini Reviews

Evincing a breathtaking command of the broader historical context that informed the rise of the Situationist International during the age of automation and the birth of cybernetics, Dominique Routhier's innovative analysis transcends the discipline of art history, allowing us to link early 20thcentury avant-garde struggles against the alienated separation of art and labour with all the nuances of the SI imperative. Given our anxieties today about the impact of Artificial Intelligence on labour and art, Routhier's study could not be more timely.

Abigail Susik, Willamette University, author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work

The situationists once described themselves as racing against the police for control of the technologies of modern conditioning. In With and Against, Dominique Routhier provides us with a stunningly insightful commentary on that race's progress over the course of the 1950s and '60s, from the rooftop of Le Corbusier's apartment block in Marseille to the classrooms of Nanterre's university. Drawing our attention to the SI's previously neglected struggle over the postwar world's latest "science of control and communications," cybernetics, he argues persuasively that this last avant-garde of the 20th century was precociously engaged with a key technology of the 21st. With and Against is a vital contribution, not only to our understanding of the SI, but also of our own moment as it has been shaped by the "cybernetic hypothesis."

Tom McDonough, Professor of Art History at Binghamton University, Author of "The Beautiful Language of My Century": Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945–1968

#dominique routhier #situationism #art #political art #art history #new books #verso books

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mergist · 1 year

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The Role of Sailor Moon in Finnegans Wake

(re/crosspost from another blog)

Finnegans Wake is probably the greatest mystery in literature, a monstrosity of a book written in "night language" where words deform, split, rearrange, take on other meanings and become jokes in other languages. Its world is a dream someone's having, its character change and turn into each other and play-act all the wars and families and Biblical falls in history, and its structure is as deep as its references and its sense of humor. It's the ultimate exercise in classical interpretation, the kind where scholars try really desperately to see what it was that James Joyce meant to communicate to us.

What makes this interpretative task more difficult is the finding of things that seemingly shouldn't or couldn't be in it, leading people to write off the whole exercise as chasing ghosts of meaning. For instance, Robert Anton Wilson (rest his merry soul) claimed that one chapter perfectly predicts the bombing of Nagasaki, and that fourteen particular paragraphs read backwards will yield Bach's Stations of the Cross.

It's not in my purview to defend interpretations like this, only to say that if these weren't put in on purpose then holy shit are they fun coincidences. If you stop worrying about what Joyce was really communicating and take the text as is, it's a postmodernist's wet dream. (Maybe literally.) The interplay of meanings and structures found inside of it makes it as easy to do "personal" readings in as the Bible, and presents it as an object of study that is forever yielding up new and interesting associations.

To that end, let's see if something's in the Wake that absolutely could never be there. I picked Sailor Moon, the much-beloved 90s anime about schoolgirls who fight monsters from another dimension. Television itself hadn't been invented yet, although there's inevitably a scene of people watching it in the Wake - presumably Joyce predicted some way to eventually play movies outside of theaters. He also mentions Popeye ("I yam as I yam") and lived in the 30s, so he knows about the beginnings of animation as an art-style. So we're in by a thread.

We're also handicapping ourselves with the word "sailor" here - sailors and tailors appear many times in the text but this is generally recognized as pointing to a character/motif called the "Norwegian captain". The captain and the tailor who he shortchanges for new clothes makes sailor outfits a prominent part of the Wake (and the Japanese sailor outfits are the only reason to put "Sailor" in the title of Sailor Moon), but also takes up a lot of the room for anything female to be happening here. (There is a male character who prominently wears a tuxedo, though...) To make up for it, we have the other motif of the moon goddess (which Sailor Moon very much represents, for reasons I'll leave to one side) and of other planets in our solar system (since her friends have titles like Sailor Mercury, Venus, etc).

So, my short case, not going through every page here:

255.30 foundling filly of fortyshilling fostertailor

A young woman appears in the sailor/tailor distinction, also called the "wishful waistress". The girl who turns into Sailor Moon (Serena in English from 'Selene' for the moon, Usagi in Japanese after the word for rabbit, as in the Moon rabbit), and is a lazy layabout even long after she hears the call to heroism. (Since the book is a dream, it makes extra sense for her to be sleeping a lot in it.)

255.31 shopahoyden, weighing ten pebble ten, scaling five footsy five

Tailor's shop; ship ahoy - the sailors are here (ten in total, five in the first season and five more introduced in later seasons); hoyden: an ill-bred girl (again lazy and sleeping); the waistress's measurements are given as five foot five and ten stone ten (or 150lbs) and this seems to check out. (Her other measurements are given shortly after - including the number 28, referring to a class of schoolgirls who figure throughout the book as 'the Maggies'.)

594.34 saelior, a turnkeyed trot to Seapoint, pierrotettes, means

A sailor dancing (turkey trot was a dance denounced by the Vatican) and pirouetting here; a feminine white-faced pantomime character called a Pierrot, or a Pierrette when played by a woman. (Suggests a dance in moonlight, or between the proverbial moon and the white-masked tuxedoed male lead I mentioned earlier.)

428.08 is saling moonlike. And Slyly mamourneen's ladymaid at Glads-

Sailor Moon; sailing like the moon across the sky; 'saying goodnight' (deformed); moon and morning - the cycle of night ("fighting evil by moonlight..."); Gaelic mavournin: sweetheart.

600.33 Molly Vardant, in goodbroomirish, arrah, this place is a proper

Molly (or Naru), Serena/Usagi's best friend, sometimes given the fan title of "Sailor Earth" (and she seems to represent Earth and normal humanity in contrast to the magical antics of Sailor Moon); Molly is verdant and ardent; Dolly Varden: a fashionable woman's outfit in the 1870s covered in flowers.

220.03 THE FLORAS (Girl Scouts from St. Bride's Finishing Establish- 220.04 ment, demand acidulateds), a month's bunch of pretty maidens 220.05 who, while they pick on her, their pet peeve, form with valkyri- 220.06 enne licence the guard for 220.07 IZOD (Miss Butys Pott, ask the attendantess for a leaflet), a be- 220.08 witching blonde who dimples delightfully and is approached in

Traditionally a section outlining the Maggies and their connection to Issy/Izzy/Izod/Isolde, a daughter in the family the story follows - but consider a "month's bunch" here to mean "the bunch collected in the passing of the moon" and another meaning appears. These are the magical female warriors (Valkyries) who rib the flawed, blonde Ms. Beauty Spot (Serena/Usagi) - the other Sailor Scouts (Girl Scouts) that the series follows.

This ties Serena and the Scouts into the fabric of the Wake by making them at least isomorphic to Issy and her Maggies, making further Sailor Moon references a matter of referencing prior interpretation on these two subjects.

#finnegans wake #sailor moon

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