Whoops took but forgot to post last night–...

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Whoops took but forgot to post last night– #sevenblackandwhitephotos one a day, no humans no explanations, I think this was day 4!
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marylibra: Evening shoes Delman (American, founded...

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marylibra:

Evening shoes

Delman (American, founded 1919)

1935

Silk, leather, plastic, rhinestones
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I never did write anything original during November.I got as far as sketching out a few of the bones

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I never did write anything original during November.

I got as far as sketching out a few of the bones of a world, and I had the opening scene sort of loosely imagined, including a super-amazing reveal that would pull the reader into this world. 

But it’s still living back there, in the back of my mind. And one of the things that recently occurred to me is… what if I just… like, this wouldn’t be the point of the book, but what if I made the whole thing have no male characters with any agency of their own?

I notice this in myself, still– if I’m writing a story focusing on a single character, it’s almost always a man. If I write an ensemble piece, a man will wind up being the character whose POV/throughline I prioritize. (*cough* Kes, you scene-stealing motherfucker.) I noticed this a while back, actually, and it’s why I have two major MCU epics: one is primarily about Bucky, the other one, I forced myself to not give him one single solitary POV scene. (I wavered, though; he has a lot of monologues where he addresses a camera. It’s not the same, but he sure gets to have his say, even if the reader’s not inside his POV.) 

So anyway. It would be really entertaining to have that be just… a down-low kind of background-level feature of this world. There’s no male characters who are actually important. Not like, anti-male or whatever, just a straight faithful inversion of your average adventure story, where approximately 17% of the population is female and you wind up with one or two speaking parts and one of them is a crone and the other the love interest who has no narrative arc or particular motivation of her own. So, just reverse that.

Even better, the protagonist is casually low-key benignly sexist and pats the love interest on the ass, tells him to “calm down” a lot, etc. She’s not a misandrist! She loves men! How else is she going to get that baby like a trophy at the end of the adventure? 

I’m gonna give her a sidekick boy who’s sort of helplessly in love with her and he has no idea and he follows her around and does what she says and maybe gets killed by the bad guy eventually and then her womanpain makes her stronger. 

But like. Actually tell a good story in among all that. You know? Like, keep that background. I’m not setting out to be sexist, here. I’m just trying to invert a trope, that’s a value-neutral thing clever literary writers do all the time.
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albymangroves:@bomberqueen17 !!!

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albymangroves:

@bomberqueen17 !!!
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x[image description: tweet by Rep. Maxine Waters: Lock him up, lock him up, lock him up, lock him...

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x

[image description: tweet by Rep. Maxine Waters: Lock him up, lock him up, lock him up, lock him up.

timestamped 11:22 1 Dec 2017]
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Check yourself (or at least, your name)

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lauraannegilman:

The Office of the New York State Attorney General is investigating whether public comments regarding net neutrality rules wrongfully used New Yorkers’ identities without their consent. We encourage you to search the FCC’s public comment website and tell us if you see any comments that misuse your name and address.

First, search to find any comments that may have misused your identity.

If results appear, click on any comment that uses your name, and when the comment appears review the name, the address, and the comment text. (If no results appear, your identity most likely was not misused.)

The search will open a new tab, so make sure to click back to this page if you find a comment submitted without your consent.

oh jesus christ i have such a common name that there are eight pages of results. 237 hits. 

I don’t know where to start, kids.

But if your name is uncommon, please do this. I’ll… have a few drinks and then work on finding out if any of these is me. 

A lot of them are form letters that are in favor of neutrality, though, in big batches like they went viral. If I can eliminate the pro-neutrality ones, which are likely genuine, then that makes this search much easier.

But, Christ almighty, I hadn’t realized how common my name is. I mean, I knew it was, but, Yikes™.
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Taking Down Terrorists in Court

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Taking Down Terrorists in Court:

In a jam-packed news day, this was the most inspiring and interesting thing I read.

Zainab Ahmad is an incredibly talented and dedicated person, very good at her job. She is one of the two of prosecutors who procured Flynn’s guilty plea. (h/t for the link)

Takeaways: 

#1 they are not fucking around with Flynn

#2 imagine the fucking work that she could be getting done if she didn’t have to drop all this shit to work on this bullshit oh my god why did we elect a fucking traitor

#3 I had no idea what our alternatives to Guantanamo are, and I’m so furious I didn’t know about this

#4 fuck Jeff Sessions

footnote: the most horrifying, poignant, shocking thing in this entire profile is when she recounts how free from racism her upbringing was, as a Pakistani-American in Nassau Co. on Long Island, and admits that it would not be the same if she were growing up now. (She was born in 1980, and so was a young adult when 9/11 happened.)
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