you ever notice a lot of stuff is considered poor and gross unless its upper middle class (white) people doing it
food trucks in the 90s were the realm of taco trucks and fairground food and were always considered unhygienic and nasty until all these rich city kids started opening food trucks and now they’re “trendy” and “innovative”
riding your bike to work is only considered geofriendly if you can also afford to drive a car but don’t want to, then you’re saving the earth, everyone else isn’t somehow??
recycling old cheap stuff to be used as furniture and wearing really old clothing is a sign of poverty unless you’re doing it a certain way or wearing a certain kind of old clothing
double standards are gross and you should expose them in your life as much as possible
When I was 15/16 I was in an accident that left me with chronic pain and internal damage that meant pregnancy was highly unlikely for me. I’ve never wanted children. The reality of me probably being unable to have children never bothered me. It’s bothered everyone else though. People have cried more over my inability to have children than I have. No matter what I say no one will believe that I’m happy in my body regardless of its ability to produce children. They mourn my body like it belongs to them. As though my ability to have children has any affect on their life.
A few months ago I missed two periods in a row and took a pregnancy test that turned out to be a false positive. I went to Planned Parenthood to get a professional opinion and with the full intention of getting an abortion if it turned out that I was pregnant against all odds. There was no fear beyond the usual nervousness you experience at the prospect of a medical procedure. There was no emotional turmoil over my decision. I know what I want and it isn’t kids. The choice was an easy one for me.
When I finally opened up about my pregnancy scare to a few friends, all of them “good” feminist women, they were almost offended over how easy the decision was for me. “If you had been pregnant that may have been your only shot at a biological child. How could you just give that up without more thought?” One asked me. “So many women in your position would kill to be able to get pregnant and you were going to just throw it away?” Another one said to me.
I am not an incubator for other women’s hopes and dreams. If I ever do get pregnant I will not stay that way just because other people in my position would be grateful to have a chance at experiencing pregnancy/birth. I’m not interested in that. I never will be. I don’t want children.
If your idea of “my body my choice” only extends to certain people it’s bullshit. If you think certain women should be grateful for unwanted pregnancies just because any pregnancy for them was unlikely you’re disrespecting their choice. Stop treating women with fertility/reproductive health issues like we’re broken or should feel sad over our health when we tell you we don’t. Stop thinking we owe you “miracle babies” even when we don’t want children.
I am not an incubator for other women’s hopes and dreams
I am not an incubator for other women’s hopes and dreams
I am not an incubator for other women’s hopes and dreams
Most commonly, this is exemplified with the Sassy Gay Best Friend. The Sassy Gay Best Friend has no queer friends, inexplicably content to surround himself exclusively with heterosexual, cisgender women and listen to them vent about what pugnacious assholes their boyfriends are.
The Sassy Gay Best Friend exhausts me just by thinking about him. The closest friends of every other queer person I know are composed predominantly of other queer people, myself included, and it’s with other queer people that we tend to best connect.
Dealing with large groups of straight people tends to exhaust and upset me, and I cannot imagine voluntarily opting into half the amount of heterosexual melodrama as the Sassy Gay Best Friend.
Especially to forward the development of straight people, which it usually is.
The Bury Your Gays trope is thought to have originated with the strict censorship laws of the twentieth century, which dictated that queer characters and relationships could only be portrayed if they atoned for their sins and “turned straight” by the end of the story, or – drumroll please – died.
In other words, the only thing burying your gays accomplishes is contributing to an ugly cycle. So if you have the option not to kill off queer characters, don’t.
This phenomenon, commonly known as queerbaiting, originated with clever creators finding loopholes in the aforementioned censorship laws of the nineteenth and twentieth century, by weaving romantic and/or erotic relationships between same gender-characters in between the lines.
One of my favorite examples of this phenomenon is 1950s film Some Like It Hot, a surprisingly tender and thoughtful examination of gender identity, femininity, and sexual orientation. Concisely put, the two male leads are circumstantially compelled to disguise themselves as women and travel with an all-female band, during which one of the men captures the affection of a (male) millionaire, who asks for his hand in marriage. He says yes, and the film ends with this exchange:
Okay, this isn’t exactly subtext, which is why the film was produced without the approval of the Motion Picture Production Code. But you get the idea: this is as blatant as queer identities could be in 1950s America.
The key difference? It is no longer the 1950s, and what was revolutionary for the time period is not revolutionary now. Don’t repeat JK Rowling’s fallacy and expect to squeak by with subtextual or offscreen representation.
Far too often, queer rep in the media showcases dysfunctional relationships, usually short-term, sex-based, and/or with a reasonably severe power imbalance (looking at you, Call Me By Your Name.) This is worrisome, because it conveys an unhealthy message to queer youth about what normality looks like, and perpetrates a pervasive stereotype that queer people are more likely to be deviant and unhealthy than their straight peers.
So allow your work to reflect this! Portray loving, supportive, and affectionate queer couples who encourage one another’s success and quality of life. Think Nomi and Amanita from Sense8, or Holt and Kevin from Brooklyn 99.
To countermand this, try to portray queer love as sweet, pure, and wholesome whenever possible. Depict puppy love and crushes and adorable dates between same gender couples. Expunge the idea that queer sexuality is inherently profane.
This doesn’t mean the couples can’t be interesting or complex, mind you – books such as Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe are excellent examples of tenderly portrayed first love, while painting intriguing portraits of complex feelings and characters.
If you’re a straight person who hasn’t interacted much with the queer community, I’m going to personally recommend that you stay away from stereotypes. Promiscuous bisexuals, flamboyant gay men, butch lesbians, et cetera.
These people exist and deserve to be depicted – I’ve even depicted two out of the aforementioned three examples in me my most recent novel – but I’m inclined that it takes a member of the queer community to portray them with authenticity and respect.
So where do you start? Casual representation, that’s where.
Give me trans men relaxing in their binders at the end of the day, casual mention of same-gender crushes or past partners, a same-gender partner that the hero is fighting to get home to. Sometimes the best form of representation is to depict queer people as simply existing and living their lives.
Disclaimer:
These are all based off of my personal pet peeves and opinions as a queer woman, and you don’t have to follow any of them. Though I firmly believe we need better representation from up-and-coming authors, I’m profusely anti-censorship, and I believe everyone deserves to write their story the way they want to.
I hope this helps, and happy writing! ❤
Or just write how you want and ignore virtue signaling bs. Characters are characters. Sexuality is an afterthought
A) Read the end of this post, where I clearly said I support everyone’s prerogative to write how they want.
B) It’s hypocritical to accuse me of virtue signaling when this response is clearly a contrived attempt to appear edgy without actually improving your writing.
C) Sexuality isn’t an afterthought in the seventy-four countries where homosexuality is still illegal, the ten countries where it’s punishable by death, or the forty-one states where forced conversion therapy is still permitted, but you do you, buddy.
People who say bi erasure doesn’t happen need to realize Freddie Mercury is known as the most famous homosexual man when he identified himself as bisexual. If that’s not bi erasure I don’t even know.
Also PoC erasure, most people don’t know he was 100% Indian
Specifically he was Parsi. Also raised Zeroastrian.
Public service announcement: do not ever touch a black child’s hair.
Tell all your friends. Keep your hands to yourself. This is not a petting zoo and my child is not for touching.
My daughter had a free hair day today. Her dad took her to the store and some random white lady touched her hair. That’s why I hover over her at the store. I’ve almost punched people, I’ve grabbed them by their wrists and they’ll try that shit again.
DON’T TOUCH BLACK PEOPLE’S HAIR. DO NOT TOUCH BLACK CHILDREN. DO NOT TOUCH MIXED RACE CHILDREN. IT ISN’T JUST HAIR IT IS CONTROL OVER THEIR BODIES. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TOUCH THEIR BODIES OR HAIR.
This is pretty simple. Authors get paid when you buy their books. If you don’t buy their books, they don’t get paid. They get paid a percentage of the price you pay for their books. If you buy highly discounted books (from amazon or B&N or Scholastic book fairs), they get paid a lot less. If you borrow a book from the library, they got paid for that one time (in the US), but at least they got that. If you read a book from a pirated site, they don’t get paid.
The problem I see is that most people don’t understand this very simple equation. They think that authors get paid by publishers just to be authors. Hint: we don’t. Authors don’t get paid to do book tours. Unless people buy their books. Authors don’t get paid by the government to be authors. Authors don’t get paid by Hollywood for their books unless they get a pittance if they’re actually given an option (1% of authors get books optioned, 1% of those get made into movies). If an author gets a movie made, they still make very little of that money, except for if books are purchased. If an author wins an award, most of the time, they make no money from that directly, only if more books are sold.
Are you starting to understand what my point is here?
Yes, some authors make money on the side doing school visits for children. A lot of them don’t even make that, especially in Utah, where local publishers are using school visits as a promotional opportunity and have nearly eliminated the market for paid visits from authors who AREN’T trying to push books on kids. (Yes, I have strong feelings about this.)
Yes, these days authors make money sometimes by being youtube celebrities (I can count on one hand the number of authors doing this). Yes, authors sometimes make money through Patreon, though this is pretty new and we’re still figuring it out. Think about this for a minute. Authors have to hustle to make money because actually writing books doesn’t pay them very much. What? Yeah, even NYT best-selling authors are not making enough to pay mortgages sometimes.
Lots of authors are offered lots of opportunities to write for “promotion.” We do need to promote ourselves if we’re going to stay in the game and keep getting contracts for new books. But promotion is pennies. I’m not trying to complain about my chosen profession. This part of it sucks, but there are other wonderful parts, clearly, or I wouldn’t stay. But if you want to help me out and thank me for any of my writing you’ve gotten to read for free, it’s really simple. Buy one of my books. And while you’re at it, buy a book from another author you love.
If you can’t afford to buy the book, get it from the library. As OP states, at least then there’s one sale. And if it’s there on the shelves, people who haven’t heard of the author might pick it up, and mention it to someone, and spread the word of mouth about it. And if the book gets borrowed a lot, then the library is much more likely to buy the next book the author writes.
In the UK, there’s something called Public Lending Rights, where an author gets about 8 pence per borrow of their books (it’s a little more complicated than that, because they sample from a subset of libraries, but that’s the basic idea). So if a hundred people borrowed my book over the course of a year, I would get about £8. That may not sound like much, but that’s kinda the point OP is making.
Authors aren’t making a lot of money, so every little bit helps. Piracy doesn’t help at all.
Don’t fucking pirate books.
A publishing deal is nothing like a recording contract or being on a TV show/in a movie.
IF am author is paid an advance by the publisher – and that is getting rarer and rarer – it is basically “back payment” for 2+ years of work to write the book, and the average advance is $5000. For two years of full-time work – so that’s about $1.00/hr if you imagine it as payment for a 40-hour work week. AND AUTHORS DO NOT START TO EARN ROYALTIES UNTIL THEY’VE EARNED OUT THEIR ADVANCE. That means paying the publisher back in full for that advance money.
So really, authors make nothing until they’ve sold at least ~1000 books.
Most bestsellers sell roughly 5000 books. So to sell 1000 books and earn out the advance is extremely rare and extremely difficult. Most authors never sell enough copies to start earning royalties per sale, or else it takes 5+ years… and that’s IF despite low sales the publisher keeps your book in print at all. Most won’t.
If an author has not earned out their advance the first 6 months, most publishers stop printing that book, and the author never makes anything from what has already been sold because it goes to paying the publisher back for that advance.
Also when we say authors earn money for each book sale: it’s about $0.60 per book.
Yes, you’re paying $17.99+ for a hardcover or $8.99 for a paperback or ebook, but that is NOT how much the author gets. So if you imagine that an author DOES become a bestseller – let’s say they sell those 5000 copies and earn out their advance, so they get to make some money on the remaining 4000 books sold – that’s still only another $2400. It has likely been an additional 2-5 years at this point since they sold the book to a publisher.
So for 4-7 years of full time work, an average author makes MAYBE $7500. IF they are extremely successful and lucky.
That’s less than a dollar an hour for almost a decade of work.
wupacing 