In the Back of the Bookshelf

jen, gemini, aroace, nonbinary, pagan, librarian, grown ass adult, unrepentant nerd. jenavira or j. quadrifrons on AO3 and everywhere else.

[damndorothea]

i saw this somewhere else but reply / tag what you did today so everyone can see that we all did something different today

[needsmoreexplosions]

we have GOT to do something to retake the little sparkle from the AI industry. She's not yours

[ramavoite]

"Ebenezer Scrooge learns the true meaning of Bisexual Awareness Week"

[butchdogs-md]

you need to understand that i have two sets of headcanons. there's the set of realistic headcanons based on my genuine reading of the show, and then there's me playing pretend with my dolls.

[romanceyourdemons]

in the tradition of outcast (2014), dragon blade (2015), and the great wall (2016), we need a movie set in the 1630s where a disillusioned member of the embroidered uniform guard and a profit-driven jianghu mercenary flee the corrupt and crumbling ming dynasty and somehow end up in the equally corrupt city of cologne, where they become key players in the fight against the sinister forces of cardinal richelieu and eventually secure the peace of westphalia and the end of the thirty years’ war. this is a million dollar idea i’m telling you

[romanceyourdemons]

i really do love this concept. the protagonist is like i’m sick of dealing with wei zhongxian’s shit, i’m gonna go someplace where people are holy and don’t even know how to act like this (the impression of europe he got from the jesuit missionary he had a tactical lunch with once), and so he travels 5000 miles and as soon as he stops to catch his breath he runs into cardinal fucking richelieu, the european wei zhongxian

[ororium-z]

Happy Pride!

[dumnslut]

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

I hope I'm not just a mutual to you, but someone you want to bring up in irl conversation so you have to awkwardly and cryptically say "my friend..." and refuse to elaborate on my origins or the origins of our friendships

[mornington-the-crescent]

June 1st

[breelandwalker]

Listen, marketing-as-exploitation discussions aside, Rainbow Capitalism is, has been, and continues to be the canary in the coal mine of social acceptance for the queer community.

If you’ll all pardon my Americentrism for a moment, the amount, visibility, and flamboyance of Pride merch available in clothing, home goods, and comestibles stores is a DIRECT reflection of how safe it is to be queer in public in the United States.

How? Simple. Out groups aren’t profitable. If you’re not “acceptable” in the current social climate, big franchise businesses will not market to you. (Prime example - Look how quickly Target dropped all their Pride merch after having been wall-to-wall rainbows every June for almost a decade prior.)

Sure, capitalism sucks and being viewed as an exploitable marketing demographic isn’t a fun concept.

HOWEVER.

The grim truth is that being normalized enough to be considered profitable by corporations IS A GOOD THING in terms of the barometer of social acceptance.

Same thing goes for smaller businesses that throw kitschy Pride events or even just put a token rainbow flag in the window or somewhere inside the shop. That’s a level of acceptance that DID NOT EXIST thirty years ago, and I can tell you because I was there.

The fact that we can scoff and bitch about being an exploitable marketing demographic nowadays means we have made GIGANTIC strides since the 1990s. It also speaks to the fact that the drive and the conversation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance are continuing. And getting louder.

You can be cynical about it if you want. But I will take a store that puts out lip-service rainbow merch over a world that pretends we don’t exist any day of the week. Because that will always mean something.

Sincerely, An Elder Queer

[backofthebookshelf]

The memes about corporations cynically covering themselves in rainbows were there to remind people that the rainbows don't mean anything when it's the expected thing to do. Lesbians still have loyalty to Subaru because they marketed to them when no one else so much as acknowledged that women might buy a car without a man involved. US based corporations who cover themselves in rainbows, and especially trans pride flags, in 2026 aren't being cynical; they're actually expressing a principle.

[uss-edsall]

Does anyone have this picture

But it’s a parody of Master and Commander’s opening title

I swear I have seen this before and I cannot for the life of me find it

[kesslersymbolic]

This image?

[uss-edsall]

YES

[eddardsharpe]

[bacony-cakes]

PNG'D! (i didn't know the font so this is taken directly from the image)

+ bonus italian navy vessel

[catgirl-kaiju]

[not-trustworthy]

mash being surprisingly queer in the 70′s - 39/?

[chili-mac-and-cheese]

was anyone going to tell me uncle iroh was in M*A*S*H or were you all waiting for me to figure it out myself???

Dr. Lin Tan of the PRC is played by Mako, voice actor for Iroh in Avatar: The Last Airbender. We meet him in S3 E2, "Rainbow Bridge".

[adriagan]

it fucking sucks being a disabled person who can't work and having to see these fuckass posts where someone's like "ahaha jobless people have no life and that's why everyone shitty online has No Job" and everyone and their mother reblogs it joyfully onto my dash for me to see. yes unemployed and unemployable people are truly without exception dogshit people with no hobbies and no redeeming qualities. you're so right. anyway if you'll excuse me i have to start my shift at the I'll Never Be Employed Because Of Permanent Disability And I Love Knowing How You Really See Me store

[adriagan]

if ur able to work can u reblog this i am seriously SO sick of it.

[adriagan]

btw this isn't solely a disability rights issue or an issue about people who are entirely unable to work. you should also be thinking about the people who are regarded as unhireable. transfems are hugely discriminated against in this way, people of color are passed over for less qualified white people, anyone who has any difficulty playing the interview game is less hireable... frankly anyone who made the mistake of pursuing the things they love and now has a degree for a niche field. if you still joke about Jobless People it's because you've fundamentally connected the worth of people to their labor, and specific labor, work that you see as valuable. and while i'm at it stop making fun of people who still live with their parents. asshole.

[ao3commentoftheday]

Fandom old here, been in fandom since I was 13 and I'm not in my early thirties. In regards to the Beta and Writer conversation I have been seeing on your dashboard as of late, I wanted to say that Fanfiction.Net actually had the ingenious idea a long time ago to make a list of beta readers. What you did was you filled out a beta-editor profile and your fandoms that you were willing to do. They still have it up. The issue is that Archive of Our Own Does *not* have this. There's no official list of active beta readers or what fandoms they will do publically. Instead, most beta readers that I have found are in fandom discord servers. Tumblr doesn't give enough traction to do a beta reader call because everyone posts and can get lost in the feed. That helps no one, not the writer and certainly not the beta whose looking for someone to help. The other issue that I am seeing is that there was a unspoken yet quite loud rule that betas were people who wished to be editors one day and just like many of us on fanfiction were hoping to become writers or were going to go into English Degrees, understood that we had to practice for our own rejection. So basically, rejective sensitivity didn't exist for us because the betas were in as much practice as we were. This is their craft as much as writing was ours. Now there were bad betas, don't get me wrong. But you knew a bad beta from a good one. Now, I don't know about everyone else's school. But in my high school we were taught how to give criticism. Art and English teachers used to make us grade each other's art and grade each other's essays long before the teacher ever got a hold of them. We had a rubic to follow in English to help us, and for art...that could get brutal. Big time. You didn't get a I'm afraid. We got "oh god, she's going to hate it and I'm going to be re-writing this again" because English teachers back in my day gave back essays and told you to re-write it. You had four drafts before you could turn in a "final". I don't know how classes are run now, but this is another huge problem that I am seeing. So, how does this work in fandom etiquette today? I don't think anyone really wants a "beta", they want assurance. Every time I see "it's my writing style" I leave because I already know they didn't want me to edit and it wasn't a writing style they just don't know how to break the rules properly. Betas can help you break grammar rules *properly*, because that's their craft. They know the rules therefore they know how to bend them, break them, and make them theirs. Writers, we should know how to do that too, but they know it better. Let them have it. Let them know what really is a writing style because if it's just insecurity, guess what? Here's the tough truth: you either get a beta and you enhance your writing and you learn how to hone your craft to be a better writer or you don't. And the problem is that you can get better if you don't. A beta isn't a have to...but a beta can make you get better faster. You'll be getting better slower especially with lack of engagement on fics on AO3 if you don't. Which is a valid way to go. And a whole other ask/blog entirely. Editors and writers go hand in hand, betas aren't an enemy you fight. People who are afraid of the red pen weren't afraid because of the mistakes they made, it was once more going to the typewriter and figuring out how to make it *better*.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, anon.

[ursavorpalis]

idk how old this person is, but i'm 40, so at the very least not that young.

I used to be in a "brutal criticism" writing environment when I was ~18. what it did was kill my desire and ability to write, and I didn't get it back until I got into fandom and met people who approached my writing with warmth and a desire to help me learn.

a brutal criticism can feel satisfying to make or read. it is not actually better in improving a story than a gently phrased "hey the thing you did has X effect, is that what you meant to do?"

"when I was young we didn't have rejection sensitivity!" or maybe all the rejection sensitive people were driven out of the writing circles you were in. maybe you'd prefer that. I don't.

[backofthebookshelf]

I am a fandom old, been in fandom since I was 13 and I'm 42 next month. I used to write a writing advice column on fanfiction.net (I was fifteen and my only qualifications were I wanted to do it) and while yes it was more common to have a beta reader at the time, it was also well known that there are different kinds of betas, and what anon describes was often not called a beta at all but an edit. A beta reader was there to tell you if you misspelled the character's name or forgot a piece of lore, or if you had used a word incorrectly, or if this fic had the emotional impact you intended. A beta reader has never been primarily about harsh criticism, and anon is the kind of beta reader I would have shrugged off as "not really interested in fandom."

[fictionadventurer]

One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.

Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.

There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!

[starfieldcanvas]

the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."

bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.

[penrosesun]

I ran into a truly wild cultural misunderstanding with my father some years ago, when I had to explain to him what “hookup culture” actually was, and that the thing he assumed it was was actually what we call “cruising culture”. His response was “how is that different from dating?” and when I explained how it was different, he said, and please note that this a direct quote: “That’s ridiculous! You can’t expect a woman to stop fooling around with other guys for anything less than a marriage proposal. I mean, she’s not a prostitute, you can’t buy her.” Now obviously there’s like… a lot to unpack there, but I think it’s pretty darn illustrative of a substantive cultural shift around the assumption of monogamy!

Also, following this, I asked my mom what her thoughts were on the matter, and she said that while she “wouldn’t put it in those terms” she broadly agreed, and thought that anyone expecting any sort of exclusivity when a marriage proposal wasn’t at least on the very immanent horizon was “nuts, honestly.” I hesitantly asked if she was including relationships with premarital sexual activity in that, and her response was “Of course. I mean, gosh, you know your Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week before she finally settled down.”

And this was when I learned, to my shock, that the oft-repeated story of how “Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week” didn’t just mean “Aunt Terri had a full dance card” but rather meant that Aunt Terri had a period of her life where she literally dated exactly seven guys at once, all of whom she was sleeping with (or, my mom was quick to disclaim, “well, fooling around with, I don’t know how far she actually went with any of them, but they were definitely all fooling around behind closed doors”), on a literal weekly rotation. Like, they had a schedule. A schedule that all seven of the guys knew.

America has gotten a lot more conservative about dating, actually.

[slyrivers]

I love this so much, I’m gonna start saying “nuts” we need to bring it back

[libralthinking]

I love b&w proper ladies breaking character with “sonofabitch”

[yooterus-deactivated20220126]

“OHH you’re following me, oUUhhh I didn’t know that!”

[j-liz]

“And tried to uh…. ….NUTS!”

[callmearcturus]

Eva Stratt really is one of the most infuriating and compelling characters I have ever seen because she truly interrogates my own personal philosophies and certain truths I hold.

I don't believe in any state's right to kill their citizens.

I don't believe in the death penalty.

I'm pro-abortion in the specific way that stems from a belief no one has the right to another person's body, even if it would save lives.

I mentioned Abby "PhilosophyTube" Thorn's "Abortion and Ben Shapiro" video before, but short version: say, hypothetically, the world's most gifted and important violinist is going to die due to needing a kidney transplant. By some weird fluke of medicine and genetics, your kidney is the only one that will work. There isn't time to find another rare donor. Your sacrifice will save this important, 'valuable' person's life... but you'll be on dialysis daily for the rest of your life.

Believing in absolute autonomy means no one can force you to agree to that. Even if it will result in someone's death, you cannot be compelled to give up your body for a righteous enough cause. In the same way, no one should be compelled to give up their body to a fetus, thus pro-abortion. (The reason you abstract it this way is to side-step the ingrained misogyny of "well you had sex so really this is your fault.")

Anyway. Eva Stratt is a much worse version of this. Grace was asked to sacrifice himself. He said no. She overruled him and in fact was always going to overrule him. The security people with the sedatives were ready to go before Grace even gave his answer. Making it a question was a polite fiction to spare Eva the trouble and trauma.

By doing it, she saves not just Earth but another populated planet altogether.

Grace said no. And he fought. He ran for his life. He was terrified. In the book, he calls it murder. In the film, he's begging them not to do it. In the book, the flashback happens as Grace-in-the-present wonders about how he must've known he could pull this mission off, he volunteered after all!

Then remembers: no he explicitly didn't.

In some way, it works better for me than Omelas. In that parable, the sacrificial child has no concept of why its happening. In PHM, Grace does know, and makes the informed decision to say no, and is overruled.

Does it stop being a fundamental, foundational wrong because it saves Erid and Earth?

How about the fact that Grace lives, does that make it less wrong?

Does the threshold change based on if Grace dies as expected or not?

Was it the only option or if they spent two weeks on the issue would they find a replacement and make up for lost time?

What projected death toll do you have to meet before Eva's decision becomes the Right Thing To Do?

Where do the scales tip?

Did the scales ever actually tip?

Other people may think they did. But for me and the absolutism I (try) to maintain about life and autonomy... I don't think they ever did. But I have to ask myself to really contend with that question.

And in the film, she did all that, and I still feel tremendous sympathy for her.

And that is fucking art.

[avaari]

#for me it's like. it's not about the scales at all.#it was objectively the correct decision and it was still an evil violent thing to do. neither cancels out the other.#and also scores of people *absolutely* died as a direct result of her actions of paving the sahara and nuking antarctica#it's just that we have a face to grace that we don't have for the people in europe who suddenly started getting tornado'ed#and for my secret slightly eviller thought. grace was fine with her making all of those similar decisions right up until they hurt *him*.#he facilitated other specialists getting conscripted on to the project against their wills and went along w the induced natural disasters#so if you want to be evil you could argue that he'd implicitly consented to the idea that she is allowed to override people's autonomy#<- I'm mostly saying this as food for thought than as a representation of what I actually believe. hashtag murder is wrong.#but still yknow. she's never taken the oath to first do no harm. via @annabelle--cane