A Little Bit O' Stuff

I said, "Okay, I know a man who is homeless. He'd be happy to work. He's got a business degree. He would be happy to come clean your house, do your yard work, or help you with your filing, walk your dogs, babysit your kids, or just about any office job. What time tomorrow should he come see you?"

They all just looked at me.

I said, "Mind you, he's homeless, so he hasn't showered in a while and the only clothes he has are the ones on his back because he lost all his stuff last week when ge got picked up for vagrancy and they wouldn't let him go back for his bag. It would be a few weeks before what you are paying him is enough to get shelter and such."

And still they stared at me.

Idk if I fall totally on either “side” here but I don’t really like the implication that fanfiction itself never explores deep themes. I’ve read fanfiction that made me sit down with myself and ask questions about how exactly I was defining myself relative to my experiences. Fanfiction writers are writers, writing about human experiences and societal themes whether they mean to or not, and not every instance is successful, but not every book is successful.

People knowing there are certain emotions that tend to pull them into stories isn’t new. I’ve had books recommended to me because someone knows how I feel about characters who were doomed before a story starts, or stories with unconventional ways of wrangling with death.

I think it’s okay if people recommend their friend a book because “you’ll like this character because they really want to prove themself,” the way casual book recs tend to go, latching onto something you know is an emotional hook your friend likes exploring. I see literally no problem, then, with the equally brief and snappy selling point being “you’ll like this because you like enemies to lovers angst.”

I get frustrated by posts that reduce the concept of a recurring theme or trope to something that just goes the same way every time, sure. And yet: recommending each other books via AO3 tags is “I think you will like this book because it contains something you like.” People are seeking the emotions they want from literature, and some are using familiar language to draw themself into a different set of media that they want to get to know better. (Others are probably already reading a lot of published books!)

I see no conflict with wanting to read a certain kind of story because you like that kind of story. We’ve acknowledged, in fact, that anything describable as “enemies to lovers angst” won’t, in fact, be that simple. So reading a lot of books that qualify as that will explore different themes and angles every time, right? This is as ~doomsday~ as me wanting to read a lot of books about characters navigating whether or not they’re their world’s definition of human and whether or not that matters.

We all have stories we like to seek out. We all already use labels that do not fully represent the complexity of the stories within them: I want to read a tragic romance, a comedy of errors, a bildungsroman. Chill out.

Translating works between mediums *always* comes with interpretation and adaptation. There’s a whole field of literary discourse around that. Hell, a professor at my university accepted a shitpost as an assignment because it distilled a play into a single image.

And frankly, ao3 tags give so much information about themes and deliver them in an accessible way. The goal, after all, is to *promote* reading, not gatekeeping so hard you push people out of reading for fun.

Sure, it might not say “forbidden enemies to lovers angst”, but it might well say:

The Montagues and the Capulets have been at war for generations, so when a Capulet girl falls for a Montague boy, the two teenagers know that they must keep their love a dead secret. But after Romeo gets caught up in the rising tensions between their two families, the couple are torn apart. As the story spins towards its tragic conclusion, Juliet must decide how much she is willing to give up.

… Or something of the sort, which basically gives you the same information— that they are lovers, that their love is forbidden and that a lot of sad stuff is going to happen.

I’ve always assumed this whole “books should use AO3 tags” thing to be at least partly a backlash to the current trend where more and more books seem to be scrapping the blurb altogether and replacing it with just a series of quotes:

“A dark gem of a book"— some famous writer.

“You’ll read it again and again"— a journalist.

WINNER OF AN AWARD YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF

“Wtf is it about tho"— an increasingly desperate reader who just wants to know it it’s worth buying a copy.

How America Fails New Parents - and their babies

12 Year Old Dymond Milburn was severely beaten by 3 plainclothes police officers because they thought she was a prostitute. Even though they beat her with a flashlight and caused injuries to her head, spine, throat and ear, the cops charged her with assault.

Sean Stewart, one of the cops involved, later received “Officer of the Year”

According to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Galveston, Dymond Larae Milburn went outside her home to flip a circuit breaker at about 7:45 p.m. on Aug. 22, 2006.

Responding to a call that three white prostitutes were soliciting in the neighborhood, the plainclothes officers jumped out of an unmarked van on Gomez’s orders and one of them grabbed the girl, who is black, the lawsuit states.

The girl contends that the officers did not identify themselves as police and that the officer who grabbed her, later identified as Roark, told her, “You’re a prostitute. You’re coming with me.”

Her parents heard her cries for help and came outside to see the hysterical girl hanging on to a tree and screaming “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” while two officers hit her about the head, face and throat, the family alleges.

Plainclothes officers. Three adult male strangers jumped out of a van, called a little girl a prostitute, and attempted to drag her away into the van. And then later they charge her with resisting arrest. 

And from this article (I don’t understand why they have that image as a header depicting a scary black man threatening/silencing a crying little white girl when it was a white COP beating on a little black girl but ok)

Officer David Roark had his hand over the mouth of Milburn when her father came out on the balcony after hearing his daughter’s cries for help. The other officers, Justin Popovich and Sean Stewart, beat Dymond’s face, head and throat while their supervisor, Sgt. Gilbert Gomez, watched on in approval.

Dymond’s parents approached the cops and said “That’s our daughter. She’s twelve.” Roark responded “I don’t care if she’s twenty-two, thirty-two, or forty-six.”

and then:

The examining physician found that the girl had injuries from multiple blows to the head, face, neck, lower back, left shoulder, and left hip/waist area. She suffered a contusion to the back of the head (where she was struck with a flashlight). There were abrasions on her arm and wrist. Dymond’s throat was swollen; she had difficulty swallowing, nausea and vomiting, and hoarseness of voice due to being struck in the throat. She had black eyes, scalp lacerations, tenderness of the vertebrae. She was experiencing double vision and loss of hearing. Dymond’s ear drum and nose were also injured (blood in ear, bruised nasal septum, and nose bleed).

After the attack, Dymond suffered from PTSD, nightmares, and an inability to concentrate in school.

When she finally healed enough (physically) to return to school a horrible surprise was waiting for her. Police showed up to Austin Middle School and arrested Dymond for resisting and assaulting a peace officer. A twelve year old girl!

In a blatant disregard of logic and common sense, the court system in Galveston felt these charges were justified and Milburn was actually charged with assault on an officer and tried, twice! After three years and two mistrials, the DA finally dropped her case.

Immediately after her criminal trials, the family filed a civil suit, naming the four officers as plaintiffs. After multiple appeals by officers, including asking the court to dismiss the case based upon qualified immunity, meaning that the officers were just doing their job and are thereby shielded from civil liability, a settlement has yet to have been reached.