Simply a happy girl

The Iron Lung movie came out before the Project Hail Mary movie. Two months before, in fact.

The ship started not because people watched PHM and decided to ship Grace with this other character called Simon. But because the Iron Lung movie fans watched it and decided to ship Simon with Grace.

Spoiler alert for both movies here, but Iron Lung is a horror movie where the main character goes through it all alone and then dies at the end. PHM meanwhile ends in a more hopeful tone where the main character gets not only companionship, but a chance at a happy ending.

People who had watched the Iron Lung movie watched PHM and noticed the similarities of the unwilling suicide missions the main characters were put through.

And then went on to consider what if Simon didn't die, but rather got transported to a different world. To someone who understands what he went through. And he gets to have a happy ending.

“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 talked about how conservative authoritarians define "pedophilia" as "youth autonomy," but even among less overtly authoritarian communities, the spectre of The Pedophile is, at best, a distraction from the reality of CSA.

"Pedophiles" are a distinct, discrete type of person. They're Not Like Us, but also, they Could Be Anywhere. They're hiding in plain sight among us, lurking and sabotaging. Anyone could secretly one of them. They're queer, they're Jewish, they're vaguely foreign. They conspire. They're a cabal. They have secret signals. They're rich and powerful and secretly control governments, but they're also poor and dirty and hide in alleyways. They're sexually deviant. They're everywhere and nowhere, and you should constantly be on guard against anyone who might be one.

Child sexual abuse, on the other hand, is abuse. It's an action, not a type of person. Anyone can commit it, because it's an abuse of power, and all adults and many other children have power over all children. Any adult has the ability to sexually abuse a child, because every adult has the ability to wield power over any child. Child sexual abuse is part of the continuum of child abuse, which in turn is part of the continuum of abuse, which can be committed by anyone who has the power to commit it.

The Epstein clients are the most prosaic phenomenon in the world. Rich, powerful people trafficked powerless people to force the powerless people to serve them. Rich, powerful people got away with breaking laws. Rich, powerful people uses people as objects -- in this case, as sex objects, but by the same structural mechanisms by which they use people to clean their houses, pick their crops, and assemble widgets in their factories.