I Just Got A Hug From Meg Cabot!

I just got a hug from Meg Cabot!

i think edward elric entire military experience can be summarized as john mulaney’s “horse loose in the hospital” bit

The portly man turned to Kail and raised a finger. “Security is a vital part of maintaining the Lapitemperum, and it is not only the right but the responsibility of all staff to verify–” “Sure,” Kail cut it, “so if you saw a couple of white technicians coming in to perform a, a, a…” “Time-curve analysis of energy dispersion for the Spire’s levitation field,” Icy finished. “Right, if you saw white technicians coming in to do that, you’d ask them the same thing? And you’ve recognized everyone else you’ve passed in the halls today?” “I…” The portly lapitect flushed. “It’s simply a matter of–” “Oh, afraid to answer the question?” Kail crossed his arms indignantly. “Maybe afraid you’d get a little flare of purple over your head?” The lapitect glared. “That’s the most… I don’t have to stand here and listen to this!” He brushed past them and stomped away. “I am impressed,” Icy said after a moment, “by your ability to dissemble within such limited parameters.” “It’s not so hard,” Kail said. “Most people, you ask questions at them, they just want to get rid of you a quick as they can. You learn to work that, you can get a lot of doors opened.

from The Palace Job (Rogues of the Republic #1), by Patrick Weekes (via kammartinez)

“So are you a love priestess or a death priestess now?”

“I swing both ways.” Desidora smirked.

Now that’s something I’d suspect a love priestess would say.” Tern grumbled.”― Patrick Weekes, The Prophecy Con

They hated each other so much in the first book that I shipped them. I like who they end up with though.

This is so important, I'm so glad you have this. As a librarian I talk about how important representation is, and yet I was still blindsided when something similar happened to me. I'm Disgrapic which is like dyslexia. I've had a long time to accept and be comfortable with this part of my identity, I've had a lot of support. I see stories of boy s struggling in school, who have learning disabilities, who hate school and I'm glad kids have representation, but I never connected with these stories and didn't think I needed to. Then Annabeth Chase came along. She is a girl, she loves learning, she is the smart one and she Can't Spell. It was like a punch to the gut in the best possible way. I didn't know much i needed that until it happened.

I’ve kind of been hanging out, watching the discourse re: Neil Gaiman at al. pertaining to Good Omens and their extratextual interactions, and there’s been a lot said by a lot of people, and I want to add my own voice here, shine a light on my own perspective in case it might help anyone else.

I’ve spent well over half an hour at work today, crying my eyes out. I saw the tweet from Michael Sheen saying that he would unashamedly engage with the soft, joyous fan community, and another post here by Gaiman talking about the freedom of interpretation of his work and his refusal to tell us what to think, and for a little while, it just overwhelmed me with happiness.

For a very long time, or at least for as much time as I can remember, I haven’t faced any particular focused discriminations for my (a)sexuality. I’ve seen the discourse here and there, I’ve seen people that are nasty human beings lashing out unnecessarily at my people, and I’ve had the odd comment here or there (but not more than any other thing people come tell me off about). I know that this sort of active discrimination exists and happens often, but my personal experience has been fairly peaceful. My partner is aware of it, my friends are aware of it, my family is aware of it, my followers and readers are (usually, mostly) aware that I am ace. It’s just something that exists, like having hands. No one really comes to me to tell me my hands are a problem, but also no one ever really comes to tells me my hands are good, either, you know? It’s been the same thing, for me.

I have, in my lifetime, seen I think one ace person that was acknowledged as asexual on TV- one of the girls in the brief ambulance team sitcom Sirens. I know there are others, a small handful of them out there, but that’s the only one I’ve seen. I’ve seen headcanons about so-and-so being ace, but most of them haven’t really rang that true for me (not saying at all that people shouldn’t headcanon whatever makes them happy, just that when I watch the same thing, I don’t recognize myself). I haven’t felt its lack (it was definitely lacking, but I haven’t had that bone-deep craving for representation I think a lot of people do have, but give me a moment). The fics I’ve read where there are supposed ace characters, don’t seem to generally be written by ace folks, and often center around the idea of coaxing the ace person into having sex with the right person (sigh), or make the character’s asexuality the focus of the story (which isn’t bad, necessarily, but it’s not what I want, I’ve already paid my dues in the “gays can only have stories about being gay” department and I’m ready to move on).

I say all of this because I want you to know where I am coming from when I say that when I watched Good Omens, I saw myself. Now, I may not be intentionally represented, but what matters to me is that the path was clear enough that I, beyond the shadow of a doubt, felt their story resonate in my bones as true to me and what I wanted to see written about me and people like me. I saw two asexuals hopelessly in love, ready to face down heaven and hell together in order to stay together and to protect everything they loved. And the story was not exclusively or even specifically about their asexuality; they got to be people (sort of?? supernatural people, but still people!!) first and foremost, having this wild adventure together.

Now, you may not have the same impression as me. Maybe you saw a different show when you watched the same thing. I’m not here to argue about that. What you saw is what you saw, what I saw was what I saw.

What I want to lay bare here is that Gaiman has come forward to say that he’s not going to take either of those things away from either one of us. As long as he maintains Death of the Author as his belief system, we both get to look at the same text, take from it what we want and need, and be happy. If he did anything else, confirmed you or me were right, the other would lose something that is possibly very, very important to us. There is no greater gift than the freedom to imagine in this case. On top of that, he and the others have been standing their ground and doing their best to make sure no one ELSE can take that away from us, either. They don’t have to do that, that’s not their job, but they’re doing it anyway. Sheen’s really out there telling people they can fuck off if they want to be mean to us, and that he absolutely wants to and enjoys interacting with the warm joy of fandom.

Listen, I’ve been tolerated all my life. It’s not so bad, once you get used to it, but today, after seeing someone do better, I realized that I have been used to it. And that being used to low-grade pain kind of sucks. Before now I had not understood the idea of craving something like this. No one had ever told me that feeling represented properly on such a major scale could feel this way, or at least I hadn’t understood it if they did. I had never known how badly I was in need of something so healing and good, and I started to understand some of the comments being left on things I had written about these characters. I began to understand that I have, for a very long time, needed something I was unaware even could exist. And now that I know, I am so, so grateful to hear that it won’t be taken away from me.

Today I saw a post from the creator of one of my new favorite things, a thing which I now hold extremely dear to my heart, tell me, tell the world, that however I interpret what I see, whatever happiness I feel because of it, he won’t correct me. He won’t ever tell me I’m wrong because it’s not like that, it’s this other way in his head. I watched him tell me that the way I feel about a thing is more important to him than making sure his way is the only way his work is seen.

And I literally cannot think of a single thing in the entire world more precious or worthy of protecting than that kind of kindness and understanding.