hell is the absence of the people you long for

laura’s 10k celebration (top 30 ships as voted by my followers) ✵ 28 ➳ clint barton & natasha romanoff

He had been genuinely excited about the 8 year old book he’d picked up. It was a new one in a series he used to read as a younger kid. He’d been actively sitting and reading, and then he was embarrassed in front of his classmates, told off for reading a kids book, and voila. He lost all enthusiasm for reading anything else that day.

What’s worse? That kid had been hit by a car like a year and a half earlier. Severe brain trauma. Had to re-learn a lot of basic things, like how to speak and how to read.

An 8 year old book would have been perfect for him. Easy enough to read that it would have helped rebuild his confidence in his own reading ability. A book meant for 15/16 years olds? A lot harder to read than a book for 8 year olds. Especially if you’re recovering from a relatively recent brain injury.

This thread is fucking depressing so I wanted to add an example of what can happen when the RIGHT approach is taken.

My best friend is a school librarian. But for a few years, she taught 7th and 8th grade. This was right around 2010.

She assigned a book report. You could do any book you wanted, but she had to approve your choice.

Some girl chose Twilight.

Alicia called me and said “I don’t know what to do. Her other teachers said it was a miracle she picked a book at all. She won’t even read two paragraphs for homework. But…it’s TWILIGHT.” Which, yes, Alicia had read, because it was popular with her students and she felt like she had to keep abreast of their likes and dislikes to be effective. (For those who weren’t around for this, or don’t remember: a lot of schools and teachers were banning Twilight more or less on the basis of finding it trashy.)

I said: “tell her yes. But tell her that if she wants to read Twilight, there are some questions you want her to keep in mind while she reads.” And advised her to tailor those questions around things that bothered her about the books (for example, Edward’s stalking of Bella).

She did.

A few weeks later she called me again.

The girl decided to read the whole series, got halfway through Breaking Dawn, took her the book, and said “Mrs. [name], I just don’t LIKE any of these people.” Normally, Alicia would’ve recommended Harry Potter, but again: these were the only books the girl had been known to pick up in YEARS, and the final Potter book was just barely three years old. If she’d wanted to read it, she already would have. Alicia’s preferred genre is one I call Tudor-lite (Jane Austen, Philippa Gregory, that stuff), and she was pretty sure the stuff she was really into wouldn’t pass muster with her student.

I was still living in the same area as Alicia at the time, so I told her to ask the girl what she HAD liked about Twilight, give me the answers, and my creepy-loving ass would make a recommendation and give her a book. Based on her answers, I gave her my copy of ‘Salem’s Lot and told her to tell the girl she could keep it as long as she liked.

I NEVER GOT IT BACK.

This girl went from ‘Salem’s Lot to Dracula. And from Dracula to Frankenstein. And from Frankenstein into the wider world of gothic literature. By the end of the school year she’d plowed through almost fifty books—which meant ALMOST THREE PER WEEK.

All it took was being told “sure, you can like Twilight” and then “it’s okay, you don’t have to like Twilight.”

A little sun, a little rain, a little love—that’s all it takes to make a flower grow.

THE AVENGERS+ greek gods and goddess 

On June, 20th the JURI of European Parliament approved of the articles 11 and 13 of the new Copyright Law. These articles are also known as the “Link Tax” and the “Censorship Machines” articles.

Articles 13 in particular forces every internet platform to filter all the contents we upload online, ending once and for all the fandom culture. Which means you won’t be able to upload any type of fandom works like fan arts, fan fictions, gif sets from your favourite films and series, edits, because it’s all copyrighted material. And you won’t also be able to share, enjoy or download other’s contents, because the use of links will be completely restricted.

But not everything’s lost yet. There’s another round of voting scheduled for the early days of July.

What you can do now to save our internet, is to share these informations with all of your family members and friends, and to ask to your MEP (the members of the European Parliament from your country) to vote NO at the next round, to vote against articles 11 and 13.

Here you can find more news and all the details to contact your MEP:

https://saveyourinternet.eu

Also, sign and share this petition:

https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet?recruiter=50668942&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial

We have just a couple of weeks to stop this complete madness, don’t let them dictating the way we enjoy our internet.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593

https://creativecommons.org/2018/06/20/european-parliaments-legal-affairs-committee-gives-green-light-to-harmful-link-tax-and-pervasive-platform-censorship/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitterfacebook&utm_content=JURI-vote-june-20

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/article-13-european-parliament-internet-censorship-copyright-a8408531.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true

https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/20/eu-votes-for-copyright-law-that-would-make-internet-a-tool-for-control?__twitter_impression=true

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/eu-meme-war-article-13-regulation

Also ao3 has spoken out about this

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/10637

Natasha Romanoff Character Bio

there’s this place called a library. and they have these things called books. and then there’s this thing called Google Search. where you can find books in PDF form.

friend: let’s check wikipedia in 2 seconds on our phones

Wikipedia as a reference resource is fantastic because, just like print encyclopedias, it serves as a jumping-off point for research… and so do librarians! A librarian isn’t going to just write your paper for you, we’re going to point you to the books, articles, and websites that contain the information. Wikipedia is great for that, too, because any article that gets more than a bit of traffic will wind up with sources and external links. But print encyclopedias don’t go that far in citing their sources, and because they’re static media, the references may not only be outdated, they might be entirely inaccessible due to age, obscurity, or cost of access.

And there’s an interesting thing about all those books we have on the shelves… anyone can write one, and usually they only have a handful of other people checking their work. Academic journals are somewhat notorious for the ease with which a completely falsified paper can see publication (especially in cases of electronic journals), but printed books can also be easily falsified, whether as a result of publishers with an agenda or just fact-checkers slacking off.  

 As has been pointed out above, wikipedia is really great at getting obscenely specific in terms of the topics of articles. It’s an amazing collection of data, and more importantly, it’s an amazing collection of sources of data.

Not only that, but Wikipedia cites its sources. It tells you right at the bottom of the page where all its info came from, so if you want to use a fact from Wikipedia but don’t want a teacher annoyed with you, just cite the source in the footnote. Teachers and professors are (a) not likely to check up on this and (b) it’s a real source so even if they do it’s legit?

The list of other languages in the sidebar? Look at it and check whether the article has a version in Simple English.