I just showed my 11-year-old son how many coffee shop AUs there are on AO3.
Why?
He sat down the other day to write a Minecraft story about three kids who go through a portal in their back yard and end up in the world of Minecraft where they have to battle all the big bosses (I didn’t even realize there WERE big bosses in Minecraft but that’s beside the point). He wrote three chapters with a little input from me – his first beta – and y’all?
He was fucking excited. To be writing a story.
Today he came home from school and seemed a little down, so I asked him about it only to find out that some little asshole at his school told him, “There is already a Minecraft story.”
Me: Okay? So what?
Lucifer: If there’s already a story, no one will read mine.
Immediately, I dragged him in and pulled up my AO3 account. My boys know I write fanfiction, so I showed him my account and how many subscribers I have. Then I showed him how many Teen Wolf stories there are. And then, because it seemed like the perfect analogy, I said, “What if I wrote a story where two characters meet in a coffee shop and fall in love? No werewolves, nothing at all to do with the actual Teen Wolf universe. Just Stiles and Derek meet in a coffeeshop and fall in love.”
He laughed.
I showed him Mornings Aren’t For Everyone. Showed him how many hits it had, how many kudos, how many lovely comments.
Then I said, “So do you think, if anyone else wrote a story about those exact same characters meeting in a coffee shop and falling in love… would anyone read it?”
He laughed and said, “No because you already did.”
So I clicked on the Sterek tag and refined to coffee shop AU. His mind was blown to see that they ALL had thousands of hits and kudos and comments. Then I clicked on JUST the coffee shop AU tag and showed him all the fics across all the fandoms written by countless different people.
I’m going to tell you all now what I told him because it applies to everyone.
Write your story. It doesn’t matter that someone else has written a story about that subject. They didn’t write YOUR story. Only you can do that.
And I want to read your story.
Holy crap, this is A+ parenting and such a good lesson.
my year 8 students had to do a budgeting activity pretending they were living out of home on $2000 a month and I find this written on there help I can’t fucking breathe
We had to do this and I was partnered with a boy whose parents are a scientist and a doctor. My family spawned the book: Top Drawer Villain – autobiography of a London criminal.
First of all, we had to choose where we would shop. He wanted to buy from Booths. “We are not buying from Booths,“ I snapped. ”Get on Asda’s website right now.“ His face froze.
“A-Asda?” he whispered. “But that’s where… The Lower Classes shop.”
This was a good start.
We then had to decide on a menu. We started on breakfast. “Toast,” he said.
“Toast,“ I said. ”Great. Look, Asda has its own wholemeal—”
“Warburton’s thick-slice white bread. Nothing else. With olive oil.”
“You WHAT?“ I choked. ”You have olive oil, on your toast, in the morning?”
He frowned. “Who doesn’t?”
“Okay,“ I said, ”but what will the children eat?”
He gaped at me. “The children? We have children?”
We continued. All was well until it came to what we would have on our sandwiches. We even sorted out the children’s lunch – they, of course, would get free school meals. “Yes,“ he agreed; ”if we can’t even afford Bertolli then they can get school meals on the government.”
He asked what dressing we should have on our ham. “Nuh-uh,“ I said. ”Can’t have ham. I’m vegetarian.”
“But I’m not.”
“Yes, but we’re married and we can only afford one sandwich filler so it has to be vege—”
“We’re married!?”
“Of course we’re married! You’re devout Christian – how do you think I convinced you to have children?”
He shook his head, frowning. “Well I want ham. You’ll have to put back the washing powder – I need ham on my sandwiches.”
We continued. Finally, it was dinner. “Okay,“ he said, clearly thinking hard; ”for dinner, we can have… Chicken nuggets and… Beans?”
“Vegetarian.”
“Vegetarian nuggets then. And beans.”
“We need vegetables. The children have to have a balanced diet.”
“You and your children!“ he yelled, and the whole class looked around.
“They’re your children too!” I screamed back.
He leapt to his feet, shaking his head and looking distraught. “I don’t believe it – I don’t believe you! I wouldn’t have your children!”
“Please,“ I cried, standing up also. ”Don’t—”
“I want a divorce!”
And he walked out of the classroom.
The teacher stood up and stared between me and the door through which he had vanished. “I’m sorry,“ I whispered, ”but we couldn’t do it any more. There were just too many differences – I can’t live with someone who thinks champagne is a budget.”
I can’t wait to see this guy when he gets to university.
but to be very blunt and very serious – it really is disturbing how you can look at fashion magazine spreads, teen magazine spreads and other media depicting teen girl trends/fashion and see how girls dressed in the 90′s, early – mid 2000′s compared to now.
i mean 1998 – 1999
2002
2003
jump ahead to 2008
vs depictions of teenagers in media / teen fashion and teen trends of the last few years (2015-2018)
and people always say “if you look at teenage girls and see sexualization, then you’re the pervert” but .. i just don’t get that line of reasoning. how can you be so naive to look at how media, modeling companies, clothing companies, etc are treating teenage girls ( some of which aren’t even teenagers – but as young as 10,11, 12 years old ) and say “nope, nothing to see here 🙂 but if you call out the problem then YOU’RE the creep” instead of acknowledging that aforementioned companies are blatantly and intentionally producing clothing that is more and more revealing, less and less age appropriate, portraying girls in more sexualized ways as years go on, peddling these themes through social media, televised media, advertising, etc. i mean, that’s the same line of reasoning of “if you look at this picture of barack and michelle obama depicted as monkeys as being racist -then you’re actually the racist one for thinking that black people are monkeys!” when the artist of the photo is the one who blatantly and obviously was being racist.
Lol have you seen Instagram?
15y/o
14 y/o
I’ve personally known girls (underage) who actually post what would considered child porn (partially or near fully nude/provocative poses) pictures of themselves while hoards of “feminists”, minor AND adult, cheered them on. I’ve watched the same girls continue to post sexually suggestive photos while their peers/fans encouraged them and adult men made sexually explicit comments under the pictures. I usually cant tell the difference between teen and adult women anymore, especially on Instagram. And it keeps getting worse. Attention, sex appeal, a huge following and validation is everything right now. That’s all that matters and if you dare call out what’s wrong with how teenage girls are being advertised as sex objects, you’re degrading and “slut shaming” them. I just want kids to be able to be kids and seeing my 13 year old cousin snap chatting her full face of makeup is disturbing enough
when i say pedophile culture this is exactly what im referring to, its sick and twisted. theyre children that look like adults and under no circumstance should that be okay. i have so much fear for this generation of girls and im scared sick of how its going to just keep getting worse.
Wow I’m a grown woman and these kids look older than me.
“The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre)[3][4][5] were the shootings on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[6][7]”
Don’t forget that basically half the country thought the students deserved it…
Another picture from Kent State.
But it was not just Kent State, eleven days later Mississippi Police fired 150 rounds into a dormitory at Jackson State College, killing 2 and wounding 15 black protesters.
Btw half of the students killed at Kent State weren’t even protesting, they were just there
What in the absolute fuck
When the Irish guy has known about this since he was like 8, but it’s suspiciously hard for Americans to learn about…
Let’s be real. If little girls’ knees, shoulders, and clavicles are a problem for male teachers, you don’t have a dress code issue. You have a pedophile issue.
March, 11th. While students were occupying a lecture hall in Montpellier’s University of Law, the Dean sent a fascist group helped by two teachers to beat up the students. Three of them ended up in the hospital, the girl in the picture with a fractured skull.
March, 27th. 4,000 students are sitting at Montpellier’s University of Art and Literature . We are voting the continued occupation of the University until all our demands are met. We make sure to include the French President’s resignation in our demands, to be certain that they will never be met. To this day, the university is still occupied.
April, 4th.
“Travaille, consomme et ferme ta gueule ! Et c’est quoi le message qu’on passe aux jeunes ?” “Tout est à nous ! Tout est à nous ! Rien n’est à eux ! Rien n’est à eux ! Tout ce qu’ils ont, ils l’ont volé ! Partage des richesses, partage des savoirs ou alors ça va péter !”
“Work, buy and shut the fuck up! And what’s the message you give to the youth?” “Everything is ours! Nothing is theirs! All they have, they have stolen! Share the wealth, share the knowledge or we will blow everything up!”
National day of strike. 2,700 people in Paris. 1,000 in Lyon. 2,000 in Montpellier. The workers joined the students, the hospital staff, the train and rails staff. Everyone marched, threatened by the CRS (security police) and smoke bombs. We had to stay masked because fascists groups were attacking people leaving the march.
April, 11th
Montpellier: Paul Valery University’s servers hacked, final exams pending
The Dean of my University (Art and Literature) has been a vocal opposant of our movement. In an effort to stop the occupation and threaten us, he has repeatedly refused to come to our meetins, has ignored the decisions made by the teaching staff and threatened to fire teachers who decided to march with us. His last effort has been regarding finals. Because the university is blocked since February (see the post I made), we didn’t have classes and almost no material to take exams. Final week was supposed to be from April 9th to 13th. The Dean ordered the teachers to create online exams for us to send. We received the subjects Friday 6th. I had to write an 18-page-long essay on animation in TWO DAYS. But today, something incredible happened. The plateform used by the university to communicate with students and send our exams was hacked by the protesting students. We can’t access it. We can’t send our exams. Furthermore, an assembly of teachers was held yesterday and they decided that they were going to play on a technicality. The Dean ordered them to make exams; he didn’t say if he wanted the teachers to grade them. A unanimous vote decided that they would give 10 to each student (we are graded on 20 and 10 is the minimum to pass) and bonus point if they give the exams.
Again, I’m begging you, share this around. The governement is purposefully hiding what is happening because they’re afraid it’s going to turn into another May, 1968. Reblog, repost, I don’t care. I just want people to see it. I’m 20 and I’m risking my life when I march.
I HAVE NEWS AND IT’S SCARY
Message from the video games teacher: “Hello everyone. There are rumors of police intervention in the next 48 hours on campus. I’m asking you to share the information, I will personnally be on campus tomorrow all day, as well as Friday. I don’t want to advise you to come, I’d feel too responsable if something happened to you… I do however think that the more students and teachers are here, the less risk there is that the police will come…’
[MORE NEWS]
“New information: a staff meeting is organized tomorrow at 9am by the university’s Dean. We just had Sud Eduction on the phone and they informed us that the meeting is organized in anticipation, to celebrate a very likely victory of the police against the students at 7am. I will be on campus at 6:30am with other teachers to support the students in case the police does come…”
THIS IS SCARY OK. THEY ARE DOING THE SAME THING THAT THE LAW UNI DEAN HAS DONE.
Tomorrow, I will go at 6:30. Let the police come. If they get violent against peaceful students who haven’t touched ANYONE in the two months this protest has been going on, there will be consequences. We will take pictures, we will film. I’m a fucking cinema students and you can bet I’ll send my bloodied face to every fucking news station if they ever lay a finger on me.
Again, I beg you, share this, please. If I’m about to get my face broken, it better be for the greater good.
why “spanking is harmful” studies will, ultimately, never matter to parents who want to hit their kids:
@fandomsandfeminism wrote a great post recently about the fact that we have, essentially, a scientific consensus on the fact that all forms of hitting children, including those euphemistically referred to as “spanking”, are psychologically harmful. they’ve also done an amazing job responding to a lot of parents self-admitted abusers who think “I hit my child and I’m okay with that” and/or “I was hit as a child and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me” are more meaningful than 60 years of peer-reviewed research.
unfortunately, I’m here to tell you why all of that makes very little difference.
in 2014, a couple of researchers from UCLA and MIT named Alan Fiske and Tage Rai published a book called Virtuous Violence, the result of a major study of the motivations for interpersonal violence. Rai wrote a shorter piece about it in Quartz, which is a pretty light but still illuminating (hah, I did not see that pun coming but I’m gonna leave it) read.
the upshot of Fiske and Rai’s work is that most violence is fundamentally misunderstood because we think it is inherently outside the norms of a supposedly moral society. we presume that when someone commits a mass shooting or beats their spouse they are somehow intrinsically broken, either incapable of telling right from wrong or too lacking in self-control to prevent themselves from doing the wrong thing.
but what Fiske and Rai found was that, in fact, the opposite is true: most violence is morally motivated. people who commit violent acts aren’t lacking moral compasses – they believe those violent acts are not only morally acceptable, but morally obligatory. usually, these feelings emerge in the context of a relationship which is culturally defined as hierarchical. in other words, parents who commit violence against their children do so because they believe it is necessary that they do so in order to establish or affirm the dominancewhich they feel they are owed by both tradition and moral right.
when abusive parents say that they are “hitting children for their own good”, they are not speaking in terms of any rational predictions for the child’s future, but rather from a place of believing that the child must learn to be submissive in order to be a “good” child, to fulfill their place in the relationship.
this kind of violence is not the result of calm, intellectually reasoned deliberation about the child’s well-being.
for that reason and that reason alone it will never be ended by scientific evidence.
history tells us more than we need to verify this. the slave trade and the institution of racial slavery, and their attendant forms of “corrective” physical violence, for instance, did not end because someone demonstrated they were physically or psychologically harmful to slaves – that was never a question in people’s minds to begin with. for generations, slavery was upheld as right and good not because it was viewed as harmless, but because it was viewed as morally necessary that one category of people should be “kept in their place” below another by any means necessary, because they were lower beings by natural order and god’s law. this violence ended because western society became gradually less convinced of the whole moral framework at play, not because we needed scientists to come along and demonstrate that chain gangs and whippings were psychologically detrimental. this is only one example from a world history filled with many, many forms of violence, both interpersonal and structural, which ultimately were founded on the idea that moral hierarchies must be maintained through someone’s idea of judiciously meted-out suffering.
and this, ultimately, is why we cannot end violence against children by pointing out that it is harmful – because the question of whether or not it is harmful does not enter into parents’ decisions about whether or not to commit violence in the first place. what they care about is not the hypothetical harm done to the child, but the reinforcement of the authority-ranked nature of the relationship itself. the reason these people so often sound like their primary concern is maintaining their “right” to hit their children is because it is. they believe that anyone telling them they can’t hit their children is attempting to undermine the moral structure of that individual relationship and, in a broader sense, the natural order of adult-child relations in society.
and that’s why the movement has to be greater than one against hitting kids. it has to be a movement against treating them as inferior, in general. it has to be a movement that says, children are people, that says children’s rights are human rights, that says the near-absolute authority of parents, coupled with the general social supremacy of adults and the marginalization of youth, have to all be torn down at once as an ideology of injustice and violence. anything less is ultimately pointless.
my friend’s four-year-old son wouldn’t go to sleep because he wanted to keep looking at the stars and she tried to bribe him with a piece of chocolate and he just said “would you rather get a reward or be happy” and turned back to the window
wupacing 
