Ollie. Asexual/Panromantic/Genderqueer. They/Them/Their or Xe/Xem/Xyr. Writer, crafter, baseball fan, TTRPG enthusiast. Whatever you actually followed me for, I should probably apologize. Unless you followed me because of one of my fanfics, in which case I should DEFINITELY apologize.
patience my brother (and patience my friend): a TMA fanfic
Read from the beginning on Tumblr || Also on AO3 and my website
Chapter 9: The Professional Twilight
Mrs Hough surprised them after they came in from the schoolyard with a chocolate cake, and the whole class sang the Happy Birthday song. Jon understood why they put his name firstâhappy birthday, Jon and Melanie fit the rhythm better than happy birthday, Melanie and Jonâbut it still didnât quite feel fair. Melanie told him to stop being silly and enjoy the cake.
He thought it was good that she knew him so well he didnât even have to say anything before she guessed what he was thinking.
Most of their classmates still got picked up or walked home by their parents, but Jon and Melanie had proved over and over that they knew the way and knew how to be careful, so this term they were allowed to walk home on their own. They waved a cheery goodbye to Mrs Houghâand Miss Goldman, who was waiting on the pickup line with her classâand held hands as they walked to the end of the block.
Once they had turned the corner and were definitely out of sight, Melanie turned to Jon with a challenging glint in her eye. âBetter hope your bag is zipped today.â
âBetter hope your skirt stays fastened,â Jon countered. He matched her smirk. âLast one thereâs a wretched weasel.â
âThat doesnât start with a W,â Melanie protested.
âDoes too. W-R-E-T-C-H-E-D. Daddy spelled it for me.â Jon tilted his chin defiantly at Melanie. âItâs like âwriteâ and âwrongâ, itâs got a silent W.â
She huffed. âFine. Wretched weasels it is. Ready, steady, go!â
She took off running before she actually finished saying the last word, but Jon was expecting that and took off at the same time. They hurtled pell-mell down the street, bags bumping against their backs, skipping over cracks and dodging around those few other people who were out walking. Melanieâs hair ribbons had come loose and Jon was pretty sure his shoe was untied, but neither of them slowed for a minute. They ought to have, of course, Miss Goldman and Mrs Hough and their parents had impressed on them the importance of looking both ways before crossing the road, and that had been one of the conditions of their being permitted to walk themselves home. They also had been explicitly told not to run like this after Jonâs homework folder had gone flying and Melanie had torn her knees tripping in an attempt to catch her skirt from falling down, but theyâd secretly agreed that what the grown ups didnât know wouldnât hurt anyone. And so, giggling and breathless and still managing to tease one another, they pounded along the pavement until they got to the shortcut.
Mummy had fussed a bit about this, too, even before they were walking themselves, but this part was all right; Mr Fister had told Daddy that the footpath was an ancient right of way and there was an understandingâheâd called it a tacit agreement, and Jon had made him spell it three times to be sure it stuck in his mindâthat anyone could use it at any time as long as they werenât committing a crime, and since Mr Fister was generally agreed to be two years older than God and had moved to Woodley on the day He invented dirt, if he said a thing was true it was understood to be correct. Here, too, stones had been laid down as a kind of footpath, stones that were constantly being replaced and retrod as spring mud and the passage of feet pushed the old ones deeper. Since the planting season had just started, this yearâs stones hadnât been placed yet, so it was still a bit muddy and half the stones were completely sunk. Melanie, as was her habit, hopped from stone to stone trying to only touch the clean parts, not because she cared about her shoes but because that was the game. Jonâs challenge was to only touch every other stone, which was harder this time of year when so many of them couldnât be seen, since it meant he sometimes had to jump pretty far. When Daddy took the shortcut with them, he always had to do it on one foot like a pogo stick; Mummy didnât play those sorts of games herself, but she was usually pretty tolerant of theirs. (Jon liked that word, tolerant. It was a grown up word for be kind and polite to one another even if you donât understand why the other person does it that way and took a lot less time to say, and Mrs Hough had agreed when he told her that and taught it to the whole class and it had been their Word of the Month, which was fun even ifâmaybe especially becauseâMrs Hough hadnât let him suggest the word after that but asked other people to suggest good words. It meant Jon got to learn new words too and didnât have to be the one teaching them all the time, and it meant the other kids in the class knew how to use the grown up words and didnât tease him so much for using them himself.)
Just because they were racing didnât meant they didnât have to follow those rules (yes, they had been told not to race, but that was an order, not a rule, so it was fine), but they had both been doing it long enough that they could do it at speed. Melanie shrieked with mingled annoyance and excitement when Jon careened into her trying to jump over a stone she was standing on, grabbed him to steady herself, and overbalanced, sending them both toppling off the path and into the nearest furrow, plowed but not yet planted. Jon managed to twist to keep from losing his glasses or spattering them with mud. The rest of him didnât fare so well.
He didnât care. He rolled off of Melanie and pushed himself to his feet, jumping back to his stone, then grabbed Melanieâs hand and pulled her up before taking off down the path again.
âHey, no fair!â Melanie called, but she was laughing as she chased after him.
From the other side of the shortcut it was only a couple of blocks and then a sharp turn almost doubling back on itself and home was right there. Jon, for onceâhe refused to think the fall had anything to do with it, heâd almost been ahead of her before that point anywayâwas just a little in front of Melanie as they tore down the sidewalk. He glanced over his shoulder, giggling, dodged around the Babashaniansâ rubbish bin, swung around the cornerâ
âHello, Jon.â
Jon pulled up abruptly. Melanie nearly crashed into him this time, but managed to skid to a halt just in time. Standing between them and the gate over their front path was a man who looked almost exactly like Sir Topham Hatt brought to life save that, rather than being completely bald, there were wisps of steel grey hair curling out from beneath his black silk hat. His eyes, which were almost the same color, were cold and calculating, and the smile on his lips didnât touch them.
And Jon, who knew everyone in town by name, house, and shoe size, had never seen him before in his life.
âApologies for the interception,â the strange man continued, âbut I had to be certain you would stop and speak with me, so I thought it best not to call attention to myself.â He ran an eye over Jon and added, âYou ought to be more careful, you know. It would be a dreadful shame if anything happened to you because you werenâtâŚwatching.â
Jon took a half step backwards, doing his best to stay between this man and Melanie. He didnât trust him for a minute. Melanie, of course, was quite often hard to convince that she needed him to protect her and would stand shoulder to shoulder with him against any threats. This time, she not only got up next to him, she tried to push in front of him to keep between him and the man.
âWho are you?â she demanded. âWhat do you want?â
âAh, you must be Melanie.â The strange manâs smile widened in a way that was clearly meant to be even friendlier and more welcoming but, to Jon, only seemed even more dangerous. âIâve heard so much about you. You two care for each other very much, do you not? And to answer your question, whyâŚâ He produced from a pocket a small, rectangular box wrapped neatly in shiny gold paper and tied round with a green ribbon done up in an elaborate bow. âIâm Jonâs grandfather, and Iâm here to give him a present for his birthday.â
Fear took hold of Jonâs stomach and twisted it like a clown fashioning a balloon animal. In the first place, the last time heâd encountered someone informing him they were his grandparent, it had been someone who wanted very much to take him away from his family. In the second place, anyone talking about it being his birthday wasnât somebody who knew or cared about him, because everyone who loved him loved Melanie too and it was their birthday, thank you. That was kind of how being twins worked. Third and most importantly, they didnât have any grandfathers anymore. Grandfather Sims had died not long after they were born, Grandpa King had died just before their first birthday, and even if both of Mummyâs parents hadnât died before she even met Daddy, this man was definitely not Chinese. In fact, he looked like the kind of person who only didnât use words like the one Scott had hurled at them on their first day of school because that wasnât refined.
Blindly, he groped beside him for Melanieâs hand. She grabbed it tight, the security a comfort. He could feel that she was just as scared as him of this strange man who knew their names. Melanie usually got angry when she was scared, and since Jon didnât want her to fight him, he spoke up in as steady a voice as he could. âIâI donât have a grandfather.â
âOf course you do,â the man said soothingly. It gave Jon an unpleasant, sticky feeling that he didnât like. âIâm only sorry it took me so long to find you. I wasâŚunaware that your mother existed, Iâm afraid, and of course by the time I learned that she was already gone. I thought her husband and only child were gone as well, but then I learned about you. I wanted to know everything about you before I approached. To be sure that you wouldâŚtruly appreciate this.â
He held out the present again. âItâs yours, Jonathan. Take it.â
Jon didnât want to. He didnât. But he found himself responding to the authority in the order, reaching out with trembling handsâeven pulling his hand free of Melanieâsâto accept the box. It felt cool and strangely heavy for its size.
The man smiled. âWell? Donât you want to see whatâs inside of it?â
âHey!â
Mummyâs voice shattered the fog that had tried to close around Jonâs mind. He jerked sideways, stumbling into Melanie, and looked up guiltily as Mummy strode towards the gate, a frown on her face. It wasnât directed at him, though. âExcuse me, who the hell are you?â
âIâm Jonâs grandfather,â the man repeated.
Somehow, Mummy got out the gate and between Jon and the strange man. âLike hell you are.â
âI assure you, I am. I am his motherâs fatherââ
âIâm his mother,â Mummy interrupted firmly. âAnd my father is dead. So is my husbandâs. We donât know you and we do not appreciate you hanging around bothering us, so get away from my children and stay off our property.â Without turning away from the man, but still clearly talking to Jon and Melanie, she added, âGet on inside now and out of those dirty clothes. Lucky for you itâs laundry day.â
Melanie grabbed Jonâs wrist and practically dragged him through the gate. Jon wasnât willing to take his eyes off the man, either, for fear of what he might do. The manâs eyes and that cold, pale smile followed him all the way up the path and through the door until Melanie let it shut behind them, effectively cutting them off.
Jon wilted. âThanks, Melanie.â
âOf course.â Melanie scowled at the present. âWhyâd you take that?â
âIâI donât know. I just felt like I had to.â Jon stared at the present, too, then shook his head. âIâm not going to open it, though.â
Decisively, he opened up one of the cupboards in the sideboard that they never used, then shoved the present inside it and shut it firmly. âThere. Now it wonât bother us.â
Melanie eyed the sideboard a little uneasily. âWhat do you think was in it?â
Jon shrugged. âI donât know. And I donât care. Come on, letâs go get cleaned up before Mummy comes back in.â
He dragged Melanie towards the bedroom and changed the subject, chattering about the party they were going to have tomorrow. She took the hook, or at least let him think she was taking it, and at least pretended to forget about the present. Jon was glad. It meant he didnât have to admit to herâyetâthat while the first part had been true, the second part definitely wasnât.
He did care. For right now, though, he was more afraid than curious.
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old lady came up to my register and she smelled so strongly of weed. Granny were you hotboxing your car before you went to the grocy store. if so i hope you have a lovely day
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for the ask game, what is a detail in leaves too high to touch that you're really proud of?
Ooh...that's a tough one! I think it's the way Tim just...quietly is a good guy in the background without making it obvious. There are the big things he does because he's trying to make up for Tim Prime (in a way), but there are also the little things that he never calls attention to and people maybe don't notice - like that he always announces when he's entering or leaving a room so Martin Prime knows he's there, or like that he always calls Charlie "buddy" or something like that to subtly affirm his gender. It was just a lot of fun to weave in and see how many people picked up on it.
What are some details you think are characteristic of you/your fics
I joke about being Bram Stoker in the way that if nothing else is accurate in my fics, the train schedules are, but the truth is that I think it is characteristic of my fics that they feel real, or at least that I want them to feel real, because I've taken the time to work out little details like what the weather would have (roughly) been or how long it would actually have taken to get somewhere or consistency in house layouts. And I do like anchoring fics in time with references to real life events.
There are also a few other characteristic quirks that show up in my writing. The phrase "[X] sleeps like an eggbeater" turns up a lot. Certain locations tend to at least be a touchpoint. And the Terry Pratchett books, especially Discworld, almost always merit a mention. (I think that's also characteristic of my fic - that I slip in little references, here and there, to the things that influence me, be they direct quotes or mention of having read/watched them.)
Each Sunday, post six sentences from a writing project â published, submitted, in progress, for your cat â whatever.
âHello, Jon.â
Jon pulled up abruptly. Melanie nearly crashed into him this time, but managed to skid to a halt just in time. Standing between them and the gate over their front path was a man who looked almost exactly like Sir Topham Hatt brought to life save that, rather than being completely bald, there were wisps of steel grey hair curling out from beneath his black silk hat. His eyes, which were almost the same color, were cold and calculating, and the smile on his lips didnât touch them.
And Jon, who knew everyone in town by name, house, and shoe size, had never seen him before in his life.
a collection of questions i, as a writer, would love to be asked !!!
1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)
2. Go to your AO3 âWorksâ page, to the sidebar with all the filters, and click the drop-down arrow for âAdditional Tags.â What are your top 3-5 most used tags? Do you think they accurately represent your writing habits?
3. What are some tropes or details that you think are very characteristic of your fics?
4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?
5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [insert fic]? Answer it now!
6. Whatâs one fact about the universe of [insert fic] that you didnât get a chance to mention in the fic itself?
7. Any worldbuilding youâre particularly proud of?
8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?
9. How do you find new fic to read?
10. How do you decide what to write?
11. Are you partial to a certain character/pairing or are you more equal-opportunity? If you are partial to any character/pairing, why do you think that is?
12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?
13. Are there any tropes you used to like but donât anymore?
14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?
15. Whatâs your favorite AU that youâve written?
16. Whatâs an AU you would love to read (or have read and loved)?
17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?
18. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?
19. If you wrote a spin-off of [insert fic], what would it involve?
20. If you wrote a prequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?
21. If you wrote a âmissing sceneâ in [insert fic], what would it be?
22. Who is your favorite character in [insert fic] and why?
23. Whatâs a trope, AU, or concept youâve never written, but would like to?
24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?
25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write?
26. Would you rather write a fic that had no dialogue or one that was only dialogue?
27. How long did it take to write [insert fic]? Describe the process.
28. Does anyone read your fics before you post them? If so, who?
29. What songs would be (or are) on a playlist for [insert fic]? Explain your choices if you want!
30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?
31. Whatâs your ideal fic length to write?
32. Whatâs your ideal fic length to read?
33. If you write chaptered fics, whatâs your ideal chapter length to write? Is it different from your ideal chapter length to read?
34. What aspects of your writing are inspired by/taken from your real life?
35. What aspects of your writing are completely unlike your real life?
36. Do you visualize what you read/write?
37. Promote one of your own âdeep cutâ fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?
38. Did any of your fics get surprisingly popular (whatever that means to you)? Which ones? Why do you think they were so successful?
39. Is any aspect of your writing process inspired by other writers or people? If so, who?
40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?
41. Link a fic that made you think, âWow, I want to write like that.â
42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?
43. If you take/write prompts: whatâs your favorite prompt fic that youâve written?
44. If you take/write prompts: do you prefer dialogue or scenario/narrative prompts?
45. Whatâs something youâve improved on since you started writing fic?
46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write?
47. If [insert fic] was a pair of shoes, what kind would it be? Describe the shoes.
48. Whatâs the last fic you read? Do you recommend it?
49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if youâre up for it!
50. Answer any question of your choice, or talk about anything you want to talk about!
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Feel free to reblog for other people to vote. DO NOT SEND HATE TO ANYONE FOR WHAT THEY VOTED. This is merely for fun and to see what people genuinely think.
please do yourself a favor & watch this rock climbingâthemed drag king/burlesque performance set to âroxanneâ by the police with all the lyrics but âroxâ edited out
i mean there is one book i think should be banned and it's "to train up a child" by michael and debi pearl. it's a guidebook for how to abuse your kids.
Okay, see, look. Here's the thing. Which was the entire point of both the original post, and my addition to it.
If we allow books to be banned for any reason, that reason will be applied to books that people do not want to be read for other reasons.
"To Train Up a Child" should be banned because it's a guidebook for how to abuse your kids? Fine. Great. Let's ban it.
A LOT of parenting guides advocate corporal punishment. We should ban those too. After all, spanking is child abuse.
Kids need nutrition, right? It's abuse if you're not feeding kids properly. These parenting guides over here say you should let your kids dictate their diets because they know what they want - come on, kids don't know what they want! They'll eat nothing but sugar! That's abuse. Let's ban any books that advocate letting your children eat whatever they want.
Wait, though. My pediatrician gave my mom a copy of a diet book when I was a toddler and said she should put me on it to stop me getting fat, but it was a severely calorie-restrictive diet and I wouldn't have gotten adequate nutrition if we'd followed it. So unless the book expressly says "don't feed this book to growing children", it's implicitly advocating child abuse. We need to ban them.
"The Care and Keeping of You" is a book marketed at preteen girls, about their changing bodies and all that sort of thing. But it was written by a man. Some of those drawings are awfully close to nudity. We can't have girls thinking it's okay to let grown men draw them naked - what? They're cartoons? Doesn't matter, girls will still think it's okay, and if you let them see that, it's abuse. Ban it.
This book advocates care for trans children by letting them dress in ways that don't match their genitals, letting them present how they want, letting them maybe go on puberty blockers if they're old enough and even hormones when they're adults. You're forcing changes on children who can't agree to them! That's abuse! Ban the books! Ban them!
I realize this all seems hyperbolic and excessive, but that is the point. If you give someone a foot in the door by saying "this reason is okay to ban books", they can justify whatever they want under that until the door's been kicked off its hinges and, often, ends up covering the very books you initially tried to pass through the door.
There are books that should be read critically. There are books that should horrify people. There are authors who have made it clear that buying their books is agreeing with their positions not (necessarily) stated in the books and therefore maybe giving them money is a bad idea. But actually banning them? No. Nothing good comes of that.
Young men today being SHOCKED and APPALLED that the girls they're dating are reading dark romance like the closet in my grandma's spare room wasn't totally chockers with Mills and Boon books when I was a kid. "Our generation is RUINED because the young women are reading NASTY PORN" if you saw the shit 50 year old women were reading in the nineties you'd hurl.
My grandmother had Clan of the Cave Bear on her shelves. My mother read Dick Francis, which all have sex scenes in as well as ludicrous horse-related thriller stuff.
I have AO3 as well as all the stuff that managed to get printed.
Also there is often a fierce double standard. Women were meant to be OK with their husbands ogling the page 3 girl in The Sun, but OMG no you can't read bonkbusters by Jilly Cooper.
Shockingly, many people of many genders have been into Weird Sex Shit for a very very long time
I am only just now realising that some people might consider Clan of the Cave Bear smut. Come to think of it, it does have a lot of sex scenes, doesn't it. Not so much the first one, but after they introduce Jondolar.
I distinctly recall, when I was about twelve years old, being handed a 1'x1'x18" box at a church yard sale and told to put whatever books I wanted off the sale table into it, and I could take them home for free. (I suspect this was largely to minimize the number of things they had to pack up when the yard sale was over.)
My options, without exception, were Bible concordances and Harlequin romances.
Reader, I did not walk home with a box full of Bible concordances.
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âAuthors should not be ALLOWED to write aboutââ you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
âThis book should be taken off of shelves for featuringââ you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
âSchools shouldnât teach this book in class becauseââ you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
âNobody actually likes or wants to read classics because theyâreââ you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot
âI only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and featuresââ you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.
"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult
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..."
Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.
Actually, I did reports on book banning three separate times with three separate teachers, with three separate sets of parameters so I was able to write about the same topic in different ways, but this is specifically about the report I did in university. The actual specs for the report included that we were supposed to complete some kind of study or poll (this was not a science class). I put the questions out on a couple of forums I belonged to at the time and asked a few IRL friends as well. A lot of the questions were standard for this sort of thing, I think - were you ever assigned to read a banned book, did you ever read banned books on your own, did you read/were you assigned them BECAUSE they were banned or did you find out about them being banned later, what's your opinion on banning books, etc.
But there was one question I asked that ended up reshaping the entire thrust of my presentation: "Are there any books that you think SHOULD be banned, and if so, why?"
Here's the thing. Most of the forums I was posting on were fan spaces for a book series that, at the time, was one of the most banned/challenged books out there. It's a fandom that I have since entirely distanced myself from, that I one hundred percent do not recommend to anyone, that I will actively attempt to dissuade people from reading or talking about, and that I would like to not be popular anymore. I'm sure most of you reading this can guess which one I'm talking about (I won't name it or go into specifics because I don't want to trip any filters unnecessarily). But it was KNOWN that these books were banned in a lot of places. A lot of people wore the "I read banned books" badge with pride. I fully expected that the answer to that question would be a resounding "no" from the forums, and that I'd maybe get a few affirmative answers from one of the other spaces.
I was shocked. Not only did a lot of people come back with either "not exactly but I think we should keep [author] or [book] out of the hands of children" or "yes, [book]/anything by [author] should be banned because XYZPDQ", but not a single person who responded gave me the same answer. The only one I remember - keep in mind it's been almost twenty years - was that one person specifically said The Bone Collector, and for the "why do you think it should be banned" question, they only said, "No. I'm not explaining it. It's too horrible to even think about. Just believe me when I say nobody should ever be allowed to read this book."
I highlighted that last comment in my presentation, along with several other of my "favorite" official reasons for banning books - the Alabama school board that banned The Diary of Anne Frank in 1984 because it was "a real downer", the district that removed A Raisin in the Sun because it was "pornographic", the library that took Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out of circulation because it "might be hurtful to children without parents", and things of that nature - and pointed out that all of these were the same thing. This was somebody saying "I don't like this, therefore nobody should read it, and I shouldn't have to explain why." I also pointed out that if you can't give a good reason, the whole thing falls apart, and then I quoted "Smut" by Tom Lehrer:
All books can be indecent books,
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth, I'm glad to say,
Is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
I can tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz - THERE'S a dirty old man...
Go back to that paragraph I mentioned earlier, about those books that I no longer recommend to anyone. Notice how I phrased that. I don't recommend them. I will tell you all the reasons why I don't think you should buy them. I will tell you all the problems with the author, with the franchise, with the writing. I wish they were out of print, I wish they were deeply unpopular, I wish nobody would ever read them again.
But I still won't advocate for banning them.
It's so easy to twist a justification. Look at what I quoted up there! A Raisin in the Sun was banned for being "pornographic". One of the websites I used as a source responded to that accusation with "Did they read the same play I did?" At the time, I thought the comment was funny. Now, twenty years later, I realize: It was a buzzword. It was a convenient label. At the time of the challenge, just saying "it's pornographic" was enough. Obviously you're not some kind of sicko who wants to hear about all the pornographic details, are you? Freak! That's pornography! And they're teaching it in schools! We should get rid of it!
A Raisin in the Sun, for anyone who didn't study it at any point or read it (or watch the movie, which was very good), is a play/movie about a black family in Chicago in the 1960s. The family matriarch has been in domestic service for years, but she's just received a very large insurance payment from her husband's death and is retiring. Wanting to give her family, especially her young grandson, a better life, she goes out and buys a house...in an otherwise exclusively white neighborhood. The head of the homeowner's association (essentially) comes to visit them and offers to pay them a substantial amount of money to not move into the neighborhood, because segregation isn't officially a thing and they can't legally stop them from moving in, but they don't want them there. There's a lot more that goes on in the play, and I highly recommend you go and read it, but the point is that there is nothing sexual or titillating in the entire thing. The closest we get is a scene where the daughter (Beneatha, a college student) is gifted a traditional African dress from her boyfriend, who's Nigerian, and he shows her how to put it on over the clothes she's already wearing, and maybe the scene where the daughter-in-law (Ruth, a laundress) accidentally reveals that, having found out she's pregnant, she's planning to have an abortion rather than bring another child into the world/have another mouth to feed.
It's not pornographic. But someone didn't want it taught in schools, so they called it that to get it banned.
It's so easy to twist labels. If you, a liberal, agree that books with X trait are okay to ban, the people who don't want books to exist will find a way to say they have X trait, and then what are you going to do, admit that you like that sort of thing? Sicko! Freak! Pervert!
You don't have to like the book, or the author, or the topic. But if you're advocating for banning them entirely, you're functionally a conservative.
This actually shows the absurdity of the whole "banned books" narrative. You say you'd never ban these books, you wouldn't recommend them.
But the school boards in question also didn't ban those books. What they did was far closer to "not recommending." Whenever someone talks about an American school or school district "banning" a book, what it means is "not stocking that book in the school library." They don't take it out of stores or the central library, they just don't have it in the echool's library. They don't stop anyone from getting it, they just don't give it to you. You can contrive a situation where they are the only means of a child getting a certain book, and that doesn't matter, because by this standard every single book in the world that isn't on the shelves in that school library was banned by that school library and that's obviously a silly standard. Librarians curate the book selection, they have to, the shelf space isn't infinite. They choose the books they think the library should contain as their recommendations. It doesn't become book banning when anyone other than a librarian does the same thing.
Hi! You are incorrect. Or at least grossly oversimplifying my points.
Yes, some instances of "books being banned" were just the librarians removing them from circulation, or the districts taking them off the required reading lists. Most cases, at least most of the ones I cited for my papers, were bans in the sense that the school districts (or libraries) not only removed official copies, they refused to allow the students to have or discuss them, period. My brother had a book, his book, one that he personally owned, taken away from him by a teacher and locked up in the school office because it was banned at the school he attended. They wouldn't even give it back to him, they insisted on giving it back to my mother. He borrowed one of my pencils once and came home in tears because he had to admit to me that his teacher had noticed it was a merchandise tie-in to a book that was banned and not only took it from him, but actively destroyed it in front of him. Because the book was a "bad book" and therefore banned.
Also, that's not the point of anything I said, or anything else in this post. If a kid comes up to me and asks me if I think a book is good or if they should read it, I'm going to say that I don't think it's good or that I wouldn't read it, and if they ask me why I will give my points. But if they say "well, I want to read it anyway", even if it was my kid, I wouldn't stop them. My personal opinions are just that, and I have no right to force them on anyone else.
It's the difference between "there are children in the school with peanut allergies so the cafeteria will not prepare or serve meals that have peanuts in them" and "there are children in the school with peanut allergies so you cannot even let your children have peanut butter for breakfast on school days". One of those is a restriction and the other is a ban. And schools absolutely do ban peanuts - and books - to that extreme.
