#intellectually i understand the reasoning

[unsentimentaltranslator]

And what drives me absolutely bonkers is that, as I said in another post just now, "being grabbed by the hair doesn't feel good" is something even babies understand. All of my objections to this stuff are just like that meme about saying the R word where the people in favour of it type up screeds of faux intellectual tripe about how actually it's fine to say a slur against intellectually disabled people and the people against it just say "it's not very nice, is it?" While I often speak in an intellectual way, I didn't actually arrive at these stances in any really intellectual way; I'm just going "I don't like people doing violence to me and I believe other women and girls when they say they don't like it either" and that's controversial for some reason.

sorry we can't talk about anything ever again because what if she chose to do that awful horrible degrading self-destructive thing half of society is pressured to do? what if she likes pressing the button that sends later generations down that same conveyor belt?

[cementcornfield]

Some D-Line Observations from Twitter

as we could all probably tell, trey is the only one making ANY difference on the d-line at this point. and not only is he the best on our line, he's one of the best in the entire league! like look at how alone his name is in that chart, he's getting doubled more than myles garrett or aidan hutchinson, and still winning as much or more than them!

and then we see sam, who seems to be entering a second season in a row of decline. he IS hurt, so you can blame injury, or maybe just old age. either way it's not great for him or the team 😔

the thing is though, his injury wasn't a secret during training camp. and myles murphy was getting more and more reps before he was hurt. i'm sure the plan was to let sam rest a bit, and have myles rotate in more than he did last year. and then....he hit IR. (the good news is that he'll be eligible to come back week 5, if he's feeling up to it!)

all of which leads to the first series of tweets....we have invested more than anyone!!! in our d-line!!! the most high round draft picks in the league! significant amounts of money in free agency!! and yet!!

it's easy to blame the FO (and i do, for a lot!) but they have been trying apparently. i know it doesn't seem like it, i personally was shocked at this info lmao. it's just that, for whatever reason, things aren't paying off. joseph ossai, zach carter.....they were 3rd round picks that have contributed very little so far. myles had flashes last year and could be a hit, but he's hurt. cam sample has historically been good depth, but he's hurt. kris jenkins is finally back in, but playing hurt. mckinnley jackson could be good, but we just don't know enough about him yet...because he's hurt! and beyond our draft picks, our acquisitions like bj and sheldon got hurt in the chiefs game, and you could REALLY feel their absence the next game against washington. the effect of injuries on this line really cannot be overstated.

and that sucks! because you look at the dj reader situation (and note that i was always on the side of keep him keep him oh my god keep him!) and see how the gamble of not paying your star vet and hoping that a lot of unproven young talent would come through....has not paid off! but! to be 100% fair, betting that dj would come back fully healthy and play like his old self, when he was getting older and had a serious injury, also would have been a gamble. it's just that that gamble paid off for the lions, and only time will tell if it pays off for us 🫣

[nyxi-pixie]

actually incredibly funny to me that ranpos entire thing centres on how his intelligence is not because of an ability or any other great thing, its just him. hes entirely, completely, inarguably human. and Yet, when it comes to dazai, so many people are Desperate that there just Has to be another explanation. his intelligence cant just be that hes unusual, no it must be a marker of separation, of difference so great it disallows the reality of his humanity.

[lady-corrine]

"Rhaenyra being usurped had nothing to do with misoginy and her being a woman -"

"The Greens are not only constituted by misoginystic -"

"Aegon and Rhaenyra were just as bad and neither deserved to -"

"George is writing about how Aegon and Rhaenyra were equally bad, not about how misoginy and patriarchy killed a woman and ruined her entire life -"

"Rhaenyra being murdered has nothing to do with her being a woman, nor is she sexualized even in death-"

[itspileofgoodthings]

before I started teaching I was neutral-to-positive when people would say things to me like “you should start a podcast or run a Serious Writing Blog” and now if you catch me doing either of those things I want you to take me out back and shoot me

[amiya-shirou]

While I do think it's extremely important to analyze a story and try to get a deeper understanding of its contents, themes, and characters, sometimes there's a big part of me that finds greater enjoyment in losing myself to the experience, to go through something I don't fully understand yet is so evocative and striking that it leaves a deep impression on me nonetheless. Sometimes I don't even want to understand them in full because that uncertainty is such a big part of my appreciation.

Serial Experiments Lain and Angel's Egg are both among my favorite anime ever, yet I would have such a hard time if I were ever asked to try analyzing them or fully convey why I love them. I know that there are plenty of theories and analyses around, some more reasonable than others, but to me they've gone beyond any conventional notion of narrative, and I don't care about applying its standards to try and dissect them. If they had such a deep, long-standing effect on my mind it's not because of some masterful example of incredible character writing, or because they effectively played with genre convention or any other reason that would align them too much to the idea of following any sort of proper "rule". I love them because I feel they perfectly succeeded in "crystallizing" a particular emotion in such a way that it only was possible because they were so effective in making me, as the viewer, feel just as lost as the characters in the indecipherable maze of their stories.

This is why I never was able to forget the scene of Alice reaching out to a Lain that had gotten so entangled in the trappings of her own mind and of the nature of reality. This is why I was hit so hard by the despair felt by the girl in Angel's Egg. It's a level of emotional resonance that lives through, and is empowered by, that very deliberate feeling of uncertainty, of being lost and alone in a scary, crazy world you'll never really understand. Sometimes, I just want to be touched by something without having to go out of my way to define it.

[aq2003]

romeo of romeo and juliet fame is hardly my all timer shakespeare blorbo but i feel like in all the productions i've watched/listened to no one has really . Gotten his Vibes. except of course for dt's romeo essay which understands romeo so perfectly it's scary

[lord-squiggletits]

NGL I think one of my least favorite "gotchas" that I see/get while critiquing stories is "so how would you fix it? oh so you don't have an idea of how to rewrite the story to make it better? oh so basically you're just complaining that you don't like it and don't have actual critique."

Buddy.

Sometimes the reason I don't have a "solution" to how the author should've rewritten their story to be better, is because I'm not privy to the author's thought process, what their alternate story ideas were, what they talked about with their editor, what they might've been forced to do by deadlines, or even what they might've thought they were writing towards at first but then later changed the trajectory of their story to be about something else.

It's all well and good for me to say something like, idk, "I think Character A should've gotten more narrative focus because their story could have helped fix XYZ Plot Hole," but it could very well be that the author never intended for Character A to be a prominent character (just a secondary or tertiary character). Maybe using Character A to solve one Plot Hole would've gone against the writer's plans because then it would open up a different plot hole for something else they had planned later in the story. If it's an ongoing story, maybe something I see as a "plot hole" is actually a deliberate mystery that the creator left open to write about later-- or maybe the plot hole is because there was a deadline crunch and the author had to drop a certain character/plot point/etc because they couldn't fit it into the story any more. Maybe having Character A be a more prominent part of the story is just based on MY personal tastes and what I would want to write in MY version of the story, but completely clashes with the characters/conflicts the author wanted to focus on.

Because yes, there are some story critiques that are as simple as "part A doesn't make sense, you could just fix it by doing B", but there are also some story critiques where suggesting a viable "solution" would require BEING the author or someone involved in the production of the story to understand what limitations or plans were involved in the selection of that flawed plot point. There are also some story critiques where even if there is a "problem" and my critique offers a "solution," there could be another "solution" or even dozens that do just as good of a job fixing the issue, but involve vastly different characters, plot ideas, so on and so forth.

Being a good critic isn't (just) about going "the story would've been better if X happened" because the story is ultimately in control of the author and their vision, and without knowing what the author's vision was (something that you almost exclusively know if you're 1. the author or 2. their beta reader), it's impossible to definitively say "this plot point should've been cut/[completely different thing] should've happened instead" because THAT is the point at which you're complaining, not critiquing. I would argue that in some cases, trying to "fix" a story yourself actually makes your critique worse, not better, because it ends up being a case of you simply imposing your artistic vision over the author's to say "I think it would've been better this way."

At least if you just say "this part of the story was flawed because XYZ" without saying "it should have been ABC instead", then you're stating your grievances with the story without being presumptuous enough to assume that YOUR version of the story would fit the author's original vision, or the constraints they were working under, or the other versions of the story that they were debating over at the time before ultimately settling on one version (even if flawed).

There's a point at which "this plot is flawed, that should've happened instead" is just fix-it fan fiction and not actual critique that could help the writer write their story in a way that fits their vision.

[chussy]

tfw i, vincent, the aroace robot boy alter, am trying to watch a YouTube video like a normal person, but I have to endure Alex, the runaway host of this disaster system and guy who's apparently gone entirely too long without having sex, thirsting so hard over the youtuber I'm watching that I can feel it like a distant earthquake

[tabbycake]

ok wth i just spent like 5 hours playing zeno remake, i’ve gotten all the endings except for the sin ones but WOW i loved that…

[levil0vesyou]

I think everyone should get to understand this. I will use simple words to say it again.

Generative AI is bad, but you need to know why. It is not bad for using AI. There are two big reasons it is bad and many small ones. I will explain the two big ones.

Big reason one: To make it, you have to steal. There are not enough pictures for the computer to look at. There are not enough words for the computer to read. To give it enough, you have to steal them. The people who made the pictures and words don't get paid. Only the people who stole it for the computer get paid.

Big reason two: It is bad for the planet. The computer has to work very hard. It uses a lot of power and computer parts to work very hard. This hurts the planet and everything that lives on it. It hurts plants, animals and humans. It makes global warming worse.

We need to know that we should not use it. We also need to know why. When we understand problems we can solve them. When we don't understand problems, it's hard to solve them. "Why?" is the most important question.

[mosspapi]

My mother really likes the rug I'm making for my apartment and said she's genuinely considering commissioning some from me. And like. I seriously deeply appreciate the thought and the fact that she likes it so much that she not only wants one of her own but will pay me for it too, but I don't think she realizes that actually doesn't do anything. "My" bank account is still owned by, managed, and accessed by her and my father. She can put money in or take money out whenever she wants. She sees all of the transactions that go thru it. If she pays me for it she's just moving her own money from one of her accounts to another one of her accounts but this time I know it exists. It's not MY money even if she pays "me".

[poprockspillage]

i feel bad bcs i have a hard time holding. concepts in my head? holding ideas ? idk like i can’t summarize things i’ve read very well because of this. i have a hard time holding onto distinct moments from something or more than one concept from it so i have a hard time with media analysis sometimes. and i feel bad because it makes me feel like i’m not very smart. i have a lot of thoughts and opinions but a lot of times i’m missing something and i know it and i want to understand

idk. just thinking about this yaknow.

[joshuaalbert]

i needed to look up a josh fact to ensure that it was not something i made up in the height of my insanity and i got so scared by the picture in memory alpha. that’s not my boy sorry that’s the guy I send to sami like once a month with the caption white josh jumpscare

[reyspacescavenger]

.

[tadpal]

one of the more frustrating parts of uni was people without memory problems saying Learn This Now And It Doesn't Matter If It's 3+ Years Until You Next Use It!! It'll Come Back To You!! like no tf it won't. it's gone.