Nor should it be.
If you want to live in a “Children of the Corn”-style bubble of innocence and purity, well, to me, that’s a startling approach to adolescence, but every generation’s got to find its own way to reject the one before, so: do as you will. But you can’t bring the bubble to the party, kids. Fandom, established media-style fandom, was by and for adults before some of your parents were born now. You don’t get to show up and demand that everyone suddenly change their ways because you’re a minor and you want to enjoy the benefits of adult creative activity without the bits that make you uncomfortable. If you think you’re old enough to be roaming the Internet unsupervised, then you also think you’re old enough to be working out your limits by experience, like everybody else, like I did when I was underage and lying about it online. If you’re not old enough to be roaming the Internet unsupervised and you’re doing it anyway, then that’s on your parents, not on fandom.
If you were only reading fic rated G on AO3, if you had the various safe modes on other media enabled, you would be encountering very little disturbing material, anyway (at least in the crude way people tend to define “disturbing” these days; some of the most frankly horrifying art I have ever engaged with would have been rated PG at most under present systems, but none of that kind of work ever seems to draw your protests). In the end, what you really want is to be able to seek out the edges of your little world, but be able to blame other people when you don’t like what you find. Sorry. Adolescence is when you get to stop expecting others to pad your world for you and start experiencing the actual consequences of the risks you take, including feeling appalled and revolted at what other people think and feel.
Now, ironically, fandom’s actually a fairly good place for such risk-taking, as, for the most part, you control whether you engage and you can choose the level of your engagement. You can leave a site, blacklist something, stop reading an author, walk away from your computer. Are there actual people (as opposed to works of art, which cannot engage with you unless you engage with them) who will take advantage of you in fandom? Of course there are. Unfortunately, such people are everywhere. They will be there however “innocent” and “wholesome” the environment appears to be, superficially. That’s evil for you. There are abusers in elementary school. There are abusers in scout troops. There are abusers in houses of worship. Shutting down adult creative activity because you happen to be in the vicinity isn’t going to change any of that. It may help you avoid some of those icky feelings that you get when you think about sex (and you live in a rape culture, those feelings are actually understandable, even if your coping techniques are terrible), but no one, except maybe your parents, has a moral imperative to help you avoid those.
In the end, you’re not my kid and you’re not my intended audience. I’m under no obligation to imagine only healthy, wholesome relationships between people for your benefit. Until you’re old enough to understand that the world is not exclusively made up of people whose responsibility it is to protect you from your own decisions, yes, you’re too young for established media fandom. Fandom shouldn’t be “friendly” to you.
Tag: truth
The densest people on the internet are the ones who say sci fi and fantasy are are getting too political. Why can’t we go back to the good old days of The Twilight Zone, with its various episodes about mob mentality and the danger of mass paranoia that totally weren’t about the Red Scare. Or Star Wars and its genocidal empire of racially homogeneous Aryan men. Or Dune with its religious tribal peoples who live in a desert that contains the galaxy’s most valuable resource and the wars with the foreign colonizers, that was purely from Frank Herbert’s imagination. Can you imagine how much Star Trek would suck if it was packed to the brim with ham-fisted allegories of every societal issue of the 20th century. Not like all this modern ultra-political stuff, like a woman hero.
french recipes: if you’re not making this in paris then what’s the point. fuck you
italian recipes: use the left leg meat of a pig from one of three farms in this specific area of tuscany, or from this day my grandmother will begin manifesting physically in your house
american recipes: buy these three cans of stuff and put them in a pan congrats you cooked
chinese recipes, as handed down from mother to child: season it with a pinch of this and some of that. you want to know the exact amount? feel it in your heart. ask the stars. yell into the void.
English recipes: boil and salt it. Okay that’s it enjoy
Greek recipes: You followed all the right steps but this isn’t quite right. I don’t know what to tell you.
Australia recipes: chuck it on the barbie
Latinx recipes: you will never make it better than your abuela, face the facts
Filipino recipes: add rice and soy sauce and some more rice MORE RICE MORE RICE MORE
Serbian Recipes: everything is salad. Ajvar? Salad. A single whole hot pepper covered in oil? Salad. Cabbage? Salad. Kajmak? Salad.
Lebanese recipes: If you don’t have at least 3 family members cooking this dinner with you than you aren’t doing it right.
Indonesian recipes: have you added spices? Add some just in case. Eat with rice. It’s not a proper meal until there’s rice in it. You just had bread/burger/cake/pizza? Eat rice anyway or you’ll die of starvation
Bonus Javanese recipes: Have you added sugar? What do you mean it’s meant to be salty/sour/spicy/something else? ADD SUGAR.TO IT
Canadian recipes: Well part of the directions are in metric but you have imperial measuring cups. I hope you like math because we’re going to find out how many gallons in a litre and how many millimetres are in a cup.
Swedish recipes: Assemble all the beige items you have in your kitchen. Great. now add raw red onions, dill and salt and white pepper. if u prefer it blander, don’t do the last things. consider serving it with jam
Norwegian recipes: listen after three days skiing uphill you will eat anything so stop complaining.
Indian recipes: spend two weeks digging the required spices out of your cupboards. Chop onions until you cry. Fry onions with spices until evey pore in your body is open, let the fragrance seep into your skin, become one with the curry.
german recipes: this meal isn’t what you think it is. it has 164 different names in different regions. it’s either made of potatoes, served with potatoes, or it’s cake. there’s a 50% chance it’s actually austrian, but don’t tell anyone.
belarusian recipes: “cook over a slow fire until done”. how many degrees is a slow fire? when is “done”? what am i even cooking there’s no picture and the only ingredients are honey and cornflower
turkish recipes: “if you do this, there’s really -REALLY- good change that you’ll die because everything is too spicy or too sweet but here we go”
romanian recipes: if you don’t already know the ingredients and directions by heart then what are we doing here
Brazilian recipes: make an extra sweet (preferably with chocolate) version of other culture’s food (sushis, hot dogs, pizzas, kibes, sfeehas, spaghetti made of chocolate; strawberry sashimis, banana burritos…)
American South recipes: put a stick of butter in it. Oh, you already put butter in? Well, bless your heart honey, but go ahead and put another stick of butter in there.
When a story idea comes out of nowhere:
THERE IS NO RUNNING. THERE IS NO ESCAPE. THERE IS NO MERCY.
This is so accurate it’s not even funny. Every single writer, no matter the skill level, can relate to this post.
if your dog sleeps with you then you understand the struggle
drawings via @chrispyfishinc
I’m going to tell you a secret—a big one. I hate drafting. I love coming up with a concept and a premise, fleshing out characters and using a beat sheet to plot my novel. After all the brainstorming, plotting, character building, and outlining, it’s time to start drafting. But I don’t want to do it.
Why? The draft never reads as beautifully as the story in my head. I get discouraged, frustrated, scared, and angry. Drafting can be messy and uncomfortable, sometimes even painful. Keep going: the fun starts when the draft is done and it’s time to revise.
Kami Garcia is the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures and Dangerous Creatures novels. Kami’s solo novels include Unbreakable and Unmarked (The Legion Series), The X-Files Origins: Agent of Chaos, and The Lovely Reckless. Kami is a cofounder of YALLFEST and a member of the NaNoWriMo Writer’s Board. She was a teacher for seventeen years before coauthoring her first novel on a dare from her students.
Your Camp Care Package is brought to you in partnership with We Need Diverse Books. Sign up to receive more Camp Care Packages at campnanowrimo.org.
(via nanowrimo)
Ardwynna's Place 