"Should Trans Women Be Allowed To Compete In Women's Sports" I Don't Think There Should Be Women's Sports.

For Novice Writers: the quick test for Are You Being Scammed Or Not...

I read a sad case today of a young writer who had had her story rewritten into illiteracy by a so-called publisher, who then abused her in email when she wrote to complain. She wsn’t getting paid for her story – instead she was actually buying copies of the anthology to show people that she had sold a story. And I thought, it is time to remind the world, and to enlighten young writers, about…

Yog’s Law: 

Money flows towards the writer.

That’s all. All writers should remember it.  When a commercial publisher contracts a book, it will pay an advance against royalties to the writer. Money flows towards the writer. Literary agents make their living by charging a commission of between 10 and 20% on the sales that they make on behalf of their clients, the writers. When advances and royalties are paid by a publisher the agent’s percentage is filtered off in the direction of the writer’s agent but the bulk of the money still flows towards the writer. If a publisher ever asks for any sort of financial contribution from a writer, they’re trying to divert money away from the writer, in direct contravention of Yog’s Law. If an agent ever asks for up-front fees, regardless of what they call them (reading fees, administration costs, processing fees, or retainers), then they are trying to divert money away from the writer, in direct contravention of Yog’s Law. It’s a brilliantly simple rule. We should thank James D Macdonald for it in the best way there is. Buy his books

Money flows toward the writer.

No, that doesn’t mean that the author should get paper and ink for free, or that he won’t pay for postage. It does mean that when someone comes along and says, “Sure, kid, you can be a Published Author! It’ll only cost you $300!” the writer will know that something’s wrong. A fee is a fee is a fee, whether they call it a reading fee, a marketing fee, a promotion fee, or a cheese-and-crackers fee.

Is this perfect? No. Scammers have come up with some elaborate ways to avoid activating it. But it’s still a good and useful tool, and will save a lot of grief. Any time an agent or publisher asks for money, the answer should be “No!”

I have this skill where I hear one note of a Taylor Swift song somewhere in public and my spine straightens and my head tilts up like I am the goddamn winter soldier being activated but instead of going on a murder spree I just say to my friends "Taylor Swift is playing" and they think I'm insane

I've been obsessed with how the first ten Hunger Games were in an actual arena, like with seats and an event floor and turnstiles and everything. Something that was so clearly human-made, without so much as a weed growing inside of it.

Then Coriolanus goes off to Twelve and has his own private Hunger Games with Lucy Gray in the middle of the woods and comes to the conclusion that humanity is violent, and it must be contained by the Hunger Games. Some point after that, the arenas are still human-made, but mimic nature like Snow's own Hunger Games with Lucy Gray. Some are deserts or tundras or jungles, but all are made to appear like a natural environment. Only they're nature that's been constructed and manicured by humans, just like the Games are.

Fitting, then, that the first hit against this arena is made by a boy from District Twelve. Then a quarter century later, this arena is destroyed by a girl from District Twelve who learned to shoot arrows in the very trees that saw the future dictator of Panem emerge from it with his worldview now set against the natural world.

This has been living rent free in my head since 2020 and I need a place to put it so I guess I'll put it here:

The golden gates are falling down keeping me away

The red and fire are calling out to me

I've tried to escape this realm of hurt and conflicting feelings

The answer's always just out of reach

Me and my bestie are rewatching mvs from midnights and Speak Now TV to find the days to clown about for reputation tv

Not every day has to count. Some days are for repairing, resting, mourning. You don't have to perform every day. Some days are for doing nothing. For sleeping all day or being on your phone. Relaxing is ok, allowed and encouraged. Do what you need to do.

I think Matty Healy is awful but I’m still proud of Taylor putting “but daddy I love him” on the record.

There are songs on the album about her realising he love bombed her and manipulated her. Realising she fell for all of it, she was never going to fix him, and he was never going to be her saviour. She is scathing towards him, but also towards herself for falling for it. She could have left it at that and maybe copped less criticism. Instead she acknowledges the backlash and the defiance she felt in that moment.

It makes me feel the same way her putting Ours on Speak Now does. Grateful that she is open to sharing her stories even when the muse isn’t deserving of the words she wrote, even when releasing it fans the fires of the “I told you so” crowd.

And much like Ours is not a defence of Mayer, BDILH is not an acquittal of Healy. The phrasing she uses is not “he’s a good man they just don’t know him like I do”, it’s “I’m not coming to my senses” “I’d rather burn my whole life down”. The message of the song is not her trying to convince you he’s a good person (he’s not), it’s about a woman stumbling through a crisis and her desperate need to be able to make her own decisions, and that includes her own mistakes - which she seems to be acknowledging Matty was.

I SWEAR TO GOD IF WE DON'T GET 1989TV

I think what really GETS me about Miss Americana is that the lyrics do really have double meaning.

If you’re not paying attention, you’d be like, ‘oh, yeah, it’s about high school love’... but then you listen closer with the context of her singing about AMERICA, or rather, TO AMERICA and it’s politics. “You know I adore you, I’m crazier for you, than I was at 16, lost a film scene.” This is really obviously symbolism of, ‘I was so caught up in my own life and being distracted by my career I didn’t really notice you, American politics, needed my attention.’

I now kind of read the chorus in two ways, too. She could so easily just be singing to the Heartbreak Prince as a love interest, saying, “It’s you and me,” and that the rest of the world doesn’t approve of her being with him... but the chorus is so much more layered when you approach it from the singing about her society / her country angle. It’s like she’s saying to America, ‘remember when I was known for my 4th of July parties? You were my whole world’, but then the Republicans claimed her for their own in her silence, and people were bullying her and talking about her, so ‘they whisper in the hallway she’s a bad bad girl.’

So when she says, “the whole school is rolling fake dice”, (which is !!!!!) This is her saying she realises the new America she lives in is run by those who manipulate the system, (just like she said in that Guardian interview as well??!). Then she’s like taking a dig, like, if ‘you’re doing to play stupid games with power, then your prize isn’t a real prize, either’.

This analogy is made even more clear and easier to see in the second verse with, “my team is losing / batteries and bruising / I see the high fives between the bad guys,” and “American stories, burning before me / boys will be boys then, where are the wise men?’ Because guess who said, ‘boys will be boys’ famously???? A certain President.

The whole analogy is genius when it’s then mixed with the American high school symbolism as well? Because to anyone who isn’t American, the MOST American thing is movie vision of ‘high school’, of cliques, of cheerleaders and bleachers.

And there ain’t nothing more cliquey and high school than two party politics at the moment, huh?

perfect new meme template just dropped