“It’s been super,” Ebby Ihionu, shop owner of Elegance African Fashions, says. “Usually during winter, the business is slow, but it has been like up, up, up. You know, people come every day.”
Ihionu is originally from Nigeria and has run this business out of the basement of her home for 11 years. And for the first time, she ran out of some items. “I ran out of dashikis. I ran out. I had to go, and you know, start making more,” she explains.
The colorful printed dress shirts usually sell in the summer. And Ihionu isn’t slowing down. She’s already booked up with orders for custom-made clothes for the next two months. It’s all because of the bump from “Black Panther.
Diane Basemera from Uganda runs an online marketplace called Amooti, where African artisans sell their goods. Basemera, 30, started her business two years ago with the goal of being an “Amazon” for African products. Sales on her website have tripled since the movie came out. One artisan on her site even created a line of hoodies inspired by “Black Panther” for spring.
Some fashion experts already predict the film will give African designs even more influence in the fashion industry.
“This is a long-term trend,” says Caroline Daniels, who runs the fashion entrepreneurial initiative at Babson College. “The number of people that are becoming fashion consumers is growing, is more diverse. They want more choice, and they want clothing that expresses individuality as well as diversity.”
Attention fanfic writers: If you use Google Docs to write/store/back-up your fics, you might want to download anything you don’t already have backed up elsewhere. Google is apparently invading and deleting people’s personal drive content thanks to the FOSTA/SESTA bill that recently passed through Congress. Essentially, it criminalizes ANY platform where sexual content could be placed.
It may also be worth making sure you have offline back-ups of any and all fics you have posted here on Tumblr and on AO3, in case Yahoo get antsy (they’ve been cracking down on the porn bot tumblrs already) and OTW face a legal challenge to take down AO3. I’m hoping that’s not the case – but I was on LiveJournal during Strikethrough in 2007 and I remember the way that whole communities as well as individual LJ accounts were deleted and purged; it was instrumental in the founding of AO3 in the first place. That was a widespread purge of fanfic writers and communities, LGBT+ communities and writers and more, all due to legal threats that SixApart, the company that owned and hosted LiveJournal, received due to allegedly hosting paedophile content. After Strikethrough was over and LJ admitted they’d gone OTT, there were a number of communities and accounts that didn’t get reinstated. I’ve always been quite careful not to have my Tumblr flagged up as NSFW in part because of that. Given the number of Facebook accounts that get temporary or permanent suspensions thanks to malicious false reports, I have very little confidence that Tumblr’s staff won’t make mistakes.
I’m not sure what this means for collaborative fics; but Google Docs probably aren’t a safe platform for that anymore.
If this is news to anyone else, listen, whatever happens in the world of politics, backing up your stuff is always a good and necessary thing. Do it and do it often. Be wise. Nothing is certain. Nothing is stable. Even data decays. In a world of rapidly-decreasing hard copies, you must perform backups. It’s not paranoia, it’s prevention.
@tisfan@27dragons I know you both use it so I thought it would be a good idea to tag you but I’m not sure if anyone else does so, please, be safe and save everything you can wherever you can.
If they touch Ao3 I fucking hope there will be a revolution overseas to bring it back, killing of everyone who tried to get us off of our drug.
one of the more valuable things I’ve learned in life as a survivor of a mentally unstable parent is that it is likely that no one has thought through it as much as you have.
no, your friend probably has not noticed they cut you off four times in this conversation.
no, your brother didn’t realize his music was that loud while you were studying.
no, your bff or S.O. doesn’t remember that you’re on a tight deadline right now.
no, no one else is paying attention to the four power dynamics at play in your friend group right now.
a habit of abused kids, especially kids with unstable parents, is the tendency to notice every little detail. We magnify small nuances into major things, largely because small nuances quickly became breaking points for parents. Managing moods, reading the room, perceiving danger in the order of words, the shift of body weight….it’s all a natural outgrowth of trying to manage unstable parents from a young age.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t do that. I’m not saying everyone else is oblivious, I’m saying the over analysis of minor nuances is a habit of abuse.
I have a rule: I do not respond to subtext. This includes guilt tripping, silent treatments, passive aggressive behavior, etc. I see it. I notice it. I even sometimes have to analyze it and take a deep breath and CHOOSE not to respond. Because whether it’s really there or just me over-reading things that actually don’t mean anything, the habit of lending credence to the part of me that sees danger in the wrong shift of body weight…that’s toxic for me. And dangerous to my relationships.
The best thing I ever did for myself and my relationships was insist upon frank communication and a categorical denial of subtext. For some people this is a moral stance. For survivors of mentally unstable parents this is a requirement of recovery.
If it wasn’t stated outright – it wasn’t said.
It’s important to communicate this frankly, too. Make it clear that you can’t know or respond to their concerns unless they actually bring them up. Be proactive in telling the people you care about that you need them to tell you when something’s wrong, and that you’ll listen.
I also want to bring up that passive-aggressive behaviour and a heavy reliance on subtext can itself be a toxic coping mechanism in response to a fear of not being listened to when talking about things directly –
normalizing actual direct communication
creates a safe space for everyone. It’s good for your loved ones too when you set boundaries around this and follow through on your commitment to have these conversations.
here’s a useful expression: “i don’t have a preference but i’d be happy to choose.”
sounds a little odd or maybe contradictory? but i spend a lot of time around people who, for various reasons, often run up against choice paralysis, that agonizing state where making a decision seems impossible.
so i use this sentence to clarify a few things.
1. are you just being polite and offering me the chance to choose first? if so, i have given you the go ahead to decide for us
2. are you having difficulty deciding? if so, i have made it clear that even though im not invested in any particular option, i am willing and able to make the decision for us.
tfw you Kinda have a crush on someone & also feel like they Sorta have a crush on you too but also you’re probably just projecting your own feelings due to wishful thinking & your hopeful ass is gonna get let down when reality comes a-knockin’
So a reader left a comment on byw 56 (really, more than one reader, and more than one comment) which I am addressing on Tumblr instead of on the AO3, because, basically, I did not have room to write a five thousand word essay back to them in my comments. I also apologize for my somewhat stilted use of no contractions before the cut; I am trying to get around a Tumblr bug that turns apostrophes and quotation marks and emdashes into display garbage on the dash.
First, let me back up for a second, because, to me, the most important part of my reply is my reasoning for why I am not, in fact, going to reply very directly to the actual specific questions that these specific readers asked. WELP SORRY! I apologize for this if it is frustrating; but, as those of you that have been around here for a while know, while I was in grad school (and before that when I was kind of perpetually underemployed) my primary source of income was tutoring K-12 students. Unsurprisingly, since I was headed for a STEM graduate degree, I taught a lot of math, but my primary tutoring area of focus was actually critical reading for students who were preparing for the SAT (note for non-U.S. readers: the SAT is the main ~college preparatory readiness~ exam in the U.S., your score on which heavily influences university admissions). And a big part of why I often do not like to answer questions about my writing, including some of the questions that these particular readers raised in these particular comments, is because for most of my adult life, I have fed and clothed and housed myself by failing to answer questions about writing by otherpeople. When you are teaching someone to read critically, particularly when you are teaching young people to read critically, the most effective thing you can do is, very frequently, to not answer their questions, but to do so in a considered and deliberate way.
(Note: If talking about the idea of critical reading in a fannish context is going to peel your onions, you should maybe stop reading this essay right now.)
With huge thanks to @theredheadinquestion for pre-reading this beast, I’ve finally finished my promised ‘How I Write Smut’ notes. The file is now available to download or print, for anyone who’d like to have a read.
Everyone writes sex differently. I’m insanely flattered that there’s been interest in hearing how I do it. I love talking about writing, and I love helping out other writers where I can – so hopefully this will at least be interesting to a few people.
Naturally, this guide is NSFW from start to finish.
If you do take a look, I’d love to know your thoughts. ❤ Redsie was terribly sweet – I think I can safely say she enjoyed it. Whether she had the courage to actually watch Jade Jantzen having fun with a homeless man, or whether she took my word for it all, I don’t know. (You’ll see.)
She liked it, anyway.
And I hope you like it, too. ❤
Haven’t read it yet, very much looking forward to having the focus to do so!
All right, AO3, I love you and all (genuinely!), but I need an easy way to filter OUT certain tagged fics when I’m searching other tags. Especially pairings.
Because I love you guys, but when I’m trying to find Tony/Pepper fic, you can guess the problem I have pretty much EVERY TIME.
I would also really like a way to blacklist certain fics or authors I never want to see again.
I would also really like a way to sort bookmarks by fandom rather than just having them be one jumbled mess.
agreed SO MUCH.
I DO NOT WANT X/Y PAIRING WHEN I’M SEARCHING FOR FIC OF CHARACTER Z WHO IS IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH Y IN THE FIRST PLACE.
It’s actually pretty easy to do! Put the name of the pairing youdon’twant to see (I’m guessing in this cases Tony/Steve) in the Other Tags box with a minus in front of it. Like so:
(In this case I searched for Tony/Pepper in the Other Tags box first, and then after the fact went into the Relationship box and clicked the checkmark)
….. *RAPTOR SCREECH* YOU ARE MY NEW FAVORITE PERSON.
THAT WORKED LIKE A CHARM. AND NOW I CAN FIND THE FIC I AM ACTUALLY LOOKING FOR!!!!
MY FACE IS SERIOUSLY THE BIGGEST SMILE FOR YOU RIGHT NOW. 😀 😀 😀
I don’t even care that this is a total overreaction on my part, I’m just really excited at such an easy fix to my problem!
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 