Sasha Kielman

And I know, the scene where the Ring tempts Sam with being "Lord of the Garden" is funny and awesome, but people forget that A) Sam had been wearing the ring for all of a couple days (compared to Frodo's 17 years in the book), and the Ring was clearly desperate and at the end of its tempting rope. Tolkien himself said that "no-one", not even Sauron himself (if he were inclined to do so), could destroy the ring at Mount Doom. The temptation at the ultimate moment would be too great. In fact, in the initial draft, this is exactly what happens to Frodo - the Ring shows him a vision of him using it to protect and save the hobbits from Sauron, and that's what causes him to finally put it on. (Presumably, Tolkien cut this because it didn't make sense for Frodo to narrate this moment.) So Sam's vision doesn't seem so ridiculous or out there now.

"Be like Frodo. Keep going, one day at a time, and try. He didn't believe he could succeed either. But he got so much closer than he would if he had accepted defeat, didn't he? And that was important too. Even if he failed at the end"

And you know what? I did. I did try. And I got there. And I understand Frodo now, at least enough to have a huge amount of respect for him.

Copying these from a discussion I had in my writing group discord, because you're right and you should say it. You need Frodo. It's easy to dismiss his role in all this as a less active participant, but he is spending every minute of every day for months resisting the greatest temptation in the world. Sam can do all he does because he doesn't have that accursed thing around his neck, whispering in his thoughts, stealing his energy and his health and his will to live.

Th Creative Writing part of my degree covered genres, styles, poetry, professional writing, articles, fiction, non-fiction, short stories, novel-writing and even some level of scripting. We also did a lot of analysis and even had an entire lecture (including workshops) on how to give and receive constructive feedback.

The Screenwriting half of my degree did none of that. We watched movies and shows and we learned how to structure scripts and how writer's rooms worked, which is all useful, but in hindsight I truly wish I could have just done all of that in a six month semester long unit in Creative Writing because that's about the amount of information that was disseminated by the screenwriting course over the 3 years.

And those people in the Screenwriting half who were NOT doing Creative Writing (doing film or drama etc.) were notably less advanced in their skills by the final year. That's not to say they were BAD writers (although some of them were, that's true of all Writing degrees, sometimes people refuse to be taught because they think they know everything already despite being at a place to learn) but they were less adept at giving feedback on other people's writing beyond "i didn't like it" or "it was clunky" without being able to verbalise why and how it was clunky. They were less able to paint a picture of the world they were creating or fine-tune character specific dialogue, which is all stuff you expect to be able to do as a screenwriter. It's not just that we should stop listening to screenwriters it's that even screenwriters should be taking more writing advice from more diverse sources like poetry or novel writers. The books people DO recommend for screenwriting (like Save the Cat, which most good writers I know have beef with) should not be seen as the blueprint but as supplement advice you can take or leave - which is what was so useful about covering so many things in the Creative Writing half of my degree.

Ashara Dayne

(English / Español / Italiano)

In the 1580s, he decided to further enhance his collection by decorating sections of pages with various artistic illustrations—books at that time were often simply kept on shelves. The Italian graphic designer and painter Cesare Vecellio (1521–1601), a cousin of Titian, was chosen as the artist. In total, he illustrated 172 volumes. The themes of the illustrations were related to the content of the books themselves (which was convenient, as it made it easy to find a specific topic). According to Pillone, the painted pages transformed the library into a unique art gallery.

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En el siglo XVI, el abogado veneciano Odorico Pillone poseía una extensa biblioteca, reunida en la finca familiar cerca de Venecia. En la década de 1580, decidió enriquecer aún más su colección decorando algunas páginas con diversas ilustraciones artísticas; en aquella época, los libros solían guardarse simplemente en estanterías. El diseñador gráfico y pintor italiano Cesare Vecellio (1521-1601), primo de Tiziano, fue elegido como artista. En total, ilustró 172 volúmenes. Los temas de las ilustraciones estaban relacionados con el contenido de los propios libros (lo cual resultaba práctico, ya que facilitaba la búsqueda de un tema específico). Según Pillone, las páginas pintadas transformaron la biblioteca en una galería de arte única.

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Nel XVI secolo, l’avvocato veneziano Odorico Pillone possedeva una vasta biblioteca, raccolta nella tenuta di famiglia nei pressi di Venezia. Negli anni Ottanta del Cinquecento, decise di arricchire ulteriormente la sua collezione decorando alcune pagine con varie illustrazioni artistiche: all’epoca, infatti, i libri venivano spesso semplicemente conservati sugli scaffali. Come artista fu scelto il grafico e pittore italiano Cesare Vecellio (1521–1601), cugino di Tiziano. In totale, egli illustrò 172 volumi. I temi delle illustrazioni erano legati al contenuto dei libri stessi (il che era pratico, poiché rendeva facile trovare un argomento specifico). Secondo Pillone, le pagine dipinte trasformarono la biblioteca in una galleria d’arte unica nel suo genere.

Rhaella Targaryen

🎨 My commissions are open! 🎨

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 

Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose

Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards

Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids

Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt

Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt

Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt

Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt

Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)

McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

I'm also a librarian and queer books are almost always cut first when we have to weed for space or prioritize new releases over old items because no one reads them

I will say, when I worked at a large downtown location, we had a "browsing card" that we would check out items we found taken off the shelf and left on a table, as an example of a book that had clearly been read, just not checked out by anyone

it's possible queer books do actually get a bit of unfair treatment in this regard because people may be nervous or outright scared to check them out onto an account with their name on it. so they get browsed at a much higher rate, but if a library doesn't have a specific system in place (or need for it) to count browsed items, then it looks like they aren't being used and they get weeded

for other librarians, a browsing card is a great idea if you have enough staff for the extra work / enough items left out to justify it

for patrons, check out queer books even if you don't read them! you're not lying or committing any type of fraud. you're keeping books on the shelf long enough for pride season when people are interested in checking them out again and for people scared to use their own accounts or who don't have library cards

for anyone nervous about using their library card, libraries do not keep search histories of what you check out!! this means even if the government does come back with a warrant, *wet farting noise* too bad! it doesn't exist!

It feels like such a small thing, but all movements are made up of small things! We have this mindset that in order to get everything done, everyone must be doing their (or *the*) absolute best at all times. But not everyone can do the same things, to the same degree, with the same amount of productivity or success. Not everyone can; sometimes, they're the ones that need help. Sometimes people just need help.

This post is very much so intended for the people who can. I've seen a lot of replies from folks who say they don't have to (or don't think about) checking out or requesting queer books from the library specifically because they *can* buy them, can pirate them, or already have them in their house or on their computers or phones. But in instances like that, keeping these books in circulation is less for you and more for the people who can't. The folks who come to the library, who don't have access to internet--or even electricity--at home and would never--have never--been able to interact with this "ubiquitous queer community" we have here online who has made so many of these. materials so avaliable to the rest of us.

And... if I can be a little frank. Sometimes the hyperaccessibility of these materials online (through pirating, cheap e-book copies, etc) gives people a false sense of security. It implies that these things are an infinate resource, good for "When I get around to it".

And often, you won't. There's so much to read and so much to do. So much to download and so much to sit down and stare at for hours. That kind of mental scope puts books in people's hands (or phones), but never in their heads.

I live in a province that is currently trying to ban queer books from libraries, and as a library patron, this is terrifying. 95% of the books I read are from the library and a lot of them are way out of my budget to buy personally.

Making Queer History would not exist without the school library I skipped class in to write articles. It would not exist without my friends with library cards for their universities sharing them and getting me access to rare texts. I would not be able to read as much as I do without Libby and Hoopla. If I have ever given you a book recommendation, know that I likely got it from the library first.

I cannot overstate the importance of protecting libraries and checking out queer books. And I want to say thank you to everyone above for being as passionate as I am about queer books in libraries.