I've been feeling increasingly alienated from academia, or at least my corner of it, and in convo with a fellow disenchanted MA sufferer, articulated this -

You're contextualizing texts in classrooms while decontextualizing yourself from the world.

This is really what bothers me most about being an academic of the kind my school is training me to be - there's a sort of willfull blindness that infuriates me and makes me feel disconnected from the communities I claim as sites of occupation and study. I feel useless, and I hate the sensation of it. 

It's called the ivory tower, immaculate and apart, the seat of higher (literally, elevated, 'tower') learning - but I want the mud, I want the dirt and blood, I want to be small in the face of suffering rather than removed from the presence of it, commenting on it with the calm distance affords.

I'm tired of being a pretentious academic. I don't want this as my identity. I need to change.

Summed up here. 

My own thoughts, casual as they may be: 

1) flashbacks to RaceFail what with all the survivor-blaming and "privilege? what privilege?" discussion

2) I really, really like the idea one commenter had, of including a "Warnings: to the best of my knowledge there are no warnings needed for this fic" to fics so that any reader who is wary can be assured she/he isn't taking a chance in reading an unmarked fic. I think I'm going to start doing that. 

3) Given that a lot of the discussion seems to hinge not just on warnings in general but also warnings for misogyny related crimes, such as rape, consent issues, assault, and abuse in its myriad forms (with the derailing tactics of attempting to move away from dubcon warnings to "do I need to warn for allergies now, too?"), there is something that just boggles me. These works of (fan)fiction, depicting - I'm assuming sympathetically, empathetically - events of graphic violence are works where the author tends to occupy, or see through the perspective of, the one assaulted. The second most common viewpoint is that of the rescuer-figure who has come to help the survivor of assault. In both fictive instances, the author tends to (not always, not in every case, but for the majority in my sampling of this genre) present an empathetic portrayal. The level of irony is astounding when this empathy given to fictional characters in fictional settings is not extended to real survivors of assault, real supporters of those who have survived assault, in the real setting that is the social networks of our journaling sites. If a dubcon fic made you cry and ache for the characters, why can't you cry and ache for fellow members of our community? Why is it permissible to allow fictive voices be heard, but silence the real ones?

4) There is no 4. The 4 is a lie. 

5) I do have a trigger. It's not related to any consent or assault issues. It is a somewhat common trope in fanfic, but I navigate around it just fine, and heed warnings when authors are considerate and compassionate enough to post them. I was recently triggered by a non-fanfic source and spent a few days randomly breaking into tears and trying desperately to regain my equilibrium. It's hard. It hurts. I don't know anyone with enough malice to deliberately want to hurt me in that way - but it didn't stop me from being hurt. It didn't stop me from flashing back and contemplating self-harm. Triggers are different from squicks, which you can walk away from. Triggers are embedded in you, and the impact they have is enormously damaging.

6) Regarding the notion of warnings = spoilers, why not post warnings separately under a cut with the addendum that if the reader has triggers, they may want to check out the warnings; if the reader has no triggers and would like to avoid spoilers, to ignore the warnings; if the reader has no triggers but likes spoilers, read the warnings; etc. It's a little extra work, but it seems like a middle ground between avoiding harm to readers and preserving authorial control over spoilers, etc. 

Five times Chekov almost lost his virginity and one time he did (originally posted here):

Warning: to the best of my knowledge, this fic needs no warnings. 

 ( a mild dose of crack )

 Heard via harpers_child , Dollhouse is renewed for a second season. I am not sure how to feel about this, but for now I will be happy(ish). 

Lately, 'sloth' has been more than appropriate as a nickname - Wikipedia tells me it's more than just laziness, it's apathy and joylessness too, a giving in to entropy. I want to blame feeling this way on a lot of external factors (school was on strike, RaceFail was pretty damn depressing, far from home, various global disasters), but mostly I think I'm still just sad. It hits me at really random moments. I think grief is one of those things, you breathe it in and don't breathe it out, it sets down roots and vines and twines inside you and doesn't let go, when you move it moves with you. 

Well, well, I'll attempt to kickstart the creativity again in the hopes of beating down my slothful ways. 

/whining

 ahahaha, YAY, despite my computer illiteracy I managed to fix the lack of usernames on my reading page. I am inordinately proud of this. *beams*

Given it is the month for poems, I figured I would start off with one of those; in this case, Rolf Jacobsen's Some People, translated by Robert Bly.


Some people
ascend out of our life, some people
enter our life,
uninvited and sit down,
some people
calmly walk by, some people 
give you a rose, 
or buy you a new car, 
some people
stand so close to you, some people
you've entirely forgotten,
some people, some people
are actually you,
some people 
you've never seen at all, some people
eat asparagus, some people
are chlidren, 
some people climb on the roof, 
sit down at table
lie around in hammocks, take walks with their red umbrella,
some people look at you,
some people have never noticed you at all, some people
want to take your hand, some people
die during the night, 
some people are other people, some people are you, some people
don't exist
some people do.


In other news, new Chuck tonight! \o/ 

I've got to say, show does a really good shop of taking ideas that make me cringe at in theory, grin at in practice. 

Warning: to the best of my knowledge, this story needs no warnings. It does contain a lot of Shawn!whump though, of both physical and emotional varieties.

 

( ZOMBIES IN PSYCH )

 

 Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue. 

Warning: angst and depiction of child endangerment.