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hacash https://hacash.tumblr.com/post/687772919906091008/not-to-be-an-edgelord-but-sometimes-i-see-tags :

dingdongyouarewrong https://dingdongyouarewrong.tumblr.com/post/686828708262215680/maybe-im-just-being-edgy-or-something-but-i-think :

dingdongyouarewrong https://dingdongyouarewrong.tumblr.com/post/686828473209192448/not-to-be-an-edgelord-but-sometimes-i-see-tags :

not to be an edgelord but sometimes i see tags like this and i wonder if i’m some kind of fucked up joker guy. like this is for real and not a bit? the hunger games was too dark for y'all at 12-16? at the target audience age it was written for? seriously?

maybe i’m just being edgy or something but i think getting to read some fucked up murder shit as a kid is good for you and i think adults trying as hard as they can to keep that stuff as far away from kids as possible are lame

where’s that post abt if you only read wholesome stuff#you don’t get

practice at approaching darker things#relatedly will & I were talking abt books we were into as kids#and he said he’d never read any jaqueline wilson bc it looked like girl stuff#and then I told him some of the lssues they cover and he was#:o :o :o <https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/where's%20that%20post%20abt%20if%20you%20only%20read%20*wholesome*%20stuff> (via sweetlyfez​)

This reminded me of one of the biggest ‘this book changed my life’ moments of my childhood, because like fez I was pretty into Jaqueline Wilson as a kid.

For those of you who never read her work - and you really should - Wilson covers seriously heavy shit (divorce, mental health issues, homelessness, blended families, homeschooling, parents dying, the works) while still managing to stay pretty kid/YA appropriate. I devoured a lot of her stuff and, being a fairly advanced reader, one day stumbled across ‘The Illustrated Mum’ at the school library.

This is definitely one of her best works: a girl called Dolphin lives with her sister and her tattoo-loving single mother Marigold, whose struggles with untreated bipolar disorder means that more often than not both girls end up looking after her. The emotional crux of the book comes when, after her older sister moves in with her dad, Dolphin comes home to see her mother in the middle of a heartbreakingly-written breakdown, and makes the painful decision to call social services.

It’s an incredibly good book - deep, dark, painful, gut-wrenching, damn near harrowing. And, considering most reviewers agree it’s suitable for ages 10 and up, possibly not something I should have been reading unsupervised at the age of 7.

I remember being horrified when Dolphin comes home to see that Marigold, convinced her tattoos are what’s stopping her from having a lasting relationship, has painted herself in white enamel paint and is disassociating naked in the bathtub. I was listening to one of my Mum’s CDs at the time and over, twenty years later, when I hear a particular song (Runaway by Cher, if anyone’s interested) I still remember how I felt when I read that chapter. After that scene I hid the book under my bed, I cried, I couldn’t bear the thought of reading any further.

And you know what? I was fine. I wasn’t traumatised for life. I told my parents about it, and my dad read the book and wrote me a long, lovely letter about how Marigold was a good person who just needed help, that Dolphin shouldn’t have had to look after her mum when she was only a kid herself, that the two girls deserved a stable home life. We talked a lot about people who struggled with mental health issues (this was in the 90s before it was cool) and kids who don’t get the stable home they need; my parents asked if I wanted to finish the book and I said yes. (Spoiler alert: Marigold gets the treatment she needs and is reunited with her daughters.)

Now, if my parents had known I was reading a book marked specifically for older kids and up, they would probably have tried to have an ongoing conversation with me as I was reading to make sure I understood everything and to see if I had any questions. (They would definitely have told me not to read it just before bed.) They might have told me not to read it for a couple of years - but certainly not to hold off beyond the target age. And the point stands, it was a dark book written for older kids, and reading it didn’t ruin my entire life - instead it opened my eyes to a reality that I had never been introduced to before.

And crucially, I was able to be introduced to that reality when my parents got involved in my reading material and, rather than censoring it, talked me through it and explained the hard stuff to me. I wonder if so many parents clutch their pearls about unsuitable reading material because they don’t actually want to be bothered talking with their kids about difficult topics. (Your picture was not posted)

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dashedwithromance https://dashedwithromance.tumblr.com/post/691284666216579073/i-love-it-when-you-read-multiple-works-from-a :

i love it when you read multiple works from a writer and you start being able to pick out the things that stick with them. like the themes they keep thinking about, that can’t be satisfied with just one poem or novel or story. or the motifs they like to reuse and recycle throughout their works like an extradiagetic thread. it’s like drawing a map through a writer’s collection of all the things that keep them up at night

LOL as a writer who’s quite prolific I’m somewhat uncomfortably aware that while no single work of mine is all that revealing, if you dig through the entire mass of them it’s pretty obvious what I’m concerned about and what I’m into, and I sometimes think about being self-conscious about this, but upon perusal of the collected weight of my AO3 comment inbox, really I think the overarching thing is that most of the shit I’m worried about is shit a lot of people are worried about, so I’m not really all that fussed that it’s obvious.

WooOOOooo will anyone ever love me for whoooo i aammmmmm get in line buddy, we all wanna know. And like…. hurr durr boobs is an extremely relatable sentiment, I don’t think I gotta be ashamed of that one either. (Your picture was not posted)