Remember To Check Your Registration Often! They're Increasing Their Efforts To Cheat And Disenfranchise.

Remember to check your registration often! They're increasing their efforts to cheat and disenfranchise.

I have come up with a better metaphor than “you can’t pour from an empty cup” for burnout. You can’t boil an empty kettle. Pouring from an empty cup just gets you nowhere. Trying to boil an empty kettle can ruin the kettle, the stove, and burn down your house if you keep trying it.

Why are people ashamed of writing fanfic? I just saw someone who is writing a fanfic for NanoWriMo - who has dedicated themselves to writing 50k words of fanfic this month - say that fanfic was their ‘secret shame’ on a forum entirely made up of fanfic writers. 

And you know what? That’s not at all uncommon. I can’t even count the times I’ve seen fanfic disparaged as something for teenage girls or unworthy all together and I think I’ve finally worked out why. And the reason irks me just as much as the fact that this happens. 

Fanfic is, by and large, written by women. It’s a creative voice that fills a void left in Hollywood as well as in publishing houses. Only 9% of spec scripts (for movies) sold between 2010 and 2012 were written by women. In 2010, 84% of the reviewers for the New York Review of Books were men and 83% of the books they reviewed were also by men. Female writers make up only 29% of TV staff jobs, a drop of 1.5% from last season, with things looking even bleaker for minorities, who hold only 13.7 percent of TV staff writer jobs. All of these facts add up to one thing - these days, writing is utterly dominated by middle aged, white men. They floods our televisions, our bookshelves, and our movie screens and sometimes we fall in love with the characters but maybe we don’t see the story we wanted told. So we write fic. 

But do you know what I think? I think that shame comes from being bold enough to dare to have a voice. I think we’re viewing our own perspectives as somehow less, unworthy in comparison to the ‘norm’ of ‘real’ storytelling that we see validated by being put on television and movie screens and bookstore shelves. While we might, as a culture, tolerate such daring activity amongst teenage girls, we also view it as childish, something women are meant to outgrow, something shameful to hold onto as adults. But it isn’t just fanfic we’re shaming. It’s our voices, our validity, and that makes me sick. 

So be a fanfic writer. Be the best goddamned fanfic writer you can be. Use your voice and be proud of it because it’s yours. There is nothing ‘less’ about fanfic. And there never will be. 

Happy anniversary to this banger.

There's a difference between "disabled" and "legally recognized as disabled," and I just want to give a shout-out to all the other disabled people who don't have formal diagnoses, who don't have access to benefits of any kind, who don't have the ability to use even the shittiest and least-helpful resources, because the process of getting legal recognition for disability sucks ass.

And another shout-out to all the disabled people who purposely avoid getting diagnosed, because official diagnoses can be used against you, and you're unable or unwilling to risk it.

Since the Paralympics are happening and I’m seeing all sorts of people saying “See? This person doesn’t let their disability stop them!”

I would like you to remember that Paralympions are OLYMPIC LEVEL ATHLETES.

How would it feel if I compared your output to that of a literal olympic athlete and used that to justify not helping you or giving you what you need?

Oh, well Michael Phelps and Simone Biles can do it - why can’t you?

Thats how you sound.