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truebluewhocanoe · 2 years

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big finish boxset review!!

The Sixth Doctor and Peri Volume One

Got this a couple days ago, listened to all four stories. Here’s what I thought about them! Spoiler-free thoughts for each episode first, then spoilers at the end.

Episode 1: The Headless Ones This one had enjoyable characters and a framing device that helped the pacing a lot. Nothing special, just a fine episode of Who. Probably could’ve handled the colonialism stuff better, though.

Episode 2: Like I’m sorry, but this one just didn’t land. Doctor Who Does Social Media is a seemingly laughable concept, and I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it didn’t work. It just didn’t have anything interesting to say and the pacing was all over the place. I had a good laugh at The Doctor Being Canceled To Death On Social Media but that’s about the only entertainment I got here.

Episode 3: The Vanity Trap A promising premise turns into a failed character piece. Also, a side character who proves to be one of the most atrociously acted characters in Doctor Who. The timey-wimey plot is nonsensical by the end and the ending just isn’t satisfying.

Episode 4: Conflict Theory There’s more than meets the eye (ear?) with this one. Ultimately, I liked it, but I can’t get too deep into it without spoilers. I laughed to tears in confusion at one point. Probably the strongest story on the boxset and actually has meaningful interaction between the Doctor and Peri! It only took until episode 4.

Overall, do I recommend this boxset? Eh.... not really, no. There’s nothing here that you can’t get elsewhere from better stories. I was sincerely hoping a boxset titled “The Sixth Doctor and Peri” would, I don’t know, examine the relationship between the Doctor and Peri, maybe even have an arc with them! Nah. If you really like this TARDIS team, you’ll probably enjoy this set, but if you’re not ride or die for Sixie and Peri, you won’t be missing much.

Spoilers ahead!

Okay, I’m mostly just going to talk about Episode 4 here. Because wow, that was an experience. About twenty minutes in I was just dumbfounded by what I was listening to. It felt like bad fanfiction! Welp, turns out it was bad fanfiction... written by the Doctor and Peri as part of their plan to take down Space Robot Sigmund Freud Hivemind. Pretty funny, while it was a thoroughly unnuanced take on mental health treatment that basically reduced to “wow, that Freud guy sure was wacky, huh?” which, well, not wrong, I don’t think it had any truly terrible messaging. (Similarly, Episode 1 reduced to “yay, we killed the one evil colonialist guy! Please ignore that the rest of the expedition was complicit in what he was doing.”) The actual examination of the Doctor and Peri’s relationship was at the end, where they turn to each other and more or less say “Our lifestyle is pretty crazy and we’re probably not in a very healthy relationship, but fuck it!”

It was quite shippy though. If you’re into that. The Doctor and Peri’s false narrative was mashed together from real events... which makes you wonder about the veracity of Peri’s line referring to her and the Doctor as “breaking up”...

Oh, one last note: Dr. Karp in Episode 3. How the hell did his lines get past Quality Assurance. Every single line took me out of the episode they were so horribly delivered. I like British people doing not-quite-accurate American accents but that was just awful.

#doctor who #sixth doctor #peri brown #the sixth doctor and peri brown #big finish #doctor who audio #big finish boxset #doctor who review

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remusinfurs · 10 months

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Campuses across the nation are debating what is and isn’t free speech. CEOs and online trolls are canceling young people whose positions they consider hateful. Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian faculty are taking sides. Students are hollering at administrators to do the same.

I am a lecturer in rhetoric at San Diego State University. Our biggest problem on campuses isn’t apathy, equity or AI. It’s that we aren’t teaching kids to grapple with complex ideas.

I don’t just mean they lack the ability for analytical thinking or deep focus — though these are real and troubling issues — but that young people today do not know how to figure out what they think. They know how to summarize.

Don’t blame the kids, or even social media. Their unnuanced arguments are a flaw of our education system. But the urgency of the Israel-Hamas conflict presents an opportunity to encourage young people to understand complex issues and articulate thoughtful positions on them.

In my class, I often introduce my students to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s definition of intelligence: the ability to consider conflicting ideas and not lose your mind.

As a secular Jewish woman, I can be both broken-hearted over the 1,200 Israelis killed (and the 200-plus hostages who were being held) in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and also grieve for the more than 13,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliation. As an analytical thinker, I must concede that I cannot understand a quality of pain that would cause members of Hamas to kidnap and assault young women, or storm houses and slaughter families — just like I cannot entirely fathom how generational trauma of the Holocaust can ignite thousands of Israelis to dehumanize their neighbors, bomb innocent civilians and cut off their access to basic human needs.

After drawing on reliable sources, cross-checking media and inviting diverse perspectives, I arrived at Team Human. I want Jewish people to have a safe place to call home, but I cannot be complicit if that creates an unsafe space for others.

Embracing the complexity changes the conversation. And opens it up. Most often, however, this begins in the uncomfortable place of listening.

Obviously, we can’t allow hate speech or ignorance to proliferate on college campuses. It’s important we understand the dangers of otherness in our rhetoric. But right now, when young people have strong opinions about a global issue, we should be careful not to instill in them a fear of speaking up.

Rather, we educators need to step up. We can challenge students to understand the multidimensionality of the conversation and to learn to apply these skills to issues in their lives.

We need to help them — and the rest of society — move beyond the binary. If we set up guidelines for people to feel safe, such as agreeing that calling out the Israeli government isn’t automatically antisemitic, but saying we must rid Israel of Jews sure is hateful, we might begin to move beyond the black-and-white thinking that has poisoned domestic and international politics.

That’s not an easy task. I recently had to get past my biases and assumptions to teach one of my own students. She had written an essay — more of a rant — about why all Americans should side with Palestinians. Despite the sting of her words implying that for Palestinians to be free, Jews must leave Israel, my job was not to shut her down but to help her express her opinion clearly in a multidimensional way.

Instead of excoriating, failing or canceling her, I posed questions designed to help her think more deeply about her stance. I encouraged her to understand her biases and assumptions, add factual, peer-reviewed evidence and acknowledge the other side.

Educators can learn from our students’ passion and curiosity for the world and teach them how to digest complex global issues. What’s dangerous are the simplistic arguments — the one-dimensional ones we see all over social media that disregard years of turbulence and peace accords, or Hamas’ doctrine to end Israel, the dubious role of Britain in the post-World War II creation of Israel, the far-right leadership in Israel that citizens had been protesting for months leading up to the Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s decades-long oppression of Palestinians.

We know what happens when we begin to believe singular perspectives — we need look no further than the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Regardless of our personal perspectives, educators have to help young people understand complexities as campuses see a rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia. Even simple things, such as noting differences between a Zionist and a Jew, or Hamas and a Palestinian. Just think if we taught students about the depth of trauma for Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Muslims.

Can we hear the outrage of youth and allow it to introduce more nuance into our own beliefs? Instead of canceling young people for having opinions, let’s invite them to speak so we can listen. Conversations exposing different perspectives will be uncomfortable. But they also might move us beyond our biases before we get into one more turbulent American election cycle.

Michele Bigley is a San Diego-based educator and writer.

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darkwood-sleddog · 2 years

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Them: short form social media like Twitter and tik tok is changing the way we communicate!

Me: still writing massive blog essays in the style of 2006 era internet….

#not dogs #I am #not on either platform and honestly I don’t think I ever will be #don’t make me #contain my thoughts to an abitrary word count or time limit #new dog essay coming later this week lmao #also publishing houses stop trying to push your authors on to tik tok thanks #literal bane of my existence #I do enjoy some shorter media but it’s also super easy to see when people ONLY consume short form medias #just like the most basic and unnuanced takes

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thedreadvampy · 3 years

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Tbf on the Martin thing while i know that's not what you meant the reason alot of people got pussy was cause it was right about the time they'd been an issue with acephobia in the greater fandom already and the way you phrased it tbh did really feel like you were equating ace!Martin and Martin being infantilised in a post about martin being infantilised being bad. Basically it kinda sounded like you didn't want people hc-ing Martin as ace because it was infantilising (which also then linked back to some shit that happened with ace discourse) and the post blew up a bit and that mixed with you Knowing Jonny and you coming off pretty aggro or not wanting to give a straight answer on what you meant (or that's what people felt you were doing) yeah that's why that went that way.

Tbf I'm not really interested in relitigating who was right and who was wrong in that particular argument, I feel the way I feel and other people feel differently and I think everything's pretty much already been said like six months ago. I asked because I couldn't remember what happened not because I was longing for the days of pointless arguing.

however because I can't resist digging myself deeper Ever I'll relitigate it anyway under the cut

I have little to no involvement with the wider fandom so I'm not sure how their acephobia was on me in any way

I could have worded the post better but I maintain it takes a pretty bad faith reading of the post to think that my problem is with ace Martin hcs when I specifically said both in the post and the tags and further clarifications that I was talking about the way that people desexualise fat, queer and abused people OUTSIDE of ace hcs

I have said about a zillion times that me knowing Jonny doesn't mean I know shit about TMA and that we've literally never talked about it. which being the case it is pure wild that people think it's a reasonable reason to treat me like some sort of voice of authority.

I have also said about a billion times and will say again that people aren't in fact entitled to demand a full accounting of a stranger's opinions out of the blue. like it is, in fact, confusing and surprising to me the degree to which people took personally the idea that a stranger could be annoyed or disinterested in discussing something that they wanted them to talk about. that's why I keep thinking there must be more to the anger about me from certain users. but like nah apparently 90% of the reason people get pissed off at me is either a) Using The Wrong Tone To Talk To Myself On My Personal Blog which they interpret as attacking them personally or b) Not Being Constantly Available On Demand To Answer And Reanswer Questions That Shouldn't Even Be Questions In The Full Knowledge That Any Poor Wording Will Be Treated As Malice. Sorry, my tone's getting a tad aggro again, I do recognise that, but I find it really frustrating to have it consistently treated as deeply inherently suspicious and/or malicious to not immediately rattle off a perfect answer to "questions" which are fairly thinly veiled traps. like there is no good answer to "what's your opinion on ace people." "ace people exist" is not a matter of opinion and I could just say "ace people are valid and good and fine uwu" which is like. True. but also utterly trite and validates the idea that point in a random stranger's inbox to grill them about Which Minorities Are Valid Uwu is in any way an acceptable or boundaried way to behave. Which I don't believe it is, and treating it as if it's a totally normal and fine thing to do just to get people to leave me alone would be pretty unprincipled imo.

Like I say I've said all this before, I'm just retreading old ground. But in terms of the Why Did This Blow Up, yeah I hear what you're saying but even trying to step back from my own experience and view this from outside, I'm still pretty surprised that a kind of shittily worded post at a bad time (from a blog that was pretty detached from the wider TMA fandom) followed by an Insufficient Disavowal of extremely nebulous accusations of acephobia, ended up being such a big thing.

Like literally. the majority of the messages I was getting were i n c r e d i b l y broad and vague. they said things like "what's your opinion on ace people" and "are you an aphobe" and I repeatedly answered them saying "I mean ace people exist and are my friends and comrades, what's the question?"

And I hope that when people raised specific issues about my actual conduct I answered them. I certainly tried to, to the best of my abilities - like I got a bit defensive initially but I agreed that my wording in the Martin post was poor and I did my best to clarify my intention (which had been to say "IF WE ASSUME THAT Martin isn't aroace," which I thought was a fair assumption when from context I was talking about a Martin being written in sexual or romantic relationships, but which I phrased as "Martin isn't [list of items including aroace]" bc as with most of my posts I wrote it in one go without reading it back). I kept saying that if people were specific about what was wrong with my conduct specifically, what they wanted explained and what they wanted me to change, I was happy to discuss that, but I wasn't happy to give some sort of Simple Definitive Answer to broad questions that were not mine to speak authoritatively on and which I often was like "I can't even begin to tell you my opinions on the answer until we unpick the question a LOT" (like. yes I could say honestly that I believe that ace/aro people are queer as a topline answer but if we go any deeper than that then we need to unpick what queerness is, what aro/aceness is, what context we're talking in, what is meant by queer spaces, etc etc and it's not something I would feel honest giving a yes/no answer to when a lot of people mean a lot of different things by the question, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't.) And it's not helped by the fact that when I have tried to answer questions in a way which feels honest, which inevitably gets long and ramble bc that's how my brain works, people have repeatedly got really hostile not because of what I say but because I've written an answer longer than "yes I fully agree with every possible permission of your point." like literally I have had people rant about how I'm being defensive or dodging the question when a) they haven't actually read my answer by their own admission and b) I'm literally. answering the question. it's fundamentally baffling to me that giving a short unnuanced answer with the intent of getting someone off your back is seen as less "dodging the question" than giving a paragraphs-long thoughtful and inconclusive answer. like this isn't a fucking debate. I'm not here to win an argument. I'm here to think about what I believe and why, and sometimes an honest answer is neither simple or conclusive.

idk man this post is actively unhelpful to everyone but me, but while I don't WANT to relitigate this every time I mention it I DO want to be absolutely clear that I have thought about all these things at length. some things were my fuckup, some things I stand by, but I still think it ended up with a response wildly disproportionate to the actual mistakes I made.

(which were there. evidently. but it seems like a very strange and spiralling way to react to "person who words things ambiguously and doesn't always give immediate clear responses to broad questions about complex issues")

#'what we're not going to do is persistently relitigate things'#*proceeds to write Another Billion Word Essay relitigating things*#apologies friends i have 0 self control #btw anon for clarity: where i say 'you' it's an impersonal you i don't mean. you. as a person.#I'm not going like YOU ANON YOU DID ALL THIS #but i am uhhhhhhh like yeah? i know all this reasoning? i just think they're bad reasons?#which i explained like. multiple times. they're all to me pretty based in a way of thinking i just can't wrap my head around #where there's like. no boundaries between individual and community actions and everything is personally addressed to You The Viewer #even if it Very Explicitly Isn't #like it's really. really hard for me to account for because i can't understand how you get to that headspace #(again impersonal you)

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sometimesrosy · 4 years

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hi rosie! I know it's been months since the 100 ended and I've seen lots of people talk about how they failed bellamy and clarke but I was wondering what you thought of raven and her storyline in s7. do you think it was good for her character and her story arc?

Ahh. Raven’s arc.

Yeah, so the problem with Raven’s arc is JR hasn’t known what to do with her since season 5. Season 4 was the last season with a good character arc for her, and even that one had a major character glitch as he tried to take her from the pragmatist who would blow up a bridge or dam or tell Clarke to kill Lxa while surrounded by her armies, to a person who said “it’s not your blood that matters, it’s your heart.” Which was one of the worst lines in this whole show. It’s not even funny like “we’re back bitches!” It’s just corny and soppy and dumb. Her character shift on science island always felt false to me. It should have been Bellamy who held Clarke in check with morality, since that had been HIS character arc. I thought it was a misstep then, and now knowing the entire narrative arc, I think it was where they started to go wrong with Raven. Until then she was my third favorite character after Clarke and Bellamy.

I ALWAYS had a problem with this, but I was giving them the benefit of the doubt that they could pull it out. Season 5 was the least bad for her, with her sacrifice for spacekru on the ship, but honestly I didn’t think they went far enough with that. I feel like they should have explored her feelings of guilt more at not being able to get her friends home, or leaving Clarke behind alone. And there was great potential in the scene where she and Clarke took McCreary down using her own body as the weapon (especially for a character whose body was always in pain and whose body had failed her... idk that’s quite some symbolism there,) but instead they chose to retreat and turn her back into the judgmental shrew that told Bellamy he shouldn’t have saved the slaves, and told Clarke she was the one who said whether everyone lived or died.

So like. She never addressed with Clarke what happened with Finn at his death. The blame she put on Clarke, when SHE wanted to instigate a war that would have had them all exterminated, including Finn. For some reason, the genius couldn’t connect those dots that her plan would have caused all of her people to massacred? I mean, it’s normal for her to have that failure in such a time of high emotion, but six years later, she still thinks Clarke was wrong to do what she did? No. Plot hole. Forgetting all the times that she enabled Clarke’s plans, or eagerly set about torturing and killing (remember SHE’S the one who electrified Lincoln without a BIT of the remorse that Clarke and Bellamy had,) is a failure of character.

Also, she never addressed the FACT that she wanted to trade Murphy to the grounders for Finn’s life and have him tortured to death in place of her boyfriend who was a literal mass murderer, AND she blamed Murphy for Finn’s actions when Murphy was the one trying to stop him the whole time. And THIS is a plot hole for a character arc and narrative line that was about Raven having learning about forgiveness and morality and leadership and sacrifice and hard decisions, and making judgments on Murphy, who frankly has been one of the most moral characters of the show since season 2. His morality might not be the SAME as everyone else’s, but it was the most firm. So, this narrative arc again did not go FAR enough.

In season 5, I figured that they would make up for the s5 scanty Raven storyline with a stronger s6 one.. That didn’t happen. I thought maybe it was because her love interest left, so she took on his judgmental role, but it didn’t work well. I also thought that part of the problem was that it would make her into too big of a character and they needed to keep the focus on the main characters, Clarke and Bellamy. But from s5-7 MURPHY got a large role, too, that brought a thorough narrative arc and finished out his character journey. So he got the focus that they never managed for Raven. I hear tell that Richard helped Murphy’s story in season 7, so that might be why. But idk. It shows that they were capable of finishing a character story with attention and detail, but they just failed with Raven.

So season 7 had Raven confronting her own leadership and putting her in Clarke’s place to face the judgment she put on Clarke. And...oh she was sad and felt guilt and had to face the repercussions of that. But... it didn’t go far enough. She was reunited with Clarke and was no longer angry at her, and they were a team again. But this wasn’t HER story arc. Her story arc just kind of went *sad trombone.*

I know she was the one who went into the anomaly and met with the sparkle aliens, but that just seemed so forced and fake. Yes, they built up the morality narrative, but... like. It should have been Clarke. Instead they turned her into the crazy vengeance lady, like Daenerys, even though her entire narrative was about her dealing with her pain and she kind of never killed anyone in vengeance? I mean she spent 6 years ALONE and she only wanted to kill herself? IDK. It doesn’t make sense that THIS was the end. She sent madi into battle too save Bellamy and that did make her crazy lady. She had her after death reckoning and we saw no crazy lady.

Sorry, that went off into failure of Clarke’s story.

How did that affect Raven? I think that from about season 3, Raven was used as a substitute to fill in gaps where they lost characters, or moved characters around. Where they changed their narrative ideas, and they needed a narrative tool to do something, they would stick Raven in... because she was a strong character who was involved with all the other main characters (except maybe Octavia.) She became like a swiss army knife who would take the place of characters that were needed but didn’t fit. And that meant that HER character was not really consistent in the later half of the series. And it feels WRONG. Someone’s judgy? Make it Raven. Someone’s empathetic? Make it Raven. Someone’s mean? Make it Raven. Someone’s righteous? Make it Raven. Someone’s a sister? Make it Raven. Someone’s a daughter? Make it Raven. Some main character needs a supporting character to prop them up? Make it Raven. They just moved her around to fit the other character’s stories. Even her big morality arc was to support Abby, Clarke, or Murphy. :/ THAT’S why it didn’t work when they made her the Clarke proxy in the transcendence narrative. Because she hadn’t actually worked through HER story, but through Abby’s Clarke’s and Murphy’s. Bleh.

And she also basically disappeared in a lot of season 7, too. Same as Octavia. Who had her story with Sky Ring and skyringkru, but then disappeared until she gave the inspiring peace speech with the goddamn petty, dumbass stupid grounders, whose main flaw FROM SEASON 1, is that they are too stupid to have survived this long. All they want to do is fight. And blame everyone else for what they did. And the eligius prisoners, and the brainless cult sheep. Honestly.

And what do we have? The most unnuanced, flat character in the show. Sheidheda. Like there isn’t even any symbolism or archetypal energy in there. He’s just there to make them fight for NO FUCKING REASON.

These are the characters who had decent story arcs that were resolved.

Murphy and Emori Diyoza Gabriel And Indra a bit. Better than most.

Fucking DEV had a better character ending than Clarke, Bellamy, Raven, and Octavia.

Actually, Mackson was satisfying, although skimpy. But then the characters didn’t have a really deep narrative line, so their ending was in keeping with their story. But it fit with their long term stated goals, what they wanted out of life. Just to be together in peace with maybe some chickens, by the shore, right? That was THEIR goal. The ending was theirs.

That was never what any of the other characters wanted. Or not ONLY. Do the right thing. Live a good life. Create a better society. Save humanity. Be good people. Live morally.

nope. But it worked for Murphy’s ending too. He didn’t want to die alone. He died, with Emori. Then he came back and got to life his half life with his friends.

I just can’t get over how they tossed the main story of being the good guys and saving humanity. I suppose there was always the question of whether they’d get a happy ending emotionally, but I never thought they’d destroy humanity, erase Bellamy and say Clarke was never the hero.

I guess I needed to address the endings of the other characters to see how they all fit in with Raven’s. Because none of the characters stood on their own, so we have to see how they were woven together and compare and contrast.

Raven was my biggest disappointment as a character in this show from season 5 on. I kept waiting for her character arc to come together or get the attention Murphy got. She had the weight to be major character, but her story just wasn’t told. She became a supporting character and really lacked meaningful development.

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aotopmha · 3 years

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I've now read 46 chapters of Solo Leveling in a few hours.

It has the consumability of Sword Art Online, but generally (so far) avoids Sword Art Online's biggest 'surface level' missteps (there is at least some sense of progression from the characters, some sense of believable relationships with the characters and not a lot of pointless additions to the cast).

But it also is very much a Sword Art Online brand of story.

I'd also compare it to Jujutsu Kaisen and early Tokyo Ghoul in that the character and thematic content is neat and it addresses the messy parts it sets up in the most basic way where you at least can tell the story means well. (Or does it?)

It's unmistakably popcorn fun, with neat action and some really cool designs (my favourite part has grown to be how the video game stuff is incorporated into everything else), but also has what I call 'teen dark' elements where the dark themes it covers aren't very nuanced. The start is fine to be fairly simple but 47 chapters in, the fact that the story keeps these ideas so simple really has started to show.

The story touches on ideas like giving into a bad system and that system draining you from your humanity and corporations and greed ruling everything, but it also has these power fantasy elements of the protagonist becoming an unbeatable 'badass' and there is still the contradiction and reluctance from the author here to have Jing-woo ever 'completely' fail like with many Isekai stories.

To cycle back to the start, I read like 40 chapters in a few hours, and what kept me reading was the pace, little hooks and presentation.

So, spoilers, *the protagonist is now a necromancer who can summon an Ornstein rip-off and an army of knights*.

Every time I get frustrated by some of the tropes this story pulls out, it follows up with at least some kind of an interesting hook.

The absorption of all of these sinister powers has got to lead to something more interesting than just cool protagonist powers for the protagonist to eventually just 'own the noobs', right?

There is always this one hook every once in a while with those small bits of the human element that make me want to know where it all leads.

I want it to be better than all of the stuff like it, but that good stuff Iin there is just shining through the cracks just a little bit instead of fully breaking through. The story is covered in a whole bunch of dark ideas that could be much more interesting with more time spent examining them and more nuance injected in them.

It even comes across as kind of childish at points.

In the end, is it just going to end up a nihilistic power fantasy quoting Nietzsche or is it eventually going to lean into those interesting themes with some more nuance?

If this mess explodes just right, it could make everything before that point a little frustrating, but delibrately slow build-up, if it doesn't it would just be another story among many that are the same.

Again, the messy, interesting stuff is just there, waiting to completely burst out.

Part of the framing tells me it is just going to be a generic 'nihilistic dude mad at the world quoting Nietzsche' thing, part of the framing tells me there is going to be more to it. Or maybe the unease is the point?

I've never felt a story depend on what I assume to be one of its big plot points so much, but right now it's just about strafing the line between obnoxious unnuanced commentary about 'how the world really works' and maybe something a little smarter.

This just loops back to my first post: these kinds of stories frustrate me so much because they are often almost there, almost really good, but some elements just pull them down.

Despite my issues, I do find this story an easy read, so I might catch up to it eventually, but for now it's kind of a take it or leave it situation.

It didn't quite fall off a cliff, but just sort of became kind of repetitive.

#Solo Leveling

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alightinthelantern · 4 years

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I’ve been trying for months to figure out how to phrase this eloquently without success, but if you’re Allistic, Autistic people are not your oppressors, and this includes Autistic men, even if you’re a woman. Autistic men are not Allistic women’s oppressors. An Autistic man infodumping is not sexism, for fuck’s sake, he’s infodumping on a subject because it’s one of his passions, or he’s trying to be friendly and conversational but hasn’t gotten the hang of small talk yet, or it’s a compulsion he can’t control. Autism frequently appears in tandem with one or more other disorders such as OCD (or Bipolar, or many others), and they all influence how the others manifest. Autistic people do not talk “too much” because “they like to hear themselves speak”, not Autistic women, not Autistic nonbinary people, and not Autistic men. That’s something Allistic people do.

“But I don’t hate Autistic people, I just hate men!” If you hate men then you hate Autistic men, and you hate Autistic people, because if you’re not Autistic yourself then you don’t know how to tell who’s Autistic and who’s not. If you don’t know living with Autism first-hand then you don’t know shit. Many Autistic people are taught to Pass in public at all costs, no matter how harmful it is to them emotionally, because they had shallow, ableist parents, teachers, or social workers. Just because someone is behaving “normally” doesn’t mean they aren’t Autistic, and it’s no more your business of whether they are or aren’t than whether the person you see parking in a handicapped spot is “actually disabled” or not. People don’t owe you that knowledge; you’re supposed to give strangers the benefit of the doubt and treat them with basic fucking compassion regardless of whether they seem to “deserve it” or not.

If a man is talking too much for your liking, then just beg out of the conversation. Don’t play along and pretend you’re interested while waiting for the conversation to finish up, because, contrary to what you believe, you aren’t sending the signal that you’re only being polite, you’re sending the signal that you’re interested, which they take as an invitation to keep going. Contrary to popular belief, most men do not intentionally subject people to enduring conversations they know the other party doesn’t enjoy! I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been snapped at by women I was only trying to be friendly with because they simply waited until they lost patience, when I would have shut up at once if they’d even once hinted they weren’t actually interested. Half a hundred times at least, and all when I was in my late teens and early 20s, when I was young enough not to know better. I sure wasn’t taught it; all the adults in my life were too busy punishing me for existing to actually teach me anything! And yes, I was young and naïve, and they were lessens that I had to learn one way or another, but the sheer condescension and callousness was thoroughly unnecessary, and still stings now years later.

The idea that all men are chauvinists in love with their own opinions is a shallow, boiessentialist position that does nothing to fight the men who actually behave like that, and hurts everyone from transmen to transwomen to Autistic men both trans and cisgender. So rather than take such an unnuanced attitude, maybe accept that most people need a little social prodding now and then, regardless of gender, and just be a little more straightforward about your desires? If you’re in a conversation you don’t enjoy, just beg out, or hint that you’re uninterested, rather than feign interest and wait for it to wrap up, and then get angry and assume the other person is stupid or clueless when they mistake your fake interest for something genuine.

#autism #sexism #albeism

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blackswaneuroparedux · 5 years

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Anonymous asked: I think you have one of the most cultured blogs on tumblr and I respect your views (even where I disagree) because you are highly educated and experienced and not a knee jerk ranter like many here. Yet I was disappointed by your post on Islam and West with a quote by the conservative writer, Mark Steyn. Don’t you think history shows that the hate filled anti-Islamism of the Crusades taught Muslims to rightly fear and hate Western Christians and that has continued down to our present day?

There’s a lot to unpack here so thank you for your thoughtful words. Thank you for being sincerely honest and open and I hope I can reciprocate in the same way. I don’t claim a monopoly on truth and I am always open to be corrected if I know I am wrong in some way. I hope you are too.

Firstly, Mark Steyn - within the specificity of the quote alone - wasn’t attacking Islam so much as showing the slow burn decline of the West, especially Europe. He was admonishing Europeans for the state of their moral and political decay of their civilisation.

As a side note, Mark Steyn is now Canadian but originally born and raised English. As such he deploys wit and sarcasm in a British way that isn’t entirely understood by North Americans. I don’t always agree with Steyn but I like his colourful turn of phrase and stylish prose. he was a drama critic before he turned his hand to political commentating and so he knows how to provoke.

Secondly, I want to make clear that I am not anti-Islamic. I have a sincere respect and appreciation for Islamic arts and aesthetics. This comes from briefly living in those cultures such as India and Pakistan as a small child and then later backpacking across Iran and Central Asia and South East Asia, and even later serving in the British army in Afghanistan.

As a rule, I also respect people of genuine faith and what it means to them in their every day lives to be better people having learned to speak Urdu, Farsi, and Dari to a fairly conversant level. I have always been the recipient of generous hospitality and unexpected kindness, especially ordinary people I met on the buses or in the night market bazaars or remote villages when I was backpacking.

However speaking frankly, I won’t apologise for being anti-Islam when it comes to the religious Islamic hardcore - unwittingly aided by misguided leftists and PC multi-culturalists - who wish to threaten the fabric of our European heritage or where imported Islamic customs and cultural practices are incompatible with our native European traditions.

Questions of how and in what ways does Islam impact and even undermine the very fabric of European civilisation are legitimate ones provided we can leave aside the unhelpful histrionics of fear mongering and stop taking comfort in broad brush racist caricatures.

Taking easy pot shots at straw men of our created fears may serve as a release for pent up frustration in the short term but does nothing to take a serious approach to practical policies to solving these problems in the long term. We need to have an urgent, sober and clear sighted discussion about how far can western societies can allow Islamic customs and practices to continue to shape our traditional European identity.

Thirdly, your view that Islam was peaceful until Western Christianity started the fight with the onslaught of the crusades is deeply flawed. Your view of the crusades is not unusual though. It pervades textbooks as well as popular literature which is based on out of date historiography.

The historiography of the crusades tends to focus on varying degrees on the three key medieval impulses that drove the crusades: piety, pugnacity, and greed.

In the popular imagination today the crusaders were nothing more than boorish bigots. In films like Kingdom of Heaven (2005), the best of the Christian knights are portrayed as being torn between remorse for their excesses and lust to continue them.

Within the hallowed halls of academia the impression one gets comes down either believing the soldiers of the First Crusade appeared basically without warning, storming into the Holy Land with the avowed - literally - task of slaughtering unbelievers. Or the Crusades were an early sort of European imperialism. Some ‘woke’ historians would go as far as to say confrontation with Islam gave birth to a period of religious fanaticism that spawned the terrible Inquisition and the religious wars that ravaged Europe during the Elizabethan era.

The most famous semi-popular historian of the crusades, Sir Steven Runciman, ended his three volumes of magnificent prose - written in the 1950s - with the judgment that the crusades were “nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

Runciman was badly mistaken and his research has been surpassed as a new generation of historians have moved down fresh avenues of archival research. That’s the nature of historiography.

There will always be a sense of the complexity of each of the historical issues regarding the crusades and why historians often disagree with common popular, often unnuanced interpretations of historical events as popularised by Runciman. It is a topic that crusade historians discuss among themselves quite often, occasionally publishing articles in popular publications.

So I don’t buy in to the argument that literally all the crusaders were virtuous or had pure motives - I don’t think any serious historian does. Nor would I ever categorise all the crusaders on one side as the good guys and Islamic forces on the other as the bad guys. That’s just lazy and silly.

There is a story about Carole Hillenbrand, one of the present leading scholars on the crusades, who was invited by an interviewer in 2018 to venture an opinion on whether the Muslims who had encountered westerners in the Holy Land during the time of the crusades had seen the best of western Christendom in their midst, Hillenbrand agreed that - with notable and distinguished exceptions - they almost certainly had not. In turn what had the Western crusaders learned from their Islamic adversaries? "The most important thing that most of the crusaders who remained in the Holy Land learned ... was to use soap".

History is a two way street of complexity and contradictions. It’s also full of unexpected ironies as we shall see.

At the moment the piety argument is in the ascendancy and is often ascribed to the late great Cambridge historian Jonathan Riley Smith - arguably the most important crusades historian of modern times. As early as 1977, he argued that the crusade was a special type of holy war that was differentiated from all previous Christian holy wars by its unique institutional and penitential nature, thus it had a special religious appeal to those who participated. It was at first associated with pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the most penitential goal of all, and a place where devout Christians went to die, which may be why so many of the earliest crusaders were old men.

I find this argument more convincing because of the reams of research now been done and adds to our broader picture of the crusaders and their motivations.

So you might see the assumptions behind your question make you fall into the Runciman view of the Crusades - and that has been out of date for some time.

The historical truth is that Muslims had been attacking Christians for more than 450 years before Pope Urban declared the First Crusade. They needed no incentive to continue doing so. Islam was always in conflict with Western Christianity from the beginning.

But even here there is a more nuanced and complicated answer which I want you to consider.

Up until quite recently, Muslims remembered the crusades as an instance in which they had beaten back an insipid western Christian attack. Islamic popular belief that was prevalent in these societies that they were the winners, not the losers during the time of the crusades. Past Muslims never whined about the crusades because they saw themselves as the victors.

An illuminating vignette is found in one of Lawrence of Arabia’s letters, describing a confrontation during post-World War One negotiations between the Frenchman Stéphen Pichon and Faisal al-Hashemi (later King Faisal I of Iraq). Pichon presented a case for French interest in Syria going back to the crusades, which Faisal dismissed with a cutting remark: “But, pardon me, which of us won the crusades?”

This was generally representative of the Muslim attitude toward the crusades before about World War One - that is, when Muslims bothered to remember them at all, which was not often. Most of the Arabic-language historical writing on the crusades before the mid-19th century was produced by Arab Christians, not Muslims, and most of that was positive. There was no Arabic word for “crusades” until that period, either, and even then the coiners of the term were, again, Arab Christians. It had not seemed important to Muslims to distinguish the crusades from other conflicts between Christianity and Islam.

Nor had there been an immediate reaction to the crusades among Muslims. As the British historian, Carole Hillenbrand has noted, “The Muslim response to the coming of the Crusades was initially one of apathy, compromise and preoccupation with internal problems.”

By the 1130s, a Muslim counter-crusade did begin, under the leadership of the ferocious Zengi of Mosul. But it had taken some decades for the Muslim world to become concerned about Jerusalem, which is usually held in higher esteem by Muslims when it is not held by them than when it is.

Action against the crusaders was often subsequently pursued as a means of uniting the Muslim world behind various aspiring conquerors, until 1291, when the Christians were expelled from the Syrian mainland. And - surprisingly to Westerners - it was not Saladin who was revered by Muslims as the great anti-Christian leader - he was a Sunni Muslim of Kurdish ethnicity. That place of honour usually went to the more bloodthirsty, and more successful, Zengi and Baibars, or to the more public-spirited Nur al-Din.

The first Muslim crusade history did not appear until 1899. By that time, the Muslim world was rediscovering the crusades - but it was rediscovering them with a twist learned from Westerners. In the modern period at the end of the 19th Century, there were two main European schools of thought about the crusades.

One school, epitomised by people like Voltaire, Edward Gibbon, and Sir Walter Scott, and later echoed in the 20th Century Sir Steven Runciman, saw the crusaders as crude, greedy, aggressive barbarians who attacked civilised, peace-loving Muslims to improve their own penury state.

The other school, more romantic and epitomised by lesser-known figures such as the French writer Joseph-François Michaud, saw the crusades as a glorious episode in a long-standing struggle in which Christian chivalry had driven back Muslim hordes. In addition, Western imperialists began to view the crusaders as predecessors, adapting their activities in a secularised way that the original crusaders would not have recognised or found very congenial.

At the same time, nationalism began to take root in the Muslim world. Arab nationalists borrowed the idea of a long-standing European campaign against them from the former European school of thought - missing the fact that this was a serious mis-characterisation of the crusades - and using this distorted understanding as a way to generate support for their own agendas.

This remained the case until the mid-20th century, when, in Riley-Smith’s words, “a renewed and militant Pan-Islamism” applied the more narrow goals of the Arab nationalists to a worldwide revival of what was then called Islamic fundamentalism and is now sometimes referred to, a bit clumsily, as jihadism.

This led rather seamlessly to the rise of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, offering a view of the crusades so bizarre as to allow bin Laden to consider all Jews to be crusaders and the crusades to be a permanent and continuous feature of the West’s response to Islam.

Bin Laden’s conception of history was a feverish fantasy. He was no more accurate in his view about the crusades than he was about the supposed perfect Islamic unity which he imagined Islam enjoyed before the enduring influence of Christianity intruded. But the irony is that he, and those millions of Muslims who accept his message, received that message originally from their perceived enemies: the West.

So it was not the crusades that taught Islam to attack and hate Christians. Far from it. Those activities had preceded the crusades by a very long time, and stretch back to the inception of Islam. Rather, it was the West - based on faulty scholarship based on misconceived principles sourced from the Age of Enlightenment - which taught Islam to hate the crusades.

The irony is rich is it not?

Thanks for the question.

#question #crusades #history #christendom #religious extremism #islamic civilisation #holy lands #historians

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miseriathome · 5 years

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A shorter rant about bad-disguised-as-woke racial politics, compared to the original ran I wrote as a rebuttal.

I saw a really bad black nationalist take* and I wrote a very very long deconstruction of fucking American racial schemas and the concrete differences in the way blackness versus all other non-black brownness is socially understood in this country and why it’s incredibly unnuanced and reductive to make “visibility” and “having a place in the binary racial schema... but as the base/bottom” is a terrible metric of which social group is the “most oppressed.”

But like. The internet is such a shithole of people who don’t want to think about the things they choose to read before they choose to react, and quite frankly the average tumblr user cares far less about racial studies than they say they do. The platitudes of social justice 101 lingo are infinitely more digestible than multiple syllibi’s worth of research and analytical texts, and they’re also way more co-optable.

Basically, I really wish there were a good way to correct the misinformation and reductiveness of “woke”-aligned propaganda without getting hate messages and being pulled into ugly discourse and even getting called the problem for calling out problems! Identifying psyops and the tactics they use is great, but there’s still this whole other level of the real people who just so happened to have swallowed the psyops’ shit and are building off of it and perpetuating it and just generally being nuisances with tremendous influence and social cred. This is why everything feels futile and unchangeable and hopeless and awful.

Look, xenophobia is a thing and it relates to racism and is a facet of specific types of racism which affect different races differently and it’s okay to say that.

* a la “‘PoC’ is a useless term because all ‘PoC’ who aren’t black are socially privileged by anti-blackness and also I’m going to ignore the ways in which non-black brownness is marginalized differently from blackness in America by way of perpetual foreigner racial schemas which function both on the microsocial level and the class-wide level for many races, and how that form of erasure/alienation/xenophobia is markedly distinct from the naturalizing assimilation faced by black Americans into the binary American schema, and I’m going to ignore how flimsy of a rhetorical strategy it is to co-opt the language of social justice in order to position what ultimately amounts to xenophobia as just when it is just as divisive and just as easily stated how every outsider to every subjugated class “benefits” (not even going into what a misnomer this is) from the subjugation of said class... and I’m definitely not going to consider why it’s fatalistic and destructive and terrible praxis to make PoC anti-solidarity the wedge issue that I want to die on,” you know, a pretty generic iteration of black American fascism positioned through a marxist materialist weirdly inverse social darwinist lens???????? And also with a delicious side of “it was outrage about one screencap of one news report about antiblackness committed by ‘alleged’ (the language in the article) PoC” and for some reason that warrants making a gross blanket statement about all non-black PoC stretching far beyond even just the one identified perpetrator race

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #not tagged

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sebastiianstan · 6 years

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Tumblr content school: why you don’t always get notes and how to (potentially) get a bit more

So in recent weeks, I’ve seen quite a few posts floating around that centre around the same subject: content creators, mainly gifmakers, not gaining followers as quickly as they would like to and/or not getting as many notes on their original content as they would like to. Most recently I’ve seen people share their like-to-reblog ratio, with a call to users to also reblog content instead of just liking it, which would result in more exposure and recognition for the creator.

Now, while all of those feelings are perfectly valid and you’re obviously allowed to post whatever you like on your blog, the conversation around this is quite unnuanced and, at times, a bit uninformed. I’m not claiming to be some kind of expert, but having been a content creator (gifmaker) on this platform for quite a few years, with my own small share of popular gifsets floating around and having built both my own blog an two fansites/group blogs to at least moderate success, I do think I have a certain degree of insight re: getting notes, so I thought I’d put in my two cents. Please note that I’m not making this post to be condescending in any way, or even to tell you what to do/how to create content, but I thought I’d help as much as I can, based on my own experience.

Below the cut are 1. reasons why I think gifsets don’t always get the number of notes you wanted/expected them to, and 2. tips on creating and posting content in a way that will potentially get you more notes.

Why you might not be getting (a lot) of notes

So let’s start with some general trends re: gifsets not getting as many notes as you’d like/expect, and not as many as they would have maybe a few years ago.

1. Tumblr is past its peak

Based on experience, I’d say fandom Tumblr reached its peak in 2015-2016, and was riding that out in 2017. I’ve mainly been a Marvel blog in recent years, so I can’t speak for other fandoms, but Tumblr was... wild in the lead-up to and aftermath of Captain America: Civil War (2016). Wonder Woman (2017) was a similar situation on the DC side of things.

New Marvel releases (like Ant-Man & The Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War and probably most notably, Black Panther) still get a lot of traction and fandom definitely isn’t dead on Tumblr, but I feel like 2015-2016 were definitely peak years. I only recently returned from a year-long hiatus; I stopped being active in late 2017 and even then my dashboard wasn’t quite as active as it was a year before that. Upon returning here about a month ago, most of my mutuals from back in the day had also become inactive and a lot of gifmakers I used to follow were not creating content anymore.

So it boils down to this: I think it’s very likely that the amount of active users within your fandom has diminished significantly as compared to two years ago. A set that may have gotten 10k notes within a few days in 2016 might now only get half of that.

2. The URL thing

This is a sad truth, but it does seem that having a semi-canon or canon url does at least help with getting a larger amount of notes on your content. I have no tips on getting a canon url (I got very, very lucky with this one), but this is a simple observation I have from over the years. Url trading/selling has basically become a genuine business due to this - canon urls are in high demand.

More importantly, what I can say is that it’s smart not to change your url too often. Becoming a popular content creator on this platform is basically the same as building a brand - and a brand has an easily recognized name. Once you have a url you are happy with, try to stick to it for a while. When you change your url, links break on reblogs of your old gifsets, by the way.

3. The like-to-reblog ratio has always been unbalanced

For as long as I can remember, posts have gotten more likes than reblogs. If your ratio is 2-to-1 or 3-to-1, trust me, you are doing perfectly well for yourself! Again, as with my first point, this might have gotten a bit more extreme since 2016, but it’s not a new thing.

4. Popular users support each other

Obviously there’s nothing wrong with this (in fact, I love that we all support each other), but yes, in general big/popular blogs are friends with each other and tend to reblog each other’s content, which can be discouraging for smaller or aspiring content creators on the platform.

However, please be aware that these big blogs built up the following they have by posting content for years and it just takes time. Also, know that most users on here actually really enjoy being tagged in your posts - so if you gif a movie or tv show you know a popular user (that you follow) likes, tag them in it and if it’s high quality content (I’ll touch on this later), they’ll probably reblog it.

Tips on getting more notes

Alright, on to part two: my personal tips on getting more notes. These are strictly based on my own experience, and as a repeat of my disclaimer earlier: I am genuinely trying to share my knowledge; none of this is with the intent of being a condescending know-it-all.

1. Don’t look like you’re complaining

No matter what the intent behind your post about your lack of notes and/or followers is, it’s very likely you’re going to come off entitled or ungrateful. I’ve personally unfollowed multiple users who post consistently about reaching their next thousand, who make angry/frustrated posts when their followers don’t increase as quickly as they’d like to, when they lose followers, etc. I understand that the hustle is frustrating, but posts like these are really quite annoying for your followers; you’re complaining about followers you don’t have to followers you do have, who are then more likely to unfollow you because it looks like you’re complaining. Your mutuals might understand why you’re posting this, but others probably don’t.

When it comes to posts about like-to-reblog ratios, which I’ve seen a fair few of recently, please consider a couple of things.

When you ask people to reblog your post instead of liking it, you are essentially telling them what to put on their own blogs.

A lot of users on here have carefully curated content; while some users simply blog about everything they like, others stick to a certain set of subjects/movies/tv shows. If they see a post they like that doesn’t fall into those categories, they’ll give it a like to keep track of it and show their appreciation, but won’t put it on their blogs. You can’t tell people to reblog something they don’t want to.

You’re essentially asking people that you do not really personally care about to do something for you. Most of the likes you get on your post are likely from people that you do not follow yourself. I’m not saying that you hate your followers or don’t care for them, but you can’t really ask anything of a user that you don’t even follow yourself.

Look at it this way: Tumblr is basically a mini society, with its own market in the form of content creation. The ones who have a few thousand followers, and who get a few hundred or a few thousand notes on their posts are already the lucky ones. If you’re a user who gets hundreds/thousands of notes on their posts (even if it’s not as many as you like or deserve), you should keep in mind that the vast majority of users on here are small blogs that don’t have the traction that you have. If you post a screenshot of the like-to-reblog ratio on a post that has 2k notes, they’re going to think, “what on earth are you complaining about?”

Posts like these can really only backfire. I don’t think it’s likely that a lot of users will suddenly start reblogging instead of liking because of them. I know those posts are getting traction, because your mutuals and fellow content creators understand your frustration (believe me, I do too!), so they reblog/like/comment on it, but you’re essentially in an echo chamber of content creators. Anyone outside of that circle will not understand it and might unfollow you because of it.

2. Quality

Another disclaimer: I’m not implying that the people who have made posts about notes/followers don’t make HQ gifs. This is simply the “tips on getting notes” section of this particular post, so that’s what I’m doing. Veteran gifmakers can skip this section because I won’t be presenting anything new here.

Here’s the thing: high quality gifsets get notes. I know that what constitutes a HQ gif is subjective, but there is a consensus on this amongst big blogs, so I will summarize it below.

Make gifs from high-quality video sources. If 1080p is available, use that. Don’t gif from videos below 720p. Also, the larger the t*rr*nt file, the higher the quality. If a 1080p t*rr*nt from a movie is under 2GB in size, it’s probably not decent enough to gif from.

Use the new dimensions. Tumblr changed from 500px to 540px over 3 years ago now I believe, and all the big blogs use these dimensions. I rarely see sets like this anymore, but some users do still hold on to the old dimensions. Obviously, you should do what you like, but know that you’ll get more notes if you make the switch.

Do not skip frames. If you use screencaps, extract 25 frames per second. If you are an ‘Import video frames to layers’ kinda gal, like me, import all frames.

Sharpen your gifs! It makes an insane difference. My faq section links to a sharpening action.

Your frame delay should be 0.05. If you have a low amount of frames, you can get away with 0.06, but do not make your gif any slower than that. It will look unsmooth.

Go for natural coloring, where you simply brighten up the gif and enhance the colors (beware of whitewashing tho). I know that using PSD’s from resource blogs is tempting, but it’s very likely they will not work for the particular scene you’re giffing. It’s best if you learn to color yourself and adapt your coloring for every set. Also, it’s up to you what you think is pretty, but extremely vibrant and extremely pale coloring isn’t very popular anymore. Natural is the way to go. (This is with the exception of those gorgeous color edits people have been making recently. Y’all are queens & that shit is hard to make yo!)

If your gif is larger than the 3mb limit, NEVER sacrifice colors in the ‘Save for web’ window. Always delete frames to lower the size of your gif.

Just saying, but Photoshop CS5 has been known to make the best gifs.

For beginners out there, please don’t be discouraged. I’ve been making gifs for years, and they were absolute shit in the beginning. It just takes time to learn, but if you stick to it, you’ll get there.

3. Concept over quantity

Allow me to draw a comparison with YouTubers here - I think we all prefer YouTubers who post one well fleshed out video a week (for example, Safiya Nygaard) over YouTubers who post an okay video every day.

I think a lot of users think the way to get notes and followers is to post a gifset every day. This probably does work to an extent, but I personally think it’s better to come up with original concepts that you post every few days.

When you watch a movie, you can make five gifsets out of scenes from that movie, or you can come up with a concept. For example, parallels between scenes, parallels with other movies, the best lines of a certain character, etc. This takes more work, but sets like these are highly appreciated because they’re original, and they tend to get more notes.

This doesn’t apply to new releases, as you are probably among the first to gif a particular scene, but if you’re giffing a scene from a movie that’s been out for a while, you’re very likely not the first to do it. People will see it, realize they’ve already reblogged something very similar, and keep scrolling. But if you come up with a new idea, that’s what’ll get you more traction.

To give you a personal example; I recently rewatched all of the cap films. Now, I could have giffed popular scenes like “I could do this all day” or “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line”, but that’s been done before... a lot. Instead, I came up with this, and got 6.5k notes. I haven’t posted that many new sets on my blog recently, but posting content like that has gained me some followers and new mutuals.

4. Timing

All this requires is keeping an eye on your dashboard and taking note of when most of the people you follow are online. I sometimes see European content creators posting their sets smack dab in the middle of the day. Lemme tell y’all something: the Americans are sleeping.

I’m in timezone GMT+1. My dash wakes up around 5pm. I never post before 6pm - I’ll post anywhere between then and midnight, so feel free to convert that to your own timezone. The scheduling feature on posts comes in handy if you’ll be asleep or at school/work around that time.

If you post when Tumblr isn’t active, your set will drown in all of the other content, so be smart about timing.

5. Strategic tagging

It seems that a lot of users still don’t know this: only the first five tags on your post show up in tags on Tumblr. Anything past the first five will only be useful for your own tagging/archiving system, but will not show up in any tracked tags.

So first point: always use the most prominent edit tag for the fandom you’re posting in. Examples are #marveledit, #hpedit, #filmedit. These are frequently used, and often tracked by big blogs.

Second point: figure out who the big fansites/group blogs are, and if they track a tag, tag them. Make sure you follow them, obviously. If your post is funny, you might wanna tag bob-belcher (#bbelcher) as well - this blog is popular across fandoms and posts content from all over!

Third: tag users who you think will like your post. Don’t be thirsty with this. Again, only do this if you follow them. Tagging 2-3 users is ok, but don’t be out there tagging 8 to 10 blogs on your post. Not only is that a little pointless (because only the first five tags will show up), it also makes you look thirsty. Users might not appreciate this, and ultimately might not reblog your post because of that. Also, try not to tag the same users on every single one of your posts.

6. Popular content

If your fandom is niche, so is your content. That’s perfectly fine; don’t feel pressured to post about anything that isn’t your passion.

But if your goal really is to get more notes and followers, create content from fandoms that are big on the platform. Examples are Marvel, Harry Potter, Star Wars, film blogs, etc.

7. Join a fansite/group blog

Every big fandom on Tumblr has one or multiple fansites/group blogs. I recommend you figure out who they are for your fandom, and apply to one that’s accepting new members. You’ll likely get in if your gifs are HQ.

I know this sounds a bit counterintuitive, as you’ll be posting content on another blog that will be getting the notes and followers from it, but it actually is a good way to gain more exposure. These blogs have large amounts of followers, and they usually allow you to reblog your own content to them, as long as you’re active. I think it’s a great way to get your content out there.

Alright, time to wrap up this post. I’m not personally calling out anyone who has made posts about followers, notes, like-to-reblog ratios, etc. I’ve seen at least 15 of those posts in recent weeks so I’m just reacting to a trend I’m seeing, by presenting a potential solution to a problem people seem to be having.

My last tip is this: if notes and followers on Tumblr are making you feel down or frustrated, maybe it’s time for a little hiatus or a step back. In the end, you are not getting paid for this and your popularity on the platform has no bearing on your real life. This is supposed to be a fun outlet for your passions and interests, not a source of frustration and anger. Don’t take it too seriously! You’re doing amazing sweetie.

#resources #i guess?#idk what to tag this as #usermichelle

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aotopmha · 5 years

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Attack on Titan Chapter 123 Thoughts

I feel like this chapter was actually the most straight-forward chapter since Eren got his head blown off back in chapter 119 - for real this time.

The nuanced character writing and the context-driven, interpretation-based storytelling is still there in moments - I feel like Eren's character and the current situation needs that to work, but other than that, I think it's really self-explanatory and I actually welcome that.

AoT's meta level narrative structure is once again connected to the story's point, themes, emotional beats - after several chapters of a lot of fairly complex and dark material we get a little bit of a breather and so do the characters.

The chapter still has some heavy material (it kind of does end with Eren basically declaring to commit mass genocide) and you might argue the lightheartedness might be a little jarring in light of all the dark stuff that came before it and comes after it, but I really did welcome this as a breather.

As I said in my initial post, I think it also does have thematic significance in that it once again reminds us of the good in the world, I'd add to that, though, that, not only from the perspective of Eren picking those that are innocent to have this horrible fate, but also from the perspective of those he sees are worthy of his protection and showing what he sees as the good that is worth protecting.

He declares to commit mass genocide, but does it with the purpose of protecting those he loves.

This is also a twisted version of the standard "Shounen protagonist fights for everyone he cares about" idea.

I really admire how the story manages to twist these standard tropes while still feeling sincere, making sense and having a point character writing-wise - again, so many stories that try to twist tropes this way feel like they are just dark and shocking for the sake of being dark and shocking and with that comes insincerity and non-believability of the drama in the story and ultimately lack of investment in it.

I’ve seen comparisons of him to Lelouch around, but that series drove me away from the very first episode, so I can’t comment on those (I know the ending of that series, but I feel like I’d need the whole picture to truly comment), but I could talk about possible comparisons to Light Yagami (Eren even almost looks like Light in this chapter, too). While I think it fits in some ways (self-righteous young man executing his justice) and I think Light is an entertaining villain, I don't think he's nearly as complex as Eren or even as complex in a general sense as I often see people claim he is.

I feel like Light didn't really have an arc and had his mindset basically set from the start, he just gradually executed it on a increasingly larger scale. Light’s goal of justice didn’t really ever have any sort of goodness to it. Eren genuinely wishes to protect those he loves, Light’s “justice” is just unnuanced self-righteousness with a dash of god complex thrown in there. I’ve seen the argument that it’s the power of the Death Note that corrupted him around, but I feel like he had the same perspective from start to finish.

I think it’s an interesting comparison.

I think you could technically make a similar argument for Eren - you could see this as just an reinterpretation of his character, rather than development, but I myself feel like his path to this point is much more complex than that and depends of several factors and events leading up to this point in the story.

Despite all the talking about how Eren might've "never changed" by the characters, I think there was a character development process that lead Eren here.

He wasn't so accutely aware of the humanity of the "other side" he was fighting against back when he was a kid.

Again, I don't think Eren ever fought for freedom at specifically the *cost* of others before Marley. His desire for freedom back then felt much more neutral to me:

(Chapter 14)

There were elements of his cynical side showing here and there, just not to the extremes he goes to here.

He wasn't this pragmatic as his 15 year-old self, in fact, at one point, he was the one looking and wanting for other ways out than plain sacrifice:

(Chapter 25)

Chapter 25 specifically concerns him, but you can also see this in much more recent moments:

(Chapter 90)

Most importantly, though, here:

(Chapter 107)

I feel like, both, him understanding the impact of what he's about to do and the choice to destroy the world are character development results.

Him seeing the humanity of his enemies leads to the positive conclusions he comes to (his current, more nuanced world view) and him being surrounded by all this negativity and more importantly, his hyper-focus on this negativity induced by the many horrible things he has experienced himself and in his father's (and the other shifters') memories leads to him being unable to see any other way out of this than the one he chose here.

In this chapter, Eren couldn't see the beauty of the world and the one time he chose to do so, he did it with a sort of sense of finality and decisiveness.

He waited as long as he could bear, but from his perspective ultimately just didn’t see any other way out.

His negative and positive growth also sort of contradict each other - he understands what he's about to do is so horrible, but does it anyway.

You could see it as a contradiction coming from how his mind has twisted because of everything negative he has experienced, ranging from his trauma from loss to him gaining his father’s and other shifters’ memories.

You could also, though, see this as a contradiction that might have more to it.

If Eren has enough perspective now to know what he's doing is horrible, why doesn't he have enough perspective to not commit mass genocide? Then, perhaps he does and there is more to his plan?

It's either that trauma and negativity is one hell of a mindscrewer and it's just his mind coming to very twisted conclusions or there is more to his plan.

My guess in the case of the second option would be that he's attempting to unite humanity against him (Willy already started this) and the purpose of his announcement is for all the Eldians across the world to inform everyone else and with that help them evacuate before the rumbling arrives at their location, giving the rest of the world more positive actions to go off of when judging the Eldians.

This could paint even all the Eldians on Paradis as victims of the "main villain" Eren Jaeger and the Titans and since this is something world-wide, this perspective could spread.

It's unbelievable everybody would listen because of the discrimination, but it's also unbelievable that nobody would listen as there are always at least some understandable and kind people out there.

We’ve seen this with the volunteers growing to see the Eldians as more human, we see this in Magath’s character arc and even in the small moment of the guards protecting Gabi. There is good in here, it’s just buried.

Perhaps there could’ve been peace at some point with some countries if Eren hadn’t acted as he did in Liberio. But at the same time Marley had their plan to attack Paradis in the near future to begin with, so even the small moments of goodness come with the constant caveat brought up over and over again of there being very little time.

What would you expect from Eren in this situation?

Eren framing himself as the villain could change nothing and it could change everything depending on how it's done and how deep the hatred against Eldians truly runs.

Perhaps some Eldians wouldn't even want to tell anyone anything because of how poorly they've been treated.

This plan would rely on the existing goodness on all sides.

Taking Eren down might need the combined strength of the Titan society in Marley, the Paradisians and the collected army of the world and the losses here might be massive enough where the aftermath might force some sort of changes to happen for this to never happen again, the only (very large) side note here, again, being that those proposed changes might just still involve the complete extermination of all Eldians after this.

Moving on from the larger scale stuff though, the other big, a little bit more interpretive scene of the chapter was Eren's moment with Mikasa.

I've been iffy about the possible romantic nature of their relationship since Grisha called Mikasa his daughter back in chapter 121 - if there was already a familial bond like that there, it really veers into squicky material to me, but it's still ambigious enough that I'm still letting it slide for now. It's only on Grisha's part still and Mikasa never calls Eren's parents her own parents - Carla is always auntie and Grisha is Dr. Yeager.

It's always been sort of awkward because of how Mikasa's backstory worked out, but for now I still consider it fine.

As far as that scene, though, as it's been like across the story, I feel like it's definitely shown as romantic on Mikasa's side, while I think it's similarly neutral as it's always been on Eren's side.

Much more important here is what it means, though - what could the subtext here be?

Did Eren look for confirmation for putting the idea/plan he had in mind in motion - confirming that Mikasa didn't care that strongly for him and thus wouldn't miss him that strongly/could defeat him when the time came for him to die (if that's the plan he's going with)?

Was it confirming to himself that what he's about to do would be worth it for if not nobody else, then at least her because she cared, not even necessarily about him, but in a general sense was a source of goodness within all this negativity he's been seeing, confirmation that Paradis was worth protecting at the cost of the rest of humanity because they were good and the others were bad, then actually looping back to his old attitude in some ways, basically looking for confirmation for his faith in the goodness of humanity?

Did he in his desparation turn to Mikasa to somehow give him another option to the one he saw or did he hope her answer would somehow change his mind when it came to executing his plan?

Maybe it was partially all these, maybe it was something entirely different, but I'm leaning on the third option the most myself.

It might just have been a secret cry for him to be protected from himself.

The gist of it seems to be him asking about the sincerity of Mikasa's feelings and whether she cares about him, doesn't matter if you see it as romantic or not.

I'm not sure if she could've changed anything because Eren was already isolated and stuck in his negative thoughts - a simple love confession wouldn’t fix all the baggage Eren has been collecting.

On the flip side, Armin thoughts when switching back to the present involved believing in the goodness in Eren - that he was on their side and he is, the problem is that Eren took his gained pragmatism too far.

Personally, I lean on the option of there being more to Eren's plan, but I can also see him just being stuck on just not seeing another option. He got his view of there not being another option confirmed many times across the 4 year timeskip and this chapter continued to show that to him.

Putting Eren aside, though, as said, this chapter was also the funnest and lightest since forever - the group reacting to a car, the group reacting to ice cream, Levi's interactions with the clown and everyone getting drunk was a blast.

It amplifies the tragedy, but is also fun.

As said, a lot of this chapter was actually very straight-forward. They all visit the outside world and have some fun and strange encounters with it. It was nice, but pretty simple so there isn’t actually much more for me to say about the more light-hearted elements of this chapter.

Finally, again on a less lighter note, I think this chapter sadly might've confirmed Historia's pregnancy. She seems to be in the Paths with a belly and since everyone's bodies seem to correspond to their real bodies in paths, unless there's something else to it, it feels like a pretty clearly-defined confirmation.

I could see Ymir undoing it, but I don't see how it could be fake now unless that girl in one of the final spreads of the chapter is a red herring and not Historia.

I think the best way the pregnancy could go to me is if it genuinely was Historia's decision (not her going back to her sacrifical self, but her very own sincere decision). You could still nitpick it to death and this plot point would have messy implications no matter what you do, but I think that would probably the best way it could go aside from her pregnancy being removed because it would at least in the very basics align with her arc.

Meanwhile, AoT continues to at least have my undivided attention because of Eren's very unique arc and the gripping plotting.

I thought this was a great chapter as what kind of chapter it set out to be - equally a breather and a setup chapter.

It had great staging, great lightheartedness and a great cliffhanger.

#Attack on Titan #Shingeki no Kyojin #AoT 123 #SnK 123 #Chapter 123 #AoT #SnK

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