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i do think what gets ignored about carrie as a character is that she’s an incredibly easy target to bully; she’s a chubby, sheltered acne ridden teenage girl who wears frumpy grandma clothes and regurgitates the jesus freak shit her violently abusive mother tells her. she has violent thoughts about her classmates and is uncomfortable to be around. she’s far more interesting being a victim that’s somewhat uncomfortable to be in the head of than a tragic waif. she’s not a martyr, she’s a child and a child who’s been victimised her whole life shouldn’t have to be kind and angelic to be recognised as a victim. suffering teenage girls shouldn’t just be presented on screen as toned down glamorous thin ophelias, suffering teenage girls can be fat and poor and think violently. i do think we need to examine why culturally we need teenage girls to be beautiful and kind to valorise their suffering and treat it as bad

My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.

Shoutout to people in the notes also mentioning people learning the language, I should've mentioned that really, given that I've been stuck reading German picture books myself while learning German.

Weird how so many countries elected extreme far right leaders and simultaneously all of those countries with said far right leaders are experiencing historic economic collapse.

the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this

For those curious, they're talking about The Legend of Khiimori.

Note: some trans women are in the second camp rather than the third. And sometimes she's a little both. Upon my years of research, it seems that being transmisogynistic is a borderline requirement to be in the second camp.

these two communicate on a level we cannot understand with current language.

Having your interests mocked as a kid and general low self esteem will have you insulting the things you like even when they're generally considered very good. Because you like it, and historically when you like something it's stupid and not worth anyone's time. So you will say nonsense like "I recommend this book/game/film, but it's okay if you hate it, it sucks, I really enjoyed it but that's because I'm an idiot" and you are recommending them the Citizen fucking Kane of that particular media type. And importantly: you need to stop doing this it is killing you