Facebook memes are usually the intellectual equivalent of getting gum stuck in your pubic hair, but any meme that’s about books is probably one that’s okay by me.

So, the meme has sometimes mutated to “ten of my favorite books,” but fuck that. Favorite isn’t that meaningful of a metric. I prefer the original meme I saw going around — books that “stayed with you.” Like a haunting ghost.

1.) Swan Song, Robert McCammon

It was Boy’s Life that made me want to be a writer, and it’s Mister Slaughter that disturbs me the most, but while a lot of folks love epic fantasy, I fell in love with epic horror reading Swan Song. Actually, Swan Song was my gateway into horror — to King, Koontz, Barker, Brite, and beyond. (Also, thanks to my wonderful sister, I have a copy of the illustrated first edition.)

2.) Blackburn, Bradley Denton

Forget Dexter. Go read Blackburn. How does a boy become a serial killer? It’s grim, hilarious, sad, scary, sweet, and back to grim again. It run laps around most other books and is some truly amazing writing. Denton’s a helluva prose-master, good as Lansdale.

3.) Beloved, Toni Morrison

Beloved is at first blush a horror novel. The horror of slavery. The ghost (real or imagined) of a dead child. Elegant, astounding work. (I actually got to meet the author when I was in college.)

4.) Ulysses, James Joyce

It’s a book so big you could use it to kill a man. It’s long and rambling and strange. It also contains playful, powerful prose and moments of mundane bullshit elevated to mythic horseshit. It’s an astounding read. A hard slog, but worth it if you can manage. Finnegan’s Wake is also a book that will stay with you, provided you don’t mind trying to read a book that may or may not just be a cuckoo idea virus scrawled madly onto paper.

5.) The Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff VanderMeer

Talked about this one last week. Just shut up and go read it.

6.) Exquisite Corpse, Poppy Z. Brite

This book is super-gross. By which I mean — grisly, gory, sex with dead bodies. It’s also written with such beauty, and crafted with such love, that it’s an astounding achievement. A tough book. Worth every word. All of my Brite books are a gift. All her books are horror written in neon, blood, hairspray, lighter fluid, sex juice.

7.) The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

It feels like we’re living in its prequel at times.

8.) Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets, David Simon

If hard-ass journalism had a baby with Greek tragedy, you’d get this. This is also the book that effectively parented both the television shows Homicide and The Wire.

9.) The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

Spare, tough like jerky, and a very personal look at Viet Nam and its soldiers.

10.) Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory

Is it even fair to call this a demonic possession book? I dunno. Whatever. It’s amazing. I remember reading this while on a plane (to Hawaii, I think), and it vacuumed this into my eyeballs and it buried its head under my skin like a tick.

Runners-up: Shining Girls (Lauren Beukes), Twelve-Fingered Boy (John Hornor Jacobs — actually, anything by JHJ), All the Rage (Courtney Summers), Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill), Dark Tower (Stephen King), Raven (Charles Grant), Sorrow Floats (Tim Sandlin), A Dirty Job (Christopher Moore), The Adventurist (Robert Young Pelton), Pecked to Death by Ducks (Tim Cahill), anything by Joe Lansdale, and probably a whole lot more I’m not remembering because dang, man, I gotta go to bed.

Your Turn

Give me 5 – 10 books that stayed with you.

Talk about why, if you can.

Go.

Last week’s challenge: Yet Fate Choose Your Title

This week:

I want you to write 500 words of a story.

But — and this is key — do not finish the story.

Write an enticing, compelling tale that fails to end.

Then, next week, someone else will finish your story.

So: write 500 words. End it in a way that makes people wanna keep reading.

You’ve got one week. Due by next Friday, noon EST.

Post it at your blog.

Link here so we can all read it.

AND GO.

There is a right way and a wrong way to summon her.  Success requires precision: a dark room, a mirror, a candle, salt, and four teenage girls. Each of them–Jess, Shauna, Kitty, and Anna–must link hands, follow the rules . . . and never let go.

A thrilling fear spins around the room the first time Jess calls her name: “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. BLOODY MARY.” A ripple of terror follows when a shadowy silhouette emerges through the fog, a specter trapped behind the mirror.

Once is not enough, though–at least not for Jess. Mary is called again. And again. But when their summoning circle is broken, Bloody Mary slips through the glass with a taste for revenge on her lips. As the girls struggle to escape Mary’s wrath, loyalties are questioned, friendships are torn apart, and lives are forever altered.

A haunting trail of clues leads Shauna on a desperate search to uncover the legacy of Mary Worth. What she finds will change everything, but will it be enough to stop Mary — and Jess — before it’s too late?

1) Scary is personal.

What scares me doesn’t scare you. Or the person next to you. Or the person next to that. There is no one novel, no matter how well written, that will absolutely get under an audience’s skin. There is no penultimate monster that will send people scurrying for bibles, holy water, and a nightlight. While people can respect how well-crafted a horror book is and appreciate relatable characters, original premise, and perfectly staged monster scenes, sometimes the scares just won’t scare. Fear is steeped in psychology.

I find this premise fascinating. For example, I have a friend who can watch any zombie or ghost movie without issue. The Exorcist made me climb the walls, he could not grok why it was such a big deal. However, we watched The Strangers — a movie about a home invasion — and he was scarred for weeks. The fantastical will not bother him. Realistic horror will get him every time.

Another friend loves zombies movies/fiction, but if you put a ghost in front of him he can’t stomach it. “If I can’t physically attack it to save myself, it scares me.” A horror author doesn’t know the audience’s push buttons. She can only go forth with what she sees as scary and hope others share her particular flavor of twitchy.

2) Scary is pacing dependent.

You can argue that all stories are pacing dependent, but to me, horror will fall flat quicker than other genres if tension is not maintained. Every one of my favorite horror novels starts small and snowballs into hideous by the end of the story. THE SHINING delivers a nibble of creepy at the beginning and escalates to some ghost activity, then major ghost activity. By two hundred-and-something pages in, Danny Torrance is being chased by an army of topiary animals and I’m trying not to vomit with fear because HOW DID WE GET HERE? WHY, STEPHEN KING, WHY?

The seed of dread needs to be planted early and steadily nourished so it can flourish into a Pee-Your-Pants Tree over the course of the pages. If the book stagnates and dips, the reader loses that uncomfortable tingle at the base of her spine. Without a foundation of creep to build upon, the mood is shot and the book fails.

The pendulum can swing the other way, too, though. Too much gore and people will see it as splatter porn. While some folks appreciate viscera dripping from the ceiling, it can desensitize the audience to the atrocities. After a while, they all blend together and will no longer evoke those much sought after trauma stares.

3) Horror tropes are plentiful. Use with caution.

Tropes exist in every genre, but horror tropes are particularly prominent. The creepy music box, the thing in the mirror reflection that wasn’t there the moment before, the haunted doll. These tropes, when spun on their heads, are fun. Horror lovers appreciate a good tip of the hat. They love fresh takes on old themes. However, using too many tropes? Or using them the exact same way someone else presented them? Derivative and stale. The audience gets that corpses look like corpses and there aren’t too many variations on the theme. What will differentiate the good piles of walking rot from the bad are the less-explored details.

The smells. The sounds. The odd tics.

And then there are the problematic tropes. The promiscuous girl who is murdered after she’s shown us a whole heaping helping of her bouncing sweater parts. The person of color who is never, ever allowed to make it to the end of the movie/book (or, if he does, is then shot right before the credits roll because Screw You, Night of the Living Dead.)  Yeah. If these tropes died in a fire, I’d be okay with that.

4) Kissing and horror go together, but not always well.

This seems to be more of a YA thing. When a protagonist is fearful for her life but spends more than ten percent of the story thinking about kissing, there’s something weird going on. I don’t care if I’m holed up with RDJ, Sofia Vergara, and Tom Hiddelston. If there are zombies coming, my girl parts have to wait a damned minute. All the makeouts in the world won’t matter if a dead thing’s munching on my spleen.

I readily recognize that having a relationship in horror can up the stakes. The potential loss, the fear of not only losing your own life but the life of a partner. I hate using another King example, but he’s the grandpappy of horror for a reason—Fran and Stu in THE STAND? Okay, I can deal with it. It worked. But remember that THE STAND had a trillion pages so King had the space to pull that off. In a shorter book, too much focus on DOES HE LIKE ME and not enough on HOLY GOD THE TENTACLE BEAST JUST ATE CHARLIE detracts from the danger. It also borders on illogical.

5) Urban legends and local lore are fascinating.

Bloody Mary came to prominence in the 1960’s. Over in England, she was a toilet bogey associated with the dead queen. In the US, her story got wonky. She’s not always Bloody Mary—sometimes she’s Mary Jane. Sometimes she’s a mother mourning for her children (a more traditional Lady in White type ghost.) Sometimes she’s associated with the Salem Witch Trials. Sometimes she’s a student who died in a school and wants to torment the living for having the audacity to breathe. The only common thread is a blackened bathroom, a name said three times, and a ghost in a mirror.

When writing MARY, I did a lot of research on the legend and found myself studying the Hockomock Swamp in Massachusetts (which is where the fictitious town of Solomon’s Folly is located.) It’s a marshland in southeastern MA that spans four or five towns and considered one of the most haunted places in New England. Not coincidentally, it’s where King Philip’s War was fought back in the 1600s and thousands of people died.  All sorts of weird claims have been made about the place, the most entertaining of which is the whole yeti thing. Like, there have been enough yeti sightings in the swamp that I’m pretty sure the yeti have built condominiums and play golf in there. Ghosts, phantom swamp gas, old gods, Indian curses—all part of the local lore and it’s amazing.

 * * *

At night, when the lights are dim and the creepy crawlies scuttle around in the dark, Hillary Monahan throws words at a computer.  Sometimes they’re even good words.  A denizen of Massachusetts and an avid gamer dork, she’s most often found locked in a dark room killing internet zombies or raging about social injustice.

Hillary Monahan: Website | Twitter

Mary: Indiebound | Amazon | B&N

Mildly hapless Edinburgh accountant Gwenllian Maule is surviving. She’s got a boyfriend, a rescued pet bird and a flatmate to share rent. Gwen’s biggest challenges: stretching her last twenty quid until payday and not antagonizing her terrifying boss.

Then Gwen mistakenly drinks a mysterious beverage that gives her heightened senses, accelerated healing powers and astonishing strength. All of which come in handy the night she rescues her activist neighbour from a beat-down by political thugs.

Now Gwen must figure out what else the serum has done to her body, who else is interested and how her boss is involved. Finally—and most mysteriously—she must uncover how this whole debacle is connected to the looming referendum on Scottish independence.

Gwen’s hunt for answers will test her superpowers and endanger her family, her friends—even her country.

* * *

Lesson the First: Be Yourself

This is the first full story I ever wrote:

It’s admittedly brief. But even as an almost-thirty-year-old human-shaped thing, I’m rather impressed with its themes. There’s an obvious moral in there about, you know, not peeing on people or sentient flowers, but there’s also undertones of vengeance and retribution and a certain dash of whimsy that I rather like to this day.

When I scribbled that little comic in 1989 or so in an Alaskan apartment, I don’t remember feeling like I had a flash of brilliance or that one day I’d win a Nobel Prize for literature or anything. There was joy in creating – and of course, the gleeful satisfaction of making a pee joke.

It was another fifteen years or so before I came to understand that the stories I wrote and bled onto hundreds of pages of 1s and 0s on a decrepit laptop as a teen could be, in all seriousness, a viable career choice.

Lesson the Second: Do What You Gotta Do

My high school guidance counselor, a panic-prone man in the waning days of the 20^th century, was a big fan of the “flipping burgers” threat. “If you don’t go to college, you’ll be flipping burgers! BURGERS! FLIPPING THEM!” he’d squawk, then run out of the room cackling and leave the rest of us scratching our heads wondering how that threat would play out in a one-stoplight rural Montana town that had exactly one place that served burgers at all. Would we all be forced to crowd behind the register and take turns with the spatula and grease-spatters?

I never found out. Because of course, even once I realized that writing stories did, in fact, pay some people money, I went to college for other things. I followed the advice of the Wise Grown-Up Sorts in my life and got a degree. I graduated a year late in the illustrious, economically booming year that was….2008.

Take that, Mr. Counselor Man. I don’t flip burgers. I hand them to people for dubious amounts of money. BOOYAH.

Lesson the Third: Write Crap Sometimes

By that point, I had completed a novel that I thought would change the world. (Feel free to cackle at me like my old guidance counselor.)

I eventually came to realize that said novel was actually a festering turd, and then later that even “turd” was giving it too much credit, because turds have some structure to them.

Through that time, I started writing the sequel, which was half turd-like in the sense that by the time I finished the second half of it, I’d learned enough to actually give it some structure. Or literary Imodium. Do with that metaphor what you will.

Lesson the Fourth: Know Thyself

My mind did a funny thing in the years between 2008 and the completion of my second novel in 2011: decided that writing might actually be the only thing I could do to simultaneously keep what was left of my questionable sanity and possibly earn a living that would allow me to stop slinging beers for a living. And because I slung beers for a living, it wouldn’t have to be a good living – I’d settle for one that allowed me to keep my now-normal routine of treading water and slurping it down various throat-tubes when breathing got boring.

After all, Sallie Mae was coming for my soul, because I had of course followed the decree of my elders and gone to university.

Let’s pause for a second. If you’re expecting this to go to a “NOW I MAKE VERITABLE FOUNTAINS OF MOOLAH AND WEAR NOTHING BUT GOLD LEAF WOVEN INTO CARDIGANS,” let me disabuse you of that notion immediately.

Lesson the Fifth: Do What You Love, Goddamn It

I’ve yet to make a single penny to pinch and hug and love and dub George.*

I might never make enough single pennies to feed the gobbling Sallie Mae monster (or, alternatively, to bury my high school guidance counselor whilst other former classmates flip burgers onto his head). The point isn’t that, after this long slog from my comic strip debut to my actual prose debut, I can see people queuing up to chuck money at me money for stories.

The point is that after several years of working jobs I really hated, I found one I could tolerate that allowed me to expend my mental energy on something I love. I might not always adore the people who sit at my tables and watch me run up and down the stairs for one beer at a time because the four of them get more of a kick out of ordering one beer every three and a half minutes than allowing me to get all four in one trip. (What would be the fun in that?) But I get avoid seeing 6 AM’s obnoxiously chipper face. I work three doubles a week and have three or four days off per week.

It’s not gold leaf cardigans, but it pays my bills. It sometimes gives me inspiration. It sometimes makes me new friends who like to geek out about Doctor Who and play tabletop games. When I’m home, I get to curl up with my cat (see exhibit B) and tell stories.

That’s what makes this whole thing worth it. I don’t have to give a flying fire-bellied toad of fucks that my degree will probably only be useful in future survival situations as kindling. I don’t have to feel bad when peers buy homes I can’t or won’t ever afford. I don’t have to worry that I missed my calling and got stuck in a career that drained me of creativity. Even though handing someone a burger isn’t glamorous or particularly lucrative, the only bottom line I have to worry about is the bottom line on a page full of words I made.

I still get that gleeful joy of creation, of making something up that wasn’t there before. Spinning yarns and universes, tales and talismans. Part of being a grown-up writer is maintaining the wonder of a child regardless of whether you make money for the stories you tell, beyond the employment history on your resume, in spite of the degrees you earned and use – or don’t.

So do the thing. More importantly, do what you need to do in your life that allows you to do the thing. Books only sort of grow on trees these days – you have to plant them yourself. Learn. Get better. Evolve your word-making craft.

I myself have come a decently long way from that first comic strip. I moved on from pee jokes…to wedgies.

Because I’m a fucking grown-up.

* * *

Emmie Mears was born in Austin, Texas, where the Lone Star state promptly spat her out at the tender age of three months. After a childhood spent mostly in Alaska, Oregon, and Montana, she became a proper vagabond and spent most of her time at university devising ways to leave the country.

Except for an ill-fated space opera she attempted at age nine, most of Emmie’s childhood was spent reading books instead of writing them. Growing up she yearned to see girls in books doing awesome things, and struggled to find stories in her beloved fantasy genre that showed female heroes saving people and hunting things. Mid-way through high school, she decided the best way to see those stories was to write them herself. She now scribbles her way through the fantasy genre, most loving to pen stories about flawed characters and gritty situations lightened with the occasional quirky humor.

Emmie now lives in her eighth US state, still yearning for a return to Scotland. She inhabits a cozy domicile outside DC with two felines who think they’re lions and tigers.

Emmie Mears: Twitter| Facebook

Masked Songbird: Amazon

Ahoy!

I’m joining up with the Pixel Project this month — “a virtual nonprofit helping make the world suck less for women and girls by raising awareness, funds, and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women” (um, can I get a HELL YEAH?) — and I’m alongside a gaggle of amazing authors like Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson, Joe Hill, Robert Sawyer, Jasper Fforde, etc.

Today is a Reddit AMA with several of us authors, so check that out.

Also, I’ll be doing a Google Hangout on September 14th, 8PM EST. (Schedule here for all authors.)

The “Read for Pixels” fundraising pages are up at IndieGogo and Razoo.

Fundraising rewards have a Skype chat with me and an e-book bundle!

Want to see the project breakdown for funding? Here it is.

Please check it out!

More info from the Pixel Project:

Your support will help make an impact on 3 levels:

Level 1 – Helping efforts to shift the Global Perspective on Violence Against Women:

“Read For Pixels” is held in support of the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign through which we are working to accelerate the end of Violence Against Women (VAW) by re-characterizing it from a “women’s issue” to the human rights issue that it really is. VAW impacts families and communities regardless of gender. Men may be responsible for most violent acts against women, but decent, non-violent men far outnumber them and have largely remained silent on the issue. For VAW to end, these men need to be involved in efforts to end the violence.

The Pixel Reveal campaign intends to do just that by triggering conversations about VAW worldwide and inspiring men and boys to take action to stop VAW in their communities.

Level 2 – Keeping anti-Violence Against Women work alive and kicking, grassroots style!

Violence Against Women is a cause that is chronically underfunded despite the global severity of the issue.

The $1 million we are aiming to raise via the Pixel Reveal campaign will be shared between The Pixel Project and the U.S.’s National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

It’ll help keep both organization’s respective anti-Violence Against Women campaigns, programs, and projects alive and thriving.

Level 3 – Helping Reach Your Communities To Get The Conversation Started

We’ve listened to many folks over the years who wish to help stop the violence but don’t know where to begin.

Therefore, as part of the outreach efforts of “Read For Pixels”, we’ll be providing all “Read For Pixels” donors with a special virtual toolkit – a set of links to resources for you to learn more about violence against women, how to start the conversation in your communities (and with the men and boys in your communities), and how to help victims and survivors of domestic violence and rape.

If folks wanna know more, feel free to check out:

• Read For Pixels
• The Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign
• The Pixel Project
• The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

“If you don’t want nude pics leaked, don’t take nude pics with your phone —” *Tasers you* *steals your shoes* SHOULDN’T WEAR SHOES BRO

— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) September 1, 2014

I wrote that tweet yesterday in regards to the celebrity nude photo thefts.

(It’s not a leak. Nor a scandal. It was theft, kay? Kay.)

It’s had over 4500 retweets since then.

A tweet that goes that far and wide tends to get a response that is equally far and wide, and so of course I’m getting a lot of tweets from people (let’s be honest: dudes) who are like BUH BUH BUT UHH THAT’S WRONG BECAUSE SOMETHING SOMETHING FALSE ANALOGY SOMETHING SOMETHING SECURITY AND HEY REMEMBER YOU SHOULDN’T PUT NUDE PHOTOS ON YOUR PHONE IF YOU WANT THEM STOLEN.

Basically reiterating the same thing I was attempting to refute in the first fucking place.

If that is your response, may I take this moment to elucidate an academic retort:

Fuck you.

Fuuuuuuuck you.

Fuuuu-huuuu-huuuuuuuuck you.

Please: now allow me to grow multiple arms like Shiva the Destroyer, and further, do note that at the ends of each serpentine arm you will find a middle finger, thrust up so that each finger is straining in an angry, arthritic fashion to convey the telepathic disdain I have for your bullshit, hypocritical, falsely equivalent opinion.

I think people should be allowed to take nude photos of themselves.

I think nude photos are rad. I think not taking nude photos is rad. I think whatever you want to do sexually or artistically is a-okay as long as its enthusiastically consensual — stick a carrot up your ass, if you want, while banging your genitals with a tambourine. Whoever you are, however you identify yourselves, I live in a world where I want you to have both the freedom to do what you want in this manner while simultaneously possessing the privacy to do it as you see fit.

Any violation of that is just that: a violation.

It is a crime. An actual, honest-to-that-blind-lady-with-the-scales crime.

It is not rape, but it is deeply demonstrative of rape culture because it is an act that exploits a woman and her body without her consent. And then, as if to vigorously rub salt into the wound with the heel of one’s callused hand, the judgey-faced shitty-assed judgments of countless men follow in the wake of the violation: victim-blaming, slut-shaming, Puritanical finger-waggling.

“If you don’t want nude pics to get into the world…”

“Something-something security…”

“Sure, sure, it’s a crime, but still, you have to know realize that…”

Shut up.

Shut up shut up shut up shut up.

If you do that, you are on the side of evil, not the side of good.

Oh, I know. You’re pretending that you have people’s best interests at heart.

You want to remind them that the phone they carry is a vulnerable device.

It’s basically a boat with a sprung hull. Anything might leak into or out of it.

So, you think that anything you have put on your phone is suspect? Or your computer or tablet? If I steal your banking information, or your credit cards, or your e-mails, or pictures of your wife, your kids — well, hey, that’s your fault. You plugged in, bro. You shouldn’t have driven on the Information Superhighway if you don’t want to get run over by a couple joy-riding hackers, right?

And hey, driving on the actual highway is pretty dangerous, too. You shouldn’t drive because you could get hit. Sure, I mean, a drunk driver shouldn’t drive drunk — but it’s kinda your fault too because you had the audacity to leave your home. Leaving your home is dangerous. Your whole body is basically a gelatinous jellyfish, just an animated sack of bones and meat quivering its way through life. If you don’t protect yourself — guns, armor, various Mad Max-ian spikes and chains — then you can expect all kinds of violence. You’re not at all secure out there. Your flesh isn’t protected by a password. It’s your fault if you get beaten up. Oh, they stole your wallet, too? That’s what you get for putting all that vulnerable money inside a leather flappy thing ensconced within the soft downy pockets of your dumb acid wash jeans.

What’s that? I just punched you in the face?

Okay, yes, that’s a crime. Admittedly! Admittedly.

But you probably also should be wearing a helmet.

Your face is very vulnerable to the security exploit of my grumpy fist.

Of course, nobody’s saying those things.

Because nobody thinks those things.

Crimes are not a thing we deserve just because we exist in this world.

And yet, that’s what people (ahem, again, mostly dudes) are saying, here. This is the digital equivalent of, “Look at what she was wearing.” A woman is raped and we ask all kinds of questions as to what she did to engender the act — did she protect herself? Was she dressed conservatively enough to thwart the unstoppable sexual aggression of men? Was she in a place — like a seedy bar, or a Ruby Tuesday’s, or any street in America — where rape sometimes happens?

If I see a cake in a window and it’s sufficiently delicious-looking, can I take it?

And when I do take it, will someone ask the bakery: well, how did you decorate it? Was it too delicious-looking? The icing is very enticing. Too enticing, really. Can you blame the thief? How can one control such base and vital hunger? You probably should’ve locked the case. Or hidden the cake behind a secret door. It’s at least partially your fault the cake was stolen. Make uglier, less delicious cakes, next time — ?

One response read:

‘…and i know i wouldnt bank online without the numerous security checks and verification systems they use.’

Well, yes, of course, but nude photos are also protected by the numerous security checks and verification systems afforded by using your phone. They didn’t staple-gun their photos to a nearby telephone pole. The photos weren’t public.

Another said:

‘Im not ‘Blaming’ but security is your own responsibility. Do you keep your money in a bank, or hang it from a tree?’

Were the nude photos hung from a tree? No, they weren’t. So, shut up.

Another called me an SJW, which of course stands for ‘Social Justice Warrior’ — a fascinating term that I guess is somehow supposed to be bad? Like, “Ew, social justice is gross, and also being a warrior for social justice, oh, yucky, blergh, fighting for things you believe in is such a jerk move. Trying to make the world a better place for society with justice is pretty weird! I mean, unless you’re one of the Avengers, because they’re great. Especially that hot red-headeded one with the naked pictures on line — did you guys see these?”

*Tasers you*

*sighs over your twitching body*

It’s ugly out there, folks.

Can’t be a woman online. Or worse, playing games — gasp!

Can’t be a black dude in a convenient store.

Can’t be transgender… well, pretty much anywhere.

You’ll get judged. Deserving of a crime by dint of some perceived deviation.

How you’re dressed. The color of your skin. The choice of your gender identity.

When you judge someone for taking nude pictures on their phone — and you suggest that what they got was, if not deserved then at least expected — you’re a sexist shit-ferret. You’re not really making a point about security or the porousness of the Internet. You’re making a judgment based on that person’s choices. You’re judging the act of taking naked photos rather than the theft of the photos. You’re putting the onus of the crime on the victim and not the criminal because — really, this is why, I swear! — you don’t agree with their choices. Prurience must be punished. Sex is a sin. Where is their shame, you ask? Such shamelessness is provocative. It provokes a criminal response which basically makes the sinner culpable for their own victimization.

Stop it.

Cut the Puritanical crap.

A crime is a crime is a crime.

It is not invited.

You don’t deserve it because of your lack of clothes or because you chose Apple as a brand.

You don’t deserve it because you’re a celebrity.

Nobody deserves it.

If you suggest otherwise: congrats, you’re now part of a culture of rape, misogyny and sexism.

*Tasers you again*

*throws you out the airlock*