Vanessa > Recent Status Updates

wait, THAT lexa hillyer???? dude!!!

i do think it's funny how we're in book 2 and already Zoey is the most specialest special to ever special with 200000 powers and a Mark that's better than her peers in TWO WAYS like this is so peak 2007 YA i can't get over ittttt

I fear this is gonna be one of those cases where the subject matter and story is interesting but the writing itself is just not there. it's pretty painful so far. which is not a comment on Dunn but instead on his ghostwriter

"And in a civilized, humane society, do we kill brain-damaged, mentally ill, broken people? Do we?"
no but apparently we fight super hard to lock them up for life in a pressure cooker of stress, dehumanization, danger, abandonment, and abuse, and talk at length about how this is so merciful and beautiful and amazing lmfao

im that chasing goose meme but saying "what's the chance of them reoffending against their fellow inmates. WHAT'S THE CHANCE OF THEM REOFFENDING AGAINST THEIR FELLOW INMATES"

the only real flaw in the book so far is it clearly expects you to be on the author/the defense team's side, and when it doesn't, it's just trying to convince you cruz had a rly sad life, which is besides the point imo. good book

the death penalty being on the table for things like botched robberies is so crazyyyyy. and betrays the function of prison to judges & juries & the public: eye for an eye, punishment, revenge, because that's a peak reform-able crime, as opposed to like. kidnapping rape torture. or a school shooting. yknow.

Once again are we going to talk about the function of prison? FASD being a strong mitigating factor in death penalty decisions is fine, but is it made with the assumption that therefore the person needs 70+ years of punishment or 70+ years of reform or 70+ years of monitoring instead? Maybe I'm an asshole but death and life in prison without parole are like. The exact same thing tbh

So here's the thing right. Obviously the murderer has a boohoohoo sad story, they usually do. But did the people advocating so hard that he didnt deserve life in prison or the death penalty have anything to say about if prison reforms? If no, prison doesnt reform, then boo for prison, but that doesn't exactly inspire confidence when it comes to releasing murderers

YEEEEAAAHHHHH I LOVE GARBAGE YEAHAAHHH

"Truth-seeking shouldn't be hostage to performative alignment, and there are all manner of ugly consequences related to this refusal to be brave in calling nonsense nonsense. But [...] nobody wants to be the one who has an army of lunatic adolescents on TikTok calling for their job." lmfaooooo. This book has been kinda weak so far but every once in awhile there's that deBoer no-bullshit

"[Anti-psychiatry] turns suffering into spectacle, turns real damaged people and their real damaged lives into a chin-stroking slogan, and then it walks away."

repetitive so far but interesting

so like this is enjoyable so far but i have such impatience with fiction now that it taking like 5 paragraphs to explain anything because it insists on being florid and clever is gonna drive me crazy. this is a me problem. why is the font so small

"As is so often true in American life, a deeply influential intellectual and cultural movement seems offended by the notion that it may have been effective."

"With very few exceptions, every problem I describe in this book is a problem that developed because basically good people cared sincerely for the mentally ill and tried to do the right thing."

Accidental revelation on why I think I jive with deBoer's writing even when I don't agree with his conclusions. This "the good intentions led us somewhere weird" perspective is something I greatly agree with on many topics.

Found out about this via a revisit to his Gentrification of Disability essay, which is triple platinum in my house. Fuck yes. One rating is a 5 star and the other is a 1 star. Pot stirringgggggggg

"a country could be ruthlessly fascistic in its colonies, but liberal & democratic at home; it could be fascist againts one group, but not others [...] In short, fascism is not all or nothing. It can be uneven==partial, incipient, not always dominant or totalizing."

toxic Yuri perhaps

Okay okay it's a little edgelordy but I like that it's different

But overall i think he's trying to hit too many nuanced topics in this tiny section (does reclaiming a term actually remove its offensive history, should historical texts be edited for modern sensibilities, should we all just drop "n-word" and use the hard R because otherwise it's ignoring the cruelty...i'd say it's the exact opposite but lol). Breadth over depth seems to be a trend so far.

I agree with him on not editing out "offensive language" from original texts, but I don't get his reasoning of "see? If I DIDNT use 'faggot' in my class, the gay student wouldn't have had a chance to express that he didn't like it & then none of us would have learned 'faggot' is bad :)" Sorry I live on planet earth where people know what words are offensive!

"History isn't linear but it also doesn't repeat on a loop, circling back to the same place over and over again. Rather, it moves in more of a spiral, pushing to places that feel familiar but are fundamentally different."