azriona: (Default)
[personal profile] azriona
1. Drabbles are 100 words exactly. No more, no less. I seem to be surrounded by fics that call themselves drabbles but contain anywhere from several hundred to several thousand words, and it's making me twitchy. Which is a really dumb thing, I know, but it's like those of us who subscribe to the Drabbles = 100 words theory lost the war at some point and no one bothered to tell us.

Anyway, if you say you wrote a drabble and it's not 100 words exactly, then I'm not reading it. Stupid, butt-hurt reaction? Oh, agreed. But there it is.

2. Cut tags are a thing and you should use them. There also seems to be a bunch of fics where the author either doesn't use a cut tag, or uses it so late in the game that it's kind of pointless. And we're talking fics of thousands of words, which take eons to scroll past. Ugh. Then there was the fic I read over the weekend that was absolutely wonderful, I really loved it... but the author had at least 300 words of pure smut ABOVE the cut tag, and honestly, at that point, I have to wonder why she bothered at all. 

(Not that I think all smut must be behind closed doors. This is tumblr, after all. But jeez louise, if you're putting it out for show, what the heck are you then gonna decide needs to be hidden?)

Anyway, if you write a fic and don't use a cut tag within a few lines, I'm probably not going to read it. And I'm definitely not going to reblog it.

3. I'm not issuing a DNI. That seems to be the thing: "Minors, DNI." (Or MAGA, or terfs, or insert-group-here.) Which, okay, I am all about curating your fandom experience. But it also seems like a lot of the people issuing the Minors DNIs are not all that far from having been minors themselves. (Like, I saw a self-described 18yo with a Minors DNI on their blog. They're 18.) And the thing that really gets me is that a lot of the older people who have them even say when they were teens, they were reading the same kind of thing. "Oh, I shouldn't have been reading that!"

Good God. Says who, exactly?!?! And are you honestly going to tell me that your life was made infinitely harder or more horrible because you did? Because you seem like you turned out fine. And you gotta know, if someone had tried to DNI you back when you were 12/14/16, you'd have just found a way around it? (And some of them admit: they did! They lied about their ages! They read the shit anyway even when it was blocked!)

Look. I have to police my kids' content, and sex? Ain't what bothers me. I'm way more pissed about how kids in media are so mean to each other and their parents and their friends. How yelling at each other and being rude is shown as being funny and normal and just how life goes, and then my kids turn around and act like that with their friends and teachers and me.

I read all the smutty romance novels when I was in high school. No one stopped me. No one said I shouldn't. Don't get me wrong, I knew they probably weren't written with me as the audience in mind; I knew I was probably too young. But I still read them. How fucking hypocritical if I were to turn around and tell a teen, "Nope, you can't read this story." 

Am I going to market to teens? Nope. Do I care if they find me? Nope. Hope they learn some shit about communication and consent and maybe something of themselves, actually. 

(I don't know. I know for some, the DNI thing is a way of curating their internet experience, and more power to them, if so. But honestly? I think for others it's just another form of purity culture by way of censorship. "Oh noes the children must never have access to anything naughty. They cannot know about sex until they are adults!" Yeah, let's just not go there for all the reasons, guys. Seriously.)

pegkerr: (Default)
[personal profile] pegkerr
Last Sunday, Delia called me up to ask, "Hey, do you want to go to Pandafest?"

Uh, sure. What is Pandafest?

It turned out to be an outdoor festival showcasing Asian foods and vendors, held just outside the Mall of America. It was a fiendishly hot day, which was definitely a drawback, but I ended up being super glad I went, and we did have fun. Since it was so hot, a lot of the fried food didn't look too appealing, but with a little hunting, we were able to find a booth selling cold soba salad, which hit the spot nicely. We tried steamed pork buns, fruit skewers covered with a hard candied coating, coconut ice cream with mango, and fried donuts. Yum! There were performers, and we watched the Korean dancers (pitying them a bit for having to dance in their traditional costumes under the hot sun).

I have been feeling so sick for so long that it definitely felt nice to get out and do something new and fun. Thanks for the suggestion, Delia!

Image description: Foreground Peg (left) and Delia (right). Delia is eating fried donut balls on a skewer. Between them is a "Pandafest: Twin Cities" stick pin. Behind them, center: two Korean woman dancers flourish fans and a tycho drummer are overlaid over a giant inflatable panda. Behind the panda, top: Chinese steamed buns in several different flavours.

Pandafest

28 Pandafest

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The View Outside the US

Jul. 15th, 2025 11:15 am
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[personal profile] pennswoods
Traveling outside the US has given me space to step away from being overwhelmed by the news and fear of the future so that I can hopefully plan and be more present when I return. One thing that has made my heart heavy this past spring was a feeling of hopelessness and personal failure - that I was too overwhelmed by rage and hopelessness to do anything or that I felt so helpless in the face of a constant onslaught of bullshit as institutions were threatened and crumbled. I also felt immense guilt for not doing more - for not protesting - for not calling my senators every day - for not dedicating my free time to doing something/anything.

I felt this guilt again yesterday when talking with one of my Swedish friends who used to live in Hawaii and is very activist in her mindset. She shared that there had been protests in Sweden this weekend (I encountered one in Malmo while I was running) in support of Palestine that were not covered in the news. She also said the Swedish news was not saying anything about protests in the US and that from the outside it seems like no one in the US is doing anything in response to Trump. She has tried to convince young people that a lack of media coverage does not mean that nothing is happening, but many of them just assume that the lack of protests means that all Americans are in support of Trump now. 

This feels so unjust, but it's also an attitude I see online in other spaces. People (lots of Canadians) are angry that Americans aren't dong anything. I know I'm not doing enough but I have been doing things that I don't normally do (attending workshops by the ACLU on how to support undocumented students, attending virtual Town Halls with senators, researching ways to support my International PhD student). I've also been traveling a lot because I have a feeling that it will be much, much harder and too expensive to do in a few years.

But I don't know what to say in the face of this attitude. It feels like people want blood. Will they only believe US citizens are doing anything when there is death and mass violence? People are constantly protesting or thwarting ICE. There is resistance in University systems and states collectively building legal funds to sue the US government's meddling in higher education and in arresting and deporting international students and faculty. 
pegkerr: (Default)
[personal profile] pegkerr
My nephew David got married this past weekend, on July 5, which happened to be my 39th wedding anniversary, which was rather bittersweet. We had family come in from out of town, so some of them got to meet M, which was a delight.

There was a July 4th welcome party at my sister's home, and then the ceremony the next day wonderful--so well-planned and heartfelt, and everyone had a marvelous time.

Unfortunately, I am not yet recovered from this terrible cold, and so I didn't stay for the dancing. I had to content myself with the videos and pictures of my family dancing late into the night.

Compare the collage made for one of my other nephew's wedding three years ago, Janus.

Image description: A couple smiles at the camera, fireworks exploding in the background. Overlaid over the fireworks are a semi-transparent clasped woman's hand and man's hand, each wearing a wedding ring. Lower left corner: a wooden box planted with wildflowers with the words "Welcome: We're so glad you're here. David & Jordan 7 . 5. 25

Wedding

27 Wedding

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marsdaydream

January 2019

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