My friend had stipulations once

This was a cold open to a youtube video and I am crying LOL

He wrote the book when he was 26.

Both girls were already dead.

One was epileptic, and in his words, "she lived alone, so there was nobody to help her when she had a seizure one day and went down with her head the wrong way." The other died by suicide shortly after giving birth to twins, and to quote him again, "in town, they said it was postpartum depression, so sad. Myself, I wondered if a little high school hangover had something to do with it."

He wrote Carrie about real girls. And they really died. They died young. And they were not pretty, perfect, pathetic little things; they were human beings trapped in a swamp of isolation by neglectful and abusive parents, dragged under by classmates who disguised the fear of "that could be me" behind hate and cruelty, and ultimately they drowned in the requirements of a society that never threw them a lifeline.

Carrie isn't just a tragic tale of bullying; in a way, it's something of a power fantasy. What if you could make them pay? What if you could make them all pay?

And as a final note: want to know why every adaptation of Carrie sucks so much?

Because it's the only one of King's works that really ought to have a co-author listed. He ditched the manuscript twenty pages in because he hated every single character and wasn't sure how to continue with the initial idea. His wife fished it out of the wastebasket, read it, and insisted he keep going, and she helped him with both edits and a girl's-eye-view into high school politics among girls. She's always played a role in his work, but that was the one where she carried his ass across the finish line and into an absolutely incredible career.

If you want to do an adaptation of Carrie and do it right, it's not Steve you need to be talking to.

truth over solace in lies

finished one of the most amazing reading experiences in my recent memory! these two are my very favourites.

Hart was on testosterone, legally changed his name, and had gotten a hysterectomy (that was described as "unfortunate" by the Right to Privacy gay and lesbian political action committee), making him the first documented trans man to transition in the USA, yet he was characterized as a lesbian woman because cis gays and lesbians had the nerve (when do they NOT have the nerve, dare I say) to think they had the right to "honor [his] life as a woman" by having fundraiser dinners with his deadname attached to them, having college lectures where they talked about him as a lesbian hero, and using she pronouns for him until 2000. The USAmerican trans community, including trans activist Lou Sullivan, had to fight to defend Hart's identity and to have his manhood recognized by the wider community by protesting these lectures and dinners and having a conversation with the Portland chapter of the Lesbian Avengers association, which ended up having a favorable response and joining the trans community in the battle.

I want to end this by reporting the words of Candice Hellen Brown, a trans woman from Portland who wrote a letter to Just Out magazine in 1994 defending Hart's transness:

The Right to Privacy Political Action Committee in Oregon has a big fundraiser every year that is called the [deadname] Hart Dinner. When asked if I am going, I indignantly answer, "Not until they stop using the wrong name and gender for one of our heroes!" His name is Alan [. . .] He never wavered from his identity as a man, and upon his death, his widow continued to insist that he was a man. Why would such a straight man be called a lesbian by the gay community when today we would certainly call him a female-to-male transsexual? [. . .] He was transsexual or, at least, a transgenderist - a true pioneer. One who is seen as a hero by today's transsexual community. Please don't let him be taken away from us by allowing his old name to be used as though it were a badge of honor.

oh, Sisyphus! i got you

We should celebrate the 10th anniversary of the legalization of marriage equality, but we also must remember in this moment when the rights of LGBTQ people in this country are under constant assault that it can all disappear in a moment.

This is the country we will go back to if the conservatives on the Supreme Court have openly said they want. We much fight to prevent any backslide, and fight to restore the rights that have already been stripped from us, especially trans right which have been attacked particularly cruely.