Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
When I was nine, possibly ten, an author came to our school to talk about writing. His name was Hugh Scott, and I doubt he’s known outside of Scotland. And even then I haven’t seen him on many shelves in recent years in Scotland either. But he wrote wonderfully creepy children’s stories, where the supernatural was scary, but it was the mundane that was truly terrifying. At least to little ten year old me. It was Scooby Doo meets Paranormal Activity with a bonny braw Scottish-ness to it that I’d never experienced before.
I remember him as a gangling man with a wiry beard that made him look older than he probably was, and he carried a leather bag filled with paper. He had a pen too that was shaped like a carrot, and he used it to scribble down notes between answering our (frankly disinterested) questions. We had no idea who he was you see, no one had made an effort to introduce us to his books. We were simply told one morning, ‘class 1b, there is an author here to talk to you about writing’, and this you see was our introduction to creative writing. We’d surpassed finger painting and macaroni collages. It was time to attempt Words That Were Untrue.
You could tell from the look on Mrs M’s face she thought it was a waste of time. I remember her sitting off to one side marking papers while this tall man sat down on our ridiculously short chairs, and tried to talk to us about what it meant to tell a story. She wasn’t big on telling stories, Mrs M. She was also one of the teachers who used to take my books away from me because they were “too complicated” for me, despite the fact that I was reading them with both interest and ease. When dad found out he hit the roof. It’s the one and only time he ever showed up to the school when it wasn’t parents night or the school play. After that she just left me alone, but she made it clear to my parents that she resented the fact that a ten year old used words like ‘ubiquitous’ in their essays. Presumably because she had to look it up.
Anyway, Mr Scott, was doing his best to talk to us while Mrs M made scoffing noises from her corner every so often, and you could just tell he was deflating faster than a bouncy castle at a knife sharpening party, so when he asked if any of us had any further questions and no one put their hand up I felt awful. I knew this was not only insulting but also humiliating, even if we were only little children. So I did the only thing I could think of, put my hand up and said “Why do you write?”
I’d always read about characters blinking owlishly, but I’d never actually seen it before. But that’s what he did, peering down at me from behind his wire rim spectacles and dragging tired fingers through his curly beard. I don’t think he expected anyone to ask why he wrote stories. What he wrote about, and where he got his ideas from maybe, and certainly why he wrote about ghosts and other creepy things, but probably not why do you write. And I think he thought perhaps he could have got away with “because it’s fun, and learning is fun, right kids?!”, but part of me will always remember the way the world shifted ever so slightly as it does when something important is about to happen, and this tall streak of a man looked down at me, narrowed his eyes in an assessing manner and said, “Because people told me not to, and words are important.”
I nodded, very seriously in the way children do, and knew this to be a truth. In my limited experience at that point, I knew certain people (with a sidelong glance to Mrs M who was in turn looking at me as though she’d just known it’d be me that type of question) didn’t like fiction. At least certain types of fiction. I knew for instance that Mrs M liked to read Pride and Prejudice on her lunch break but only because it was sensible fiction, about people that could conceivably be real. The idea that one could not relate to a character simply because they had pointy ears or a jet pack had never occurred to me, and the fact that it’s now twenty years later and people are still arguing about the validity of genre fiction is beyond me, but right there in that little moment, I knew something important had just transpired, with my teacher glaring at me, and this man who told stories to live beginning to smile. After that the audience turned into a two person conversation, with gradually more and more of my classmates joining in because suddenly it was fun. Mrs M was pissed and this bedraggled looking man who might have been Santa after some serious dieting, was starting to enjoy himself. As it turned out we had all of his books in our tiny corner library, and in the words of my friend Andrew “hey there’s a giant spider fighting a ghost on this cover! neat!” and the presentation devolved into chaos as we all began reading different books at once and asking questions about each one. “Does she live?”— “What about the talking trees” —“is the ghost evil?” —“can I go to the bathroom, Miss?” —“Wow neat, more spiders!”
After that we were supposed to sit down, quietly (glare glare) and write a short story to show what we had learned from listening to Mr Scott. I wont pretend I wrote anything remotely good, I was ten and all I could come up with was a story about a magic carrot that made you see words in the dark, but Mr Scott seemed to like it. In fact he seemed to like all of them, probably because they were done with such vibrant enthusiasm in defiance of the people who didn’t want us to.
The following year, when I’d moved into Mrs H’s class—the kind of woman that didn’t take away books from children who loved to read and let them write nonsense in the back of their journals provided they got all their work done—a letter arrived to the school, carefully wedged between several copies of a book which was unheard of at the time, by a new author known as J.K. Rowling. Mrs H remarked that it was strange that an author would send copies of books that weren’t even his to a school, but I knew why he’d done it. I knew before Mrs H even read the letter.
Because words are important. Words are magical. They’re powerful. And that power ought to be shared. There’s no petty rivalry between story tellers, although there’s plenty who try to insinuate it. There’s plenty who try to say some words are more valuable than others, that somehow their meaning is more important because of when it was written and by whom. Those are the same people who laud Shakespeare from the heavens but refuse to acknowledge that the quote “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them“ is a dick joke.
And although Mr Scott seems to have faded from public literary consumption, I still think about him. I think about his stories, I think about how he recommended another author and sent copies of her books because he knew our school was a puritan shithole that fought against the Wrong Type of Wordes and would never buy them into the library otherwise. But mostly I think about how he looked at a ten year old like an equal and told her words and important, and people will try to keep you from writing them—so write them anyway.
*sobs for like the umpteenth time this day and reblogs the fuck out of this*
Reblog, Facebook, and sending it to myself so I can always find it…
This brings back so many memories of my childhood stories that I may just weep.
“I wont pretend I wrote anything remotely good, I was ten and all I could come up with was a story about a magic carrot that made you see words in the dark, but Mr Scott seemed to like it.” Are you KIDDING me, that is the most beautiful metaphor about writing and you used the man’s own PEN as the central symbol I’m crying and I can’t even imagine how he felt sdlfkajsdf GOD.
i was emotionally abused in school as a small child, but strongly supported and validated at home; as a result, instead of coming to believe i deserved to be dehumanized and scapegoated, i developed a reactive stubbornnes where everyone who hasn’t earned my trust over a course of years is on probation and everything they say has to pass a gamut of skeptical analysis.
now, don’t get me wrong, this has caused a lot of problems for me in my life. my intimacy issues are breathtakingly bad. BUT it does have the followiing benefit: abusers testing for victim potential push me once, then run like hell.
what occurs to me after reading about the way abusers systematically erode your boundaries and use the frog-boiling method to make abuse seem normal, is that the general public could perhaps benefit from my experience, and learn that there is a simple first line of defense against abusers:
politely refuse the first request a new friend or date makes of you.
that’s it. that’ll weed out a whole lot of the assholes without you ever having to lift a finger to eject them. decent people will accept your refusal – they might be a little confused or hurt, but they won’t PUSH – and abusers will either show their true colors, or run like the cowards they are.
now, it might take a bit of cleverness to refuse the literally first request if it’s something like ‘please pass the salt’ that no sensible person would ever refuse, but if your hands are conveniently buttery you can do it. otherwise, wait for the first actual favor that requires effort, or just bluff it out – give them a cheerful nope and watch how they react.
because, in case you didn’t know this, a real friend will NOT throw a shitfit if you tell them you can’t drive them to work tomorrow, or you don’t want to lend them your jacket, or you’d rather they don’t take the last soda from your fridge. they really won’t. they’ll still be your friend. they won’t make a big deal out of it. i promise, abusive behavior is NOT normal, no matter what someone in your life may have told you.
Me, a humble fic farmer, tending her plot of land:
neighbor john said there was a shipwar starting just over the hills. what do you think Ma, do you think we'll ever see a shipwar?
Ma, clutching her apron to her chest:
oh dear, I hope not!
Pa, sitting in his rocking chair and smoking his pipe:
hmph! there's always been shipwars and there will always be shipwars. you just keep your nose out of it and mind your own business. we ain't got no business messing around in shipwars. now step to it! i want that field of headcanons and plot twists plowed by morning! and keep those plot bunnies from getting at the smut, we can't afford anymore WIPs!
If you took the whole of Norway, scrunched it up a bit, shook out all the moose and reindeer, hurled it 10,000 miles around the world, and filled it with birds, then you’d be wasting your time, because it looks very much as if someone has already done it.
—Douglas Adams on New Zealand in “Last Chance to See” (via twin-city-ankh-and-morpork)
ok here we go pet peeve no. 45678: when girls are made fun of for behaviour that has literally been drilled into them by society. let’s go through some of these.
haha girls are all like “don’t look at me without makeup on!!!!”: maybe because we are taught from a very young age that we’re ugly without makeup. if we don’t wear it we’re asked why we look so tired, why we didn’t make an effort today, why we seem slobbish. as we grow older if we don’t wear makeup we’re seen as unprofessional and it can actually affect our careers but no yeah it definitely doesn’t make sense that we’re insecure about our naked faces whatever
man my gf always takes food from my plate so annoying lol #relatablecontent: probably because she’s fucking starving but it was instilled in her that cute girls eat like precious baby bunnies so she got a salad but all she fuCKING WANTS ARE FRIES. JUST GIVE HER THE FUCKING FRIES.
girls always go to the bathroom together haha lame and weird: mainly so we don’t get attacked asshole. also having a pee buddy is fun i pity you and your pee-buddy-less experience. when do your friends tell you how nice your hair is. oh that’s right they don’t because guys are the fucking worst
look at these drunk girls tottering around on high heels they look ridiculous: i will defend to the death women’s right to get just as completely shitfaced as men and don’t even ACT like it’s not practically fucking mandated that if a woman isn’t wearing high heels she isn’t dressed up. high heels LITERALLY GIVE ME BACK PROBLEMS but i have to wear them for work because if I don’t i’m not “””””professionally dressed”””””” give me a fucking break
WOMAN AND SHOPPING. OHOHOHO BOY.: yeah ok so we have to spend money you don’t on makeup products, skin products, hair removal products, pads and tampons, and on top of that we’re expected to change our clothes more often than you which means we need more of them, and also women’s clothing sizes are voodoo so every fitting session is a battle with your self confidence. AND we pay the gender tax. i fucking hate shopping. i do it because i have to, you buttnerd. and even if some women enjoy shopping im sure some men also enjoy shopping??? why must you gender??? activities??? why is this the world we live in????
girls on their periods are fucking psycho hahaha!!!: no we’re just in more or less constant pain so we have less patience to put up with your your bullshit. not to mention that a woman’s testosterone levels actually INCREASE on her period so GUESS WHO WE’RE MORE FUCKING LIKE, CHAD. GIVE A FUCKING GUESS.
lol girls spend forever in the bathroom lololol: all right first of all if we’re talking about say, a sporting event, and you’re complaining about all the women who are queueing to go to the bathroom, we have a COUPLE MORE STEPS INVOLVED THAN PEOPLE WHO CAN JUST WHIP IT OUT AND THEN TUCK IT AWAY. not to mention the fact that yeah we have to take a second to double check the paint smeared on our faces or the socially acceptable hairstyle we’re wearing. we’re not allowed have fucking buzzcuts chad. apparently having less than the requisite amount of dead protein on the top of our head makes us a target for verbal abuse on the street chad. how about ranting about the people who built the stadium or whatever who KNOW it takes women longer to go to the bathroom but normally lot the same amount of stalls to men and women?? AND IF WE’RE TALKING ABOUT PERSONAL MAINTENANCE yeah ok buddy and how long does it take you to shave your legs? you think I like spending SEVENTY TWO DAYS OUT OF MY LIFE accidentally cutting myself and pulling muscles in my thighs??? well. i dont. so that’s why i don’t do it mainly. but we probably spend the rest of the time slathering ourselves with anti-aging creams because everyone is falling over themselves to tells us that our sell-by date is 35 while George Clooney and RDJ will probably continue to play wry sexy playboys until their fucking hips fall off. go fuck yourself chad.
GOD. I CAN’T EVEN GO ON. ADD YOUR OWN IF YOU THINK OF MORE.
this post is gold
I hate you Chad
i was not expecting this to get popular at all but i will tell you one joyous thing: over 2,000 notes so far and not one single person has disagreed. WE ALL KNOW ITS BULLSHIT AND THAT IS SOMETHING AT LEAST.
Waiting hours for a cellphone to charge may become a thing of the past, thanks to an 18-year-old high-school student’s invention. She won a $50,000 prize Friday at an international science fair for creating an energy storage device that can be fully juiced in 20 to 30 seconds.
Everybody, remember this face. Remember this name. If this becomes a commonly used & highly lauded discovery, at some point a White guy is going to take credit, even if he has to word it like “Improved upon a previous…” No no no Fuck that guy. Remember this brown girl. Remeeeemmmmmberrrrr
What about her name? I keep seeing this all over my dashboard, but I’ve never seen it with her name in the actual post and not just in the link.
Eesha Khare. That’s who she is. Not just “Nameless-brown-girl-who-made-something.”
Barcelona-based fashion designer Alassie of El Costurero Real creates delicate cloaks, capes, and scarves that look like diaphanous moth and butterfly and wings for an instant fairy transformation. Each pair of vibrantly-colored insect wings is made of muslin that’s so light and delicate it looks like chiffon. The edges of the wings are wired to help them keep their shape and make them easy to use while dancing. Build a human-sized cocoon and you’ll be ready to entertain friends at parties or stage impromptu street performances.
Visit the El Costurero Real Etsy shop to check out more of Alassie’s wings as well as all sorts of other fantasy, Victorian, and steampunk garments and accessories.
