#nope no essays for me

[ofthecaravel]

danny wip

[decarbry]

I stopped drinking caffeine after 9pm

[leohtttbriar]

what a way to explore the consequences and sources of paternalism. the interventionist efforts of the caretaker to fix what was broken by providing the end-products necessary for survival but not the means, while dooming others to a somewhat artificial competition, creating an ecosystem that cannot sustain itself nor foster any aspect of higher-level sentience in beings (like curiosity! or deep passion! which is punished!), all of which relies on reproduction.

reproduction which is delicate and fragile and yet insurmountable in its demands. like of course this civilization that depends on a top-down selective distribution of power also depends entirely on reproduction and fails when reproduction fails. it's like the failures of medieval lords-and-bondsman, where "the institution cannot guarantee the continuity of kingly life, but it is the only institution available" and beowulf, alone and irreproduced (son-less), dies with a dragon. of course b'elanna and harry are honored guests---they were foundational to the entire ocampa people for the brief moments they were among them. their illness was just a symbol of the foundation's brittleness.

contrasted with janeway cutting the entirety of voyager's strings to their community, their infrastructure, their source of power, their foundational space. they're all in a similar helplessness to the ocampa by the end of it, but the degree of choice is vastly different--as in, choice exists. the implication being that while voyager is now more lost than imaginable they're also not. and the fact that the ship is named the same name as NASA's voyager 1 and voyager 2, both of which were sent out with the absolute intention of them never being returned home, speaks to something particular as well. what ties a people to a place has to be something more dependable than the "honor" of producing offspring.

[bleue-flora]

There has been a lot of discussion regarding c!Quackity, c!Tommy and c!Dream recently, a good portion stemming from the recent video circling around, where it is depicted that c!Tommy not only knew of c!Quackity’s torture but approved.

But while I could write an essay about it (ok yea I did…but) instead I want to shift the focus a bit, away from the same debates we keep having year after year. Because I think we’ve become too focused on the characters themselves over the audience's perception of them and too focused on morality, justification, and right and wrong in a story where everyone is morally questionable. Because at the end of the day it isn’t whether c!Dream or c!Tommy were actually right or justified, it is about - Who you root for and why. It is about (you) the audience's perception of the characters, not the characters’ perceptions of each other. Sure, c!Tommy himself feels justified in hurting c!Dream but do you believe he was.

With that thought in mind I found myself reading a 24 page research paper last night on a psychological study that looked at what an audience defines as the hero and villain. Why they are naturally pulled to like certain characters and hate others. What the audience’s classification of morality in regard to the characters of fiction where the conditions of morality are often not defined. One of the things shown in the data and line up to real life is that at the end of the day, heroes and villains are not defined on true purity and morality itself. If they were, action heroes and anti-heroes wouldn’t be successful and enticing. And yet, anti-heroes are some of the most beloved characters. In fact, I for one am typically drawn to violent anti-heroes, some of which are the heroes despite being perhaps sadistic murderers and torturers. But if the audience doesn’t simply define hero and villain as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ then what is pulling us toward taking one side over the other.

The answer is actually more complex than you might think. According to this paper, the first thing taken into consideration in a viewer’s appeal or unappeal of a character has to do with what the viewer considers “appropriate behavior.” Simply put, “appropriateness” is basically a social judgment which serves to approve or disapprove of a character’s behavior. This can be based on many things, such as cultural norms, societal code of conduct, your personal morals or experiences. And I think this is key, because I for one see stealing and griefing when I play Minecraft as seriously hurtful things to do (even though you can always rebuild). To the point that if you blow up the house I spent hours building or take my items it can ruin the fun for me entirely. So my definition of the appropriateness of such behavior might differ from people who take those things much more light-heartedly, causing me to disapprove of c!Tommy more than they would for that behavior.

Even further, when it comes to determining their appropriateness of behavior as in whether we tend to approve or disapprove of them we can look at moral domains, which spark our moral intuition instead of simply categorizing everything into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ since not even our subconscious brain is always so black and white. In the research I read, they looked at two sets of domains (aka sets of relating attributes used to measure and compare): The person-perception domains of Warmth (tolerant, friendly, warm, polite, gentle, trustworthy), Competence (intelligence, cleverness, opposite of stupidity, efficiency) and Duplicity (mad, tormented, violent, and tragic), which help to measure our perception of morality in characters as well as the five moral domains of MFT - harm/care (concerned with the suffering of others and empathy), fairness/reciprocity (related to justice), authority/respect (related to hierarchy and dominance), ingroup/loyalty (common good and punitiveness toward outsiders), purity/sanctity (concerned with contamination). According to the research behind these domains, we, the viewer, evaluate characters immediately and without cognitive deliberation. In other words, when characters fulfill domains it sticks with us and when they violate domains it can send out major red flags to us as soon as it happens without us thinking about it, not later in more considerate retrospect. So then, it makes sense that now as we debate we struggle to find common ground because our judgment was made ages ago and it's hard to reason with our already defined moral intuition.

As such, since I started getting into the dsmp first by watching all of the recordings of previous streams in order in this one playlist then going onto watching all of the blueberrytv videos (at the time of course), which edit the streams to allow you to see things from multiple perspectives. Therefore, I watched things from the very beginning, back when it was just c!George and c!Dream goofing off and dying in the nether. So, my intuitive judgment of c!Dream involves him building the community house, always trying to keep the peace between his friends, exploring the world so he can bring back all the types for wood for people to build with, building the prime path to connect everyone's houses together to make for easier travel, rebuilding Tubbo’s house after c!Tommy burned it down, helping c!Ponk when people kept burning down his house. These are just some of the moments I suspect helped to form my evaluation of him. Showing him as being very empathetic and caring, being loyal to his friends and accepting of new people, being a mediator and trying to keep things fair between his friends, fulfilling at least 3 (since he kinda is the authority that is hard to classify) of the moral domains. The streams also depicted the characteristics with warmth as well as competence and intelligence. So immediately my perceptive moral intuition deemed him the hero. As he fulfilled the warmth and competence domains of the one method and most of the domains of the other method without violating them in an obvious enough manner for me to remember at this moment (These are by no means the only reasons why I’d be inclined to root for c!Dream but that's beside the point).

On the other hand, my introduction to c!Tommy was him immediately breaking the three rules, by going around taking down donator’s signs, griefing, stealing, claiming things and property as his, trying to kill people until he ends up being banned. So he hurt others and causes harm, he is invited to join and have fun but fails to reciprocate that by going about and messing things up, he immediately disrespects everyone and defies authority by breaking the rules, hard to say on loyalty though (as mentioned above) him burning down c!Tubbo’s, his best friend, house doesn’t give me the impression of loyalty, concerning purity he scams and lies, is obsessed (though hardly the only one) with male genitalia (which I personally find unsavory) and is disrespectful towards women so definitely failing in the purity and sanctity domain as well. In regards to warmth, I wouldn’t say so, nor particularly competent, though certainly meeting the more violent and aggressive elements of duplicity. So in other words, in just his first few streams he has violated every moral domain, while also not meeting the warmth or competence but meeting duplicity. So immediately my impression of him is to dislike and disprove as my moral intuition labels him as a villain.

In other words, perhaps our affinity for characters and perception of their morality has less to do with actual legal or other measurements of morality but more of what our initial impression was that formed our judgment from the very start. Because at the end of the day, I feel like the discussion needs to be less about whether this character or that character is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because their motivation or trauma justifies their behavior and more about what qualities do you appreciate about the character. At the end of the day, it's fiction and you should be able to love or hate whatever character you want regardless of morality or right & wrong. It’s your opinion and I don’t see other fandoms shaming and bashing other people for liking a certain character that others dislike and/or the protagonist dislikes meaning therefore they are bad so how can you like them. But in the same way, I should also be able to hate a character without being bashed for not being empathetic to their trauma… Anyways I think the idea that we all see characters as justified and innocent in our own way is cool, especially in respect to the dsmp which is told from all angles, and that’s what I set out to learn more about and share with you. Hopefully, you have enjoyed my findings and I made sense (…..and if it didn’t, you are always welcome to ask or add on :D), sorry for the length I’m beginning to realize conciseness is not my strong suit…

I hope with this interesting angle, we can lean away from discussions on legal, moral, crime, trauma and more towards questions of preference and characteristics and personal perception - Why do you root for them? What was your introduction to the characters? How do you think that impacted your viewpoint on the story? Has your viewpoint ever changed? What do you think helped define your definition of ‘appropriateness’?… etc <3 <3

[elucubrare]

tor.com published an 'article' that took about 500 words to say "I don't like ice world settings....but maybe i should be a little more open-minded" & i'll take all the ice worlds he doesn't want

[halfyourheart]

(*˘︶˘*).｡.:*♡

[wrecklesspp]

Bro omfg Ive thought abt tweek dying instead of Craig but yall are literally already getting him RUN OVER BY A FUCKING TRUCK 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[roguemonsterfucker]

Sorry to talk about it again but I'm just still flabbergasted by the whole plagiarism thing

Like... When watching hbomb's video the first time and seeing him point out the rewording of stuff to change it *just* enough to (hopefully) not get caught stealing... I flashed back to my college days of when I did exactly that. 😅

There was a limit on how many actual quotes I could use, so I got around that by literally looking at my sources and rewording it enough to get past the plagiarism checker (TurnItIn.com my belothed) without losing the meaning of the text that I honestly didn't fully understand because I was writing on topics I had no real knowledge of myself.

BUT BUT BUT

I still cited my fucking sources.

Yes, I was using other people's words so I could get through the hell that was college, but if you read my stuff, you'd know exactly where I got it from. I never claimed credit for all the ideas.

And... again... I was just doing it to survive. I wasn't making money. I didn't even end up actually graduating, so it didn't even help me academically.

Somerton on the other hand not only rarely *if ever* credited the people whose words he stole, he was doing it for money, while also putting down fellow queer creators. He *wanted* full credit for all the ideas in his videos. To cite his sources would be to pass the credit on to others. And he couldn't do that.

Edited to add: It's probably a bit extreme to say I "stole" anything for my papers. Like I said, I cited my sources. I just paraphrased what I could when needed, probably to a degree that was questionable at worst. I just have anxiety and feel like "OH NO I"M A TERRIBLE PLAGIARIST."

[birbhouse-doodles]

What's a bad miracle? They got a word for that?

That scary movie artober challenge thing I keep doing has arrived! I'm kicking it off with a really obvious choice, a super visually stunning and insanely good one, probably the most fun movie I've seen so far this year: Nope

[wright-phoenix]

i hate when i have a vivid vision for a song fitting my current fixation but i'm not equipped to create it into existence

[lesbicosmos]

i love poetry. it's one of my fav art forms. dead poets society is literally my favourite movie. (shocker)

so WHY is it so difficult to analyse poetry for my english work 😭😭

[fricktic]

ur writing essays abt scc's color scheme wheres k_ks . fanny write an post about them being green . we need every member of the polycule . please

if its an essay on k_ks color scheme u want its an essay on k_ks color scheme ur gonna fucking get . hold onto ur antennas boy

well right off the bat i think its relatively safe to say that . green . cant exactly see this being all that controversial of an opinion and as far as ive checked (spent hours scrolling thru the scc tag looking at art) i havent seen anyone interpret them as a color besides green , better yet differed from the canon green at ALL . like everyone agrees yeah this is a good green . and coming from local green enthusiast i can confirm its a good green so this is completely understandable

i will say that something im EXTREMELY INTO is the shade of green on k_ks shop sprite

like look at it . it goes fucking crazy . changed the line art and bg color because with just white and black it doesnt show how truly this shade fucking rocks . i know that its just green a bit hue shifted towards purple but come the hell on this shit rules

i dont care if this is unrelated its still something that came up while looking at k_ks sprites and i want to talk about it anyways . and its still color related so eat my shorts

we all know about normal sprites vs shop sprites being very . yknow . but two things that bother me intently is that

1) her handle goes from black to purple

this one doesnt bother me crazy much bcus it can just be played off as “shop sprites are gonna be more detailed than normal sprites” and yeah fair i guess but . u get where im coming from

and 2) HIS BELT COLOR SWITCHES

this makes me furious this makes my blood boil why does this happen . there is no need for this to happen why did this happen . k_k baby im not mad at u im mad at the person over at deltarune headquarters responsible for this

this is turning into me looking at details of the sprites themselves instead of what this all originated from and that was literally just “what color is k_k” soooooo what if it was purpleeeeee lets see it purple

i will admit that it doesnt look . Crazy Purple . some may argue it looks a lot more blue and while yeah i guesssss it is blue to my brain it registers as purple especially when paired with the green . compared to the purple that sweet and capn are usually associated with tho yeah it isnt the most purple of purples , and in saying this k_k isnt even typically associated with purple anyways . but do u really think i care about that NO i like how they all have a bit of purple one way or another i think it links the three together nicely . theres a lot about their designs that link them together nicely but thats a whole other post

any fucking ways

[phantomskeep]

Y'all ever need to make yourselves sad so you can write a chapter in your fic, so you go and read some hurt no comfort fics? And then suddenly it's midnight and you're crying and you can't write because now your depressive mode is kicking in---

[scalproie]

just saw Nope (2022) so spoilers ahead but the interpretation I've seen a couple times on video essays and some posts on here about "Gordy" sparing "Jupe" because he realized that they both are similar in the way they are being exploited as novelty for entertainment both as an exotic animal and an asian child actor rather than real living beings... feels more like what Ricky Park is telling himself to cope with such an intense trauma rather than what most likely happened. To think it was a deliberate action of the chimp playing Gordy (who has no actual name) to spare Ricky humanizes it too much when it is, as an animal, not capable of morality, and it was probably the sum of the tablecloth covering Ricky's eyes therefore not "provoking" the chimp plus the fact that Ricky stood absolutely still, not making any sudden movement (unlike the dad actor who yelled and ran), that did not set off the chimp again and so, maybe, when it lifted its hand to what looked like the fist bump with Ricky that might've became part of their routine, it maybe already calmed down and went back into animal actor on set mode. But while its true that they were basically treated the same way by the industry, I truly dont think it was some special bond between the chimp playing Gordy and Ricky that saved the latter from the massacre. Because it would undermine one (among many others, this is one of the most surface level ones I think) of the movie's message about how animals gonna do what animals gonna do and you have to understand WHY they do such things and not treat them both as humans or less than humans.

And if Ricky was indeed thinking that he survived because of a special bond with Gordy and not because of, overall, accidental luck (like OJ did living 6 months basically next to Jean Jacket but never setting him off because he never accidentally "provoked" him by looking at him, or just general luck), it would make sense why he immediately projects his experience with Gordy onto his experience with Jean Jacket, and tried to turn it into another profitable attraction, because thats what became of the Gordy's massacre and that was what was forced onto Ricky, who eventually embraced it. And came to believe that he could tame two dangerous animals. Well at least that's my interpretation anyway.

[starswallowingsea]

im vibrating with love for crazyb right now i am going to explode

[ara-a-bird]

Philza telling Grian, Wilbur and Scot, to run to the middle and grab what ever they can in survival games.

Haymitch could never. And frankly he would never