It’s INSANE to me how controversial romance novels are. Romance novels. Like, being openly a fan of them immediately opens you up to people constantly coming at you like “but don’t you think it’s ~limiting- and ~juvenile~ to have a genre of books with happy endings for women?”
Like.
No?
Why is it such a big deal to want to read stories where women have sex and then don’t die at the end? Jesus Christ.
Why is the concept of female characters being happy seen as less creative than female characters suffering? (Trust me, creating a world where women win in the end takes a lot more creativity and artistic vision lmfao)
Anyway, literary bros will pry my romance novels with their happy endings from my cold dead fingers.
Or die in the very beginning of the book. But no one calls out James Patterson for writing another formulaic thriller in which a woman is horrifically killed after getting laid and then some man solves her murder. Every. Damn. Time.
But hey, those romance novels where women get happy endings are so limiting, eh?
Real talk: realizing how common it is for female characters to be punished for on-the-page sex with death was a big part of my embracing the romance genre. Once I noticed it I couldn’t unnotice it. It’s everywhere. A woman having sex in literature or non-romance genre fiction is the literary equivalent of a red shirt on Star Trek.
It’s not just the sex thing, though that’s a key element. It’s that, in romance novels, the heroine gets to be cared for the way she normally would care for everyone else. It’s wish fulfillment in that her romantic partner will do emotional labor, spend a great deal of time thinking about her, or sacrifice his desires or fortune or reputation to be with her, or spend days nursing her back to health, or risking his life to save hers. In romance novels, you’ll find men taking care of children, talking about their feelings, putting effort into their appearance—even if they are adorably bad at it. Watch how many romance novel protagonists fall in love with a man who happens to be rich or handsome, but she didn’t give in until his behavior changed and he starts mentoring her, or providing for her, or being gentle toward her, nourishing her, listening to her, appreciating her… I suspect romance novels are looked down upon not for being juvenile formulaic “beach reads” but because they paint a fantasy world that leaves men feeling uncomfortable or even emasculated. But whether you’re a Midwest housewife or a big city CEO, women who read romance novels just want to read about men loving women the way women are expected love everyone else—with a nurturing and protective form of unswerving loyalty. Great sex they don’t have to die for is also a huge bonus, but the *romance* part of the novel is genuinely more about the woman being appreciated (for her beauty or spunk or intelligence at first, and then for all of her by the end).
Bear in mind that ambulance companies aren’t diverting EMTs away from a heart attack or traumatic amputation to answer your call. They’re much more likely to be diverting EMTs from:
Sitting in an ambulance station or a random parking lot playing Words With Friends and/or developing elaborate company-wide romantic intrigues
Sitting in a hospital EMS room doing giant stacks of paperwork no one will ever read while trying to make dinner entirely out of saltines and condiments
Routine transports of people who have to travel by stretcher, who maybe are not happy to be late, but are hardly going to die from it
Transports which are technically emergencies, but are stuff like vomiting or a sprained ankle where the urgency factor is more like “yeah, you should get that seen” than like “STAT CODE RED CODE BLUE CODE POLKA DOT STAT STAT STAT.”
So if you think you might need an ambulance, call one. You are not going to single-handedly take down the EMS system by daring to use it.
I’m reblogging it but I would be that person wondering “Do I need this enough” until I died.
I have legitimately done this. Please, take care of yourselves.
Furthermore, guys, we have dispatch. Dispatch makes sure that we’re all where we need to be, so you’re not taking an ambulance away from someone who “needs it more.”
Let dispatch worry if an ambulance needs to be somewhere else. You just worry about taking care of yourself.
Most of them time we’re passing the time at the station by trying to find where the firefighters hid the remote /this time/ and listening to scary stories on YouTube. Your safety and health is not an inconvenience.
the bigger concern, at least in america, is “if i call the ambulance.. will it make go broke?” because they charge you an arm and a leg for it here.
If I get amputated and they ask for a shit ton of money for the emergency drive I will throw it at the accountants face
I am probably going to die saying “I can’t afford it”
This is your yearly reminder that Leg Avenue sells stolen sculpts/IP from @whitefoxhats, my boyfriend’s Etsy, which is his primary source of income.
*If you see THESE FUCKERS RIGHT HERE, these 4 inch fawn antlers on a headband, on THIS model:
———DO NOT BUY THEM.——
Spirit Halloween, Google Express, HalloweenCostumes dot com, and a bunch of other big costume retailers sell this exact item. It is a recast of Whitefox Hats’ 4 inch Faun Antler Headband.
They only have the one color and the one size, with no ears, and the Leg Avenue recasts are actually HEAVIER than the original resin antlers, which is… just completely stupid. You can even see that it’s an inverse cast. Also, unlike this knockoff, Ash’s products have improved since this sculpt!! JUST HIRE HIM, PEOPLE!!!
This is unfortunately a pretty common problem; large retailers can afford to steal designs and artwork from independent artists, give them NO attribution, and face zero legal consequences for it. If you know a company pulls shit like this, don’t buy from them– Chances are, you’re getting a cheap ripoff at the expense of an independent artist. 😦
fuck if it’s this easy why do they close the goddamn road for like five months shit
all outta soub 😦
I work for the road crew in the summer. Crack sealing (the process you see above) is fairly quick and simple. (Though holding a hose that pumps literal tons of 350F tar into the road in the middle of the summer is NOT easy)
I think what a lot of people underestimate is just how much road there is in your city. And just how many directions the crew gets pulled.
For our city of around 50k people there are 8 of us.
Also, crack sealing is a wholly temporary measure, meant to slow the break-up of the roads, it’s not a permanent fix.
Roads tend to get closed for months on end because we have to tear the whole thing up, then, depending on the class of road, we either have to hammer-drill into concrete to lay rebar and the pour concrete, or we can get straight to paving. If it’s a road requiring concrete we’re required to wait at least 24 hours for it to set.
So after 2 days we’re finally able to pave. But the city allocates one (two if we’re lucky) 5 ton truck to transport material.
A relatively short paving job requires at a minimum of 60 tons. So that’s 12 trips to the asphalt factory and back. Each ton is around $80.
TL;DR
There’s a lot of road, not many of us, and soup is expensive.
Chartreuse Abstruseness Export 