#paywall discourse

[lvmimis]

i probably shouldn't harp on this but i was Provoked and i no longer have dishes to wash

anyway i do think we need to address the fact that we seem to treat fanwriting and fanart fundamentally different (or maybe i'm biased and just not seeing the other side, and if so you guys can gently point that out) but i feel like people do not just demand and expect artwork of their faves in the tags generally the way they demand writing as if it's not just as much an act of labor as everything else

all fanwork is an act of labor and love you are entitled to none of it

[puhpandas]

tbh I think a good way to view tales from the pizzaplex is that it's in addition to and not instead of

[thosearentcrimes]

STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY VINDICATED ONCE AGAIN

Perhaps around now would be the time for those of the YIMBYs who genuinely care about truth and social welfare and solving the housing crisis to join the rest of us in demanding one of the few policies that can actually achieve our shared goals of giving the people tolerable housing at a reasonable cost, that is, massive state (or municipal, that works too) social housing construction projects, yes there will be corruption it's worth it anyway. The best time was when interest rates were like 0%. The second best time is now.

[bisexualdisasterwenkexing]

riots are righteous. looting is lovely. full speed ahead on the use of force against our oppressors. seize those means, y'all ✌🏻

[akorah]

The third person in the Army helicopter that went down in Washington, DC on Wednesday with AA 5342 was a woman.

In light of Trump's DEI comments, the family has asked the Army not to release her name. In light of Trump's DEI comments, the Army has complied.

USAmerican women, let this be a reminder that some people in power see us as being allowed in the military. We're allowed to be in aviation. It's not our birthright to have careers we love by being born human beings.

This applies to straight, cis, white women in the workforce as well. The "DEI hires" are your allies -- you're one of them.

[x]

[lesbianralzarek]

slightly parallel universe where tumblr allows alphabets from other languages to be used in peoples urls, so 2012 bloggers used katakana phonetically to shorten their ridiculously long fandom urls that contained every single ship theyve ever loved so that the whole goddamn thing could actually fit onscreen. a few users started using khmer and sinhala and other alphabets that are hard for monolingual english speakers to parse solely so it would be difficult for most tumblr users to @ them and/or track them down to block. this lead to discourse blogs demanding that people post selfies to "prove" that they arent using arabic for "nefarious purposes" and saying blatantly racist shit like "i block people using sanskrit on sight" or "can you claim ancestral reasons for using ge'ez?". someone gets called out for race-faking because they use chinese but their icon is a white woman, who turns out to just be a fictional character that they like, and they actually are chinese. several prominent and terminally online leftist blogs make bizarre claims about how using alphabets they dont know is basically the exact same thing as paywalls on academic articles because its "hiding information from people who cant afford college". it all culminates in staff making a meme that reeks of "how do you do fellow kids" vibes about how only cyberbullies use bangla, which is widely condemned by literally everyone as being racist as hell, and any further alphabet discourse from then on is shot down hard by merely posting tumblrstaffbangla.jpeg

[cassymblr]

they're doing it again

THAT'S NEXT YEAR

bro it’s april

[sophie-baybey]

I think the invention of the term "traumadump" has done discussion of mental health a lot of harm. I keep seeing discourse vs whether or not it's okay to talk about heavy topics with your friends, and like... I feel like there is a very big and important difference between my definition of traumadumping (ie. Frequently and habitually diverting your conversations with others towards your own misery, often with the goal of focusing attention and sympathy towards yourself at the expense of those around you, and without recognizable effort to reciprocate your empathy towards those you are speaking to or to ensure their comfort) VS the mere act of having heavier conversations with those around you. I've seen a lot of backlash to the idea of traumadumping as a concept lately (they paywalled human connection etc etc) but I think it's worth recognizing there is absolutely a kind of behavior that can create a negative feedback loop with this stuff. Especially if you navigate a lot of spaces in social media, it's not uncommon to find people dropping really heavy stuff on complete strangers unprompted. Idk, I think there's a degree of nuance to be had that's maybe getting a bit lost due to everyone having different definitions of what it means to "trauma dump."

[talxns]

Academic Articles that Analyze Queer Readings of Batman and Robin (Brudick)

There actually exist multiple!…but the ones I want to introduce right now talk specifically about how the creation of the batfamily was DC’s attempt to dissuade brudick readings. and that it can be argued that DC is still doing the same thing today.

The first article is called “All in the Family: Homophobia and Batman Comics in the 1950s”, published in the International Journal of Comics Art in Fall 2000 by Chris York. It was not available for free online, but I bought a digital copy of the volume it was published in and provided screenshots because it’s been 24 years and I hate the fact that academics are behind paywalls so I’m sharing.

This article was actually infamous because DC refused to grant permission for the use of their panels in this article.

Click for better quality.

Notable Quotes:

“National [Periodical Publications]’s biggest step, however, was the introduction of other members of the Bat-family, which would give them permanent female counterparts and solidify their heterosexual status.”

“It is clear that, although Batman and Robin remain partners, their interests are no longer as the Dynamic Duo, but as a Bat-family.”

“Taking the focus of the comic away from Batman and Robin was exactly what these superfluous characters were designed to do.”

The second article, published in the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies in 2005, is called "Domesticity, Homosociality, and Male Power in Superhero Comics of the 1950s" by Mark Best.

Good news! This article is available online for free and it’s a great read.

Notable Quotes:

“In contrast to the Marvel family, however, the Batman and Superman families were modeled more after the familial relations of the nuclear family and the gender expectations of the domestic ideology.”

“One way the genre attempted to contain any “subversive” potential, including the possibility of homosexual readings of the comics, was through the narrative device of the “super­ hero family.””

Here is more academic reading with the themes of Batman and homophobia, written in 1991. This article is referenced in the former piece.

In summary:

(lest we forget) Batman has had queer readings since its inception, specifically between Bruce and Dick.

The creation of the batfamily served to curtail those brudick readings

It seems pretty obvious that the same attempts are STILL being made by DC, now with the exaggerated push for explicit familial titles like “father” and “son”. And are still working if you see any discourse online from fans who strictly oppose brudick on the basis of their “father/son” relationship (which seems to me a more modern emphasis compared to in the past, maybe i’ll make a different post about that later.) They are unknowingly parroting Freddy Wertham’s concerns and eating up DC’s new strategy of distancing Bruce and Dick, just under an accusation harder to argue against nowadays. It’s gauche to criticize queerness nowadays, but consider it incest and suddenly it’s acceptable to bash again.

I just find it incredibly fascinating that brudick had been discussed and analyzed in multiple academic articles! And reading some comments I saw lately of people exclaiming “I can’t believe Brudick is this popular!/Who on earth is shipping Brudick!?!” made me sigh and really want to pull these out. Brudick has been a thing before all of us were born. DC’s propaganda/internet purity culture has been doing too good of a job lately. We have to remember our roots.

[oldguardleatherdog]

[Gift link, no paywall]

Zuck wiļl now explicitly allow vile and dehumanizing hate speech against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people to be posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads without adverse consequences for the poster. He has gone so far as to provide Meta employees with detailed examples of speech that will now be allowed on Meta platforms. This article goes into detail as to how these new policies were formulated and rolled out. It's worth a read to understand the calculation and planning that went into this.

This is more than "mere" homophobia and transphobia. Zuck went out of his way to explicitly target us and single us out over other minorities who use these platforms.

It's clear that this is Zuck prepping and staging his platforms for use in actions that The Rapist Administration is setting up to launch against us in the days to come. Our elected officials and our so-called national LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations have put out a statement or two, but I'd hate to be hanging until they actually take action to protect us.

We need to find a way to mount a response to this, and to all the rest of what's coming at us. Good people of good will are gathering and planning, but it's early yet. Take note of these signs, keep watch and stay alert, don't detach, don't look away.

From the article:

"Among its changes, Meta loosened rules so people could post statements saying they hated people of certain races, religions or sexual orientations, including permitting 'allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.' The company cited political discourse about transgender rights for the change. 

"The company also removed the transgender and nonbinary 'themes' on its Messenger chat app, which allows users to customize the app’s colors and wallpaper, two employees said.

"That same day at Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said.

"In the @Pride employee resource group, where workers who support L.G.B.T.Q. issues convene, at least one person announced their resignation as others privately relayed to one another that they planned to look for jobs elsewhere, two people said.

"In a post this week to the @Pride group, Alex Schultz, Meta’s chief marketing officer [and Meta's highest-ranking openly gay executive], defended Mr. Zuckerberg and said topics like transgender issues had become politicized. He said Meta’s policies should not get in the way of allowing societal debate and pointed to Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case, as an example of 'courts getting ahead of society' in the 1970s. Mr. Schultz said the courts had 'politicized' the issue instead of allowing it to be debated civically.

"'You find topics become politicized and stay in the political conversation for far longer than they would’ve if society just debated them out,' Mr. Schultz wrote. He said looser restrictions on speech in Meta’s apps would allow for this kind of debate.

"On Friday, Roy Austin, Meta’s vice president of civil rights, announced he was leaving the company. He did not give a reason."

[Emphasis added.]

[xxsomethingsimfulxx]

Early access paywalling an EYELINER is absolutely pathetic.

early access in ts2 really?

and your problem is?? most of my stuff is being released for free and being a cc creator in the sims 2 shouldn't discredit my work compared to s4cc creators, sims 2 is better anyways and i could really easily turn the early access into a subscribers only subscription like all of the other sims 2 creators that have a patreon in here, bye.

[puhpandas]

Opinion on the TalesGames theory?

I think it's becoming increasingly clear that it's probably just all canon because of sotm being (at least right now with the current info we have) true to the books so like. I wasnt a big fan before of things outside of stuff like ggy where it's just very clearly about something in the games, but with how intertwined the mimic is with just normal tftp books I think it's safe to say its pretty much confirmed now lmao

[deepseasmetro]

the discourse around american academia pisses me off even as a third worlder because its even more apparent to us that the purpose isnt spreading knowledge when research papers are often paywalled and when the bullshit with US american ip laws directly makes it more difficult for us to access material!! if academia was indeed for the aim of redistributing knowledge it wouldnt be paywalled and region-locked to the extent that the US has it. but like dipshit american site so

and all that research only exists if it gets funded anyways, and whos funding them :^)

[arnaerr]

Feeling like I really need to decrease my contact with fandom spaces, because whenever I look for Halsin related art/references, I see some wildest takes that give me psychic damage. Like, yeah, his writing has issues, but people calling him an incel/discussing how he forces astarion into a poly relationship/the whole polyamory discourse/etc, I'm just ??? And then there's another topic of discussing his body type, everyone has their preferences and it's ok, but I'm tired of people commenting my art with stuff like "boohoo he's too thin op is fatphobic☝️🤓". It's ok for people to have different opinions, but I don't understand these "wars" on who gets the character better and people stating their opinion like it's an ultimate truth. For me, there's beauty in seeing how differently people perceive the characters, but the lack of acceptance in the fandom makes me feel tired ngl.

I mean, it's difficult to avoid interacting with the mass fandom bc I post fan arts regularly, but I will probably stop looking for art & memes bc it ruins all the joy for me. I'm kinda glad that I keep the majority of Halvari artworks under a paywall, lol. No conclusion here, it all just made me sad.

[msmads]

Switch 2 Prices Rant

Actually tagging this post because the points in this poorly organized rant aren't empty, and I do want them see to some extent

maybe someone else will tidy up my tired ass's mess of points from a meandering rant into bullet points or something.

maybe I'll tidy it up later into like, an essay, idfk, it's a mess and I'm not looking to actually write an essay.

... oh boy this is gonna ruffle some feathers though, guess I'm finally opening myself up to some hellsite discourse...

NGL, I'm getting fed up with people complaining about Nintendo Switch 2 prices and Switch 2 game prices, when they're only halfway to catching up with inflation since 2005 on the game prices on the most expensive games, which means yes, Mario Kart World is cheaper than Madden 05 was, and they're refusing to acknowledge the actual problem that their own wages aren't going up to keep up with inflation.

Within the (shitty) present system, the problem isn't a luxury good being 450 bucks, it's that you're not being paid enough for what you do.

AND for fucks sake, 450 bucks for a piece of tech that is on the cutting edge of power efficient gaming, is pretty decent.

These guys are out here fixing or improving most of the problems with the previous generation system they made, and keep on not laying off their employees unlike the other big fish, and what they get is people being understandably unhappy about the price and lying about stuff to have a big ol' negativity circlejerk on Nintendo, while saying shit like "it's not a political issues" and ignoring the fact that Videogames are the cheapest form of entertainment there is today, even with these price increases, and the fact that wages being stagnant in an inflationary economy is obviously going to cause problems like this, and the related fact that SOMETHING IS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO GIVE WHEN AN INDUSTRY IGNORES INFLATION ON IT'S PRODUCTS FOR 20 YEARS, AS EVERYTHING ELSE GETS MORE EXPENSIVE, UPPING COSTS ALL AROUND FOR MAKING THE GAMES AND HARDWARE TOO

and

that's not even getting into the absolute BULLSHIT where companies that have publicly traded stocks in the US have a legal responsibility to keep grow every year!

THAT'S LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE

COMPANIES HAVE BEEN SELF CANNIBALIZING BY MINIMIZING STAFF TO DEAL WITH THAT, WHY DO YOU THINK CVS PHARMACIES ARE SUCH SHITTY STORES WITH LIKE ONE PERSON STAFFING THEM?

Nintendo has been managing to keep away from stripping themselves for parts, despite the Switch 1 being frankly a shit show of a device by Nintendo's quality standards, with them going through a dark period of undercooked BS in the middle of its lifespan to boot.

They're doing shitty things with credits lately, that's something reasonable to complain about.

They're shitty to their fans with their IP enforcement, that's something reasonable to complain about.

They swept Joy-Con Drift under the rug, that's something reasonable to complain about.

They dedicated a whole ass physical button to a paywalled bootleg discord call feature, that's something reasonable to complain about.

BUT GODDAMN

PEOPLE ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE PRICES OF THE CHEAPEST FOR CONSUMERS FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT THERE IS GOING UP IN PRICE BY A MODEST AMOUNT INSTEAD OF THEIR FOOD GOING UP IN PRICE OR THEIR WAGES STAYING STAGNANT FOR SO DAMN LONG THEY'RE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE MOST REASONABLE BLEMISH ON A RAY OF PLEASANTRY AMIDST A SEA OF DISASTER THAT CREATED THE BLEMISH INSTEAD OF LOOKING TO THE MAELSTROM AND RESISTING THE ACTUAL FUCKING PROBLEM

If you can't afford it, save up for it

if you can't save up for it, UNIONIZE AND DEMAND BETTER PAY SO YOU'RE NOT UNDERWATER JUST TRYING TO SURVIVE.

Ah yeah, the online subscription thing

that that exists at all, pretty shitty

but holy shit, I find it so annoying hearing about how much more you get out of XBOX Live or PlayStation Plus than Nintendo Switch Online

they're all doing the same shitty practice of paywalling your ability to access servers the subscription isn't even paying for, XBOX and PlayStation just force you to pay for EVEN MORE STUFF

Nintendo's top plan is asking LESS THAN HALF THE BASIC PLAN FOR THOSE OTHER TWO FUCKERS

50÷12<9.99

and the basic plan on Nintendo's end is less than 2 dollars a month,

as shit as it is that they paywall that at all, it's way better than what Microsoft and Sony are and have been doing for way longer, so comparing to them on that front is pretty bullshit too.

bllghhhh.

ok...

I think I'm done.