My two cents (and something I learned from tumblr): Cranberry juice. Get the 100% stuff. My cramps aren’t that bad, but a good glass of cranberry juice on my heavy day really takes the edge off, and it’s worked for every woman I’ve told this to.
i actually hate rn that theres no discussion on what happened with atiki and why
like were all just gonna keep going like nothings wrong like nothing hasnt been wrong for a long time
i didn’t get to read the fic before she pulled it. I have the absolute faith that she had zero intention for it to be interpreted as dub con, even a little bit. she’s like Enthusiastic Kink champion. i will miss her dearly, but she was already feeling outside pressures and of course the anon harassment didn’t help.
at the same time, there were multiple people who interpreted part of the fic as dub con and regardless of whether or not it contained actual dub con…those interpretations are valid bc it still made them uncomfortable. some were rude about it but some were polite and just the NOTION of the word dub con being remotely associated with her fic caused her distress.
she would never write a dub con fic and even those uncomfy with it said that it turned out not to be dub con. that doesn’t take away the fact that they still felt uncomfy enough to ask for a warning next time. although i do hope she comes back bc I already miss her, I hope she finds peace away from tumblr, if that’s what she needs
they were not valid enough to literally drive a ESL writer out of her place in this fandom based completely on a subjective accusation. they were (from what i hear) highly inaccurate accusations (and i’m going to go ahead and give her the benefit of the doubt on this one because of her record on dubcon). its one thing to feel uncomfortable, to ask questions, and to have her confirm, vehemently, NO it would NEVER be.
that would be the end of that. your incredibly individual experience with a piece of work does not give you the pass for anything against an author, other than unfollow, unsubscribe, distance, etc if you dont like the result, especially after such a clear confirmation in negative.
but people kept pushing. kept going. as soon as someone even so much as whispers the word trigger on here, the accused party is a goner.
its a poison that ate through atiki in a day. and its That, that i cannot stomach. not the interpretations, the questions, but the venomous callout culture that grants immunity to anyone claiming to be a victim.
This notion of ‘oh well it made me uncomfortable so now they must pay with their exile no one can challenge me on this because i used the word trigger’ cannot be the deciding force on every damn case here
ive been here a long time now. this isnt unique. this isnt me trying to invalidate feelings of distress, this is me challenging the actions the collective take to dealing with very VERY subjective interpretations
A little confused by this. If I don’t want to read a fic because of uncomfy subject matter, I just skip it.
Don’t fucking harass writers out of their community, regardless of how much righteous anger you think you can justify. If you participate in that kind of witch-hunting, the only thing you’re accomplishing is making people afraid to create and share what they’ve created. It isn’t just the loss of a great writer like Atiki we’re dealing with because of this shit, it’s the loss of all the new writers who are going to decide it isn’t worth the risk to post something, or who will alter their potentially groundbreaking and amazing work out of fear that they’ve crossed a line. Creativity doesn’t flourish in an environment dominated by fear.
You don’t protect yourself when you attack someone else. You might feel better for a little while, but you have solved exactly nothing.
As an aside, I am not sure of what is going on lately, but another writer recently pulled their fics from AO3. It was In Care Of by Quietasasleepingarmy. They said they didn’t want their writing on there anymore. Its too bad. It was a very sweet fic, so if you know it, its gone now.
All of this. Here’s the thing… I get that people have very individual tastes about what they want to read. That does not give them the right to literally bully people out of this fandom by harassing them and telling them to “kill themselves”. Stifling creativity in order to create a “safe” space will leave us a world with absolutely no original, daring work left. If you don’t like a work of fiction… don’t read it. Don’t recommend it. Move on to something you do like. For gods’ sake, don’t harass the author like they are the worst person on the planet. There are actual monsters in the world doing horrible things – join a cause that actually helps combat THAT, not some innocent person writing fanfiction. So whether the work was dubcon or not (knowing Atiki, it probably wasn’t), whether the work was properly labeled or not, the aftermath was ridiculous and disgusting and I’m still reeling from it. And the sad part? She’s not the first, nor will she be the last. Because the bullies won. She left the site. Just like theglitterypotato left before her, and countless others who faced anonymous harassment and bullying. The bullying doesn’t stop if they get what they want.
I’m a firm believer in the freedom of creativity and the freedom of expression. I may not like everyone’s way of expressing their creativity, but I will stand up for their right to create it. It all reminds me of why we have things like banned books week, to remember that banning and challenging a creative work STILL happens to this day, and is never, ever right. When we start burning books (or in this case, fanworks), it’s the people behind them who get hurt. Instead of going after someone who wrote something you don’t like, how about taking a little personal responsibility to decide what you want to view on the internet. Block people, blacklist words, I don’t fucking care WHAT you do, but YOU need to create your safe space rather than putting it all on the shoulders of a fandom whose artists and writers are giving up and moving on.
And more importantly, we should all take a page from Wil Wheaton and practice the #1 rule of life: Don’t be a dick.
I have read the fic (and I saved it on a document) and this is what was about:
john wakes up naked in sherlock’s bed and looking at certain evidences he draws the conclusion that he has had sex with sherlock but can’t remember because he was intossicated. and sherlock goes along with what john thinks has happened. what is revealed next is that this conclusion is completely wrong, it’s the opposite, that night of sex didn’t happen because john was intossicated!
“You said you wanted to have me,” Sherlock said, finally, very
quietly, “you said it multiple times, and you told me what you
wanted to do to me and I—I wanted those things, I wanted it too but
I – -I couldn’t. Because I knew you weren’t going to remember, I
knew you were barely conscious. It wasn’t possible, it wasn’t
right. So I waited until you fell asleep and I left and…
and in the morning, when you woke up, I saw that you’d already
jumped to conclusions. It was too late. You already thought we’d
spent the night together and it’s difficult to kill and idea once
it’s been planted inside someone’s head. So I improvised. I let
you believe you were right and I… I lied.”
sherlock lies because he panics and that causes all the misunderstanding.
was this fic dubcon? no, there is no description of actual dubcon sex happening
did this fic contain elements of implied dubcon, that even if later it have been revealed not to be true, could be triggering for people sentitive about this topic? yes
atiki posted this fic late at night (circa 3 am), she was eager to publish it after a long time she didn’t write and she didn’t have a beta that could have given a second opinion. her mistake was not to put a warning in the notes
about a situation that could be read as dubcon but it’s not real.
after receiving the first critics and backlash she apologised multiple times and deleted the fic because she didn’t want to cause harm. this thought stressed her and made her panic while people continued to attack her for writing dubcon and receiving anon hate telling her to kill herself.
this continued for all the next day because for one mistake that she tried to correct and apologised for the tumblr attitude is still going for a witch hunt. (under a read more she told she read a blog that was plotting a vendetta against her for what happened)
this is one of the last ask she answered before deleting:
so atik did a mistake (putting a warning beforehand, I still want to highlight that she didn’t write dubcon) that she tried to fix at her best apologising and deleting the fic but the tumblr attitude is to jump at throats like she was one of the worst person ever in fandom because everything must always been black or white.
and this is the reason why we have lost one of a hell brilliant person that gave us amazing fics and headcanons and funny posts and shitposts and she didn’t deserve that.
Reblogging because this conversation needs to continue.
I just…I don’t know, guys.
Losing Atiki is a real tragedy, and not the first nor even the third or the fifth…and it didn’t have to happen.
Things in our fandom are not good right now.
Somehow, sensitivity and compassion and the desire to create safe spaces have been twisted into a weapon that people who feel powerless IRL can use to harass and bully others. While I do believe in using tags and warnings as a polite courtesy, what that’s devolved into is a type of policing of artistic expression as a kind of power trip…and nothing, nothing deadens creativity and expression like fear over being attacked. Especially if we can’t tell where the next attack may be coming from.
Not to make this about me, but hell, I’m gonna make it about me for a minute.
I’ve been having a really rough time of it lately in my real life. This is not a secret, nor is it news. With all this going on? I feel like my happy fun place is basically none of those things. I’m anxious about writing, I’m anxious about posting, I feel like all the fun and color has been sucked out of the thing that brought me the most joy.
I don’t want this to be the end of the line. I don’t. I have so many more stories to tell. But everything feels frozen and remote, and I can’t reach what I need to reach, and that’s the kind of feeling you really can’t consciously overcome. It’s the feeling, ironically enough, of being unsafe.
I am on the bloody edge of deleting and walking away from everything right now, because I don’t know if I have the emotional energy to fight through this mess right now. Maybe I should just freaking go and find some peace and quiet.
My best friend and the smartest person I know in the whole world is telling me NOT to delete, not to let the bullies and the knuckleheads win, to fight it out and stand tall and stake my claim on my little corner of the fandom. She’s right. (She’s always right, it’s boring. 😉) But I’ve mentally been on the edge of deleting for the past 24 hours, because I just don’t know how to reclaim what I thought I had here.
This isn’t like, a threat or a cry for attention or a demand for people to say, oooooh, Caitlin, please don’t delete!!! That’s not it. I’m just thinking out loud.
I’m not threatening to take my toys and go home. At least, I’m not trying to. I’m genuinely lost and sad and I don’t know where to go from here. I really don’t. But I do know we need to keep talking about all of this, because we’re on the edge of losing things that are really important to all of us, and I don’t want that to happen. God, I really don’t.
@consultingcaitlin Stay. Life is what we make of it, even when the world is in shreds about your feet. The unfortunate thing about art is there will always be naysayers, no matter the media, no matter the intent. One has to brew a pot of tea, put up a blanket fort, and invite only the kind and generous minds within.
It’s not a ‘Sherlock Thing’ – there are SWTFA implosions happening constantly now on the edge of my dash. It’s not a ‘Tumblr Thing’ – I know authors that are bullied on Goodreads and through email, etc.
It’s a human nature thing. There’s not much to do about it but endure.
my issue with this is chalking t up to ‘human nature’ absolves us collectively of the responsibility we have toward eachother in this space.
i dont like sweeping shit under the rug because ‘haters gon hate’
Reblogging this because all these are very important points and we really need to keep this conversation going. Because when I read people trying to lump what atiki did with the likes of aa or other literal rape apologists, my blood starts to boil.
It’s not a matter of double standards, it’s a matter of looking at things in context. Did atiki mess up for not thinking of putting a warning and for reacting badly when asked to put one? Absolutely. Did she deserve the literal slavine of insults and threats that swamped her inbox? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
It’s really disheartening that one single mistake done in good faith could erase months and months of lovely (and highly praised) content. In under 24 hours people went from idolising everything she did to telling her to literally kill herself. How is that fair? How is these people’s hurt more valid than hers?
This is not about the fic anymore, or about content warning or debating wether dubcon was involved or not. All of that was decided one hour after all the shit happened and atiki decided to delete the fic, which should have been enough. This is about the way some people always like to claim the higher moral ground by pushing down everybody else around them and reducing them to their one single mistake instead of realising that not everybody has malicious intents and sometimes an honest mistake is just an honest mistake.
I think the worst thing that can happen to a writer is feeling forced to delete a work. It’s a bit like killing one’s own child (sorry if this sounds too dramatic). Others make you deliberately destroy something you created, a work of art you poured your soul into. It’s so sad.
In the above I read a lot about the feelings of readers. How about the feelings of the writers? We expose ourselves with our fics. We pour out our fantasies, we let readers look in the chasms of our soul. Good ficiton gives away a lot about the person who wrote it. That’s why it hurts so much if the readers start to insult our works – because they insult us with their scathing remarks. It’s not just the writing they criticise (which is absolutely ok if it’s done helpfully and polite; it’s even appreciated) but they humiliate our very selfs – in front of a large cheering crowd.
A lot of shit happened in my life. Still I write very dark fics. This is sometimes not easy for me. But that’s what happens when I start writing. I can only draw on my experiences. Honestly, it’s a kind of therapy. I would never state that in the notes to my fics because I don’t believe people want to read how I work through my traumas – they want a good story that caters to their preferences. And they are entitled to get exactly that. Should anyone dare to judge my coping mechanisms they can go fuck themselfs.
Good writing should not just be warm paste that makes you feel happy. Of course, there’s a place for such stuff as well. But I at least want to read ficiton that stirs something inside me, that challenges me, that might even shake and upset me. That’s what art should aim for – a world without triggers would be a very dull place indeed.
Thank you @isitandwonder. Absolutely all that you have said here. 💜
I read that fic, and I had no idea about the backlash. This is a pretty standard trope in this fandom. I have read this story by different authors fifty times already, and none of THOSE authors were hounded from fandom.
Atiki’s fic was absolutely reasonable for the context of the Sherlock universe and the established fandom.
Fic has its own set of rules.
Fic is not fiction. A writer doesn’t have to introduce a character and let the actions of 300 pages define them. A reader doesn’t have to meet the character – they are already solid in the reader’s mind. Fic lets a writer skip the discovery, and explore an aspect or interpretation of an already-established character.
Fic is not life. Fic is not a roadmap for how to act. It is not a suggestion for how you or others should have sex or conduct relationships. It is not expert advice vetted by a priest, a psychiatrist, your mom, and a sex therapist.
Did Atiki mess up? No. Did the people who bullied her mess up? Yes.
Just in case we were in the mood to congratulate ourselves for being an inclusive safe space. I like to think it’s true but it’s really, really not. The entitlement fandom feels to callout whomever it wants has gotten completely out of control.
I am sick of this. It is why I am working on a 50 Shades re work. Why I started A Little Sugar Never Hurt Anybody.
We are all adults.
If you are not an adult, do not read things that deal with adult issues/subjects.
If you are not mature enough, don’t read mature fiction.
Stop this.
This furthers no goal.
Fuck you.
Sit down and really think about what you are doing.
The end.
I swear to all I hold holy I will fight you on this.
I write for myself now and I’m glad some still read along. I’ve had a pretty terrible couple of years and some days I struggle with writing- I struggle with fandom. It’s gone bat-shit bananas. I feel so much pain about losing yet another author.
These people, us, me- we are PEOPLE, too.
I’m not sorry about how I feel on this subject.
And I will say it-
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER DO NOT READ
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER DO NOT READ
IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER DO NOT READ
Has it gotten through yet?
I hope so.
to be honest I think this is at least one factor in why I’ve slowed down. There are a lot of good people in this fandom, a lot of people who love and support one another. But there’s also that trickling fear in the back of people’s minds, that if they say the wrong thing or write the wrong thing or draw the wrong thing then the vultures will come. Some people have been driven off, some of have simply stopped writing for the fandom. It’s voices stilled by bullies and that’s what I can’t stand.
I’m a small fish, and I’m thankful I haven’t drawn anyones negative attention. I’ve always been very very careful to tag and tag throughly, but one person’s simple mistake shouldn’t leave them in tears and being forced off the entire site.
This isn’t healthy, this isn’t right, and it isn’t sane.
I’d like to take a second to list all the people I wish had known more about dyscalculia growing up:
My first grade teacher, who noticed when on a verbal counting test that I went from 99 to 100 to 200 and told my parents I just needed a little practice
My third grade teacher, who couldn’t understand why I would turn in a timed multiplication table test with absolutely nothing written on it, or burst into tears when asked to bring it home and have it signed by my parents
My school corporation, who placed me in advanced mathematics for two excruciating years based on aptitude tests, apparently unaware that aptitude and ability are not one and the same
My fifth grade teacher, who privately admonished me for “laziness” because I couldn’t stop making “silly mistakes”—like switching multiplication and addition, or flipping numbers like three and eight, or failing to follow every step of a math problem
My sixth grade math teacher, who publicly called me out for writing the formula for the Pythagorean Theorem on my hand, claiming I didn’t study, though I had spent five hours the night before preparing
My parents, who grounded me every time my report card came out, trying their best to discipline what they thought was laziness
My family doctor, who, once told about my math troubles, prescribed me ADD medication without any running any kind of diagnostic
My Algebra teacher senior year after I was diagnosed, who claimed that giving me extra time on my test would be “unfair to the other students”
Every teacher who ever laughed and pointed at the clock when I asked them what time it was
The boy in my band class that said I was the “stupidest smart person he’d ever met”
My former boss, who when I told I had dyscalculia told me “I probably have it too, I am always mixing things up!” (she was an accounting major and ran the accounting portion of that place of business)
But you know who would have really benefited from knowing about dyscalculia? Me. I wish I had known. I wish I could go back and tell my ten year old self that it wasn’t my fault, that I am extraordinary in the best way. I wish someone, somewhere along the way could have seen what was really going on.
That’s why dyscalculia awareness is so important.
oh my god.
I. had no idea this was a thing. looked up the symptoms and
‘inability to tell, at a glance, how many objects are in a small group’
THIS. THIS IS A THING? THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE?
‘struggles with directions, anxious about moving from one location to another’
I memorized the route to all my classes in high school and yet if I didn’t have COMPLETE AND UTTER FOCUS I would STILL GET LOST it was so unbelievably stressful
‘is constantly late because struggles with understanding the passage of time’
‘struggles to read analog clocks’
‘moves too fast or too slow’
‘struggles with basic math/memorizing math facts like times tables and formulas’
GOD. I spent MONTHS on those times table tests; long after everyone else had gotten theirs done, I was still taking and retaking those awful, awful tests.
And I still have to turn everything into addition to get it to make sense. 10-7? count up from 7 to 10, on my fingers. do it again to make sure I’ve done it right. 4×6? that’s 6+6+6+6. keep track of it on my fingers. do it again to be sure. 18/3? start adding threes together, keeping track of how many it takes, on my fingers. do it again to be sure. STILL SOMETIMES GET IT WRONG because even addition is hard.
just.
dyscalculia.
is a thing.
thank you for this post.
I see people trash-talk Tumblr all the time but I’ve lost track of how many people have said something JUST LIKE THIS about their mental or physical health, their gender or sexual identity, and their understanding of social issues or world politics during the less-than-18-month I’ve been here than at any other website or classroom I’ve ever had a presence in.
I literally didn’t learn that I might have dyscalculia until I was studying to be a teacher and had to learn what the hell that was. And oh hey, look, I have practically every symptom but I’m about to graduate and there’s really no point in me putting forth the money to diagnose anything. Seeing kids FINALLY get something in math after working really hard at it, only to forget by the next day, JUST like I used to do, but knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop that. All I can do is teach them the little tricks I learned to remember and figure stuff out and get around the fact that I knew only about half the times tables.
(Most of my symptoms have been mitigated or alleviated by technology and I would like to tell my third grade teacher: fuck you, I have a calculator with me at all times and I do not need to know my times tables FFFFFFFFF and I am not stupid or lazy for not being able to learn them)
My chemistry teacher used to write me really nasty messages on my chemistry work about how I’d get the problems right if I stopped doodling in my notebook and actually tried harder. I asked him for help and he refused to help me because I couldn’t point to one single thing I was struggling to understand. I could do the experiments but I couldn’t do the math. The only reason why I didn’t fail chemistry was because we started working on organic chemistry at the end of the year, and ochem is all about shapes and drawing the molecules. At the end of the year he gave me some kind of barely passing slacker award. I took it with a smile and didn’t cry until I got home. I’m still hurt by it and I still hate that man.
In college, I nonstop struggled with math, I still failed chemistry a couple of times before finally savaging my way through, actually got kicked out of school but begged for them to keep me in… and when I was a second year senior, begging the math counselors to let me into trig so I could just meet my biology requirements, they took a look at my ACT scores and said “Huh, your math score is way lower than your other scores. Have you been tested for a learning disability?” But because I’d already been diagnosed with depression I’d have to go to an outside agency to get tested and it was going to cost me $300.
Now as an adult I’m late all the time, I miss deadlines, and people just think I’m a total unreliable flake. I think my boss hates me. But I managed to graduate college with a degree in Wildlife Management, become a wildlife biologist, and now an Astronomy teacher, and I still multiply by counting up on my fingers. But whenever English teachers say shit like “Oh but you’re a science teacher, math and science go together, I can’t do that!” I want to punch them. I can’t do it either, but I stuck my fist up the ass of the system anyway and had to fight tooth and nail to get where I am now. Now I’m just afraid of trying to get certified as a high school science generalist and/or get my Master’s degree when I was never officially diagnosed and have never had any kind of support.
since i published this post so long ago i’ve watched it circulate tumblr and heard stories of all kinds. some people were abused by horrible parents and teachers, others had it recognized early and got the help they needed. many people are just hearing about it and suspecting they may have it themselves, which hopefully means they will get the help they need. some people even send me their stories about obstinate school staff, ableism in their homes and work, and sarcastic teachers who think we’re lazy or “slow” (god, the way they treat cognitively disabled kids… holy fuck.) i don’t always reply to all these stories because it can be taxing, but believe me when i say i read every single one. the story above gave me pause because it is one i identify with. i too had a similar struggle with my chemistry teacher.
what all these stories have made clear to me is that a) we need more awareness and testing for learning disabilities in schools and b) we need a complete overhaul of how we treat children with all kinds of learning disabilities and cognitive impairments. when i look back on the way that the “special education” kids were walled off, vilified, ridiculed, and generally ignored by the staff at the public school i attended, i realize that, in my case, no one recognizing my disability was a blessing. if someone had, i would have been treated the same way the other disabled kids were treated in my school district at that time.just like this post says, i still wish i had known, but knowing is only half the battle. we need enormous changes to our public school systems to accommodate and address learning disabilities. we need more access to testing at a lower cost. we need awareness and cooperation from teachers and parents. we need to address ableism in schools. we need to change the way teachers, parents, and students think and act. and we need to make resources for testing and therapy available to adults too, because learning disabilities don’t go away when school ends either.
when i read these stories, i feel a fire in me growing.
This evening a bored Mark Gatiss did an impromptu twitter Q&A session and answered over fifty questions ranging from where is his favourite place, what’s his party trick and how does he like his tea to what would Victorian Mycroft’s weapon of choice be and whether he’s Team Cap or Team Iron Man. There was quite a lot of snark in the answers that followed.
I’ve screencapped the tweets and posted them below to make them easier to read, but warning this is now rather a long post!
I was home watching TV and cutting up a steak when I got the call at 8PM. A friend of mine worked at a famous hotel in LA and one of the guests made a last minute request for a DJ to play the hotel bar. Someone that could get there and start playing in an hour. The bar frequently had live bands play, but never a DJ. So with little to no time, my wise and generous friend thought to throw a gig my way.
“Yeah, I can get there in an hour. Am I getting paid?”
“Yes, you’ll get paid.”
“What kind of party is it? What am I playing?”
“Someone’s renting out the bar for a private party. And that someone is… The Artist… formerly… known… as… Prince.”
That sentence was not real to me. Still not real. I had no time to really think or say anything but, “What? You serious? Yes. Be there as soon as I can.” Got off the phone and my stomach turned. Only a handful of people in the world have imprinted their music that much in my brain. And couldn’t he just call up any of the best DJ’s in LA to come play for him? Why’s he gonna trust someone who is by all means an unknown? I’d been DJing parties and bars for years but going from that to Prince is an Olympic leap.
The next half hour felt like a panic attack. I made a list of songs to play for Prince and his private Prince party. Ok, no Prince songs. He doesn’t want to hear himself. No MJ. I don’t want to insult him or anything. Didn’t they have beef in the 80’s? No hip hop. Can’t picture him rocking out to Kendrick. I thought of who he was influenced by and dragged some James Brown and Stevie songs into the playlist. Isley Brothers, Curtis. Great. 8:20PM. I still have to get ready even though I could spend the next month picking songs. I quickly close my laptop and get dressed. Pack up my turntables, mixer, cables and run them all to the car as I’m sweating through this black suit.
I get to the hotel with about five minutes to set up. The bar is completely empty aside from a couple of servers and my friend who made the call. And the room is almost lit exclusively by candlelight. I’m told to set up my turntables on the grand piano, which is also covered with candles, making me feel like hip hop Liberace. A waitress tells me there’s like an 80% chance Prince doesn’t show up. He just likes to rent out the bar in case he and his friends wander through the hotel and feel like stopping in. “But you should start playing music anyway in case he comes in. Who knows.” So I start playing songs to the very empty bar. The anticipation is a killer. My friend gives me a much needed glass of whiskey before taking off.
A giant spread of appetizers is covering the bar and getting sweaty. Spring rolls, cheese, orange juice. An hour goes by. Then another hour. A no-show. I’m kind of bummed out but also very relieved. I don’t know how I’m going to react if he walks in that door. So I’m just playing the set of my life to nobody. It’s like I’m getting paid to practice and listen to whatever I want on the bar’s sound system.
At 12AM the door opens and some guy walks over to me and without a greeting he says,
“Hey man. He’ll be here in 15 minutes. What are you gonna play when he walks in?”
“Oh I got some stuff lined up. Some older Stevie Wonder, the JB’s.”
“Yeah. Yeah, he likes that. Anything like that, Earth Wind & Fire, Chic.”
“Yeah I got Chic! I’ll play that.”
“And he wants to hear Janelle Monáe when he walks in. You got that?”
“Yup. Yup. Janelle Monáe.”
“Cool, he’ll be here in 15 minutes.”
I didn’t have any Janelle Monáe. I ran out to the concierge desk in the lobby to get the wifi password, ran back and started downloading a bunch of Janelle Monáe off of iTunes. Right on time as I cue up the track, the door opens and I catch a quick glimpse. Full on afro, turtleneck and a gold chain. I want to say he had a cane, but I was trying not to look directly at him. I didn’t want to throw him off or maybe infuriate him by making eye contact. Prince was in the room. I was just musical wallpaper. He and a friend sat down at a couch about fifteen feet away from me.
The grand entrance song blended straight into James Brown’s Talking Loud and Saying Nothing. I played Ike & Tina Turner, Charles Wright, Omar’s The Man, and Gust of Wind by Pharrell. My head was pretty much glued to the turntables, sticking to my no look philosophy, but I could hear bits of conversation. Hearing that Prince voice in person was something strange. It just belongs on record or on microphone. I start dishing out some other favorite tracks of mine, Think Twice by Jay Dee and Alicia Myers I Want to Thank You. There’s zero reaction to the songs I play. I’m still worried I’m not playing what he wants to hear. Is he gonna throw a spring roll at me?
A little later that guy from earlier comes back into the bar and walks straight over to me.
“Hey man. Just want to let you know, they love your music.”
“Oh really? Thanks. Do they want to hear anything in particular?”
“Nope. Just keep playing what your playing.”
Oh it’s on now. I can finally breathe and I’m getting props from the man himself, or from the middleman himself. And then it hits me. There’s only two people in there. Prince and a girl. I’m not there to DJ a private party. I’m there to DJ a date. Prince is on a date and I’m the entertainment.
I saved my set list from that night and I don’t remember playing half the songs on it. All I know is I was in deep concentration, mixing out of my mind. Messenger man came in one more time and said Prince might try to play the piano. When it was time, he would pop his head in the door and give me the cue to stop DJing. I had never seen Prince perform, so a private piano ballad to his woman and myself sounded alright. I stayed looking at that door for a while until Prince’s date walked over to me.
“Hey, so what’s the name of this song? He likes it and wants to know.”
“It’s a Smith’s cover. This Charming Man by Stars.”
She sat back down and relayed the info, to which he nodded his head. Now I’m stumping Prince with cool music. I play another track. She comes over to me again and asks, “What’s this one? He wants this on repeat.” Blacker 4 The Good Times by Ballistic Brothers. So I play that song a couple more times in a row. It’s now 4AM and I’m just a little delirious from being on my feet DJing for 7 hours. And I’m running out of music. My song selections are all over the map at this point. Esperanza Spalding, ESG, Broken Bells.
At around 4:30 Prince gets up off the couch and walks floats right over to me. He looks me in the eye, starts shaking my hand and says in a deep Prince voice,
“Thank you. That was very enjoyable.”
“Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.”
In my mind it was that smooth but there’s no doubt I was speaking gibberish.
And just like that he left the room with his date. He didn’t put any moves on her in the bar, but I like to think I helped him out by setting the mood for whatever happened next. I stopped the music and the lights went on.
And that was the best night of DJing I ever had or ever will have.
Actually it is a jar full of chocolate covered raisins on top of a dirty TV tray. But pretend the raisins are interesting and well rounded fictional characters with significant roles in their stories.
We’re sharing these raisins at a party for Western Storytelling, so we get out two bowls.
Then we start filling the bowls. And at first we only fill the one on the left.
This doesn’t last forever though. Eventually we do start putting raisins in the bowl on the right. But for every raisin we put in the bowl on the right, we just keep adding to the bowl on the left.
And the thing about these bowls is, they don’t ever reset. We don’t get to empty them and start over. While we might lose some raisins to lost records or the stories becoming unpopular, but we never get to just restart. So even when we start putting raisins in the bowl on the right, we’re still way behind from the bowl on the left.
And time goes on and the bowl on the left gets raisins much faster than the bowl on the right.
Until these are the bowls.
Now you get to move and distribute more raisins. You can add raisins or take away raisins entirely, or you can move them from one bowl to the other.
This is the bowl on the left. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?
You can’t tell for certain, can you? Adding or removing a raisin over here doesn’t seem to make much of a change to this bowl.
This is the bowl on the right. I might have changed the number of raisins from one picture to the next. Can you tell me, did I add or remove raisins? How many? Did I leave the number the same?
When there are so few raisins to start, any change made is really easy to spot, and makes a really significant difference.
This is why it is bad, even despicable, to take a character who was originally a character of color and make them white. But why it can be positive to take a character who was originally white and make them a character of color.
The white characters bowl is already so full that any change in number is almost meaningless (and is bound to be undone in mere minutes anyway, with the amount of new story creation going on), while the characters of color bowl changes hugely with each addition or subtraction, and any subtraction is a major loss.
This is also something to take in consideration when creating new characters. When you create a white character you have already, by the context of the larger culture, created a character with at least one feature that is not going to make a difference to the narratives at large. But every time you create a new character of color, you are changing something in our world.
I mean, imagine your party guests arrive
Oh my god they are adorable!
And they see their bowls
But before you hand them out you look right into the little black girls’s eyes and take two of her seven raisins and put them in the little white girl’s bowl.
I think she’d be totally justified in crying or leaving and yelling at you. Because how could you do that to a little girl? You were already giving the white girl so much more, and her so little, why would you do that? How could you justify yourself?
But on the other hand if you took two raisins from the white girl’s bowl and moved them over to the black girl’s bowl and the white girl looked at her bowl still full to the brim and decided your moving those raisins was unfair and she stomped and cried and yelled, well then she is a spoiled and entitled brat.
And if you are adding new raisins, it seems more important to add them to the bowl on the right. I mean, even if we added the both bowls at the same speed from now on (and we don’t) it would still take a long time before the numbers got big enough to make the difference we’ve already established insignificant.
And that’s the difference between whitewashing POC characters and making previously white characters POC. And that’s why every time a character’s race is ambiguous and we make them white, we’ve lost an opportunity.
*goes off to eat her chocolate covered raisins, which are no longer metaphors just snacks*
Just watched the trailer for Doctor Strange. It looks very entertaining, of course. But the Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One thing felt weird. So consider this reblog my post about it.
God. I am sitting over here fuming not just at thefuckingAbbieDeathDebacle jesus christ
but like, in retrospect, the whole… broken way they played out damn near every storyline? Every promising meta arc on that show just fizzled. Whoever was in charge of ultimate narrative and thematic shape of the series, each season? Failed. Repeatedly.
To show you what I mean, here’s one way it could have gone:
Season 1 – they combat the Horseman of Death. Blah blah Death is Van Brunt reveal blah blah historical love triangle blah blah stuff about Katrina being a witch blah blah… but let the emotional through arc of the first season mirror the Witnesses’ fight against Death – aka, let Ichabod grieve the death of everything he knew, including his wife. And! let Abbie deal with revelations about her mom and her ancestors being all magicy in a way that parallels Death’s riding around all willy nilly (ie something resurrected from the past) so that she can deal with those. Two Witnesses, two perspectives on dealing with Death: grieving for and letting go of what’s lost vs learning to embrace and celebrate that which still lives on in those that survive. Season Finale: They figure out that they can temporarily turn a Horseman back to its mortal self just long enough to kill it, and the spirit of the Horseman can be banished to purgatory. So Van Brunt dies and Death gets banished. But! Katrina’s still “alive” in purgatory? They can bring her back?? Then, in trying to get her, something goes wrong and Abbie gets pulled in (not to replace Katrina).
Season 2 – other things seem to have slipped out of purgatory when Katrina escaped. Including – DUN! – theHorseman of Pestilence, this season’s major villain. Abbie in purgatory has to face memories of her past, decisions she made that still haunt her, her own personal demons, while Ichabod fights literal demons that escaped from purgatory and is trying to get her back. Demons as pestilence, as scourge. Katrina helps him, and Ichabod is not sure the sight of her using magic is unnerving because she’s hid it from him for so long or if, no, magic is just fucking creepy. Midseason Finale: Abbie comes back, Katrina is revealed as the Horseman of Pestilence, having made a pact with Moloch (after years of torment in purgatory, which we can sympathize with because we’ve seen what Abbie went through there) so he’ll release her. Back end of the season is all about people dealing with the idea that the people they love not being the people they know anymore. All about the idea of the complex interplay of the effects of illness (again: pestilence) and agency and identity. Again: two sides of the Horseman theme. Season Finale: they’re given the option to attempt to ‘exorcise’/separate the Horseman from Katrina (more risky, not certain that she’ll survive or that it will work at all) or to kill her so they can just banish the Horseman like they did the last one. Interestingly, let Abbie support exorcism and Ichabod be in favor of just letting his wife go and finally be at peace, and let the Witnesses fight over it. Katrina gets exorcised, dies anyway; the spirit of Famine is banished. Ichabod and Abbie part ways, still upset with each other and how things went down.
Season 3 – A NEW CHALLENGER APPEARS. It’s the Horseman of Famine, yaaaay! Again, parallel this Big Bad with the emotional throughline of the season, and show the Witnesses with distinct perspectives on the concept. Famine is all about sine qua non (without which [there is] nothing), about losing essential nutrients, about quod me nutrit me destruit (that which nourishes me, destroys me), about Tantalus. On the one hand: the idea of a total lack of nourishment, starvation; on the other: empty calories, the idea of fullness without actual substance. Ichabod and Abbie learn that they depend on one another, they rely on one another, and yes, that they need each other. Midseason Finale: they finally get back together as partners after a lot of nudging from Jenny (who has opened up an artifact fencing… uh, antique shop, and is dealing with the pain in the ass that comes with being Respectable (ugh taxes) and trying to dodge trouble from her past). Season Finale: Abbie and Ichabod banish Famine, their UST is off the charts, are they gonna–?
Season 4 – Horseman of War. I think you see where I’m going with this? Events ramp up, episode setups get increasingly confrontational and violent, there’s a shit ton of conflict both within the police department and in the supernatural world, etc, etc. Two sides of dealing with conflict (theme) = de-escalate or bring a bigger gun and win. Silver lining: Abbie and Ichabod are, like, tentatively courting, and it’s adorable and sweet until, like, a demon comes racing through the park they’re having a picnic in, or a rage virus starts infecting people when they are at a romantic restaurant or whatever. Midseason Finale: they totally hook up. But the morning after, Ichabod wakes up back in the middle of the Revolutionary War. Abbie chooses to astrally project herself to ‘wherever he is’ (she’s invisible to others!), and episodes take place combining both timelines. …if this show isn’t above referencing other stuff, we can give a nod to Quantum Leap, although there should be some equal back-and-forth helping across timelines, like Ichabod finding an artifact Abbie needs in the present, which he hides in a safe place so she can go find it centuries later. He also sends her love notes that way because he is a huge nerd. Season Finale: Ichabod comes back, they banish War, but Henry – who has thus far just been an occasional guest star who Jenny hires sometimes to authenticate shit, or who helps consult on cases – turns out to be Ichabod & Katrina’s son and Moloch’s minion! And he’s been the one to mess with stuff like sending Abbie to purgatory or sending Ichabod back to the past! DUN!
Season 5 – Henry! Themes are betrayal, sabotage, shaken trust, that kind of thing. Midseason Finale: Jenny gets possessed by some trinket Henry had left behind in the shop ages ago that they’d thought was inert, becomes corrupted by evil power. The entity that was Jenny works with Henry against Witnesses, trying to free Moloch. Season Finale: with Abbie’s (and Ichabod’s) help, Jenny gains control of the power within her and uses it to kill Henry. But: Henry’s death opens the doors to purgatory, letting out not just all four Horsemen, but also Moloch.
Season 6 – Moloch! Themes are: ultimate Evil, the darkest corners of one’s soul, worst fears realized. Also, the ideas of ‘too much of a good thing,’ or ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Episode before Midseason Finale ends with Team Witness (Jenny retained power; Irving – who, yes, has been around but I was TRYING to keep this concise, oops – also there, plus, okay, Joe and Andy maybe? Let’s say Andy came out of purgatory with Katrina and joined Team Witness after proving himself.) squaring off against the Horsemen, while the Witnesses face Moloch. Midseason Finale: Black screen, caption reads: One Year Later. Post apocalyptic time jump! (Come on, all the cool kids do it.) All tech infrastructure ceased functioning; most of humanity is either vanished or dead. Team Witness hunts down the Horsemen one by one and banishes them again. This should keep us occupied until the Season Finale: facing down Moloch, who, sensing his defeat, turns back the clock to the pre-midseason faceoff. But Abbie and Ichabod, being Witnesses, remember how he defeated them that time, and Moloch ends up killed for good. Everything as it should be. Fin.
And, because Six Seasons And A Movie is a great idea: Pandora can be the movie. Pandora, opening the gates of Hell (Moloch only ruled purgatory, after all).
…and like, this is just me spitballing off the top of my head. It’s entirely possible that this is flawed in some places or could be punched up in others, but like. Jesus. The material they had to work with, the staggering potential… and we got what??
This is Catherine The Great. She was a legendary Empress of Russia and ruled longer than any other leader, and she did a damn good job by all accounts. People loved her, she worked hard, she was smart, and she was also one of the proudest motherfucking freaks in HISTORY. She proved to the world that just because you look a little like Lady John Lithgow does not mean you are undesirable, and just because you’re royalty does not mean you can’t be a horny goddess of filth.
There’s this rumor that Catherine’s biggest conquest was a literal goddamn horse, but historians believe that it’s just a sick rumor that some hating ass bitches made up because they were intimidated that a woman could not only be in charge of a country but of her own sexual predilections. HMM, THANK GOD TIMES HAVE CHANGED???
Anyway, Catherine used her money to finance this fuck pad room in her castle that was an homage to doin’ the nasty. Catherine’s Pinterest board must have looked like a fucking PornHub screenshot because this is what that beautiful proud slut decorated her lair with:
A chair that is so classically beautiful and…oh my damn…what in the hell..
IS THAT CHAIR SUCKING A DAMN DICK?
THAT IS THE DEVIL AND HE IS EATING A PUSSY LIKE HELLFIRE’S GONNA SHOOT OUT OF IT
YOU NOT A BAD BITCH UNLESS YOUR OFFICE CHAIR HAS A PANTALOON-LESS VULVA AIRING ITSELF OUT ON IT.
THERE ARE GIANT WANGS GROWING OUT OF GIANT CHI-CHIS HOLDING UP A CORNUCOPIA OF FINELY-CRAFTED, CLASSICAL ASS, BAROQUE ASS, ROCOCO ASS GENITALS, WITH THEIR TORRENTIAL EJACULATIONS. HOW THE FUCK YOU GONNA GO TO IKEA AFTER THIS SHIT?
I wish there were more pictures of the original pieces, but in the 50′s some uptight German Army dipshits destroyed her collection because it gave them shameful boners or something. An artist has recreated her utilitarian odes to fuck, but it is truly sad that we cultured skanks can never appreciate such high art in its original glory. Damn, Cathy. Respect.
