#reading
#wylieeast We’re all set up in the library with the button making machine! I’ll be here for about another half hour and then again at lunch time for all of your button-making needs! Come pick one out and grab a summer reading flyer while you’re here!
The narrative of ‘this person was disabled but their disability was cured as part of their story’ is ableist
The narrative of ‘this person is disabled but “overcame” disability in order for them to be a hero’ (e.g. a paralysed person finding a way to walk) is ableist
And just for clarification for the non-disabled, using adaptive technologies, like prostheses or whatever, is not ableist as long as you never forget. Ask yourself questions about the benefits but also the limitations of whatever adaptive thing you’re giving the character.
- They have to take a pill every day to treat a chronic illness or chronic pain? Okay, what happens when they forget, or are in a bad situation and run out of pills?
- They lost a limb or are paralyzed and now they have a sci-fi cybernetic prosthesis/exoskeleton to replace the lost functionality? Cool. What does maintenance look like? Does it ever malfunction? What happens if they don’t or can’t take care of it? Do they still get phantom pains even with the adaptation?
- They’re deaf or blind or anosmic, but they’re a wizard who uses magic to adapt to the lost sense? Fine. What does it take to maintain that magic? Do they have adaptive strategies for when the magic fails?
- They’re autistic or have ADHD or schizophrenia or some other cognitive disorder, and they have a chip in their head to make it easier to communicate when non-verbal? Okay. What exactly does it do for them? Does it ever malfunction or give them headaches? What are other ways they’ve adapted to their disability apart from this chip?
Other questions to ask that go for all kinds of things:
- Do they have a service animal? For what tasks or situations is it trained?
- Do their family/friends know how to help if their adaptive technologies/strategies fail?
- Is their disability (or the adaptation) visible or observable to others? How do others react?
- Has their society adapted to accommodate disabilities, and if so, in what ways? (Ramps, closed captions, sign language, etc.)
Basically, think about what it adds to the story to have your character disabled. If you were just going to completely cure it with no ongoing repercussions or adaptations, why did you bother making them disabled in the first place? What story were you telling?
really good addition
Yesss
Don’t even try to lie, we all know its true-
Uh ohhh hahaha
My toxic trait is that I genuinely believe with all my heart that I would survive a YA book.
>u<
Sleep child, close your eyes & dream. Today is over but, tomorrow will soon arrive again. No need to wait up, waiting for darkness to fade. Morning will come. You will change, becoming different from day to day, although all else in the world will feel the same…
October reading material: Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein, and Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley.
My thoughts on “The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper,” in which I include the sentence “meanwhile, men with syphilis carried on syphilis-ing.” Click here to read.
I think we all know just how hard it is to get started reading native content in our target languages. For the longest time, I thought reading Chinese novels was an unachievable goal. Every time I opened one up I was just overwhelmed with unknown vocab. So what changed?
Well, I kinda put myself in a situation where I had to read a novel or else. That’s to say, I took a Chinese lit class at college where we read two novels and three short stories. At the same time I was also taking a half-credit class where we read small parts of the 三体 trilogy. So, my only options were to read or fail.
The two novels I had to read were 《在细雨中呼喊》 by 余华 and 《家变》 by 王文兴. 《在细雨中呼喊》 was up first, and I decided to do something that I actually wouldn’t really recommend y’all do: I made a spreadsheet of every new word I encountered. Every. Single. One. You might remember I made a post about that last year once I’d finished the book. If you’re curious about the exact details of what I did, I suggest you check that post out. Here’s a screenshot of the spreadsheet:
So lemme just reiterate: I absolutely do not recommend doing this^^^ unless you a) are only planning on reading like a page or two a day, or b) love suffering and pain and misery and crying. I know I definitely stress-cried a few times while reading this novel.
Anyways. I did this for two reasons: 1. I wanted an accessible list of the new words I encountered, and 2. I wanted to track how many pages I read and new words I encountered each day. It was super time consuming, but also really satisfying because I was able to see the number of new words decrease as the days went on. The first day, I read 8 pages and had ~200 new words. By the end, I was averaging 7 new words per page. It was cool to see the progress, but it was a pain in the ass to document so. Decide for yourself if you wanna put yourself through this.
However, not everyone has access to a college-level literature class in their target language. So here’s some methods that have worked for me when reading outside of class:
Fangirl Daily is now one year old!
It seems crazy to me that a whole year has gone by since I set up my baby. I remember setting out on this endeavour, knowing it was going to be hard process to get readers and keep track of my blog. Thankfully my passion for books followed through (aswell as for the adaptations) and I am incredibly proud of what I have done so far.
So, Fangirl Daily is now one year old. Party poppers ahoy,…
#OTD in 1918 – Almost the entire leadership of Sinn Féin are arrested. 150 were arrested on the night of 16–17 May and taken to prisons in England.
#OTD in 1918 – Almost the entire leadership of Sinn Féin are arrested. 150 were arrested on the night of 16–17 May and taken to prisons in England.
During the last year of the First World War, on the night of 17/18 May, over 70 leading members of Sinn Fein were arrested under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act. The arrests had been made following the discovery of a supposed plot on the part of Sinn Féin to help Germany enter Ireland. This “German Plot” is generally believed to have been used as an excuse to intern the leaders of Sinn…