#be capable of engaging with

[catmask]

sometimes while i think about that while a lot of adults did not treat me very well as a kid i also get a lot of 'in hindsight this person was so good to me and i didnt even realize it until now' as an adult. today i was thinking about how the first anime convention i ever went to was when i was 10 and i asked the man working the manga cafe what manga was/what a good place to start was (because the con was very overstimulating for me and i had gotten lost) and he asked how old i was before recommending yotsuba and asking if i wanted any water or something to eat. its really simple but theres a lot of bad things that couldve happened or he could've been careless in his recommendation, but instead yotsuba has remained one of my favorite manga for years, and probably a large portion of why i continue to read manga as an adult... i think adults who try to involve kids in the world safely/kindly even in little ways make so much more of a difference than they ever really know.

[cipheramnesia]

Lilo & Stitch is, and probably will remain for the foreseeable future, the Disney animated film that is more antithetical to everything about Disney as a company than any other Disney animated film. Unfortunately it is also owned by Disney which effectively commodified every subsequent use of the characters back into conformity with every other Disney property. Which leaves the original film itself kind of an orphan - isolated from its creator by its own nature, its various sequels and merchandise and etc belonging to Disney with no bearing on the film, and innately difficult to engage with on its own terms by the nature of the larger population of the Disney fandom also aligning more with Disney as a corporation and not that specific film.

It's almost like some kind of secret experimental creation which normally would have been destroyed by all the acceptable corporate governance under Disney, but it managed to escape and find the weirdos and exiles of the world who could appreciate it or something

[buckingham-ashtray]

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (1983), SO4E02, “The Treasures of Agra” (part 2)

I know ppl have posted this scene over and over before but I just.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

THIS THING IS SCUUUFFED AS HELL & ITS ALSO THE BEST THING I HAVE ANIMATED THUS FAR. IM SO IN LOVE WITH EMIZEL. JUST WISH I GAVE HIM MORE STUPID TATTOOS. NEXT TIME THO. NEXT TIME. I ALSO LOVE VEX&VIV SOOOO MUCH. charlies flavor of Deranged is my FAVORITE!!

[carlyraejepsans]

"mouthwashing fandom" and "people who complain about mouthwashing fandom" currently at an arms race for most insufferable people on my dash

[ovaryacted]

I’ve been laughing about this whole topic since yesterday not because it’s funny, it’s absolutely not, but because it’s fucking ridiculous that we are giving history lessons on racism and the people who have been calling this shit out for months are right and have been right despite the constant gaslighting.

Do you know how crazy it is to be a non-American 40 year old conscious human being and intentionally use racist & violent American imagery in a fic for an incredibly minuscule character played by a Latino man of color who’s the child of political refugees? Do you know how crazy it is to also have a reader-insert acknowledge the confederate flag, and still fuck the person that hangs it in their space? Like do y’all see how fucking crazy that shit is? It’s insane just typing that out. When I said y’all move like the feds in this fandom preaching about inclusion & community in one breath while doing the very thing that jeopardizes and harms those that are excluded from said “community”, I meant that shit, and I was right.

As much as we like to deny it, writers have their own motivations and intentions for creating and sharing the projects that they do. If you as a writer actively choose to add racist themes in your writing to intentionally make a character problematic, it’s a reflection of who you are, because you didn’t need to do that and yet you still decided to do it anyway. Would you as black American want to read a fic where the reader insert fucks a racist? No. Then why do you as a white person, especially a non-American, think it’s okay to do the same? Would you fuck a racist? By the way some of y’all keep dismissing the intentions, that’s up for debate because a lot of y’all would rather fetishize the shit out of that man than have a lick of common sense.

If you really are a “brilliant” writer and person, you’d practice what you fucking preached and wouldn’t need to add racism in your fics when we have enough of that shit in real life. Instead, all you are is a coward, a hypocrite, and a loser and that’s all there is to it. This goes beyond fandom and community, this is real life. And if you have a problem with BIPOC individuals in particular talking about this and setting y’all straight, I suggest shutting the fuck up and opening your ears since you’re not gonna fix your mouths to be the allies and advocates y’all say you are. 🤷‍♀️

[recurring-polynya]

I think one of the reasons that authors sometimes write characters as too self-aware is that you're writing and you have to have all these deep thinky thoughts about what the motivates the character and why they're acting the way they are. And naturally, you want to share all these cool and smart insights with your readers so they will know what a brilliant and incisive character writer you are. But you can't. Because your blorbo is an idiot. You just have to write them saying the stupidest thing anyone has ever said but in a precisely specific way that your readers will nod sagely and say, clearly, this author is a genius.

[dawntread]

your blood is not even worth spilling.

[separatist-apologist]

anyway my secret santa one shot is completed thank you very much, i am not doing a multichapter fic this year

[elvisqueso]

Pocahontas (1995): 3 times Pocahontas is compared to her mother + 1 time she's recognized on her own merits.

rambling lil meta under the cut

see, what's crazy about this whole situation is that it makes me wonder what exactly pocahontas's mom was like to have left such a massive impression on literally everyone in their community? there's that outright statement that "yeah, your mom's spirit is in the wind, basically, and our people venerate her as a spiritual guide (at the very least)." we know that she's the main connection between pocahontas and grandmother willow, and there's an implication in there that whatever leadership role she held in the village is expected to fall on pocahontas's shoulders someday.

i am so convinced that this role is some kind of spiritual leader/shaman position. wise-woman, priestess, whatever it's called. we don't see anyone else besides kekata performing any kind of spiritual rites, and even he isn't seen acting in direct contact with spiritual entities. kekata has to perform chants, provide offerings, and use a medium. pocahontas can just fuckign. talk to the things. how is she doing that? why isn't anyone else really able to do that? john smith could talk with grandmother willow but would he be able to if pocahontas wasn't there (i actually think he could but that's a different post)? has she ever done that for literally anybody else? nakoma never mentions grandmother willow. nobody mentions grandmother willow. apparently, the only two people who knew about her before pocahontas brought her new bf over was pocahontas and her mom.

i'm losing track of myself here, but the point is pocahontas is Highly aware of the ghost she's expected to live up to. and it sucks. and there's a lot more to her character arc about this but the eventual come-around to accepting that she has a responsibility to be more than herself and more than her mother's ghost is so heartbreaking because it also meant she had to let go of her soulmate at the same time so i c ry

[bayetea]

ok I have something mildly inappropriate to say. if hazel and sammy had been 17 instead of 13 they definitely would have made out at least once. sammy is smooth as fuck. the way he kissed her on the cheek on her birthday could have easily turned into a 16 candles-type kiss scene if they weren't literally middle schoolers. people in the 1940s were more reserved but premarital kissing on the mouth was not some unheard of thing back then

fast forward like 75 years and hazel is voluntarily bringing leo into her flashback in moa and instead of the rufus bullying scene they stumble onto her first time kissing sammy and hazel is Mortified. her past self is getting frenched by sammy and she's like "oh no--oh gods I didn't mean to show you this--leo don't look!" and leo and sammy are identical so it feels like he's watching himself make out with her. and he's like "this is weird. I don't understand what's happening. did I make out with hazel 70 years ago and forget. why is fake leo so much better at that than me" but in the darkest recesses of his mind there's something kind of 😳😳😳 about it. it's just so easily self-insertable and he can't control how his brain is superimposing himself into sammy's shoes. it's like hazel levesque x reader and the reader is leo

and this is absolutely hilarious to me but unfortunately the consequence of rewriting it like this is that after they find out that sammy was leo's great great grandfather all along leo is going to feel such revulsion over what he did that he just stays on calypso's island and never comes back /j

[dreadfuldevotee]

okay so I've gotta say I just finished iwtv and like it's really refreshing to find someone who's willing to talk about armand (and, by extension loumand) in an interesting way. Because I quite liked them in S2 so imagine my surprise when I go online and all I see is people acting like armand personally kidnapped claudia and also was mind controlling louis 24/7 (tiktok is horrible with that) when that's just the most boring and frankly nonsensical reading of the material ever. (I think it's silly in general to constantly compare loumand and loustat on the basis of who's worse because. come on.)

However, it got me thinking about how some of that might be the show's own fault? Sure, a big amount of the people not willing to engage are loustat shippers who can't comprehend one person loving multiple people, but I've seen that many people revert back to calling armand this big bad who would have let louis die as if it recontextualizes the WHOLE relationship when imo... it doesn't? Like I feel like I'm going insane bc the show presented it as this huge twist and I didn't quite get on with it? (I'm conflicted on the loustat reunion too but whatever). I feel that there's a disconnect there of what was established the whole season and what was said in the finale. And people are just running with it.

Man idek if what I'm saying makes sense but I wanted to hear your takes on it bc I quite enjoy them and value your input!

No, I totally get what you're saying! I think the details of the loumand breakup collapse on itself upon prodding a bit. I can understand why they wouldn't want them to split the way they do in the book (years of travelling together, finally ending up in New Orleans- Armand setting Louis up to meet Lestat who is wallowing, jumping at sirens 'n just generally sad and pathetic; and being fed up that Louis is seemingly unmoved to any real emotion after the encounter. Them exchanging some harsh observations about each other and then Armand walking off into the night) I think the season ending is more interested in serving the direction they're (presumably) heading for Louis, and wrapping up his life story.

I've been thinking of it to myself as a "Straw that broke the camel's back" kind of break. It's the resurfacing of all the myriad of ways Armand fucked up and fucked Louis over- Oh, and by the way not only did he have a more active role in the play than you originally thought, it never even crossed his mind once to lift a finger to save you. Though, even this falters a bit under remember that Armand breaks Louis out his crypt. People smarter than me have put their finger on exactly why it stumbles on the landing, I'm sure.

What makes it work enough for me is that Louis doesn't go back to Lestat. Yes, they see each other and hug tearfully but Louis does not walk out of Dubai with the intent to ask Lestat to take him back. No, he goes home. He ruminates in the sound of the driver's accent and immediately steps out in a saint's hat. The fact that he finds his way to Lestat is a turn of fate and even then its not really a reunion of lovers but of parents, as the only two people who will mourn Claudia. I say this all the time, but I think knowing that IWTV as a contained story is about grieving a child is the puzzle piece I think a lot of people miss. Before its about Lestat and messy romances and aliens, the whole story sprouts from this moment of deep grief. So I love that Louis has this moment of personal introspection and allows himself to feel his own grief and share it with Lestat but also make a promise to try living for himself and still goes back to the penthouse alone.

I think my continued feelings are a little contingent on how the show plays it going forward. The way I see it, if we start taking score for whos worse, Armand or Lestat- They are tied for gold. Lestat is still complicit in the trial, as is Armand ofc, but neither of them wrote it or schemed it, or genuinely personally desired to kill Louis/Claudia/Madeleine. If the show decides it wants to act like Armand is irredeemable in Louis eyes I will be....less than happy, to say the least. But if the show is as interested in engaging with all the character and all their complexities I think it could all come together quite nicely by the end.

[whentherewerebicycles]

ok more AI thoughts sorry i'm tagging them if you want to filter. we had a team meeting last week where everyone was raving about this workshop they'd been to where they learned how to use generative AI tools to analyze a spreadsheet, create a slide deck, and generate their very own personalized chatbot. one person on our team was like 'yeah our student workers are already using chatGPT to do all of their assignments for us' and another person on our team (whom i really respect!) was like 'that's not really a problem though right? when i onboard my new student workers next year i'm going to have them do a bunch of tasks with AI to start with to show them how to use it more effectively in their work.' and i was just sitting there like aaaaa aaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaa what are we even doing here.

here are some thoughts:

yes AI can automate mundane tasks that would've otherwise taken students longer to complete. however i think it is important to ask: is there value in learning how to do mundane tasks that require sustained focus and careful attention to detail even if you are not that interested in the subject matter? i can think of many times in my life where i have needed to use my capacity to pay attention even when i'm bored to do something carefully and well. and i honed that capacity to pay attention and do careful work through... you guessed it... practicing the skill of paying attention and doing careful work even when i was bored. like of course you can look at the task itself and say "this task is meaningless/boring for the student, so let's teach them how to automate it." but i think in its best form, working closely with students shares some things with parenting, in that you are not just trying to get them through a set list of tasks, you are trying to give them opportunities to develop decision-making frameworks and diverse skillsets that they can transfer to many different areas of their lives. so I think it is really important for us to pause and think about how we are asking them to work and what we are communicating to them when we immediately direct them to AI.

i also think that rushing to automate a boring task cuts out all the stuff that students learn or absorb or encounter through doing the task that are not directly tied to the task itself! to give an example: my coworker was like let's have them use AI to review a bunch of pages on our website to look for outdated info. we'll just give them the info that needs to be updated and then they can essentially use AI to find and replace each thing without having to look at the individual pages. to which i'm like... ok but let's zoom out a little bit further. first of all, as i said above, i think there is value in learning how to read closely and attentively so that you can spot inaccuracies and replace them with accurate information. second of all, i think the exercise of actually reviewing things closely with my own human eyes & brain can be incredibly valuable. often i will go back to old pages i've created or old workshops i've made, and when i look at them with fresh eyes, i'm like ohh wait i bet i can express this idea more clearly, or hang on, i actually think this example is a little more confusing and i've since thought of a better one to illustrate this concept, or whatever. a student worker reading through a bunch of pages to perform the mundane task of updating deadlines might end up spotting all kinds of things that can be improved or changed. LASTLY i think that students end up absorbing a lot about the organization they work for when they have to read through a bunch of webpages looking for information. the vast majority of students don't have a clear understanding of how different units within a complex organization like a university function/interact with each other or how they communicate their work to different stakeholders (students, faculty, administrators, parents, donors, etc.). reading closely through a bunch of different pages -- even just to perform a simple task like updating application deadlines -- gives the student a chance to absorb more knowledge about their own unit's inner workings and gain a sense of how its work connects to other parts of the university. and i think there is tremendous value in that, since students who have higher levels of navigational capital are likely to be more aware of the resources/opportunities available to them and savvier at navigating the complex organization of the university.

i think what this boils down to is: our culture encourages us to prize efficiency in the workplace over everything else. we want to optimize optimize optimize. but when we focus obsessively on a single task (and on the fastest, most efficient way to complete it), i think we can really lose sight of the web of potential skills to be learned and knowledge or experience to be gained around the task itself, which may seem "inefficient" or unrelated to the task but can actually be hugely important to the person's growth/learning. idk!!! maybe i am old man shouting at cloud!!! i am sure people said this about computers in the workplace too!!! but also WERE THEY WRONG??? I AM NOT SURE THEY WERE!!!!

and i have not even broached the other part of my concern which is that if we tell students it's totally fine to use AI tools in the workplace to automate tasks they find boring, i think we may be ceding the right to tell them they can't use AI tools in the classroom to automate learning tasks they find boring. like how can we tell them that THIS space (the classroom) is a sacred domain of learning where you must do everything yourself even if you find it slow and frustrating and boring. but as soon as you leave your class and head over to your on-campus job, you are encouraged to use AI to speed up everything you find slow, frustrating, and boring. how can we possibly expect students to make sense of those mixed messages!! and if we are already devaluing education so much by telling students that the sole purpose of pursuing an education is to get a well-paying job, then it's like, why NOT cheat your way through college using the exact same tools you'll be rewarded for using in the future job that you're going to college to get? ughhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHh.

[abirddogmoment]

I highly recommend getting a highly social dog breed. Being told by pet professionals that my dog is delightful just really never gets old.

[esleep]

how do other adhd people exercise. repeating random movements for no immediate reward feels like setting myself on fire and i can tell my body is deteriorating around me but idk what to do about it

[lucksea]

my awful cat