concerned-astronomer

[concerned-astronomer]

honestly, the radicalizing event that made me ditch faux-ironic detachment is when I sent a hard-to-write sentimental message to someone I was (at the time) close with, and they sent the vomiting emoji back. it was like oh okay, that sucks. I am now of the opinion that it is 100x cooler and braver to be sappy with the people you care about.

[concerned-astronomer]

[concerned-astronomer]

https://twitter.com/vagina_museum/status/1628046312275935232

[concerned-astronomer]

it's so fucking frustrating to be in college and know everyone uses chatgpt and to be tempted by it constantly while also knowing intellectually that it doesn't work and it's a bad idea. like, i hang out in the library a lot, and i see people using chatgpt on assignments almost every day. and i know it isn't a good way to learn, because it's not really "artificial intelligence" so much as it is an auto text generator. and it gives you wrong information or badly worded sentences all the time. but every week i stare down assignments i don't want to do and i think man. if only i could type this prompt into a text generator and have it done in 10 minutes flat. and i know it wouldn't work. it wouldn't synthesize information from the text the way professors want, it wouldn't know how to answer questions, it just spits out vaguely related words for a couple paragraphs. but knowing my classmates get their work done in 10 minutes flat with it while i fight every ounce of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in my body is infuriating.

[concerned-astronomer]

You all need to hear this:

1. You probably dont suck at your craft as much as you think you do, I bet a lot of people are amazed at what you can make, and

2. If you actually are the Literal Worst In The Whole Wide World at your craft... who the fuck cares? What are they gonna do, call the police on you? Keep making your shitty little things, youre the boss of you, fuck the haters.

[concerned-astronomer]

I will remind people that one of the biggest signs of a scam is urgency. A scammer does not want you to look away or click out of the tab or hang up the phone. They make you feel like there's a very close time limit, like you have to act NOW if you want to protect your bank account/not get arrested/help your (grand)child/save an animal/save a person/etc, and they will use manipulation tactics like guilt tripping and making you feel rushed to keep you from taking a step back and having a moment to think.

If someone who is asking for money is rushing you, making you feel pressured to give them money immediately and making you feel guilty or like you're in some sort of danger if you have any questions or doubts or hesitation, they are scamming you. They are doing everything they can to get your money before you have time to think or do any research, and then they vanish as soon as they get what they want.

[concerned-astronomer]

yeah actually we removed the big bad wolf from the little red riding hood story because portraying violence against minors is really messed up. yeah. yeah also the wolf narrative was really predatory and had had some icky grooming vibes and a fable meant for literal children shouldn’t have implied p*do shit and grape so now little red riding hood goes into the woods and nothing happens and she goes to grandma’s house. don’t worry our kids will still stick to the path and know not to follow to wolves implicitly because we told them to and children should always do as their told. just like little red riding hood does now.

[concerned-astronomer]

I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.

[concerned-astronomer]

collection

[concerned-astronomer]

[concerned-astronomer]

thinking abt that time in one of my art classes when the prof put up a silhouette of L from death note and said “this is not an effective design bc you can’t tell who this character is from this shape” 

and everyone in the class went like “yes we can that’s L from death note”

[concerned-astronomer]

Rewatching Treasure Planet (great movie, watch it) made realize something about the way that stories convey information to their audiences. There's been a lot of discussion on the overuse of plot twists and how many stories prioritise surprising their audience over telling decent stories. However, if you instead reveal the "twist" to the audience before it becomes known to the characters, you can build tension and stakes. Treasure Planet comes right out and tells you that Long John Silver is the main villain almost immediately after his introduction (And even before he's introduced we're warned about a cyborg, so you'd have to be pretty dense to not put 2 and 2 together and realize he's a bad guy). So when the audience watches him and Jim bond and grow closer, it builds tension for when Jim finds out and it highlights the tragedy of their friendship, because we all know it's not going to end well. Then, after the truth is revealed, stakes are created because we want the friendship between Jim and Silver to be repaired, because we know it was real, but we don't know if can be after what Silver's done. And all of this would have been lost if Silver's true nature had been a cheap plot twist. The tragedy would be completely overshadowed by the surprise and betrayal, and any investment in their relationship would have been built on the false impression that Silver was a good guy.

Another good example of this is Titanic. Even if you were somehow ignorant of the ship's sinking, the film makes sure you know that it sank with its framing device of Old Rose telling her story to people salvaging the Titanic's wreak. And Titanic's plot structure could only possibly work if you know the ship is going to sink. I'm not just talking about building tension, tragedy, and stakes for the characters like with the above example, I mean that if you didn't know that the Titanic was going down walking into the film, the abrupt shift from romance to suspense-disaster would be an increadibly tough pill to swallow. But it works because we expect it. You don't walk into a film called Titanic without expecting the damn boat to sink.

However, the sad thing about both of these examples, is that despite all the benefits that came from telling the audience these things ahead of time, I think the main reason the creators didn't make them plot twists was because they couldn't have. Treasure Island is the single most influential piece of pirate media out there, and you'd have to have been living under a rock for over a century to not know the Titanic sank. So, the writers had to work around the fact that these important turning points in the narratives were common knowledge, and they wound creating incredible stories as a consequence.

I want to see more of this style of writing in stories where the writers aren't forced to do it. We've clearly seen that you can tell some really damn good stories by giving information to the audience before the characters learn it, and I just wish more works would do that instead of trying to surprise people with shocking twists.

[concerned-astronomer]

I came to this way later than I should have as a supposedly engaged Friend, but holy shit Britain Yearly Meeting's response to the transphobes is fucking incredible.

this is the most profound "fuck you and your shitass underhanded tactics" i have ever seen from an official Quaker source. do you know how badly you have to fuck up for the clerks to outline five different ways you're out of right ordering?

and they have, as one would expect of Quaker bureaucracy, brought the goddamn receipts.

nyah nyah yah boo sucks

like i am just. I'm not surprised but it's still always good to see it acknowledged that Quakers are disproportionately trans and non-binary (literally four times higher percentage of us in Britain Yearly Meeting than in Britain as a whole) and also as a disabled Somewhat Trans the original message leaning so heavily on "but think of the poor disabled people!" pissed me off so fucking much. so. another W here.

yes i know this is just the stuff trans activists have been saying the whole time but this is the stuff we've been saying the whole time and it's laid out just. so fucking succinctly and obviously that it just feels like a sick burn, you know?

HOOTIN AND A-HOLLERIN again, i know this, but having it in official terms as A Fact Of The Situation is just like. ugh. my heart is healing.

it is a very quaker "shut the fuck up" move to repeat "discerned" twice in one paragraph just so you know for damn sure it was done under the quaker process and is divinely/spiritually/bureaucratically solid, and i know because i have done this exact thing while clerking

fellas is it possible to do a pacifist murder

SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP again like. if you are not used to quaker spaces i need you to know that it is SUPER uncommon for modern quakers to straight-up say "this is offensive and wrong" to each other. like. it is frankly one of the real problems in the Society, our tendency to be conflict-avoidant and try to find a middle road and be polite.

so i need you to know that being this unequivocal on a contentious issue, in a published communication from BYM, is a fucking nuke in Quaker terms. this is gloves-off bare-knuckle quaker convincement. fucking get 'em.

and finishing out on one final "no YOU'RE out of order!" which, again. as someone who clerks on an area meeting level and has wanted to say this kind of thing to people a lot, this is additionally satisfying in ways that aren't even about the trans rights of it all.

although also

including pronouns in the sign-off is also, i think, standard practice for the Clerks now, but god it's satisfying in this context

WHOOOOOOO i am FIRED UP this has MADE MY MONTH

[concerned-astronomer]

how am i not supposed to be a samfrosie truther when this is an actual passage from the book

[concerned-astronomer]

I know I've said it before but every rewatch I do cements this thought further - elijah wood's performance in LOTR is absolutely insane, they really had a character whose name means "wise by experience", hired an 18-year-old to do it, and he delivered so much that not only is it a beautiful and moving role on its own, it's a performance equal to those of the absolute powerhouses he played side by side with like ian holm and ian mckellen. to name just a few

[concerned-astronomer]

Art by Alariko

[concerned-astronomer]