I said I wouldn't, but then I did

Crunchy lives here. He writes stuff. Australian. Adult. Queer. Original Fic on Patreon. Ao3. Ko-fi.

[mongoose-bite]

Crunchy’s Patreon

On my Patreon you will find my original writing, serially published novels and short stories, for free, for everyone, forever. Patrons get early access and occasional blog posts, and I'm open to suggestions for more rewards  in the future, but if you like what you read, I encourage you to subscribe, even if you can't pledge, and sharing the link helps a lot too.

Here's what you can dig into right now:

Short Stories

When We Learned to Cut Diamonds Fantasy. 9k words.

Faris is used to hosting guests far more colourful than himself in his lodging house, but while the attention of the charming, free-spirited poet Ikenna is flattering, his curiosity can’t lead anywhere good. Faris does not see any reason to share what he does all afternoon; at best he’d be mocked. But Ikenna starts to get to him, and surely there are worse things to be thought of than a fool.

What We Owe the Dead Fantasy. 4k words.

Mordella had never met General Sherwood, so the news of his death disheartened her but little more. She didn't seriously consider the possibility she might later meet his corpse. What were the odds?

The Spirit of the Season Dark urban fantasy. 5k words.

Julian's coming home for Christmas, and for the first time in his life he's not looking forward to it. His mother is doing her best, his Busia is doing her best to ruin it, the weather is unbelievably cold, and his Uber driver went to school with him for years but doesn't recognise him. He's having trouble finding his Christmas spirit, but it might just find him.

Beasts of the Earth Fantasy. 3k words.

A scribe is sent to obtain goblins for a terrible purpose, but that's what goblins are for, aren't they?

Brickhead Sci-fi. 3k words.

It's the unseen, important maintenance that keeps your interstellar commute safe and reliable. Please be sure to completely ignore our dedicated and unimaginative staff if you happen to see any of them.

Wintering Fantasy. 1.5k words.

Pearl slept a lot that winter.

Little God Fantasy. 3k words.

Timur’s family had their own god, and as his father said, 'You get out what you put in.'

Novels

Seaboard - Complete. 49k Words.

In a not-too-distant but divergent future, professional boyfriend Dev finds himself dumped and unemployed in one fell swoop. He visits the seaside slums on Australia’s east coast to cheer himself up by observing those less fortunate than himself.

His sense of superiority is predicated on his ability to return to the bland and comfortable Interior, but getting away from the Seaboard is harder than it seems. Soon he finds himself in hopeless debt, first to a freelance policeman and then to the landlady and self-styled queen of EnSpire, a vast and decaying apartment tower on the edge of the beach.

Time is running short; the monsoon approaches and with it Dev’s last chance to leave before the storms.

Lightning Country - Complete. 146k Words. $10

Rath's just a kid from Lightning Country who fled a family tragedy to the bright lights of Paramento Bay, and made good as a professional assassin. Almost professional; Master Cromwell leaves her a little star-struck.

And then Cromwell murders someone he wasn't contracted to and steals the most advanced ship in the skies, and Rath makes it her mission to hunt him down and kill him.

Agata is the Wolf - In progress

Agata is a widow, a grandmother, and a werewolf. When her granddaughter’s unexpected and ill-advised visit on a moonlit night brings a stranger in her wake, Agata unleashes her wolf to protect her, but leaves the man his life.

Agata’s powerful in-laws keep their distance as long as she doesn’t break any Family rules, the most important of which is to leave no prey alive. Now there’s a Witchfinder on the loose nursing a bite that will be everyone’s problem the next time the moon is full, and Agata must decide who she is and face what she’s done.

[monswoon]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Street Brat: Chapter 96

“What is it?” He asked, holding Eren’s gaze. 

“My official acceptance into the Asura’s.”

Haroun’s little ghosts. Levi’s confusion grew. 

“Oh,” he said, taken aback. “You accepted?”

[transpondster]

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

my students are really harshing on the romance in jane eyre and yeah whatever age gap but something is just not clicking for them that jane eyre is a sexual power fantasy FOR THE YOUNG WOMAN in the relationship. jane eyre shows us this young woman who has an older man so wrapped around her finger that he SOBS for hours when she rejects his love, that raises up a panicked storm when she chooses to leave him. and while you shouldn't get me and my crip studies self started on the ableism of the ending, i.e. that jane's mastering of rochester is complete only when he becomes disabled, the fact remains that jane eyre is about a young woman mastering an older man in every sense of the word. it is a sexual power fantasy in which a young woman is so desirable and so loved by an older man that he drives himself into (emotional) ruin when (for a while) he cannot have her—that the young woman has the upper hand to choose when and how and on what terms their relationship happens. so whatever, age gap blah blah blah (it's literally a victorian novel, come on), but they're truly just missing that the novel is not endorsing an older man preying on a young woman—jane always has some degree of agency (and eventually total control) over rochester. the sexual power fantasy is about and for (and told by) the young woman!!!

[spankerella]

@ perfectunion

[banchie]

i've been phasing the phrase 'google it' out of my vocabulary and going back to 'look it up'. fuck you youve lost your generic trademark privileges

[taraxippos]

Had been thinking about this post (which is a fake excerpt from an imaginary narrative written to mock 'tumblr prose'), and how most "no actually this is good" comments are highlighting how the construction of individual sentences is interesting, how some of the language is evocative, how it Goes Hard. Because that post is written badly in a very thoughtful manner that focuses on core structural issues rather than going for low hanging fruit of poor technical proficiency with the written word, it is not bad in the most "obvious" of ways. So I think this is a legit learning opportunity, but also I don't want to dunk on anyone so instead I will just preach to the choir of My Followers.

But yeah like to be more constructive than just going "lol tumblr prose bad", really the issue in Large part that characterizes "tumblr prose" (which to be clear I don't think is a discrete thing and at most is a combination of several writing tendencies influenced by the medium of Online) comes down to the lack of real contrast in Any aspect of narrative construction, and an obsession with being quotable and constantly being at 100% of Going Hard (which go hand in hand).

In that post, the character voice is indistinct from that of the narration, and the characters quote one-liners that look Meaningful as excerpts and are borderline nonsensical as dialogue. There is no more than the faintest, most generic hints of characterization; these people exist as vague concepts to say deep words for the reader. The sentence length has little variation from its staccato beat, and so it is awkward to read and fails to complement the action or accomplish anything with the pacing (save for the slight slowdown when the torturer feels all that damp animal electricity). The timing is awkward and exaggeratedly dramatic. The description is a flowery kind of tryhard visceral and seems avoidant of describing anything too directly ("something dark and arterial" where there's nothing being accomplished by conveying uncertainty about what is currently gushing out of the injured character and the simple use of "blood splashed across the stones" would actually be 10x more effective), in a way that does disservice to what is supposed to be a torture scene, and leaves it weightless and ungrounded. In fairness to the people saying "this is good", that is MUCH easier to say when reading this fake excerpt as the standalone piece it actually is, but this kind of writing Cannot function in an actual narrative and is not what an excerpt from well constructed narrative fiction is going to look like basically ever.

It reflects a lot of very typical amateur writing issues that just about everyone has to grow out of (the minimal diversity in sentence length, simulated non-attention to scene pacing and timing), and issues common to fanfiction-influenced writing on social media (allergy to paragraph lengths of more than two sentences, little to no description of the characters or setting because, in fanfiction, the reader already knows their physical characteristics and mannerisms and it doesn't need to be lingered upon, Unlike In Original Fiction). But this particularly hits on an issue I think is semi-unique to narrative writing in the social media milieu, which is a focus on being quotable. This may not even be a conscious impulse at all But It's There. This kinda apparent terror of any moment not being as beautiful and hard hitting as possible (or for comedy, any moment not being A Joke). Everything "Goes Hard", so nothing actually does. A lot of "tumblr prose" type writing is less a narrative, more a string of quotes loosely assembled into narrative that vaguely gestures at things like Plot and Character. It substitutes depth for Suggestions of depth by utilizing stock symbolism without building it into the narrative, and by gesturing at weighty contexts without actually engaging with them. There can be little contrast or effective use of tone, pace, description when your story is a series of Hard Hitting Quotes.

I'm reading Watership Down right now and I think it's a great novel overall and can work as an example of how important it is to utilize contrast in your writing.

This segment is the lengthy first description of the titular down, which the rabbits are now encountering for the first time:

Adams is slowing the pace here to introduce us to the setting of the next segment of the book. The average sentence length is very long and keeps us lingering in the sensory detail, while still varied and thus smoothly readable. This new place is introduced by simultaneously conveying its physical description in vivid detail and conveying its feeling and character, and getting the most out of every described feature to do so. The thorn trees are "wind stunted". The air is "scented". The language takes on a very flowery character and heavily utilizes simile and metaphor. Woodland is "tumultuous with evening", sunlight filters through grass "like a wind" to the small creatures below, in contrast to laying "like a gold rind" on the hill when seen from a distance. This grandiose description is heavily functional and conveys both exhaustive physical detail and a feeling that this place is beautiful, awe inspiring to something like a rabbit, and full of life, though not without quiet hints of danger. It hits because Not Everything In The Book Is Described This Way. It means something that we're lingering like this and stopping to get a sense of this place on every possible level, and moving away from more direct, simple prose to convey the feeling of the place in depth.

This segment describes the rabbit Bigwig being found caught in a snare:

The prose here here has the opposite approach of the first excerpt. The language is concise, direct, and brutal. It only veers slightly away from the literal to describe Bigwig's voice as 'bubbling out' from his mouth, both conveying that the saliva and blood in his mouth is literally bubbling as he speaks, and implying the unsettling way his voice sounds as he's being strangled. The sentences are much shorter on the whole, as fit for the pacing of a tense and rapidly changing scene, and the timing closely complements the action - "There was a pause" not only conveys That There Was A Pause but interrupts the rhythm of this segment; the moment of uneasy stillness is echoed in the act of reading itself.

The scene this is excerpted from is extremely effective and does in fact Go Hard, it's well constructed in of itself but its effectiveness mostly lies in its place in the narrative. It's the culmination of a long, tense buildup as the reader becomes more aware that something is deeply Wrong about the place the rabbits are in, and the payoff is effective in being blunt and visceral, which hits because Not Everything In The Book Is Described This Way. Nothing about these excerpts are particularly quotable because that is actually not what good narrative writing is about.

[notquiteaghost]

project hail mary time travel fic but it's stratt. and she has to do it again.

[notquiteaghost]

the thing here is of course that it worked. it worked, so she has to do it again. she has to send him again. she's not even going to save dubois and shapiro, she's not going to save yao and ilyukhina, she's not changing anything, it worked.

except maybe she adds some supplies, to the ship. increases the amount of food, includes some organic compounds. more painkillers. and maybe she spends more time in proximity to grace. not working with him, not talking to him, just doing what she'd be doing anyway, what she's already done, with him in her line of sight

and he notices, because that's his job. was his job. that was the point of him, to know her well enough to notice something has changed. and he doesn't say anything, isn't going to say anything, and in fact maybe nothing gets said. neither of them say anything and the lab explodes and she sends him to die and she waits and waits and waits and the beetles come back and he doesn't. and then she wakes up again on an aircraft carrier off the coast of china

[notquiteaghost]

and it WORKED. and she's here AGAIN, because maybe this is just what happens to you when you are the final signature on a mass extinction event. maybe this is her penance. maybe the world continues on without her, warmer and brighter, but she has to stay here in the worst of it and hold it all together.

she did better. she tried. she knew more. once she'd killed him, once he was out her reach, she could change more. maybe less people died. maybe different people died.

she looks at him as long as she's able and she packs him more vitamins and she doesn't say anything and the lab explodes and she waits and the crops fail and she waits and the wars start and she waits and the beetles come back and she wakes up again on an aircraft carrier and she rolls over to press her face into the mattress and she screams

[notquiteaghost]

the fifth time, she promotes him. six months from launch, that's when she wakes up, and she gets out of bed and gets presentable and walks to his door and says You're the primary science officer now. and he says What? No. No, it can't be me. and she says It has to be you. and she's not trying to do anything with her face, with her voice, but something must happen anyway because he looks at her and says You're sure? You're really sure? and she says It should have been you from the start. and he says Okay, let me– Gosh, okay, I have been awake five minutes and all I've eaten since yesterday is candy, but sure, yeah, I'll go on the suicide mission. Are you– We're getting breakfast, c'mon.

she packs him vitamins. she looks at him. he gets mildly obsessed with a different c-drama every time, somehow. maybe that's the linchpin, maybe he just has to make it through them all. she fills a harddrive with them. she tells him she's never been more sure of anything than she is of him. she waits and she waits and she waits. the beetles come back. he doesn't. she wakes up on an aircraft carrier.

[notquiteaghost]

she stops the lab explosion. she keeps him out of prison by the skin of her teeth. the beetles don't come back.

she lets the lab explode. she lets him hate her for killing him. she's going to be older than his alien, soon. she's on the aircraft carrier, watching him breathe, for six months. and then she's waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for twenty seven years. twenty seven years is too long for any neat little montages of her catching things before they fall. the weather isn't even the same. it depends who wins the war for the sahara. she's sisyphus, she's prometheus, she's atlas. she kills her only warmth and it gets colder and colder and colder until she wakes up again and there he is. maybe it's a gift. six whole months of him breathing

[dreichsmirr]

My abortion was really one the most hated kind of abortion. I wasn't underage. I wasn't raped. I wasn't in medical need.

I got pregnant not through some fluke or 1 in a 100 contraceptive failure. I got pregnant because I was knowingly and willfully having unprotected sex. Out of wedlock too if that matters.

It was my own fault, I was being irresponsible because I knew I could always get an abortion if I got pregnant. My abortion was as close as it comes to 'using abortion as a contraceptive' as anti-choicers love to say.

I didn't abort it because my health was in danger or because I didn't have the ability to care for it or whatever else. I did it purely because I didn't want a child. I wanted sex and I didn't want to deal with any consequences from it.

There's no moral here. I don't feel bad about it whatsoever. I suffered no karmic consequences or punishment from god. My life is amazing. I want to rub this in the face of every conservative and anti-choicer. I did the terrible thing. I had an abortion for the most selfish of reasons and literally nothing happened. Suck it.

[vacuously-true]

You know how there's like some mathematician or something, who like did some useful stuff but is primarily known for overshadowing that work by going to great lengths trying to convince people to blow up the moon or something?

I wanna be like that but the hill I'm dying on is that the moon should be considered a planet

[vacuously-true]

Stop tagging this about the Unabomber it's not about the Unabomber, it's about time we give the other fucked up mathematicians some recognition, it's about this fucking guy

[hereticalteapot]

OP you're right and you should say it. There are 9 planets in the solar system and two of them are in a binary planetary system. I will die on this hill.

[vacuously-true]

EXACTLY. EARTH-MOON IS A BINARY PLANET SYSTEM. AND I WILL BECOME NOTABLE FOR MY FREQUENT POSTS TO VARIOUS TUMBLR BLOGS AND MY ADVOCACY FOR THE RECOGNITION OF THE MOON AS A PLANET.

[hereticalteapot]

Now, dear reader, you might say: "But three of the Jovian moons and Titan are bigger than the Moon!". And to that I say yes, but two of those are bigger than Mercury also and people aren't usually upset about that. Plus all of those are satellites of bodies that are completely incomparable in scale.

Ganymede, the biggest moon in the solar system, is 0.008% the mass of Jupiter. The Moon is a bit over 1.2% of Earth's mass and a solid 27% of its radius. There's no other planet* in the solar system with a satellite anywhere close to the kind of similarity in size that the Earth-Moon system has.

You might also say "Fine but it's literally called 'The Moon' so that's a bit silly". To which I say that I've been calling it that to be more easily understood but it would be extremely easy to switch to calling it "Luna" which is what most people do when they encounter situations where saying "The Moon" creates ambiguity - like when writing sci-fi or a nontrivial amount of astronomical research.

In conclusion, lumping Luna in with the satellites of other bodies is unhelpful because it is geophysically distinct from most of them, and orbitally distinct from all of them. Luna is a planet and it's rad that we can see one so clearly in the night sky.

[*No, Pluto is not a planet, but yes Pluto-Charon is totally a dwarf planet binary]

[kazoracht]

I'll integrate this into my belief system but only because it's funny

[asdfjasklfjdkla]

hello???? hello??????????? have we walked into the twilight zone or something??????????? yes, the moon is a percentage (a percentage almost exactly) of earth’s mass, but that doesn’t magically make us a binary system! the barycenter is still well within the diameter of earth! what next, are you going to say that since deimos and phobos orbit mars, they’re actually a trinary planetary system?? you fucking better not!

[hereticalteapot]

Hi, I'm an astrophysicist, I am well aware of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) definition of a planet. It is a definition that is relatively controversial and doesn't really make a lot of sense - it was mostly written to prevent the list of planets from getting too long as we discovered more dwarfs. This definition does not include anything to do with barycentres - I'll get back to that.

The IAU definition of a planet has 3 parts:

1. Object in orbit around our Sun

2. Object has reached hydrostatic equilibrium (i.e. it's a sphere, not a potato)

3. Object has cleared its neighborhood around its orbit

Both Earth and Luna satisfy 2. I will accept that 1 is debatable, but the crux of my argument is that Luna is the size of a terrestrial planet (yes, ~1% of Earth's mass, but still huge and of roughly the same order of magnitude as Mercury, which is a mere ~5% of Earth's mass) and exceptionally large relative to its orbital partner compared to any other "satellite", a factor the IAU does not account for.

It's important to note that 1 literally does not permit binary planets - even if both bodies are identical, one must be the "moon". This is major criticism of the IAU definition. It also doesn't account for exoplanets or rogue planets, but that's another story.

3 is where this definition falls apart. You could easily argue that most of the planets in our solar system fail depending on how you interpret it, because it's so fuzzy. The Earth fails, because there's a planet-sized body chilling out in its orbit (Luna), Jupiter fails because it has huge quantities of asteroids trapped in its Lagrange points, etc.

In the latter case, we say that because Jupiter is determining the motion of these bodies, it still counts. For the Earth we simply ignore Luna and say that the rule is more about stray bodies than orbital partners. But by the same logic we can say that for Luna we ignore the Earth, and Luna passes.

So I would argue that the IAU definition is bad, but if you fixed it so that it allowed binary systems to exist, it would readily define Luna as a planet in my view (if you deleted the Earth from the solar system and left Luna, it would unambiguously meet the criteria).

Now let's talk about barycentres.

The barycentre of two bodies in orbit is just their overall centre of mass. People often point to the external barycentre of the Pluto-Charon system to indicate that they are binary dwarfs. However, this is a poor metric in my view, because it's highly dependent on orbital distance.

The centre of mass of the Earth-Luna system is inside the Earth at present, but if Luna simply orbited further away, the barycentre would be in the empty space between them, with nothing about the two bodies individually, or the qualitative nature of their orbits, having changed. In fact, given enough time and pretending the Sun won't consume both bodies in a few billion years, Luna would actually drift far enough away due to tidal interactions for this to happen - it would be silly for it to suddenly be a planet one day when it wasn't the day before.

To answer your question, no. I would under no circumstances argue that the martian moons are planets. They are minuscule space potatoes that are not even large by the standards of asteroids. If Mars were close enough in mass to them for the system to be considered plausibly trinary, it would be far too small to even qualify as a dwarf planet (and there's no way such a system would be gravitationally stable to perturbation by Jupiter regardless).

[vacuously-true]

@hereticalteapot Thank you so much for laying this all out! I totally agree. Something that's motivating to me is the fact that Luna is more gravitationally attracted to the Sun than to Earth- and by that definition is orbiting the Sun, not the Earth. This is not true of any other "moons" in our solar system except some which are not even large enough to become spheres- so this is another way in which it is different from the moons in our system.

It's really frustrating to me when people lash out and say "You're wrong because there's a definition, for the love of god look up the definition" about a topic where I think it's clear my point is that I KNOW the definition and I disagree with it. And that's allowed! Definitions are made up! "Planets" are made up, and I think we should make them up differently!

All the things in our solar system are just different kinds of rocks dancing to each other's gravity- they're all affected by each one's gravity, even in tiny ways. They do not fall neatly into subcategories "planet" and "not a planet" - we made this distinction up because we wanted it. We noticed that some of the bodies in our solar system seemed much more important and dominant than others and we wanted a name for that. But the planets don't know that- they don't have an inherent major distinction between them, nor are they obligated to. When we wanted to come up with a way to clearly decide which bodies were planets, we had to make something up.

What we made up is a little bit vague, and even if it were extremely clear cut, we could still debate whether it was a reasonable or intuitive or useful definition.

In science we have lots of definitions, and they aren't handed down by god, they're made by people, and they are made to be useful, and when they aren't useful or reasonable, they can be and should be and are changed. Knowing which things fit which definitions is part of science, but another part of science is thinking critically about whether things SHOULD be defined, how they should be defined, whether definitions need to be changed, and other things like this- and that's messier than just knowing facts. But that's science.

[vacuously-true]

I hate to say it folks, but my fondness for the "Luna is a planet" argument might not just be because it's silly and I like to be silly. It might be a really convenient training ground for thinking about definitions which are social constructs in other contexts. Like race, sex, gender, disability, economics. These things, like planets, are made up. They are very real, don't get me wrong! They are real because we made them up! But what, exactly, they are... we decided it. And we could decide differently. We have that power. If you don't like something because it doesn't fit a definition- that's not really an argument against it. Because the definition could be changed. Should it be?

[pig-lota]

This is all great points and you're so right.

Also for any barycenter definition fans - the barycenter of Luna and Jupiter is within Jupiter. I think we can all agree Luna is not a moon of Jupiter.

[meme-space-nine]

Something else to note is that IAU bylaws require a new definition to be voted on to be circulating for at least a year in the scientific community. The one voted on in 2006 was drafted the same day. Also, the vote was specifically and carefully planned such that most of the planetary scientists who were only there for specific parts of the conference relevant to their fields had left already. It was rigged and in violation of their own bylaws, so I think its well past time we stop listening to this absurd definition.

[vacuously-true]

What the absolute fuck I can't believe election rigging is part of this story lmfao

[vacuously-true]

Alexander Abian blogging from the dead

[vacuously-true]

Prev I would really like you to explain what you meant by some of this because I think I'm not aware of some physics you're referring to. But. On the other hand. I am SLIGHTLY afraid to ask.

[t-rexdescendant]

i am Incapable of putting things into words in any reasonable manor so instead i have drawn a handy diagram

[vacuously-true]

Well. I guess that helps.

[azaablue]

the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.

[blackheartbiohazards]

"I don't want to read this" is totally valid.

"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

[blackheartbiohazards]

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

[spellscarred]

Bro, blocking someone and then using their tag like this is, all offence, weak as fuck. Like all you had to say was, na bro I don't promote pedo protags on this here blog, because I wholly agree with the premise of your argument given contexts (i.e., writing abusive relationships to show the evils, great; writing abusive relationships to show the romance, yikes).

This response is so, so comically shitty within the context of that tag, oh my god.

[blackheartbiohazards]

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

[blackheartbiohazards]

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

[blackheartbiohazards]

"Censorship of some topics in fiction and art is good and I would be happy if it were to be enacted in a way I approved of"

and

"some things should be banned from ever being written or read about in fiction"

are both authoritarian viewpoints to hold and express, even if you don't have the power to enact them.

If you hold these viewpoints you are holding authoritarian viewpoints.

[averageidiotenby]

DUDE IT’S PEDO FICS EVERYBODY THINKS THEY’RE NASTY

[blackheartbiohazards]

Let me explain this to you in simple terms.

Something being nasty is not a good reason to ban fiction about it.

If we accept that "something being nasty is a good reason to bad fiction about it" then we give a foot in the door for all the people who truly, genuinely believe that queer people are nasty to ban all queer literature.

This is not about defending bad people this is about defending the freedom of good people from tyranny, you moron.

[kawaii-pigeon]

I think if you take it to its logical extreme. Say, banning people from writing stories of sexual abuse. That could then be said "well ANY talk about sexual abuse is bad."

And from that, you could ban books that talk about it irl. Or books like how to recover after being abuse. If its not something to be discussed AT ALL.

[plague-of-insomnia]

The fact that I’ve seen this post in some form on my dash like 100x and each time there’s new idiots who do not get that you can’t have *some* censorship.

Either you’re for it or you aren’t.

The moment you agree that something should never, ever exist in fiction is the moment that anything can be banned.

Remember a while back how Tumblr banned a bunch of tags, including many popular innocuous ones that even people who are for censorship used and were upset about?

When censorship happens, stuff YOU like can and will be banned. That’s how it works.

Remember how a bunch of people had their accounts terminated here only last year for writing about their own sexual abuse?

When you ban “pedo” topics, say, any talk of child sexual abuse in any form, that means people can no longer write about their own experiences. It means people cannot educate others so they can learn how to protect themselves or get help from these situations.

Censorship is authoritarian. Full stop.

Even if “everyone” agrees something is “gross” and “shouldn’t exist,” that does not fucking matter.

Do you know who generally believes queer people are gross and shouldn’t exist??

The same people who are banning books left and right solely because they have queer characters or relationships.

The same people who attack and kill queer folk for simply exisiting.

This is not just some fandom matter or a case of being chronically online.

Protecting freedom of expression is essential, and if you do not get that, I don’t know what to say to you.

[scientia-rex]

And the people who keep bringing up child sex abuse as a reason for censorship are doing it very specifically because everyone feels like then they HAVE to agree with the person in favor of censorship.

It’s not that there isn’t widespread societal agreement on this. It’s that they want you backed into a rhetorical corner where you feel compelled to agree with them.

[ruffboi-mags]

Also, like, we KNOW how this shit shakes out in fandom because it's happened before.

In 2007, Livejournal capitulated to the "pedophilia and sex crimes!" cries of (hate group) Warriors 4 Innocence, and you know what communities got shut down? Slashfic communities. Sexual assault survivor support communities. Authors who'd written non-smut m/m fic even got caught up in it. It was DEVASTATING to fandom spaces. I think pretty much everyone knew at least one person whose account was literally DELETED, or were a member of a community that was wiped off the map because they were considerate enough to include topics like "sexual assault" or "BDSM" in the profiles under the badly-named category of "interests" to indicate that posts on said blogs or communities may include discussion of things like that. Even if it was for a SUPPORT group. And it was because a group of religious bigots came to LJ and said essentially "EVERYONE thinks it's gross and that it's promoting CSA, we should ban it."

Like, strikethrough and boldthrough were a large part of what propelled AO3 out of a more unfocused conversation on one person's blog about hosting a site INTENDED for fandom content, into being an actual archive and nonprofit. And it's a large part of why you won't find AO3 banning topics that you find "gross".

Censorship is authoritarian and it will ALWAYS have more collateral damage than you can imagine.

[nyxelestia]

Going to add that fiction which had sexual abuse and communities which played around with it as a writing topic are the very things that protected me from irl sexual abuse when I was a teenager. I was in a dicey situation, and realized that while my situation did not match up to any of the superficial or textbook cases mentioned in passing (if at all) through school, it matched up a LOT to what I'd learned about irl sexual abuse through works of fiction and the rhetoric of my communities. I got out of that situation and dodged what was, in retrospect, one hell of a nasty bullet. If it hadn't been for that "nasty" fiction and those "nasty" communities, I would very likely have been abused, and subject to further violence spiraling out from that abuse.

[benjis-house-boat]

you can’t have *some* censorship.

[the-real-seebs]

Yup! It really is, in fact, pretty much that simple:

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

[senirac]

Storytime!

I had a friend. We were 12. We had just discovered fanfiction and were obsessed. We read anything and everything we could get our hands on. One of the stories we read was a "pedo fic." It exposed us to scenarios and language that hadn't ever been touched on in Sex Ed at school or with our parents. To be frank, it "corrupted our young minds with topics we shouldn't have to deal with." It also gave my friend words to finally describe why her neighbor creeped her out so much. "He's creepy and weird" gets a 12 year old scolded and lectured on being nicer. "He's a sexual predator" gets adults asking questions and involving the cops. Her neighbor "moved away."

Censorship is pro-pedo and anti-child-safety. There is no communicating what's wrong if there are no words to describe what's happening. Bad things will happen whether you have the words to ask for help or not. Censorship takes those words away.

"I don't think anyone should be allowed to read or write this because it is disgusting to me" is authoritarian.

[nomsfaultau]

“Bad things will happen whether you have the words to ask for help or not. Censorship takes those words away.”

[depsidase]

[shabbytigers]

was anyone going to tell me about shotput bod

[boy-yuri]

i looked up women’s shotput because i was curious and. oh my god

[mongoose-bite]

Agata is the Wolf Chapter Five

Start from the beginning. Agata is a widow, a grandmother, and a werewolf. When her granddaughter’s unexpected and ill-advised visit on a moonlit night brings a stranger in her wake, Agata unleashes her wolf to protect her, but leaves the man his life.

Agata’s powerful in-laws keep their distance as long as she doesn’t break any Family rules, the most important of which is to leave no prey alive. Now there’s a Witchfinder on the loose nursing a bite that will be everyone’s problem the next time the moon is full, and Agata must decide who she is and face what she’s done.

[victusinveritas]

[naughtypiggy]

Scientists uncovered the nutrients bees were missing — Colonies surged 15-fold

Scientists have developed a breakthrough “superfood” for honeybees by engineering yeast to produce the essential nutrients normally found in

TLDR- Modern agriculture pollen is low in nutrients, and there aren’t enough wildflowers. Science has to develop vitamins to supplement the diets of agricultural bees. So plant some wildflowers for the wild bees near you.

[heydocverdant]

you’ve heard of vitamin B, now get ready for bee vitamins

[hollowedskin]

I got a 4 min long video of Kimchi dreaming today, so here's a clip

You get the whole walk cycle and the little sprint at the end.

Sometimes her sprints last for like 4 or 5 seconds and she can shoot herself off the couch or into a wall if she gets a grip with her back claws. If she does it next to a wall, her head smacking into it sounds like someone is trying to break into the house. She doesn't wake up.

Later in the dream she injured her paw and was limping, and earlier she caught something and ate it.

[hollowedskin]