Things in my Tabs

[jhameia]

How America Became a Country That Lets Little Kids Go Homeless

How Should We Respond to Teens' Racist Tweets? (I kinda agree with this; I don't know why schools should be in charge of their students' online activities when it's scary enough how some schools monitor students' online activity. Why not just call the parents? Or just put them on a blacklist and make sure never to fucking hire them?)

No More Happily Ever After (OMG YES THIS I am so fucking sick of these snobs who think happy endings are like low-brow or some shit.)

Thanks Munira for this one: Ingredient Facial Oil Moisturizer – Customize It For Your Own Gorgeous Skin

Oldie but a goodie: BOOBIESHIPS AND TITROCKETS! Because one of those spambots tagged an LJ entry in which I linked to this, so I felt compelled to revisit. Good choice, me.

Comments

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

The schools here aren't "in charge" of the students' out-of-school behavior, or even necessarily monitoring the students' online lives here at all. Students behaved poorly outside of school, in very public ways, and the schools were made aware of that behavior. Had the students gone to a local bar and shouted these things at PoC there, and someone heard that and alerted their school how they behaved the night before, it would be no different (except these tweets reached many more people, and there is a clear written record that the conduct really occurred. What they said is not contested.).

The question of how much schools should be "monitoring" student tweets is separate from the question of how the school should respond when students make public racist tweets under their real names with their pictures, and the school is alerted about this conduct. How they choose to respond is up to them.

(Also, "tell their parents" may not be effective when the children are learning it from their parents and/or tweeting what their parents said. There needs to be community shame to put a stop to this.)

[fantasyecho.livejournal.com]

That's a really good point, drawing a nuance between "making schools aware" and "schools monitoring".

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

However, it is doubtful that anyone reads, watches or plays fictional media to be presented with the same realities with which they live every day of their lives.

Uuuuh I just want to throw this sentence at people. While I love stories that are essentially emotional torture porn (I wanna see people broken down and suffer, all the horrible ways they can have horrible things done to them!) I'm really miffed at the dwindling of happy endings. Yes, I do want that pat sense of resolution. Especially since most creators can't make the downer ending feel like closure, so I'm often left going "but what then? That's it?"

I've long had this problem with mainstream literature. Many authors aren't good enough to write something meaningful, but fool the audience into finding meaning because of the downer ending so you're trying to rationalize why you read the stupid mess of a book. No, no, you don't get it, it's just really deep.....

[fantasyecho.livejournal.com]

Haha, can you imagine presenting the SWM default with the realities in which they live their everyday lives? They would either die of guilt or boredom really quickly.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Fwiw, there are some really key aspects of my lived experience that never get presented in realistic fiction (or non-fiction). I very explicitly have to consume "escapist" fiction in order to see any reflection of what I live, at least these (very non-trivial) dimensions of it.

None of this is directly applicable to happy ending/non-happy ending -- I just want to say that the lack of being presented with the same reality I live, in stories, Is A Real Thing over here. I also know I'm not the only one with this issue.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

While I am never going to agree with an article that states "genre fiction is escapism, pure and simple" -- uh, no, not that pure or simple thx -- I have noticed that I've come to seek out "happy endings" now that I am older, in rather a reversal of my previous tastes. Which makes me giggle at all the suggestions that happy endings are less sophisticated teenybopper stuff.

[fantasyecho.livejournal.com]

I thought it was speaking more to the audience that insists on genre fiction as escapism, and yet use that excuse for all sorts of nonsense like, Fantasy Europe is all white because ESCAPISM and No One Considers Unfortunate Implications of any given situation because ESCAPISM. I'm definitely a fan of happy endings though.... I'll read the ending of a book before I decide whether I want to buy it, usually.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely don't parse that middle paragraph like that. I don't think this article is of the "escapism excuses everything!" camp and in fact I think repudiates this, but I also think it's quite explicitly stating that what makes fiction "genre" is the impulse toward escapism -- toward the fantasy of effectiveness, if you prefer -- and I just don't agree. Certainly that's why a lot of folks read whatever the read, genre or not. But I'm not one of them and to make it a definitional foundation will always gall me.