http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/what_state_prisoners_get_to_wo.html

1) well absolutely I'm just writing about the people around me who need more representation and have rich textured lives but also

2) so much of the wider queer community disregard Muslim dominant countries as backwards and inherently incapable of queer progress. They'd happily blame this solely on Muslims, completely ignoring non-Muslim folk in these countries are just as capable of queerphobic fear mongering and prejudice. It's much harder to acknowledge colonization set us all back while our colonizers get to reap the benefits.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/what_state_prisoners_get_to_wo.html

day 192

abuse in caregiving professions (like teaching or nursing) is not solely a result of power dynamics. it's also because people who go into those professions often have a idea of themselves as Good People, and are consequently incapable of recognising or acknowledging when they've hurt someone else. instead, they mentally put 'people who have inconvenienced me' into the Bad People box so they can freely abuse them while maintaining their moral high ground.

i read ross greene a lot when i was working with "difficult" or "behaviourally challenged" children. his refrain is "kids do well if they can" - meaning, in short, that most kids act out only when the demands of a situation exceed their capabilities. punishing them for this is not only cruel but also completely pointless, because they also don't want to be doing what they are doing.

a) i forgot how fun this is

b) it's really hard not to like, re-write for them and stick to just "hey add descriptions here, change this grammar, really cool ideas!" bc i'm an adult and not trying to talk over/railroad these kids, but i'm just so excited for their ideas!!!

c) little boys write cool stuff like "what if we went to mars but it sucked so we left, but left behind all our technology and the technology rose up and created its own society and then went to war with us for abandoning them? what if transformers had 100x the war crimes? what if the earth blew up. what if we were the robots all along?"

teacher: little girls have really rich inner lives to combat the way they're puppeted by society in real life. they'll learn to censor it out in a couple years, but it doesn't go away.

CW: Langdon is 15. CWs include slavery, referenced collars, referenced abuse, and dreams of murder most foul

Langdon is fifteen years old when they take the inhaler out of his hand and put a gun in it instead.

"It's okay," Brewster says, with a slight, friendly smile, patting him on the back. Brewster's older than he is by more than a decade, if only just. They look sort of the same, most of the staff does, with curly dark hair and eyes a little too big for their face.

Plus, the black leather collars, white button-ups, and plain black pants all staff wears for every waking hour. He got his first work uniform, all three pieces, at four, like everybody does.

Not all the staff looks exactly alike, though. Some of them, like Vander, have almost unsettlingly bright blue eyes, too. Runs in the master's family, which means it runs in the staff family, even though no one talks about it. Langdon's are blue. Brewster's are a color like a stormcloud in some lights. Something about both your parents having blue eye genes, but since Langdon's never been to school, all he knows about genes is what he's seen on TV when it's his night to pick a show.

Greg, his sister's husband, came to live with them from another house when he was three years old. His eyes are brown. His hair is stick-straight, lighter in color. His smile doesn't have the same sort of lilt to it.

Greg doesn't have Marcoset blood poisoning him, not like Vander - whose nerves are broken and don't feel pain, leaving him scarred and forcing Brewster to be his shadow all the time to keep him from hurting himself. Not like Langdon himself, who can barely work outside for half an hour without his inhaler close at hand. Not like Rita, who hardly ever leaves the bed, or Henry, who was born deaf and is probably going blind, too. Too much toxic blood in just about everybody.

The medic thinks he and Brewster are both the master's. Anyone who said that out loud where the master might hear would be whipped.

Personally, Langdon thinks Brewster is too happy to be Isaac Marcoset's son. Isaac Marcoset has a library of scowls and glares for any occasion, and only one or two smiles.

Brewster turns him to face the targets, breaking him from his thoughts. They're just wooden cutouts in vaguely human shapes that have had crude faces with horrible Os of surprise painted under their little dot-eyes. "We're just testing you out. Take the shots, see if you hit the targets. These two guys here, and if you hit those, those bottles I lined up on the tree trunks over there."

"I don't want to do this," Langdon says, voice low, a little airy. Even with his inhaler, his lungs fight whenever he's scared, or if he works too hard. The inhaler just holds off the worst of it. He hates the heavy weight of the handgun he's holding. Hates how good it feels. "Brewster, I-I don't want-"

Ohhh man, that hit me so hard 🥺 A first hint of power, presumably among the first he's felt in his life, and the thing that gets him through it is imagining getting away 🥺🥺

I wonder how many of the others had this same thought when their training began. I wonder what stopped them from trying.

Maybe it was the realization that they were never going to see that random coworker that complimented their shirt (now ripped and covered in blood). Realizing yes, they’d probably never see anyone they knew, close or not, ever again.

Maybe it was coming across the gum wrapper left in their pocket, realizing they missed so badly something so small. They’d used to keep a pack of gum on them always. The tiniest things stung the worst.

Maybe it was realizing they’d probably missed some important milestone. They couldn’t be sure how many days had passed but they’re pretty sure they’d missed Christmas. Someone’s birthday. A wedding. A funeral.