Day: June 15, 2017

thebibliosphere:

fidoruh:

hopefulkillianheart:

rhube:

lediableaquatre:

fearnotthepen:

I don’t understand why books have shifted from having summaries on the back of the covers to having one-line reviews.

Seriously though. I want to know what the book is about. Not that someone from the Evening Standard thinks it’s a masterpiece. 

I have been waiting for this post my whole life.

Editors I have talked to seem *genuinely* surprised when I bring this up, but, honestly, I don’t care if Stephen King, Robin Hobb, and GRRM ALL liked it, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT’S ABOUT.

I never buy a book with a blurb on the back like how the fuck do I know if I am even remotely interested in the story

@thebibliosphere

The blurb got moved–on hardbacks–to the inner sleeve cause marketing showed (a phrase that makes my soul shrivel) that if a book had positive reviews on it, people would trust those reviews and be more likely to buy it.

Most paperbacks will still have a blurb on the back, but it’ll be vague and buzzwordy because it was written by someone in aforementioned marketing team, sort of like how they will tag certain words to make it jump out in a Google search for ebooks. It doesn’t necessarily have to be accurate–just so long as you get the general overall feel for it in order to make a reader think “hey I might like this.”

In reality, authors have very little to do with the cover of their own books, from the composition to the words that appear on the front and back. Some publishing houses will even change the title, and once you’ve sold that book, they are perfectly within their rights to do so and better pick something which marketing will think their target audience will engage with. Hell, I’ve seen authors names changes cause marketing suggests readers won’t read XYZ genre written by Author Name who is known for writing ZYX, so it will be suggested to the author that another name be used, and most authors will go along with it because the implied threat of “we won’t publish you otherwise” hangs in the air over their contract like an axe.

This is not so much true of big name authors in big publishing houses, but for small time fish, it’s fairly common to have nothing to do with the cover design of your book. Indie small houses tend to be a little better about it, but that’s usually because their marketing team is smaller and it’s more cost effective to throw the blurb at the authorxs head and say “here, you do it”.

superheroesincolor:

Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (2011)

“From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890’s to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of blackness itself.

Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films. Throughout the text, the reader is encouraged to unpack the genre’s racialized imagery, as well as the narratives that make up popular culture’s commentary on race.

Offering a comprehensive chronological survey of the genre, this book addresses a full range of black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, as well as art-house films, Blaxploitation films, direct-to-DVD films, and the emerging U.S./hip-hop culture-inspired Nigerian “Nollywood” Black horror films. Horror Noire is, thus, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen.”

by

Robin R. Means Coleman

Get it  now here  

Robin R. Means Coleman is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and in the Center for AfroAmerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. Her previous books include African Americans and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor and the edited collection Say It Loud! African Americans, Media and Identity, both published by Routledge, and most recently the co-edited volumeFight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader.

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Source: superheroesincolor

galacticpasta:

sleepyflannel:

twink-phobia:

all public school anti-bullying activism is extremely transparent and meaningless

faculty: BULLYING IS BAD!! ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY!! THIS IS A HATE FREE ZONE!!

me: hey this person called me a stupid dyke today

faculty: hmm that’s unfortunate. have you tried perhaps, not being gay?

I feel like everyone is against bullying until they actually look at the kids who are being bullied.

The cheesy anti-bullying tapes that they show in schools feature these skinny straight white neurotypical kids who get picked on for no reason. Usually the insults are something along the lines of “You’re a loser!” or “Get lost, freak.” All the kids watching immediately feel bad for the victim, and think “Aw! She didn’t deserve that!” 

Then, ten minutes later, they go pick on some marginalized kid without thinking twice. As an autistic person, I was often this kid. The insults I heard growing up were not “You’re a loser!” or “Get lost, freak.” They were “Don’t let the retard work with us” or “Shouldn’t she be going to the special school?”

The problem is we teach kids that bullying occurs for no other reason other than just to be mean. This could not be further from the truth. Bullying occurs because as a society, we condition kids into hating fat, black, neurodivergent, queer, and disabled people. Kids don’t bully each other just to be mean. They do it because if something’s “wrong” with the person, it’s completely justified.

But of course, we can’t tell kids this kind of stuff. We can’t say, “Hey! Making fun of your gay classmate is bad!”

Because when we do, suddenly the phone calls come pouring in, each with a parent on the other end screaming “You can’t be feeding my son that liberal propaganda!” 

supernini235:

karnythia:

kylorenvevo:

Today I was chatting with a coworker who I knew had been in an abusive relationship in the past. She was laughing as she told me and another coworker about how her ex never let her leave the house. Like she was for real cracking jokes about his jealous rages and how she wasn’t allowed to so much as set foot outside their door if he wasn’t with her, and the way she was telling it was funny, so we laughed along. “That’s why I enjoy doing the little things now, like taking the bus and going to the bank,” she said, and we all giggled because who likes public transportation and doing errands, right?

Then she got serious for the first time since the conversation started, it lasted only for a few moments, but I will never forget the one sentence that she said without smiling: “I’m going to die before I let that happen to me again.”

There was also this one rape victim whom a relative of mine represented in court. The rapist’s lawyer tried to discredit her by pointing out that she’d laughed while giving her testimony. She was eighteen years old on the witness stand, telling a judge and a room full of people about what had been done to her. She giggled because she was embarrassed about having to describe the graphic sex acts, and she nearly lost her case because of that.

I have classmates who laughed while telling me about old men who stole kisses from them. Who made jokes out of stories about their boyfriends screening their messages and forcing them to do things they didn’t want to do. I have known girls who were molested and manipulated for years, who shake their heads and snicker at their own past selves, how could I have let him do that to me, I was so naive, hahaha. This one woman reenacted for me, complete with dramatic gestures and voice impersonations, how her ex-husband who was under a Temporary Restraining Order scaled the gate of her house with a gun, and how she’d locked herself in her bedroom and screamed at the police over the phone to come NOW. Both of us were in stitches at the end of her tale, clutching our stomachs in mirth.

Just because they laugh doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

I can laugh about my abusive ex now because I’m not with him and will never have to let him near me again. I also sometimes wake in a cold sweat because I dreamed that I didn’t leave him. Laughing about trauma is an odd coping skill, but it is super common because it helps people stay sane in the face of awful things. We laugh to keep from crying. 

People laughing at something that causes a stress response is normal. It’s literally your brain trying cope and survive by trying to make you less afraid of the stressor. Don’t ever doubt yourself about what you’ve experience, just because you laughed. Laughing is a completely valid response to something horrible, and your experience is just as valid whether you laugh or cry (or sometimes both at the same time) about it, and don’t let anybody try to tell you otherwise.

Just reminded of the time I also got sent to a guy at some Christian counseling place for an SSI reevaluation. I didn’t even know there were any practices like that in the area, but it turned out there was at least one–and they were apparently seeking out disability assessment contracts! I also didn’t know I could try to get that changed.

(The only review ever, after I got a new case manager at the local Social Security office who took it upon herself to repeatedly call people up to harass and threaten them over supposedly faking. That was fun. Probably not the only one to get a review out of it, either.)

At least nobody was sounding aggressively Evangelical at me or anything, but the fact that openly ideologically motivated professionals were getting federal contracts for disability assessments struck me as hideously inappropriate at the time. That was also fairly early during the GWB administration, so yeah. So much dodgy shit was not as normalized yet.

The waiting room also had brochures for some type of bedwetting alarm system including the option of a shock aversive. (Not vibration, definitely shock.) I had no idea that existed. The only mentions I can easily find right now refer to one model which has apparently not been on the market for a while (thank goodness), but something similar was definitely getting pushed in the US ca. 2000. So yeah, seeing that didn’t make me any more comfortable about whoever the assessment had been contracted out to.

In that case, they did at least behave professionally dealing with me, but I still felt put even more on the spot. When the evaluations are already stressful enough. Having someone in that kind of position of power over you, with multiple ideological reasons to possibly consider you Undeserving–besides very possibly an investment in the idea of praying disabilities away–is really not reassuring.

Not everyone is going to behave professionally (by most standards) and even try keep their own religious beliefs off other people. To state the obvious. Especially if they’re feeling a need to set themselves up as Professional Explicitly Ideological Counselors. Seems too likely that this might help shape their ideas of what even constitutes professional behavior, on top of the basic worldview filtering and bias concerns.

That time I did manage to keep access to SSI and the connected Medicaid. Still felt like that was an even closer call, and nobody should be placed in a position like that.