The Stoner's Library|MOVED

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Cover art by @madbrake

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Submission Guidelines

 What we want: Bring us your pirates, mermaids, sea witches, selkies, sea nymphs, cecaelias, and krakens. We’re looking for Sapphic* fantasy tales that explore love on the high seas. If it’s Sapphic fantasy and aquatic, we want to see it!

 All levels of fantasy are fine, low (magical realism) to high (epic fantasy).

 Happily Ever After or Happy For Now ending required. No cliffhangers, please.

 Co-authors are welcome.

 *We define sapphic as an umbrella term that encompasses lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, and queer women, and is inclusive of trans women, non-binary people, and cis women. 

 Heat levels: No erotica, but we are open to all heat levels (from sweet to spicy)

 What we DON’T want: No triggering subjects such as on-page non-consensual sex, incest, and excessive gore. Subjects like racism, homophobia, transphobia, religion, discrimination of any kind, and anything else otherwise triggering or hurtful must be challenged on-page in a conscientious way. 

 Submissions Open: June 1, 2023 – November 30, 2023

 Title: The Pull of the Tide

 Type: Anthology of short stories

 Length: 4k – 20k words

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

the idea that we're all supposed to be soldiers, shaping every part of our lives around doing what it takes to most effectively Fight The Enemy. that everything you do must be held up to scrutiny, and if anything falls short of what our side might ask for, you're Part Of The Problem

Even if some pieces of media are obviously hateful and i think most reasonable people would/should hate them, it's so so important to be able to confront the ugly parts of humanity. it is impossible to address a problem if you refuse to look at it head on.

like, i was talking yesterday about Song of The South, which i think is a solid contender for containing "objectively bad content," if such a thing exists. do i think it's a particularly artistically valuable movie? not really. do i think it's appropriate for anyone who just wants to enjoy an animated film without getting slapped in the face with romanticized racism and dehumanization? also no. it makes me angry that parts of it have continued to exist for so long with their context stripped.