Hi Dhaaruni! I Want To Learn About Radical Feminism, Could You Rec Some Books/texts? Thank You

i am increasingly convinced that the wedding industry is having a statistically significant impact on young women leaving the mormon church. has anyone looked into this?

Love! Love! Love!

"For fuck's sake, this song and dance again? Every single generation complains about the youth, going back to Aristotle and ancient Chinese philosophers. And it's always some grandstanding about their inherent moral character and never the fault of parents. You know what my fucking generation did? They fucked when they were 13 and became drug addicts at 11. You steered clear of teenagers in groups because they would fucking shank you and rob you. And nobody ever read. You ASSUME cooking an egg is easy, because it's a skill you already have. As someone who had to consciously teach himself this skill as a teenager due to family bullshit, IT'S NOT. There's tons of fiddling involved if you want your boiling egg to taste nice. I didn't know you're supposed to salt the water until years later because it just never occurred to me. And you bet your ass there are tons of skills that you struggle with that are effortless to your parents and that they complain that 'kids these days' can't even do. Humans will always choose the easiest path. The fuckers who mastered cooking tapioca were either desperately hungry with nothing else to eat or lonely autistic weirdos who just do these things because they can. Same as it ever was. Take a step back, look at yourself and learn some goddamn humility. How often are YOU on the second page of the newspaper?"

— Goncharov, Goncharov (1973)

fandomite-brained “progressive” and “queer positive” intellectuals will tell you with a straight face that certain pieces of fictional art like rap songs or comedic jokes or fifty shades of grey can socially sanction or enshrine rape culture, but their 25 chapter gay noncon omegaverse ao3 fanfiction that is publicly available on the world wide web is somehow ontologically different. They think they can hide their contradictions from me, lol. they are so cute hehe you’re so bad at obscuring your affinities behind flimsy platitudes you little freak (steps on them with my steel toed boot).

Symbolism in Writing

Weather Symbolism

Rain: cleansing, sadness, renewal, obstacles

Sunshine: happiness, hope, clarity, energy

Storms: conflict, turmoil, dramatic change

Snow: purity, stillness, coldness, isolation

Fog: confusion, mystery, uncertainty

Wind: change, freedom, unrest, communication

Animal Symbolism

Eagle: freedom, vision, strength, courage

Lion: bravery, power, leadership, pride

Dove: peace, love, innocence, spirituality

Wolf: loyalty, cunning, survival, community

Snake: transformation, danger, temptation, wisdom

Butterfly: transformation, beauty, impermanence

Plant Symbolism

Rose: love, beauty, passion, secrecy

Oak Tree: strength, endurance, wisdom

Willow Tree: sadness, flexibility, resilience

Lotus Flower: purity, enlightenment, rebirth

Ivy: friendship, fidelity, eternity

Cactus: endurance, protection, warmth

Object Symbolism

Mirror: self-reflection, truth, illusion

Key: opportunity, secrets, freedom

Bridge: connection, transition, overcoming obstacles

Candle: hope, spirituality, life, guidance

Clock: time, mortality, urgency

Mask: disguise, deception, concealment

Number Symbolism

One: beginnings, unity, individuality

Two: partnership, balance, duality

Three: creativity, growth, completeness

Four: stability, order, foundation

Five: change, adventure, unpredictability

Seven: mystery, spirituality, luck

Season Symbolism

Spring: renewal, birth, growth, hope

Summer: vitality, abundance, joy, freedom

Autumn: change, maturity, decline, reflection

Winter: death, stillness, introspection, endurance

Light and Darkness Symbolism

Light: knowledge, purity, safety, enlightenment

Darkness: ignorance, evil, mystery, fear

Shadow: the unconscious, secrets, mystery

Twilight: ambiguity, transition, mystery

Element Symbolism

Fire: passion, destruction, energy, transformation

Water: emotion, intuition, life, change

Earth: stability, grounding, fertility, growth

Air: intellect, communication, freedom, change

the problem with addiction is not that it's pleasurable. it's not "having too much fun" disease. it's not even a requirement for addiction that you have fun at any point in the process at all and to be honest it is incredibly common that no pleasure is gained from substance use. imagining that addiction is about pleasure does two things: 1) demonises feeling good (there is nothing wrong with wanting to be happy/comfortable/etc), and 2) frames addicts as people who Like Having Fun Too Much. it's simply not useful to frame things this way as well as just fundamentally not being true

i can't recommend Jared Pechaček's The West Passage enough - it's a strange, gorgeous fable that I've only hesitated to post about because I've struggled to convey how good it is and why you should read it. It's like being inside the the marginalia of a medieval text. it has the perplexing consistency of Alice in Wonderland and the wistful necessity of the best kind of young adult coming of age. despite its fairytale feel, there's also a real sense of grounding in the world and the material experience of its people. i cried at the end.

and the prose is lovely:

A pigeon launched itself from a courtyard, drawing her eye up to faraway Red Tower, purpled with distance, its beacon dull in the light of day. If a wind came from there, you could get a whiff of the sea. In the windless noon, white smoke from that eternal fire drifted all over the southeastern district of the palace. Much closer was lapis-domed Blue Tower, rising from a field of white plaster walls, swirling with pigeons and the bright flecks of hummingbirds who came to drink from the flowering vines that spilled down its sides.

Vibes for Softly Tortured Characters

For the ones who make you want to wrap them in a blanket and also scream “JUST TALK TO SOMEONE.”

Always looks like they didn’t sleep (because they didn’t)

Talks like they’re about to say something else, but never does

Constantly touches their sleeves/jewelry/lip, like if they’re not holding something, they’ll fall apart

Laughs too easily, but it never quite reaches their eyes

Over-apologizes for things no one noticed

Craves affection but flinches when they get it

Body language = trying to take up as little space as possible

Flashes of unexpected rage, like pressure finally cracking glass

Always says “I’m fine” in a tone that screams “Please ask again”

Cries alone, then wipes their face like it’s a secret

Feels safest in chaos because stillness feels like waiting for pain

Thinks being loved means being a burden

Cannot remember the last time they were truly, fully relaxed

Keeps people at arm’s length, but is the first to drop everything if someone else needs help

Treats their own joy like it's a luxury they didn’t earn

Ursula K. Le Guin on How to Become a Writer.

How do you become a writer? Answer: you write.

It’s amazing how much resentment and disgust and evasion this answer can arouse. Even among writers, believe me. It is one of those Horrible Truths one would rather not face.

The most frequent evasive tactic is for the would-be writer to say, But before I have anything to say, I must get experience.

Well, yes; if you want to be a journalist. But I don’t know anything about journalism, I’m talking about fiction. And of course fiction is made out of experience, your whole life from infancy on, everything you’ve thought and done and seen and read and dreamed. But experience isn’t something you go and get—it’s a gift, and the only prerequisite for receiving it is that you be open to it. A closed soul can have the most immense adventures, go through a civil war or a trip to the moon, and have nothing to show for all that “experience”; whereas the open soul can do wonders with nothing. I invite you to meditate on a pair of sisters. Emily and Charlotte. Their life experience was an isolated vicarage in a small, dreary English village, a couple of bad years at a girls’ school, another year or two in Brussels, which is surely the dullest city in all Europe, and a lot of housework. Out of that seething mass of raw, vital, brutal, gutsy Experience they made two of the greatest novels ever written: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

Now, of course they were writing from experience; writing about what they knew, which is what people always tell you to do; but what was their experience? What was it they knew? Very little about “life.” They knew their own souls, they knew their own minds and hearts; and it was not a knowledge lightly or easily gained. From the time they were seven or eight years old, they wrote, and thought, and learned the landscape of their own being, and how to describe it. They wrote with the imagination, which is the tool of the farmer, the plow you plow your own soul with. They wrote from inside, from as deep inside as they could get by using all their strength and courage and intelligence. And that is where books come from. The novelist writes from inside.

I’m rather sensitive on this point, because I write science fiction, or fantasy, or about imaginary countries, mostly—stuff that, by definition, involves times, places, events that I could not possibly experience in my own life. So when I was young and would submit one of these things about space voyages to Orion or dragons or something, I was told, at extremely regular intervals, “You should try to write about things you know about.” And I would say, But I do; I know about Orion, and dragons, and imaginary countries. Who do you think knows about my own imaginary countries, if I don’t?

But they didn’t listen, because they don’t understand, they have it all backward. They think an artist is like a roll of photographic film, you expose it and develop it and there is a reproduction of Reality in two dimensions. But that’s all wrong, and if any artist tells you, “I am a camera,” or “I am a mirror,” distrust them instantly, they’re fooling you, pulling a fast one. Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts—only in the truth. You get the facts from outside. The truth you get from inside.

OK, how do you go about getting at that truth? You want to tell the truth. You want to be a writer. So what do you do?

You write.

Honestly, why do people ask that question? Does anybody ever come up to a musician and say, Tell me, tell me—how should I become a tuba player? No! It’s too obvious. If you want to be a tuba player you get a tuba, and some tuba music. And you ask the neighbors to move away or put cotton in their ears. And probably you get a tuba teacher, because there are quite a lot of objective rules and techniques both to written music and to tuba performance. And then you sit down and you play the tuba, every day, every week, every month, year after year, until you are good at playing the tuba; until you can—if you desire—play the truth on the tuba.

It is exactly the same with writing. You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned how to do it.

Of course, there are differences. Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done anywhere, and it is done alone.

It is the experience or premonition of that loneliness, perhaps, that drives a lot of young writers into this search for rules. I envy musicians very much, myself. They get to play together, their art is largely communal; and there are rules to it, an accepted body of axioms and techniques, which can be put into words or at least demonstrated, and so taught. Writing cannot be shared, nor can it be taught as a technique, except on the most superficial level. All a writer’s real learning is done alone, thinking, reading other people’s books, or writing—practicing. A really good writing class or workshop can give us some shadow of what musicians have all the time—the excitement of a group working together, so that each member outdoes himself—but what comes out of that is not a collaboration, a joint accomplishment, like a string quartet or a symphony performance, but a lot of totally separate, isolated works, expressions of individual souls. And therefore there are no rules, except those each individual makes up.

I know. There are lots of rules. You find them in the books about The Craft of Fiction and The Art of the Short Story and so on. I know some of them. One of them says: Never begin a story with dialogue! People won’t read it; here is somebody talking and they don’t know who and so they don’t care, so—Never begin a story with dialogue.

Well, there is a story I know, it begins like this:

“Eh bien, mon prince! so Genoa and Lucca are now no more than private estates of the Bonaparte family!”

It’s not only a dialogue opening, the first four words are in French, and it’s not even a French novel. What a horrible way to begin a book! The title of the book is War and Peace.

There’s another Rule I know: introduce all the main characters early in the book. That sounds perfectly sensible, mostly I suppose it is sensible, but it’s not a rule, or if it is somebody forgot to tell it to Charles Dickens. He didn’t get Sam Weller into The Pickwick Papers for ten chapters—that’s five months, since the book was coming out as a serial in installments.

Now, you can say, All right, so Tolstoy can break the rules, so Dickens can break the rules, but they’re geniuses; rules are made for geniuses to break, but for ordinary, talented, not-yet-professional writers to follow, as guidelines.

And I would accept this, but very very grudgingly, and with so many reservations that it amounts in the end to nonacceptance. Put it this way: if you feel you need rules and want rules, and you find a rule that appeals to you, or that works for you, then follow it. Use it. But if it doesn’t appeal to you or doesn’t work for you, then ignore it; in fact, if you want to and are able to, kick it in the teeth, break it, fold staple mutilate and destroy it.

See, the thing is, as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness. You are in the country where you make up the rules, the laws. You are both dictator and obedient populace. It is a country nobody has ever explored before. It is up to you to make the maps, to build the cities. Nobody else in the world can do it, or ever could do it, or ever will be able to do it again.

Excerpted from THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT by Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © 1989 by Ursula K. Le Guin.

I recommend Le Guin's book about writing, Steering the Craft:

money is such an underrated accessibility option.

like people want to think any disabled person who is after money is morally suspect some way, because they're not asking for "treatments" or "accommodations" like a lot of our issues can be fixed way more easily with money. can't drive? paying for a taxi is often one of the more accessible alternatives. can't cook? you can pay more to have prepared food delivered to you. food restrictions? that food straight up costs more money. can't clean? you can pay for someone to do that. house inaccessible? having (lots) of money can help with that, you get the gist.

having money won't make us abled. it also won't stop our symptoms from being distressing, painful, or debilitating. but there's a huge gap in experience between the average poor disabled person and someone who's actually wealthy. you can buy your way out of some of the difficult situations most disabled people are left to rot in. wanting money, needing money, asking for money is pretty natural when it's such a useful tool. why get so weird about disabled people wanting money like i'm pretty sure everyone wants money anyway