our eternal mother tongue

Cameron (she/her), author of The Eirenic Verses

[topazadine]

Mm I feel like I should introduce myself again since it's been a while

That's not me, by the way. That is my dog, Clark.

I am Cameron (she/her), 30-something and author of the Eirenic Verses. This is my ten-part queer literary fantasy series with poetry magic. Book 5 is releasing soon (you should preorder it) and I'm working on Book 7 as we speak.

As for my writing credentials: I began writing allll the way back in 1998, but began seriously studying craft in 2010.

Importantly, I have written over 2 million words of fiction since 2021. Yes, that sounds insane, but I have the stats to prove it and can provide them upon request if you're really that nosy.

I hold a Bachelor of Arts in English from University of Illinois-Chicago and a Master of International Relations from Cleveland State University, as well as an Associate of Liberal Arts (and soon an Associate of Business Management). Additionally, I tutored both K-12 and college students in writing for about three years for separate companies.

Not your average 20-something Tumblr user, but I began using this hellsite back in 2011 under a different URL, left for a bit, then came back. So here I am, trapped in digital purgatory once more.

My Tumblr cross-posts from my website, eirenicverses.com, which publishes twice-weekly articles on writing craft, my book series, and some personal stuff sometimes. I also send out a weekly newsletter with more craft advice, series updates, poems I like, and reading recommendations. It takes around five minutes to read and releases every Monday at 6:30 am GMT.

Also I am a horse girl. Horse.

That's Monty from the therapy barn where I ride.

Anyway, I give unfiltered opinions on everything I feel confident enough to talk about with any authority.

You may not like my tone. That's fine. Block as needed. I will never know.

[titleknown]

I will say, since some copyright bootlicker brain-shat their ideology on a reblog of my post, one of the copyright bootlicker things that pisses me off the most is the idea that "The only reason people want to make derivative works of things in ways copyright doesn't allow for them to is because they're lazy, and we need copyright to force people to learn originality."

It's an opinion I've seen by multiple people pushing against views like mine, and it's a view that's just shaped by such a deep contempt for the idea of derivative works as having value and of the idea of any of the grubby untermenchen that are the audience adapting or altering art as opposed to the sacred; untouchable artist.

It is legit it's just the same "makers and takers" view towards society as your average Suburban Republican, a boilerplate case of what academics would call "producerism,"

Which is, of course, a right-wing populist framework.

Like, I have a dim view on people calling independent artists "petit bouregois," as I think the issue of how to ensure the wellbeing of small creatives locked out of other economic areas without rent-seeking is a major unsolved problem and I'm sympathetic to how people are scared.

But in the case of the people like the one I linked, I have no such sympathy for them.

They just think the only way to prevent "riff-raff" from existing is acting like HOA landlords over the human imagination, it's fucked.

[topazadine]

I love that you had to vaguepost me, the HOA landlord over the human imagination, but alas, I found it. People tend to do that when they cannot actually argue with the substance of a post, but the post hurt their feelings enough that they needed to crash out about it elsewhere. As has clearly happened in this case, too.

"it's a view that's just shaped by such a deep contempt for the idea of derivative works as having value and of the idea of any of the grubby untermenchen that are the audience adapting or altering art as opposed to the sacred; untouchable artist."

This is hilarious because I wrote 1.7 million words of fanfic, most of which are still readily available on Archive of Our Own. (Some have been taken down not because of copyright or anything but because I didn't want them visible anymore for other reasons.)

My fan-created parallel canon was about as twice as long as the Bible, 130 interconnected stories. But oh sure, I *hate* audiences adapting and altering art. Really fucking hate it, clearly.

I have vociferously defended fanfic dozens of times, both on here and on my professional blog. I donate readily to Archive of Our Own and consistently push people to write fanfic if they want to become an author.

My own original work would not exist if it were not for the practice I got through fanfic. Many, many authors have this same experience and think very positively of transformative work. In fact, I've said before that the highest honor would be someone making fanfic of my books.

I myself got a book taken down for copyright violations back in 2015: a series of Sherlock Holmes stories that borrowed too heavily from the BBC adaptation. It exists as a ghost on my Goodreads profile, because Goodreads is forever, but cannot be purchased anywhere and I don't even have the files anymore.

If anyone should be hopping mad about copyright, it should probably be me. I worked hard on that and it went poof! But I'm not. Because I realize I did borrow too heavily from someone else's IP and that it was illegal. That is perfectly legitimate and, now that I'm older and have my own copyrighted material, I would hope someone would do that for someone trying to reuse my IP.

I do not believe that fanfic, sampling music, or any of that is "makers versus takers." I think you can make new things by taking from old ones ... but it has to be transformative.

And even here, you're ignoring that argument. You're dancing around the fact that fair use is a thing, has always been a thing, and no one is protesting it. Transforming an old work into something new is the entire basis of creativity, both physically and neurologically. It utilizes associative thinking, which is when you connect two disparate realms to generate a new, third realm.

You cannot have any new work without old work. This is a fact. Any artist needs inputs and training, which they do through reading, listening to music, reviewing artwork, or whatever else is necessary for their craft.

The issue here is what you said: derivative. You just want to take someone else's work, slap your own label on it, and then profit.

I am a small author. I'm not a "megacorp." But I've spent thousands upon thousands of hours both learning how to write and then producing my books. Each book is a distillation of over a decade of unmonetized labor, and it deserves to be protected. Others should not be able to profit off my hard work without my permission.

And it's so amusing that you're against AI but also want to demolish copyright. A major reason that the AI bubble is bursting is because it plagiarized hundreds of thousands of books and authors are suing. Disney pulled out of Sora not for ecological or moral reasons but because it was concerned about copyright and the expenses involved. The very thing you are railing against is fighting the other thing you're railing against.

You didn't actually engage with anything I said, just threw a tantrum and tossed some intellectual-sounding words in there. You did not refute anything I said, didn't argue its merits. Which is precisely why I am quite certain this whole thing isn't some ideological battle for you. It's personal.

Copyright hurts your feefees. Sorry. Get well soon.

[titleknown]

Times That Copyright Expansion Has Historically Fucked Over Artists On An Institutional Level:

Sampling rights becoming prohibitively expensive to use by small artists

Musicians being forced to sign over sampling rights to their record company, making any benefits they would hypothetically gain moot.

The Digital Milennium Copyright Act leading to the vidmaker-stomping nightmare that is ContentID

The DMCA leading to making it harder than ever to preserve media due to the way it prohibits tinkering with any locks the megacorps put on it, meaning it's way easier for artists' hard work to end up vaulted and lost.

The way basic chord progressions and musical styles have become copyrightable thanks to various lawsuits by the Marvin Gaye estate

The fact that the artists of the past used to be able to remix; adapt and iterate on art made within 56 years of them, likely created in their lifetimes, and now artists can only do those things with art produced nearly a century ago by people long dead.

New and independent artists being crowded out of the market by megacorp-owned IPs that would be public domain (and thusly convey less of an overwhelming advantage-via-marquee-value to megacorps) if the US had its pre-1976 copyright laws.

Times That Copyright Expansion Has Actually Materially Helped Artists On An Institutional Level:

????????

[books-bread-and-brigandage]

So like I said last time I saw this post and got no answer? 2 questions: Why do you think holding companies to the law of the land (In this case copyright) is an EXPANSION of the law? and when has not requring compamies to follow the law helped cretaves at all?

Does copyright have issues? Absolutely! Is letting companies ignire it becase they think they have a right to anything on the internet going to fixthat? No its fucking not.

[titleknown]

...I didn't answer it because I'm bad at time management and you're not really asking in good faith, but I do have answers.

To your first one, case law is how we determine both the limits and the use-cases of laws. That's what the courts are for, to elaborate on how the law is to be applied.

Multiple things I spoke of on the original post were decided not by democratic deliberation, but by case law. So there's your answer there.

On the second one, that's actually comically easy: Preservational piracy and fanworks. Like, under copyright law most of that shit is indeed illegal, and it only survives by deliberately having megacorps turn a blind eye to it when it's convenient for them despite the vital cultural function of both.

Like, fanworks create an ecosystem of small creatives that both support works (especially smaller indie ones), allowing for young and up-and-coming for creatives to hone their skills for whatever they might apply them to, and in general create the "third place" for artistic creatives that is currently quite lacking.

The fact that isn't cited as helping creators implies a hierarchy of who gets to be considered a "real" artist/writer/creative or not that places fanwork creators at the bottom, and uh, that leads to some really fucked up ideas about art and labor and I generally judge anyone who has them.

Preservational piracy is the only reason some works survive in the cultural consciousness due to "keep circulating the tapes," or even survive at all in regards to the ones hogtied in legal red tape.

In other words, they help the works of creators survive when they'd be buried by their megacorp owners, who let's face it would be making the majority of the money from it. We saw a lot of this in the HBO Max purges, to give an example.

Both of those could be crushed in an instant if the megacorps wanted them to be, I have little doubt even with the OTW's army of lawyers a large amount of fair use defenses could be absolutely crushed, and yet, they are both vital for creative ecosystem.

And, if we have to keep fudging the law to keep huge parts of art in society running, then maybe the law is bloated in a way that makes it unfit for purpose.

Because like, I know that Copyright Abolition Now as an idea has way more obstacles to it than a lot of people supporting it seem to claim, and there'd need to be a lot of infrastructure built before we can go that far/

But as I also say, there is so much shit we can do before that to reduce IP's overreach, and I think it needs to be done; and following from that any effort to expand the reach of what IP law currently exists must be fought tooth and nail, because the majority of IP law and precedent as it stands isn't meant to support creatives, it's meant to support the megacorps that buy them out.

[topazadine]

No? Literally all of this is wrong.

There is no such thing as "preservation piracy." There's just preservation versus piracy. Archives have always existed and are not illegal.

Let me give you an example. Bishop-Accountability is the premier source for archival content about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It has thousands of archived news stories, reuploaded onto its own servers. In some cases, the original news article has been scrubbed from the internet and Bishop-Accountability is the only remaining source. The website has never been taken down because it is providing an educational public service, which falls under archival protections.

Ripping a CD and then hosting it on the internet for others to use, a la Limewire, is not archival. That's just piracy. You're not preserving anything. You're just stealing someone else's work and giving it away on their behalf.

Fanworks are perfectly legal when they are transformative and noncommercial. OTW's army of lawyers doesn't need to crush a corporation's complaints about fanworks because it has always fallen under fair use policy.

Monetizing a fanwork is illegal because then you are competing with the intellectual property of the copyright owner. Which is why AO3 has an army of volunteers checking complaints for potential monetization, requests for commissions, whole-cloth postings of IP in fanworks, and so on.

Purely transformative, noncommercial work? Not illegal. Trying to make a quick buck off of it? Very illegal.

This whole time, you have been completely ignoring the fair use doctrine and the transformative nature of using someone else's IP, dancing around it because you want to get rid of copyright. What you fail to understand is that you would fuck over a huge percentage of small creatives in your hopes of making "megacorps" mad.

Copyright law was first created in 1710 (the Statute of Anne) because of the very thing that would happen if you got rid of copyright, which was book publishers taking authors' books, printing thousands of copies, and leaving the authors themselves with nothing. Authors were not able to benefit from their own labor because of corporations.

Removing copyright would put more power into the hands of corporations, not less, and it's absolutely insane that you can't see that. I think you've been blinded by the "wah wah I want to use everything I see for my own use" and are cognitive-dissonancing yourself into thinking it's some revolutionary cause.

It's not. You just want to steal from people and not put in any work to do so.

And lastly, you keep ignoring how and why musicians, artists, other creatives actually get absorbed into a "megacorp." They sell the rights to their IP to the corporation. It's not just hoovered into the bowels of the company without the original owner's say. It is a business decision by the individual creative.

Musicians, authors, and others may enter into a non-exclusive agreement, where they permit use of their copyrighted material for a single purpose, or they may get royalties off the distribution of their work through a company, such as with a book publisher or record label. No one forced them to make that business decision. They were not required to enter a non-compete clause. They were more than capable of negotiating their own terms, and if they chose not to sell, they didn't have to. In fact, choosing not to sell and then having your IP stolen forms an even stronger basis for a copyright lawsuit.

I am not saying that the copyright system is perfect, but as an author myself, I'm pretty disgusted with the idea of there being "IP overreach." I spent hundreds of hours producing my books. The person who wants to lightly remix it and then sell it did not.

Copyright is labor rights protection for creatives. It allows us to own the means of our production, the fruits of our labor, and to determine how our labor will be used. Being against copyright is the most anti-socialist stance you could possibly have, but you've twisted it into a virtue so as to disguise your real stance, as well as the stance of everyone else who agrees with you, which is this:

"I don't want to work hard to produce something new. I just want to lazily chop together some music samples, throw them into an audio mixer software, call it a day, and make money. I don't want to try very hard, but I still want the attention and praise that people who try hard get.

"I'm going to call creatives the 'petit bourgeosie' and rail against them because them working hard makes me feel bad, and it makes me feel very intellectual to use a fancy Marxist term. Dressing this up as an anti-capitalist argument will make it harder to argue with me, because then it seems like whoever is arguing with me supports large corporations.

"I don't really give a shit about small creators who use copyright to protect their work because I'm jealous of them being able to produce anything, and angry that they have protections against me stealing from them. Copyright law makes me feel bad because I don't have anything to copyright."

So yeah. Maybe try making something actually transformative and you won't have a problem with copyright? Because it will likely fall under fair use?

And the funny thing is that if you actually reached out to a small creative and asked to sample/access their work, they probably would let you. I've given away copies of my books for research purposes or for personal enjoyment. Musicians let people sample their things all the time.

There are thousands upon thousands of royalty-free music resources out there, thousands of tutorials, thousands of free editing software or sound effects or paint brushes. made with love by others who want to share their craft. You don't even want to put in that much work to do whatever it is you want to do. It's frankly embarrassing.

[titleknown]

Times That Copyright Expansion Has Historically Fucked Over Artists On An Institutional Level:

Sampling rights becoming prohibitively expensive to use by small artists

Musicians being forced to sign over sampling rights to their record company, making any benefits they would hypothetically gain moot.

The Digital Milennium Copyright Act leading to the vidmaker-stomping nightmare that is ContentID

The DMCA leading to making it harder than ever to preserve media due to the way it prohibits tinkering with any locks the megacorps put on it, meaning it's way easier for artists' hard work to end up vaulted and lost.

The way basic chord progressions and musical styles have become copyrightable thanks to various lawsuits by the Marvin Gaye estate

The fact that the artists of the past used to be able to remix; adapt and iterate on art made within 56 years of them, likely created in their lifetimes, and now artists can only do those things with art produced nearly a century ago by people long dead.

New and independent artists being crowded out of the market by megacorp-owned IPs that would be public domain (and thusly convey less of an overwhelming advantage-via-marquee-value to megacorps) if the US had its pre-1976 copyright laws.

Times That Copyright Expansion Has Actually Materially Helped Artists On An Institutional Level:

????????

:EDIT: Note this is from a USAmerican perspective because I am from that wretched Burger Country, feel free to gripe about your own country's bullshit copyright laws in a similar manner in the reblogs!

[topazadine]

You have literally always been able to remix, adapt, and iterate on things, and you are still able to do so. I'm a writer, but I'll give a music example because that seems to be your personal frustration.

The iconic intro from "Faint" by Linkin Park is a reversed and sped up version of "Tania Meets Klebb" from the James Bond movie From Russia With Love. (This Reddit video shows the original so you don't have to go digging for it.)

Since we only learned about this last year, I highly doubt that Mike Shinoda reached out to the producers of From Russia With Love to ask for their permission to sample the song. He just ... did it. Since it was transformative, that's not against copyright.

Something is considered transformative when it adds “new expression, meaning, or message” to the original. The link there provides an example, which was when a rap band wanted to use a Roy Orbison song. The US Supreme Court decided that the song was indeed transformative and fell under fair use policy.

The decision noted that "[t]he more transformative the new work, the less will be the significance of other factors, like commercialism, that may weigh against a finding of fair use."

In other words, the more creative you are, the less likely you are to be sued. Which is why copyright exists in the first place: to prevent people from being able to just steal someone else's work, file the serial numbers off, and call it a day. You have to actually ... work for it. And this apparently pisses off a lot of people who don't want to work very hard.

Also, it's a lie that you can copyright chord progressions. You also cannot copyright an entire musical style. These are scaremongering misconceptions. The US Copyright Office explains the difference between sampling and interpolation, and also how to use beat stores (which can themselves be extremely affordable).

For a genuinely creative person, being limited to a certain time period is not that catastrophic. There are amazing musicians today who only work with ancient instruments and historic songs, like Caipercaille, Wardruna, and Faun.

And there are plenty of people who play covers of popular songs on traditional instruments, like Guizi Music and Algal the Bard. They're not getting copyright striked because their work is transformative enough to be considered fair use.

In the writing world, it's difficult to justify copyrighting a character's name, but you can sue if someone just straight up yanks your character and puts it in something else. Because, you know, then their work is infringing on your intellectual property, as it is competing with your work in the commercial market. Should they have enough marketing power, they can funnel all your potential sales to them instead.

All of the gripes mentioned here are mostly "Wah, but I don't want to make something new, I want to take something else and change it a little bit but not too much and then make money from it! You're making it so I can't rip things off!"

The same arguments people use for pirating from indie authors. "Wah, but I don't want to pay anything, I want to pay nothing and make sure authors don't make any money because why should they? I want it! Gimme! Your payment is being able to produce something I can steal!"

Someone who has done the work and produced something of value understands the importance of copyright, because they spent hundreds of hours creating the product that someone else is trying to steal.

Someone who has not done the work and has not produced something of value is always going to bitch about copyright because it requires them to do some sort of work.

[kasaneteto]

im getting really fucking sick of all this “it gets better!” bullshit. im going to have depression for the rest of my life. it’s not going to “””get better””” fuck you

[kasaneteto]

i have really great news guys, despite it all

[kasaneteto]

to everyone reblogging this and saying that you’re the exception, or this will never apply to you, you are not alone. back when I made that first text post I felt the same way. but something I realized in between the first half and second half of this post is that it starts with you. it starts with wanting to be done with the misery. it is so much easier to give in to whatever mental health issues you’re dealing with, especially in a world that is built against us. however it is so worth it to not give in. it is so worth it to do things that make you feel good even though it can feel impossible to start. it’s so worth it to fail at something because at least it means you tried.

getting yourself out of the hole is hard, and can feel damn near impossible at your lowest. but it isn’t impossible. i am living proof of this. nobody is responsible for your emotions but you, and if you want to be happy, you have to create your happiness. do whatever you can to surround yourself with joy. not hedonism, but actual joy. accomplishments, good relationships, engagement in healthy hobbies and habits. it can be hard, there’s no denying it, i still struggle myself sometimes. the reward is so worth it. feeling like you’re the best version of yourself is so worth it.

to quote the queen kali uchis: i know it’s hard, but did you even really try?

[justsomeguycore]

nothing but respect for my trans cow best friends

[justsomeguycore]

happy pride to my trans cow best friends

[brainstreams]

Underused Ways to Show Two Characters Have History

Everyone writes: “We’ve known each other for years!"

But we can do better than that—let's make things actually interesting.

Here are some quick tips for writing two characters with history (without saying, "we've known each for years"):

• They reach for the same object at the same time without looking

• One of them uses a nickname no one else is allowed to use

• They start arguing mid-conversation like the first half already happened

• They move closer when the other looks uncomfortable

• One of them says, “Don’t start,” before the other has said anything

• They know exactly which buttons to press (and press them immediately)

• They unconsciously drift toward each other in crowded spaces

• They anticipate each other’s reactions before they happen

• One quietly moves something (a drink, weapon, chair) because they know the other will reach for it

• Someone might say something, and the other immediately responds with: “You’re still doing that?”

• They suppress laughter at the same time over something no one else noticed

• One character still treats the other based on who they used to be

• A certain place, smell, or song causes them to exchange a look

• Their arguments sound rehearsed, like they’ve had them before

• They touch each other casually without asking (fixing clothing, nudging, taking something from their hand)

• They stand closer than strangers normally would

• They borrow items from each other

• They bring up something embarrassing from ten years ago

• They sit in silence together and it’s either very comfortable or extremely tense

• One of them automatically orders the other’s drink

• They interrupt each other and still somehow finish the same sentence

• One starts a story and the other finishes it automatically

• They argue about the details of shared memories

• They mention people or events without explaining them

• A simple phrase or nickname triggers an entire inside joke

• They notice tiny things about each other no one else would catch

Real history sounds like unfinished conversations, old habits, and arguments that never really ended. When you show shared history (instead of telling) your characters seem that much more alive and believable.

On a similar note: Not all shared history is comfortable. Sometimes shared history means unresolved tension or an old rivalry:

• They refer to something only as “that” or “before.”

• Someone says “You know why.” without explaining further

• Standing slightly farther apart than expected

• Fingers drumming or fidgeting when they’re forced to talk

• Avoiding eye contact for just a second too long.

• A small disagreement suddenly becomes heated.

• One character reacts sharply to something that shouldn’t matter anymore.

• A casual comment triggers silence or defensiveness.

• One character starts explaining themselves but trails off

• One character makes small, cutting remarks disguised as jokes

• They still know each other’s preferences or weaknesses

• They speak in fragments when the past comes up

• They fall into familiar conversations and then awkwardly break them

If you enjoy digging into character dynamics like this, my printable novel planner has detailed sections for relationships, character arcs, and story structure. It’s perfect for organizing a fanfic or mapping out an entire novel!

⤷ my printable novel planner

[prokopetz]

Level 1: Asylums are scary because there's crazy people there.

Level 2: We shouldn't treat mental health facilities as objects of horror because it stigmatises mental illness.

Level 3: Asylums are scary because there's psychiatrists there.

[hypotenussy]

the number 1 rule of fanfic is have fun and be yourself. the number 2 rule is the average healthy adult male can lose roughly 2 liters of blood before dying.

[thecharmingquirksofothers]

incredible prev tags

[homophobla]

Twice a year in Hawaii the sun passes directly overhead and objects cast no shadow. It’s a phenomenon called “Lahaina Noon”

[wordfather]

idk if this is an usamerican thing or not but it always blows my mind as a small european country resident that yall have many names and types of apples???? what do you mean its not just red yellow or green??? why is it so complicated??? who is granny smith????

[wordfather]

'whats your favorite apple' 'red' 'no i mean like what type' '??????' actual conversatiom i've had with a mutual from usa

[wordfather]

THIRTY TWO??????

[phillyphillyphilly]

Listen that doesn’t even account for all the weird shit local farmers are getting up to.

May I present the best apple:

[wordfather]

the world is so big and beautiful

[topazadine]

Pink Lady erasure as per usual

My precious, my beloved, unfortunately my mom is a foolhardy Jazz lover who cannot be swayed to the light side

[topazadine]

Here is something I think doesn't get discussed enough in the rabid parents vs. childfree arguments (which I think are annoying in the first place).

Having a child rewires your brain to prioritize protecting your offspring. This is documented across scientific literature, it's not a matter of debate.

Those with poor Theory of Mind cannot realize that "this is important to me" does not mean "this is important to everyone." (Childfree people can have poor Theory of Mind too, so that's not an attack on parents, put your pitchforks down.)

Since a parent's brain has been rewired to prioritize their offspring, those who don't prioritize any offspring don't seem to have any common ground with them. We're basically functioning in completely different realities based on how our brains are processing time and space. We don't share the same brain network. Our brains light up for different things, or at different strengths.

Childfree people aren't attached to your children. We do not have that neurological wiring because we didn't bond with your children that way. Your children are not equally important to us, even if we like you, or even if we like children as a general concept, or even if we like your children as individuals.

And that rewiring means some parents (not all) develop a miscalibrated threat detection system, where mild annoyance becomes a grievous affront and neutrality becomes a potential attack.

Someone not cooing at your child, or - dare I say it - being annoyed at your child screaming is not an evil person. They're not going to stab your child. They don't hate your child or you as a person. They don't hope all children die.

You just have a far more sensitive threat detection system than you did before. What is a very reasonable negative reaction to an unpleasant stimulus (children screaming, throwing things, running around, slamming a basketball for hours) has now been reinterpreted as a moral judgment because of the way your brain works now.

I don't like children. They annoy me. They are loud, unpredictable, repetitive, pushy, with poor boundaries. I understand that this is because of their developmental process and has nothing to do with their morality either. It's just two different people at two different life stages who don't like the way the other behaves.

This is a neutral thing. It is a preference. It says nothing about me as a person, or about you as a parent, or about anything. I don't hate children, and I don't want them to die, and I don't wish suffering on them. I want every child to be loved and cared for and provided with all the best opportunities in life ... and to be kept away from me. Because they annoy me.

The reason that annoyance has become so outsized is because I am constantly attacked and screamed at for something that is, in general, just a preference for how I like to spend my time and with whom I like to spend it. That has pushed me to like children less, and to want to spend less time around them, because even minor irritation is blown up into a massive debacle. I'm browbeat into glowing praise for children, and told they're "tiny humans" and that my reality is wrong because the parental rewiring overrides Theory of Mind.

I want you, whether you are a parent or not, to understand that just because your brain says something does not mean it is true. Someone disliking children is not a moral judgment on children as a class of people, and it does not require intervention, nagging, hatred, or insults. Someone ignoring your child in the grocery store is, frankly, the best possible reaction they can have, and it's bizarre to act like this is an affront.

Forcing people to like children makes them like children less, and makes you look like an asshole. Being pushy and universalizing parenthood as the ultimate good makes you look like an idiot. You're not doing anything valuable with your time.

And on the other hand, childfree people not liking children does not mean that we get to be assholes to them. We do not need to roll our eyes or scoff at children existing. We can ignore them; that is our right (I promise it is). We cannot go out of our way to be rude.

The world would just be a much better place if everyone accepted that their version of reality - including the preferences, desires, judgments, beliefs, opinions, and moral alignments - does not exactly synch up with everyone else's, and be okay with that.

[geniusbee]

these are getting weird

[cynicaltechnophile]

They didn't think about it then, even though it was obvious to anyone who looked into it. It's the same old song and dance. "I'm white and middle class, my opinions and actions are definitionally not political. So you need to forgive me. You need to absolve me of sin in a way that requires no introspection or change in my behavior." The same reaction that scoffs when you look askance at their chik-fil-a. "It's just a sandwich!" It's just a sandwich. You couldn't even be bothered to deny yourself that trifling treat to gesture vaguely at a principled stance.

[topazadine]

I wanted to substantiate the above by showing that there WERE articles about Elon's bizarre behavior, so no one can claim that this was unknown to consumers when they purchased a Tesla.

Tesla first launched their Roadster in 2008, with the Model S releasing in 2012. You are very, very unlikely to see an original Model S on the road nowadays, because most Teslas have a battery life of about 10 years. That means the oldest models you'll see now are maybe 2016 at the very latest.

Elon Musk was already an insufferable shit back in 2012, and even the barest glance at his social media at the time would show this.

And about 2016: he was being weird back then too, fighting about fatal Tesla car accidents that trapped users in their cars until they burned alive. The issues at Tesla factories, including the blatant OSHA violations, were first discussed in 2016.

The man is so insane that he refuses to have yellow in his factories. New York Magazine first outlined that in 2018.

The other unique thing is that Tesla owners are typically tapped into the Teslasphere: partly because they need to know where charging stations are and partly because the Tesla used to imply membership in an exclusive club of nerdy cool people who are le epic win. Like Jeep owners, but for pasty dweebs.

This information would have been readily available to them had they followed literally any Tesla-centric forums, seen any news articles about Tesla, followed any Tesla Facebook groups. They were more likely to see this information than anyone else, but even I saw the original New York Magazine article in 2018.

Even I heard about the Teslas catching fire. It was a cultural shorthand for how shitty Elon was, especially because he threw a tantrum about it and refused to admit he was wrong. None of this was a surprise to anyone.

Tesla Apologists also like to say there were no EV alternatives when they bought it. This is patently false.

We can go to the extreme and claim they had purchased a Tesla S new in 2012 (I rarely see Roadsters because they were so limited). Again, this is statistically unlikely in 2026, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

There were a half-dozen other options at the same time, many of which were more affordably priced. The Nissan Leaf, the Toyota Prius plug-in, the Chevrolet Volt, the Ford Focus Electric, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, and several others. All from reputable brands with a long history of producing decent vehicles.

But those were from Poor Trashy People vehicle manufacturers. They were not flashy, exciting status symbols like a Tesla was (because it was indeed an expensive status symbol at the time). A Nissan Leaf does not imply you have a shit ton of disposable income you can drop on a space-age toy that goes brrr. A Toyota Prius is a boring workhorse sedan that doesn't suggest you're a Coastal Elite who cares about the environment.

These whiny, simpering Tesla owners got caught up in their privilege and snobbery, which came to bite them in the ass because they were so focused on looking sophisticated that they didn't do the barest amount of research whatsoever. Which is frankly hilarious for a group of people who positioned themselves as superior to us trashy poors. All that virtue signaling and no critical thinking to back it up.

[pangur-and-grim]

I've read a few recently published books, and there's this recurring pattern where if anyone does anything bad and interesting, they have to later talk about it in a way that makes it clear that it was a misunderstanding/ justified/ not their fault, so they're still a good person. and if they have a disagreement with another character, they have to therapy talk it out, regardless of their background. it doesn't matter if this is a street urchin with three teeth who just stabbed and kidnapped someone, you will get eloquent sterile therapy speak that will smooth out any possible emotional tension. and everyone asks for permission before they kiss, and waits for a clear enthusiastic yes. again, doesn't matter the character's background or situation, they will ask "can I please kiss you," because if they didn't, that could get all yucky and uncertain, couldn't it? and if a character is from a rich family, they will hate being in a rich family, and hate wealth signifiers, and actually be all for class equality. and everyone is casually queer, without thought being put into how that would mesh with the society that is being described. like yes, this is violent class-based system obsessed with inheritance, but no, it's not actually a problem that the child they've coldly groomed to take on the family mantle is unwilling to beget an heir because of gay. the parents might be terrible, cruel and fascistic, but they're not homophobic! I don't know, it just seems like EVERYTHING that could actually be messy gets sanded and sanded until it's smooth as a shark, but the Fun Violence is allowed to stay, because bloodshed doesn't actually bother anyone or have any consequence apart from your rogue character shrugging and going oops, was that me? the rogue is still a good person though. if you think they're not, just wait for the two solid pages of introspection. and yes they started the book by slitting two throats, but that was fine. they will ask permission before hugging you.

[topazadine]

There are many reasons for this that are braided together, but I'm going to be bold and say it: I think a lot of this has to do with rising illiteracy.

I just read a Fortune article the other day about the fact that some college students can't read a single sentence. One. They cannot parse the meaning of a single sentence. That's terrifying. (Here it is on Yahoo without the paywall, btw.)

The thing is that you do not have to be wholly illiterate to struggle with reading. About half of Americans have low literacy, meaning they read around a sixth grade level or less.

This puts publishers in a terrible position. They need to sell books to an audience that cannot read books made for adults but that doesn't want the simplicity of grade-school books. The books need real adult problems without the nuance, hence the therapy speak and the black-and-white thinking.

Another thing is that cognitive flexibility influences literacy, meaning the reverse is also true; cognitive inflexibility determines lower literacy. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to update your schemas or combine multiple pieces of information without being expressly told to do so. It also impacts whether you can identify the mismatch between what someone says and what they do, which is the gold standard way to avoid therapy speak.

Poor cognitive flexibility means you can't have messy situations, because then the reader doesn't know what to think. Everyone has to be sorted into Good Person and Bad Person, and if the Good Person does something that may seem Bad, then they become a Bad Person unless the text assures us that they are still Good.

You will see many positive Goodreads reviews for these books. I'm not saying every single person with a positive review for a book like that has low literacy, but it's more likely than not. The same thing that drives you insane is what compels other readers who can't handle more complex texts.

Basically what I am saying is that if you want something with nuance, as a reader or a writer, you probably need to seek out selfpub stuff. I know that a lot of selfpub is garbage specifically because of the lower barrier to entry, and a lot of good selfpub stuff is not highly rated because getting reviews takes time and energy.

(I'd like to say my own stuff is good but doesn't have a lot of reviews because that requires active solicitation and I'm busy. I'm competing with millions of authors, both selfpub and tradpub, who have larger budgets. Anyway.)

Still, if you go sifting, ask for recommendations, and follow selfpub authors, you're likely to find more complex work that was not brutalized to fit the lowest common denominator.

[thesweetiepienovels]

Some is better than none. Some is better than none. Some is better than none. Walking for three minutes, is better than nothing. Drinking a glass of water and eating a snack, is better than nothing. Wiping down the counter, is better than nothing. Small things are not nothing. Small things are not nothing. Small things are not nothing. You don’t have to achieve grand things if all you’re capable of right now is the smaller things. They are still achievements. Don’t do nothing just because you don’t think you’re capable of doing bigger things, just do something you’re capable of today. 

[goldcrescent]

I also think that the strength gap is at least partially manufactured women would in fact be stronger overall if little girls were encouraged to do physically taxing games and activities and eat their fill while they’re growing vs having to constantly diet and be sedentary indoors (or god forbid do intense cardio while under-eating). The amount of adult women honestly afraid to lift weights bc they think they’ll get bulky as though bulking isn’t a full time job that athletes have to spend all their time on and anyone on earth gets shredded from just using their adult muscles for their intended purpose, girl your bone density 🥀

[goldcrescent]

if you say women are intentionally nerfed from birth in 2026 people look at you like you’re insane and start condescendingly telling you about how women are just better at different things (but not during their periods haha) but this was a completely basic feminist talking point I grew up with like “girls can do it too! [shot of little girls climbing and running with boys]” nickelodeon commercial tier base level I hate it how is everyone suddenly dumber than the average 7 year old

[lilyflxwers]

ok i absolutely need to know what accents u all have pls reblog and tell me or comment or whatever I must know