It's not safe out here. It's wondrous.

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.

Old hag by *veprikov

i would like to give julian "baby" bashir a kith😗💅✨

someone give odo a hug can yall NOT tell how sad he is. Hug the gelatinous man

quark is peak capitalist😼

^like he would literally sell one of his friends for 1/2 a bar of latinum

it was bad in tng and its still bad now, the clothes kids/teens wear are ATROCIOUS. The Drip™ is NONEXISTENT. jake deserves better

i really like sisko

o'brien is still mvp

odo's bucket is an underrated character, he carries the entire show💅

so like. Are kira and jadzia gonna phuck

julian plays Space Tennis but then thinks hes straight. Make it make sense

speaking of julian: Garak

hes SO cryptic. and clearly horny for bashir😃

why is jadzia's hair so Tall🧍🏻‍♀️

odo could have the fattest, juiciest ass on the station but yet he chooses not to. wasted potential odo

⚪️ man

⚪️ woman

🔘 person with adhd

and i am seeking:

⚪️ men

⚪️ women

Lumberjacks, like most megafauna species generally require more space than the average hardware store, even a big box store could provide. The misconception is that Lumberjacks are a social species because of how they often work and live together.

This is a matter of necessity, not preference, and a survival technique for thriving under the LogBoss.

A “pack” of Lumberjacks, if not under the environmental pressure of a LogBoss will naturally disperse until they each have a wide territory.

Lumberjacks rarely fight for territory.

One on one, a Lumberjack could drive out a Dad or Lesbian, however the latter tend to travel in social packs.

Lumberjacks will passively retreat on the presence of large numbers of people. Kind of like Sasquatch.

Getting a “pack” of Lumberjacks assembled would be hard enough unless they were forced into a Hardware Store by a LogBoss. In that case, they would already be in a heightened and potentially agitated state far above their natural behavior. This artificial scenario can be likened to a circus animal running amok. If it had been in the wild, the incident would not have occurred.

Free-roaming Lumberjacks are the cryptids of the Hardware ecosystem. They are surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive.