Deliquesce

And if you also hadn't heard of her go read this because uhh... Holy Shit

This story sounds like it could have been a brilliant exploration of gender and warfare and violence but instead it was attacked by people who didn't know how to confront a story that made them uncomfortable, and the author faced horrible consequences.

I am not saying all this to excuse my friends and colleagues by saying "Oh, they had good intentions, they didn't mean it." I'm telling you that because I want everyone reading this to feel deeply somber about the idea of what YOU could do when you truly, genuinely think you're acting with good intentions. I want you to see what could happen when YOU run your mouth unthinkingly on social media and lean into collective hysteria instead of practicing prudence and thinking for yourself. They had good intentions, and they ruined someone's life anyway.

No one person ended Isabel Fall's career. No one came at her with a knife to personally, individually stab her in the back. But hundreds and thousands of people threw just one little pebble and thought NOTHING of it, because it was just one little pebble, right? Except it contributed to ten thousand other pebbles. It was part of the five tons of pebbles all crashing down on Isabel's head at once.

Out of the authors I personally know who were involved with the debacle, all of them felt absolutely crushed with shame and regret when they learned the truth afterwards. I have spoken in person to people who, during the debacle, were calling for Fall's story to be taken down because it was "transphobic", and who later realized that they were the ones doing violence for absolutely no fucking reason at all except collective hysteria and getting caught up in the mob, and who even to this day are embarrassed and regretful of what they did and who wish deeply that they could take it back and sincerely apologize to her. They can't. It's too fucking late. And that's a tragedy all of its own. The people I've talked to know that. They mourn that.

The community that killed Isabel Fall's career was not a community of "bad people" or evil monsters or secretly-awful bigots. It was a community of people who cared deeply and had good intentions who nevertheless ended up doing a really really REALLY BAD THING. Being a good person doesn't prevent you from hurting others. Having good intentions doesn't prevent you from hurting others. "uwu listening and learning from my trans siblings <333" doesn't prevent you from hurting others. And no matter how famous and talented an author is, they are still a human being who is just as capable of making a horrible fucking mistake and hurting someone as you are.

Don't put people on a pedestal -- either as some kind of writing god or as a witch to burn at the stake. They are people. And Isabel Fall is a person. Be so fucking careful of what you say and who you say it to or where on the internet you say it, and if there's a loud bit of confusing drama happening and you aren't absolutely fucking sure that objective, real-life LITERAL MATERIAL HARM has been done to someone, consider shutting the fuck up and staying out of it instead of amplifying it. Consider watching from the sidelines and waiting a week or so for the dust to die down before you have a take, if you really feel like you must have a take. Consider using intellectual judgment instead of acting reflexively from your gut-reaction feelings. Consider discussing it with a friend in private instead of publicly airing your grievances.

And treat others the way you'd want to be treated. How would you feel, if you were in Fall's position? How would you want people to deal with your work if it upset them or if they disagreed with it? Would you want to be publicly stoned to career-death, or would you want people to discuss it calmly and with restraint, and for the ones who didn't like it to go, "I think it's not for me, actually," and for the ones who didn't understand it to say, "I think I need to sit with this for a while."? How would you want people to act, if it was you? Great, now act that way yourself.

“there’s a restaurant two miles from my house called—” nope

“today I learned [celeb] went to my high school—” nope nope nope nope nope

these are all real posts I’ve seen on the internet that allowed me to identify a user’s hometown instantly. if it’s a small town, that’s doubly dangerous, because a bad actor could trace you just by a unique first name or selfie you once posted. in an age where doxxing and stalking are some of the worst I’ve ever seen it, you HAVE to think twice about what you’re posting online.

i once saw a 13-year old post an image they noted as being “a few miles from their house.” it had a theater in the shot with a unique enough name to be local. one google maps search, now everyone knew not only what city they lived in, but the possible neighborhoods in that radius too. and they had a HUGE following…who all knew this was a 13-year-old child.

so yeah. not to sound like a 90s internet safety PSA…but I’m gonna be that PSA for a minute.

if you’re posting an image, there is NO need to say that you live there. you could just be traveling. “saw this in Montana” is better than “saw this by my house!”

before you post about a venue, especially a restaurant or small store, check and see if it’s local—CRUCIALLY if it has only one or two locations. people might travel to arenas or convention centers, but they’re far less likely to be traveling to Bartleby’s Fish and Chips. if it’s an anecdote and you still live nearby, you can honestly just leave the name out entirely.

if you’re sharing a news story, it can just be a story you found and wanted to share. you don’t have to clarify “it happened in my town,” because even if you don’t mention your town name, an easily-googled news article will.

if you’re seeing a concert or meeting a celebrity on a tour that’s stopped locally, wait until they’ve hit a few more venues before you post about it, or at the very least wait until you get home. this is honestly a smart move for any event you attend: unless you’re marketing yourself, there’s no need to advertise your location in real time.

check your selfie backgrounds for anything identifying. this includes city names on venues, school names, street signs, and house numbers.

this stuff is flexible if you no longer live in your hometown, or if your city is particularly big, but there’s STILL no reason to tie yourself to your school, your workplace, or your street. you can call it paranoid, but as someone who’s seen my friends get literal death threats over fictional characters before, the last thing I want is someone willing to act on those threats finding out where they live.

I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.

All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."

But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.

I'm just gonna slide this on in here for anyone that is interested in preserving old games. They take it very seriously too, they want an archive of every single game. Like, they have lists of every game ever released for a system, and once that system gets old enough, they add it to their archive and start collecting. Their latest addition was the Xbox 360, they opened that vault up in September 2022, and proudly announced they'd finished their collection of games for it back in April.

Also, while their game archives are almost entirely complete, they've got another project of archiving the manuals that came with those games, and that is... considerably less well filled out. Their collection of Xbox 360 manuals is especially rough, they've only gotten manuals for three games. So if you've got some Xbox 360 games kicking around, and the manual's still with them, please consider scanning them and submitting them to the site!