Seeking Distraction

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.

"You won anyway. And I was late!"

"Boom! Crash! That's what I'm talking about! Fuck scissors!"

"Bitch!"

"See? You lost. And I didn't even look. Next!"

"See you later, boy!"

"Yes! There you go! I cheated."

"Bah! Humbug."

"I win!"

"I win!"

"Why?" - "I'm sorry." "What does it mean?" - "It just means I won."

fifth attempt "ruibo! come on!"

David Fane laughing "Do I win? Defeats everything!"

brooklyn (13-21yo us residents)

seattle (13-26yo us residents)

boston (13-26yo us residents)

los angeles (13-18yo california residents)

san diego (12-26yo us residents, not the whole collection just commonly banned books)

these cards (part of the books unbanned initiative) get you access to each library's complete libby/overdrive collection (unless otherwise mentioned), no hoopla/kanopy/physical copies included.

ebook collections are expensive to maintain (many american libraries have annual fees for non-residents because of this) but because of an uptick in book banning (particularly brutal in mississippi last summer) larger libraries have opened their doors more, which is very kind of them!

i've used my seattle card for the last several months and their libby collection has about three times the books that my local library does, which is wonderful for accessing more niche titles or skipping a waiting list. would love to hear of similar ebook initiatives internationally!

i use library extension (firefox/safari/chrome compatible) to check all my collections (+ the internet archive) at once, works for several different countries highly recommend it.

thinking about a story

creating a new document

brainstorming

researching

thinking of a title

explaining your story to someone else

reading other stories and noticing things like word choice, sentence structure, plot development, characterization

thinking of a great line that doesn't have a story yet

getting a picture in your mind that you want to put into words someday

being inspired by others, even if you don't know what to do with that inspiration yet

making notes about how you want to tag your work

editing

cutting out lines or scenes that don't work

stopping work on something that isn't working right now

starting over

writing a summary

I am not British, but I have grew up with Thomas & Friends. This is such a throwback lol. Matt Berry's voice is gold xd