My Soapboxes

Can you believe this was published fifty years ago?

"We have made considerable efforts to discover what sort of person the offender is and why he has broken the law, and we rack our brains to find out what to do with him... Hardly ever do we pause for a moment to examine critically the contents of the very law the existence of which alone makes it possible for the individual to offend against it."

Oh wow. Ohhhh. Oh I gotta sit down. Wait, I'm already sitting down.

We often prefer to see crime and delinquency as alien phenomena, as somehow existing outside of society, involving attacks on society. These disturbing acts, we would like to think, do not reflect the normal workings of our social system, but rather represent some kind of aberrational malfunctioning of the system. Were it true, such an idea might well be reassuring, but clearly it is not. Crime and delinquency, along with other problems, are integral features of the social order and cannot be explained by reference to some "external" or "abnormal" phenomena or occurrences. Unfortunately, the persisting unwillingness to face up to this fact (and the related fact that legislation itself "produces" crime and delinquency) has even led some sociologists to commit what they term the "evil causes evil" fallacy. This fallacy, that "bad" consequences must have "bad" causes, blinds one to the ways in which socially disturbing behavior may be grounded in aspects of the dominant social structure and prevailing value systems.

published in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and seventy three

A corollary of this reasoning is the belief that such problems as crime and delinquency always require special solutions... One particularly unfortunate result of this is an inordinate focus on the individual deviants or "offenders" themselves. Such individuals are seen as being basically different from nonoffenders...and it is in this basic differentness that the "causes" of delinquency problems are believed to lie.

of our lord nineteen hundred

and seventy three

>look inside

Obviously the NHL is racist as fuck, but it is a choice to put racism in a fictional story everytime, and I don't think it's a bad choice for someone who has never personally experienced the worst of racial discrimination to try and make the choice to write a world without systemic racism) I'd love to say hey in my fantasy romance land the only thing they have to fight is the systemic homophobia. Racism is stupid, bad, illogical, and obviously wrong in every way. Maybe falling in love is hard enough without having to deal with all of that added back in as extra because again she can't possibly know what kind of racism Shane Hollander specifically would experience to depict that from his first person perspective.

It is easier for Rachel as a white person who does not have first hand experience with racism to focus on all of the things about racism that everyone expects to see but are obviously wrong and shouldn't exist, than it is for her to research and depict all of the things that have no logical reason to happen but do anyway.

Even researching she can sensitivity read all the discriminations and trials that could potentially happen to this fictional character that he doesn't deserve for any rational reason, and then ask a person of that same marginalized identity to help her write a deeply personal true to life reaction to that trauma.

Or she could just write a world where that pain doesn't exist. Because it doesn't have to. And then POC with actual lived experience don't have to take on the emotional labor of engaging with that trauma for the benefit of her story. Plenty of POC authors have provided their own narrative formatted condemnations.

congrats! Now you have a motif! A recurring theme! A focus for your art! Something to haunt you!

Seventeen still lives of dandelions? Three hundred poems about grief? A sketchbook dedicated to your grandmother’s house? Two books trying to unravel the complexities of familial relationships?

An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.

A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.

This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.

And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!

Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.

And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.

writers describing characters as "stocky", "thick", or "soft" has ALWAYS been code for "fat" in writing. a lot of writers (and people in general) are scared of the word "fat" and will avoid it as a descriptor at all costs.

(to be very clear, "fat" is a morally neutral word unless the person saying it intends for it not to be. I am a fat person - this is the simplest and easiest descriptor to explain my body and i will continue to use this word to explain my body in a morally neutral way.) But, to return to the point, this is an existing issue in the literary world - just like there are many writers that use words like "tanned" or "olive toned" when they're scared to clarify the character isn't white. Both situations are problems in literary spaces that we've had for ages.

Soft language is used as a descriptor whenever a character isn't thin, fit, or white. So, no, we're not stupid for "imagining" Harris as chubby or fat that being said, i am looking forward to Justice Smith's portrayal of Harris Drover. and NO, him being black is NOT an issue and if that is YOUR issue - we are not the fucking same. "Erasing a character's white identity" is in no fucking way the same as removing the precious little fat representation in romance media we already get.

Especially because media is not created in a vacuum and it IS worth mentioning that we're currently in a heightened state of fatphobia and body harming via fashion drugs like Ozempic - removing the fatness from a main romance lead IS a statement that we all get to feel something about.

I'll even go a step further and say that it will be an incredible addition to Harris' character to be a black man who has lived his life as openly gay while being loved and supported by his family. That in itself is so rare in media and I can't wait to see the Drover family absolutely adore their gay son. (and his new boyfriend!)

I MEAN LOOK AT THEM

at andy like this… does she

know it’s legal now??

SOPHIE NÉLISSE as ROSE LANDRY

Outrageous military spending is anticipating a need for violence to counter violence before any violence has occurred, and the resulting starvation of public good programs creates an environment where people give into the projected inevitability and see it as their only option as well.

The world you prepare for will find you. It's a theme as old as storytelling itself, you'll meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.

Like I said, the museum was a pretty snotty institution. It’s got a LOT of objects it’s way famous for possessing, but nobody knew about the absolutely massive collection of Moche erotic pottery it had because the curators were totally embarrassed by this stuff.

Some examples:

Pretty hot shit, right? They never, ever put any of this stuff on public view or published it in any catalogues but - we legit had like several hundred pieces of Moche ceramics in the “dirty pots” category. Anyway, I was left alone to just do my job with regard to the database for several years, ok? And I figured, well, these’re accessioned objects in the museum’s collection - better get down to bidness. 

I catalogued every goddamn bestiality, necrophiliac, cocksucking, buttfucking, detached penis, and giant vulva drinking cup in that collection. I’d be like, 

A drinking vessel in form of a standing man wearing a tunic and cap. He holds an oversized erection in his hands and stares into the distance (note I did not say “like he’s hella-constipated”). The vessel has a hole at both the tip of the penis as well as around the rim of the figure’s head, thus forcing the drinker to drink only from the penis or risk spilling wine all over themselves from the top of the vessel. Red and orange slip covers the surface of the piece.

Pretty straightforward, right? Apparently the deep seated fear of these objects that the curators exhibited was meant to spread to me as well, but - no one ever gave me that memo, because I guess Midwesterners reproduce asexually. When the curators understood that I had catalogued all of these objects in addition to the other, non-sexy pieces in the collection, they were apparently livid, but knew they had no legs to stand on in terms of getting pissed at me for it. 

I visited the museum’s online public access database a few years back and - every single description I wrote of these pieces has been totally neutered to say something like Male figural vase.