Isabel Cooper

I blame reading Pern when I was ten, and multiple books where they had to go back and do the thing because they'd already gone back and done it except somehow they hadn't and they vanished but knit one purl two JESUS FUCKING CHRIST get back to the shiny dragons and problematic sex.

Cannot answer for our gracious host, of course, but I like Time and Again on a similar principle: you can go to the past but you can't change major events. (See also Ridcully in The Last Continent: "Why would I kill my grandfather? I rather liked the old chap.")

Same, really, which is ironic because my first novel had it as the basis for the plot--albeit I went with magic time travel so the heroine can change the past and still exist: I wanted a postapocalyptic heroine in the Victorian age, but fucked if I'm thinking about paradoxes.

Ohhhh shit. Like that Futurama episode but played for drama.

I mean, really, my answer to the moral dilemma is "I don't fuck around with time travel, dude," mostly to annoy philosophy majors. ;P

There were so many times in those books where I was like, well, in reality I'm a good liberal and I don't think there's any reason to hit kids, much less whip them, but THESE MOTHERFUCKERS...

(I also love the Lazy, Lousy, Liza Jane bit, and how Laura's parents were basically "...look, just be careful in the future," even though Ma made some vague effort at dumb Christian high-road stuff.)

...but instead you cover them with leeches, and then, when you encounter them ten years later and they still suck, you scare the horses while they're in a carriage, tell your BF to make up his damn mind, and feel awesome because you have better name cards.

As long as you create a substitute for the whole Nellie Oleson arc, because I did love having a YA series where you don't learn that the awful person in your school has a really hard life and you make friends with them and take the higher road and blah blah blah...

I was doing a reread a few years ago, when I still updated my blog, and the lurking cosmic horror and/or people being fucked up in these books was *impressive*. The grasshoppers walking over Carrie....GAH. And then all the scenes in either Little Town or Golden Years of people hating each other.

Ooh, the Benders, right?

Also, killing Henry Ford solves the problem earlier and easier.

I always say that you can get around the “kill baby Hitler” moral whatever by seducing whichever of the senior Hitlers you think you’ll have more success with.

Also, we let people vote three years younger than we let them buy beer, and there are folks who don't drink for whatever reason. (Or who don't buy their own booze: until I was in my late twenties or so, I pretty much just drank at parties, so it never came up.)

(Not by writing the paper, just in general.)

...tbh, both the "journalists" involved with RFK Jr. and Pharma Bro and the female members of the Trump administration/right-wing probably count. (Assuming the whole thesis isn't just BS, which...IDK, I was 17 and mostly concerned with getting laid.)

...in their culture/subculture. (Manson girls and "the place of women in the movement is on their backs," Bundy's girlfriends and "Stand By Your Man" backlash to feminism, etc.) And was thinking I didn't have a modern example because there are fewer serial killers, except...

Random thought today: so I pulled down a decent grade on my school's giant history paper by writing it about serial killers and the women who love them, with the thesis that the women who get involved with serial killers represent/are influenced by the most toxic form of prescriptive femininity...

This. Also, even if you hate the coffee (which I do) they'll have something that you can drink/eat in the parking lot while catastrophically hung over, which is the cornerstone of life in New England.

And then Pa had to have The Talk (Massachusetts style) with her.

My mom has told the story of, when she was a little girl, being sent to get her dad some coffee for the first time and ordering it with cream and two sugars because that's how he had it at home.

Brings it back. Pa takes a sip, makes a face. "What did you order?"

Tiny Mom: "Cream and two sugars?"

RFK Jr. wants Dunkin’ to prove drinking its iced coffee is safe - The Boston Globe The warning comes as Kennedy is leaning heavily into his agenda to improve American diets.

This moron has no idea how much of a third rail this is. If he goes through with a public fight with Dunkin he will never live this down. In the words of my people "fuck ya motha."

Also, if I were involved with this administration, I...might avoid bringing up teenage girls, as a general rule.

RFK Jr. blasts Dunkin’ as Healey replies, ‘come and take it’ Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. singled out Dunkin' last week while speaking at a rally against processed foods.

www.boston.com/news/health/...

Okay, this? This is how we end up in Fallout 4.

If you have to keep all the sex between the main two characters, and you want to write an orgy or a sex club or whatever, you could at least have the heroine appreciate it as a viewer. She just seems like a buzzkill otherwise.

But also, authors? Why are you even putting an orgy into your story if your characters aren't gonna...orge?

(There was a story on Choices where you and your LI get to attend an orgy, but you only have the option to have sex with him there, and: whyyyy?)

In my journey to being the most arbitrarily picky reader ever, I have just DNFed a book because the heroine gets to go to a fae orgy and is spending her whole time being shocked and uneasy.
Which is a tragic waste: there are lots of people who'd be grateful for a nice orgy like that.

Literally what we have here is that the average American CEO is part of a mean girls group chat and is terrified to step out of line and be told that they aren't cool by the other people who peaked in 8th grade

Some genius eventually suggested sports-style commentary.

There was someone on Reddit who got Big Mad about guys being even slightly attracted to each other in MMMF, and the rest of us were like, should they just be standing around smoking and waiting their turn then, or what?

Oh, yeah. Especially for people who are idealistic enough to go into politics for good reasons.