maybe the cost of being female

But this isn’t about legitimate anger. This is about something that happens over and over, no matter who you are, if too many people hear you speak. This isn’t about legitimate anger, and it never is. This is about abuse. This is about sexual harassment. This is about hurting women because they’re women, over and over, until they go away.

But here’s the thing. Here’s why I’m not deleting Tiger Beatdown: They only do it if you’re good. Seriously. They only do it if your work reaches people, and convinces people, and if they literally cannot frame an opposing argument that they think might have any chance of winning. They can’t beat you in an argument; that’s why they abuse you, that’s why they try to make you feel as worthless and self-loathing and incapable of self-defense as any other abused person, that’s why they abuse you till you can’t work or even think about anything but being abused, that’s why they try to make you believe that it won’t stop till you stop publishing or die. That’s why they make you want to stop publishing. Or make you want to die. Because after all of it, after all the “bitch” and “cunt” and “die” and “dyke” and “ugly” and “smoker” (???) and “I’monna rape ye, woman,” there is actually one threat scarier than ALL of that: The threat that you’re right, and you’re going to win. And that’s the threat that you pose.

Sady Doyle | Why I Didn't Delete Tiger Beatdown

like the weight of something

Trust me when I say that fanfiction (and its iterations: fanart, fanvids, fan signs, fansites) is/are a guilty pleasure. Reading/watching/gazing/surfing through various ways in which others have expressed their love for a particular fandom is always fun, if highly embarrassing.

Fanfiction is a scary place because there is so much of it, and because there is so many bad stories. It's a rarity when you can find a fully-realized, taut piece a writing that not only imbues the original story arc with more understanding but also fleshes out the canon.

I recently finished the Hunger Games trilogy (SO INCREDIBLE LET ME TELL YOU OMG OMG), and found the following story via livejournal. It would be an understatement to say that I enjoyed the story; I did. I cried at the end. Clutched my chest, bowed my head, and exclaimed oh my god.

Trust me when I say, The Unrecorded Hours is an incredible feat of storytelling, of well-wrought writing, of the guiltiest of pleasures.

I'm going to read this every day for the rest of my life.

The Unrecorded Hours | hollycomb | R | Livejournal

your life is a page out of blake

This blog is srsly close to resembling my tumblr -- which, is fine -- but it begs this question: why even have a blog at all? Good question.

I don't know, to post things that I like in many disparate locations; disjointedness is cool.

And that's Blake, up there, so I like this post.

Have a haiku:

Capturing moods is

swimming a frozen lake.

I saw Piranha.

and so, diana, the wonder woman

On the Enterprise, no one cares that you're into space travel. It's also not revolutionary to note that speculative fiction is basically sociology's dream journal; when people tell stories about places and societies that might be, they tell us what they think societies are. What changes, what doesn't and what should. But when girls get involved, stuff gets weird.

Sady Doyle | The Fantasy of Girl World: Lady Nerds and Utopias

i am flawed if i'm not free

Stripped. Head shaved. Made to wear a dress. Questioned, questioned, questioned; called names, called names, called names. Imprisoned. They made a cage to keep her in. They put her in chains. Attempted rape, attempted rape, attempted rape. (“I tried several times, playing with her, to touch her breasts, trying to place my hands on her chest, which Jehanne would not suffer, but pushed me away with all her strength.”) Tried to jump out the window and die, at one point; it didn’t work; the charges against her therefore included “cowardice.” Joan of Arc, found guilty of cowardice. Abandoned by her friends, abandoned by her King. (Most noble Lord Dauphin, I am come and am sent to you from God to give succor to the kingdom and to you.) Made to fight the hopeless battle, arrow in the neck. The King made her submit to a stranger’s finger up her vagina, to prove she was a virgin, before he would talk to her. The men who took her to the King thought she was crazy and planned to put her in a ditch. The man who sent her to the King thought she ought to be sent back to her father and whipped. All of this, just because she stood up and said she was the girl, the very special girl, the girl who could save them all. And then they were going to burn her alive, and at that point, only at that point, she broke down. It wasn’t real, she was sorry, it wasn’t real, she was everything they said she was, she was evil, the mission was evil, the visions were evil, the visions lied, they told her she was going to be okay, God told her she was going to be okay, fuck God, fuck the most noble Lord Dauphin, fuck France, fuck everything, she didn’t want to be Joan of Arc any more.

Sady Doyle | Running Toward the Gunshots: a few words about Joan of Arc

i wear my ponytail like a waterfall

I'm not very good at blogging.

However, they say (and really, who are they?) that in order to succeed in the writerly world, one must have a blog.

So, I blog.

An introductory post of sorts:

• I am a girl.
• I am also a comic fan (see: WW, Buffy, A Distant Soil).
• I like most things that are a) funny b) ironic c) dastardly d) literary.
• I live in St Paul.
• Rilo Kiley is, by far, the greatest band in the world.
• I am interested in lady business and issues (see: feminism, feminist theory).
• I have a boyfriend.
• I am generally quite jovial.
• I am into roller derby.
• I am a poet.
• My greatest fear is sharks and shark-related experiences.
• I was in film school (HIPSTER-SCARE).
• I am getting my MFA in Creative Writing (hence the blog, woe!).
• I like people.

I know a bulleted list hardly introduces someone with any kind of warmth or joy, but I think it serves the purposes of this post.

As will this haiku:

Public writing is

treacherous, as is swimming.

Sharks can be disguised.