heimishtheidealhusband
gele-gordijnen
I totally had to do this manip *need a deep breath* WELCOME JOHNLOCK !!!!
The aesthetic on this is so fucking on point but what box is john standing on lol
mary’s coffin?
Oh my god
It got better oh my god
diversityinya
By Malinda Lo
For the past few years, I’ve read hundreds of reviews for Diversity in YA. I read them to determine whether a young adult book has a main character who is of color, LGBTQ, and/or disabled, and thus is appropriate to include on DiYA. Sometimes the book’s cover copy reveals this, but often it does not — or it deliberately obscures it — and then I have to read reviews to figure it out.
The reviews I read range from Goodreads reader responses to blog posts to mainstream reviews (like from the New York Times) to trade reviews. Trade reviews are brief reviews published in trade journals such as Kirkus or Publishers Weekly, and I usually start with these for several reasons. First, they’re short, and because I do DiYA in my spare time, I don’t have the luxury to read lengthy critical essays on every single potentially diverse book that’s being published. Second, these brief reviews pack in a lot of detail including spoilers, which are often key to determining if a book has diverse content. Third, they’re edited by the editors of those trade journals, which means they should have been fact-checked. Sometimes trade reviews do contain errors, but generally speaking I believe they are reliable about the facts of a novel’s plot.
If a trade review only hints about race or LGBT or disability issues, then I turn to blog reviews and Goodreads to confirm my suspicions. But more often than not I find that trade reviews do include details about the book’s diversity, and lately it has become increasingly common for trade reviews to state a character’s background quite plainly. I appreciate this because that’s why I’m reading these reviews, and I think an up-front statement that a character is gay is much better than an insinuation that the story has something to do with sexuality. It removes some of the stigma from historically marginalized identities, and it helps those of us who are seeking out these books to find them.
Of course, not all reviews discuss diversity in a skillful way. Frankly, it’s hard to do it in one paragraph, and I recognize that. I’ve encountered reviews that reveal broader assumptions about race, LGBTQ, and disability issues, and sometimes those assumptions are based in unfortunate stereotypes. Over the past several months I’ve been keeping track of reviews that I felt did a disservice to a book’s diverse content, and revealed latent racist, heteronormative, or ablist beliefs.
These reviews reveal a few specific issues or perceptions about diversity: the idea that diversity in a book is contrived; the critique that a book contains too many issues; the question of believability; the demand for glossaries; and finally, unsupported assumptions relating to race. Because these issues are so complicated, I’m going to be writing about them in several posts over several days.
Before diving in, a few caveats:
“Scarcely Plausible”
One perception that has cropped up in several reviews, generally of science fiction or fantasy novels, is the idea that a diverse cast of characters is contrived. Here are some examples:
“Some humans remain "Norms” while others are “Changed,” and therein lies the only prejudice; no one looks askance at homosexuality and all races are appreciated. Some elements appear contrived and slightly pedantic: there is exactly one gay couple and one lesbian couple…“ — School Library Journal review of Stranger by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith
"While any caper involving such a perfectly ethnically and sexually diverse team of teenagers, all blessed with genius-level skills, is scarcely plausible, it is nevertheless praiseworthy.” — Kirkus review of The Doubt Factory by Paolo Bacigalupi
“Effort has clearly been made to diversify this cast, including a smart Dominican female lead. The supporting characters are less fleshed out.” — School Library Journal review of On a Clear Day by Walter Dean Myers
To “contrive” means to make something in a skillful or clever way. This is, hopefully, exactly how writers work. However, “contrive” often has a less positive connotation. In the review of Stranger, the critique that the novel is contrived suggests overt and clumsy manipulation; in other words, it reveals the actions of the man behind the curtain. In a novel, the writer’s goal is to cause the reader to lose themselves in the story, so anything that knocks the reader out of the story’s world may appear to be a flaw. When a diverse cast is criticized as “contrived,” though, it’s a bit more complicated.
The critique of The Doubt Factory’s “perfectly ethnically and sexually diverse” cast as “scarcely plausible” reveals a deep-seated belief that a group of people are unlikely to be ethnically and sexually diverse. As in Stranger, this diverse cast is read by the reviewer as contrived — as something constructed in a less-than-subtle manner by the author, and thus as unrealistic. In the review of On a Clear Day, the statement that “Effort has clearly been made to diversify this cast” suggests that this diversity would not have existed naturally; it needed effort.
There are numerous problems with the critique of diversity as implausible. First, this critique reveals a lot more about the reviewer’s assumptions than it does about the book’s quality. It suggests to me that these reviewers live in homogeneous peer groups and have little personal experience with diverse groups of people. The problem with this should be obvious: One individual’s personal experience is not universal. There’s nothing wrong with a reviewer recognizing that to them the book’s diversity felt jarring, but that doesn’t mean the book’s depiction was flawed. That means the book’s depiction of a diverse group of characters is different than the reviewer’s personal experience. In fact, if a book depicts something that a reviewer is unfamiliar with, I would hope the reviewer might take a moment to consider what that means.
The book industry, from editors to publishers to reviewers to booksellers, is overwhemingly populated by straight, white people. Stories about non-white characters face an uphill battle from the beginning because they have to explain themselves to gatekeepers who may not be familiar with the issues involved. In the real world, there certainly are peer groups who are homogenous, but there are also peer groups who are diverse. The existence of a diverse cast of characters is simply not unrealistic — ever. Even in real-world communities that are largely white or segregated into racial enclaves, interracial friendships and relationships exist.
I admit that sometimes I’ve encountered folks on the internet who object, “But in some small towns the people would not be diverse!” To them, I say this: A novel is not reality. The books that are critiqued for implausibly diverse casts have generally been science fiction or fantasy. These are books that depart from reality on purpose. These characters are not randomly diverse; they have been intentionally developed and placed in the narrative for a reason. For example, in The Doubt Factory, this “perfectly ethnically and sexually diverse team” of characters is purposely assembled by a lead character in order to pull off a heist that is an intervention into capitalist inequality. The diversity is a feature, not a flaw. An all-white cast would have been a flaw, as it would have resulted in a white savior story line.
I understand that some reviewers won’t agree with this argument, and I understand that books are personal experiences that differ from one reader to another. What disturbs me more than a review’s denial that diversity is realistic, however, is the belief that purposely creating — contriving with “effort” — a diverse cast is pandering to the diversity movement that has been simmering for decades, and has exploded in YA and children’s literature over the past year. For example, take this review:
“Fairy-tale–telling Hale tackles straight-up science fiction in a tale seemingly tailor-made to forestall complaints about lovelorn teen heroines and all-white casts of characters. Maisie Danger Brown (really), smart, home-schooled, one-handed half-Paraguayan daughter of scientists, has always dreamed of being an astronaut.” — Kirkus review of Dangerous by Shannon Hale
This review blithely ignores and ridicules the real-world inequalities behind “complaints about lovelorn teen heroines and all-white casts of characters.” This review is offensive, and if I had been the Kirkus editor, I would not have allowed this line to stay in the final review. It reveals a belief that simmers beneath all those critiques of diversity as implausible: the belief that nonwhite, LGBT, and disabled characters are simply unnecessary; that adding in these perspectives derails a story; that “reality” is white and homogenous.
It should be blindingly clear that I disagree with this belief. It’s frustrating to see it crop up again and again, coded beneath reviews that criticize diversity as “scarcely plausible” in one phrase while describing it as “praiseworthy” in the next. Diversity is not “praiseworthy”: It is reality. Reviews that deny this fact of life are well behind the times, and they do a massive disservice to the majority of children in the United States who are not white.
Coming up next time: “So Many (Too Many?) Issues”
its-a-writer-thing
writing-the-words
For sci-fi or fantasy writers, chances are you have already come across the desire to write a non-human race. Aliens, goblins, mermaids - you name it. I’ve been writing fantasy and sci-fi for seven years now, and here are a few tips for you.
One thing I see a lot with creating your own alien / non-human race is our reliance on human features. Aliens, for example, typically have two eyes, two arms, two legs, and a mouth. I think everyone can be more creative in this department. Leave the human standards behind and try to have more original designs.
When you are designing this race, consider their homeland. Mermaids, for example, would need much more body fat to survive in water for so long, or a layer of body hair. So, would look more like dolphin people or otter people than anything else. Of course, you have the right to make your species look however you want, but considering their evolution and what they need to survive in their environment will help you develop more original designs.
Consider: how do they eat? What do they eat? How do they obtain the food? How do they defend themselves? Do they fly / swim? Lay eggs? What senses do they have (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste)? How do they observe these sense (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands)? Think more about what the species needs to survive, and less about how attractive they’re going to be.
People have different accents, languages, and dialects depending on where they are from. It’s completely okay to have your race speak English. Another option is that they speak a language and you just translate to English. For example, in A Game of Thrones, when the Dothraki speak, many words are just written in English or translated by another character.
Consider how your race might speak. Avoid colloquialisms in dialogue. Normally, as a writer, you want dialogue to be as natural as possible, but it’s unlikely that another species would have developed the same speech patterns that we have. Contractions and slang should also be eliminated.
When a non-human race is interacting with us, there has to be some differences between our culture and theirs. While coming up with new cultural habits is challenging, questioning our own is a lot easier. Why do we say “bless you” when someone sneezes? Why do we knock on doors? Why do we wait for everyone to have food before eating?
We do not need to replace cultures. Your non-human doesn’t need to say “Genjarloo” instead of “bless you” after a sneeze. They could remain silent, or even react with fear if they don’t know what a sneeze is. The same goes for please and thank you and other manners.
Ideas for some unique cultural habits are ways of greeting someone or thanks. Maybe when they see a friend, it is customary to place a hand on their head to welcome the friend into their home. Perhaps if you are grateful to someone, you have to cover your face when they are around. Especially consider habits unique to the species. If they have a tail, is it considered rude to wag the tail? Or is it rude to leave the tail hanging on the floor?
A major cultural change is the idea of gender, which is entirely created by our society. If your species is male and female, or based on a binary gender system, their idea of what gender is should be different from ours.
Finally, consider morals. What is good and bad in their society might be very different from our own.
The biggest piece of advice: think about why a character is doing something. If it’s because it’s just “what we do”, then a non-human shouldn’t do it. Be sure that you are not writing an altered human. Just because your character is from space doesn’t make them an alien, you need to show us that. While an altered human character is easier to write, they simply aren’t believable.
Best of luck and happy writing,
Marina Montenegro
action
“As a contemporary woman, I have a sense of agency that they did not have…If they could do the impossible, with the resources that we have at our disposal, I think we can deal with the mentality that is resurging and reinserting itself into our culture.”
Here’s Octavia Spencer on the lasting effects of misogyny and racism in the STEM fields, the importance of education, and how she was influenced by the real-life women who inspired Hidden Figures.
thoodleoo
caeruleus: a deep shade of blue used to describe the sea
aequoreus: of the sea
litoreus: of the sea-shore
flustra: the usual calm particular to the sea
transmarinus: from beyond the sea
undisonus: resounding with waves
mare: the sea
malacia: dead calm at sea
cyaneus: sea-blue
creativichee
If your character has a trait you consider one of their key features and it is never challenged in anyway, that trait will probably have about as much impact as their “tiny mole on their left buttcheek” trait.
For that trait NOT to fall totally flat, one or more of these things need to happen:
abschaumno1
hacash
As an occasional visitor to Star Wars fandom, here are some things I would like to see come out of Rogue One:
-
the fic about the reactions of the Empire’s IT and records management
departments when they learn that some trigger-happy general just
literally blew up an entire unique archival repository of key bureaucratic data
- the comic about the first time some maintenance
technician tries to repair something on the Death Star and the guy’s
like, ‘where’s the documentation?’ and their boss is like ‘um, well,
funny story about that….’
- the in-depth analysis about various
mistakes the Empire makes in the original trilogy and how they operate
in context of an organization that has just, I repeat, LITERALLY BLOWN UP ALL OF
THEIR OWN BACKUP DATA. Of course it’s easy for any random hero to
impersonate a Stormtrooper! THEY DESTROYED ALL THEIR OWN PERSONNEL
FILES.
Rogue One, or, Why All The Empire’s Librarians and Archivists Joined the Rebellion
Rogue 2 plot summary: a bunch of Imperial waste management techs go AWOL and steal the Death Star plans back from the Rebels because how else are we supposed to get the dianoga out of the pipes when we have literally no idea where half of these ducts go or what they’re for
they complete their mission but in the end decide not to delete the plans from the main Alliance computers after they’ve made their copy because ehhhhh what if we never had to fix anything on that piece of shit again, what if that, it’s insured right?
This also explains why none of the bridges or giant pits in the floor have railings: literally no one knows if they’re supposed to be there or not, and once someone tried to drill into the floor to install some and destroyed the main air circulation wiring for half the station, now everyone just has to be real careful all the time
It also means that when they built the second Death Star in ROTJ they had to start entirely from scratch, yikes
in the end they decide not to delete plans from main Alliance computers because their heist crew contains one records manager who’s like ‘look, we’re SUPPOSED to have redundant data backups, this way we’re not even paying for the storage!’
THAT’S WHY THEY DON’T HAVE RAILINGS
abschaumno1
nevertrustatrickster
Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.
Finally. People need to realize aliens aren’t the answer for everything (when they use it to erase poc civilizations and how smart they were)
(via TumbleOn)
What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”
Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it
And the Iroquois told Europeans that squirels showed them how to tap maple syrup and no one believed them until they caught it on video
Oral history from various First Nations tribes in the Pacific Northwest contained stories about a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting the coast, but no one listened to them until scientists discovered physical evidence of quakes from the Cascadia fault line.
Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.
Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/
Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄Adding to this, the Inuit communities in Nunavut KNEW where both the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were literally the entire time but Europeans/white people didn’t even bother consulting them about either ship until like…last year.
“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.
In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.
“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/16/inuit-canada-britain-shipwreck-hms-terror-nunavut
“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”
Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.
“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/sammy-kogvik-hms-terror-franklin-1.3763653
Indigenous Australians have had stories about giant kangaroos and wombats for thousands of years, and European settlers just kinda assumed they were myths. Cut to more recently when evidence of megafauna was discovered, giant versions of Australian animals that died out 41 000 years ago.
Similarly, scientists have been stumped about how native Palm trees got to a valley in the middle of Australia, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that someone did DNA testing and concluded that seeds had been carried there from the north around 30 000 years ago… aaand someone pointed out that Indigenous people have had stories about gods from the north carrying the seeds to a valley in the central desert.
oh man let me tell you about Indigenous Australian myths - the framework they use (with multi-generational checking that’s unique on the planet, meaning there’s no drifting or mutation of the story, seriously they are hardcore about maintaining integrity) means that we literally have multiple first-hand accounts of life and the ecosystem before the end of the last ice age
it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.
Now consider this: most people consider the start of recorded history to be with the Sumerians and the Early Dynastic period of the Egyptians. So around 3500 BCE, or five and a half thousand years ago
These highly accurate Aboriginal oral histories originate from twenty thousand years ago at least
thatsthat24
romancedreams
yourfavouritedoll