#and i just think media studies people who write about the internet are having a fucking field day right now
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Book rant? Anthropology, apes, and racism discussion.
I started reading a book titled "Bonobo Handshake" by Vanessa Woods. I picked it up because a) I want to learn more about bonobos since my knowledge of them is minimal. b) the author had interacted with bonobos in person so it's an interesting perspective to read. c) the book had positive reviews.
I was not expecting the author to start off telling us about the 'discovery' of bonobos in this way.
W-what do you mean, in Belgium? The author makes it clear that bonobos live in Congo and she gives us a few examples of local bonobo lore. Meaning, people in Congo know the bonobos very well. Way to go to give a colonizer the credit??? wtf. In this perspective, she is letting us know THAT was the moment when Bonobos entered western science, which is true. But I was really hoping the author would give it a more holistic view than this, but it seems she really believes in this??? And let me tell you, from what I am picking up between the lines, she ONLY accepts western science. Here is an example:
This is the page that confuses me immensely. I don't know if she is trying to come off as sarcastic or not. She sets out for us that Takayoshi Kano is the star of Bonobo research, but in the next paragraph says there is no one studying Bonobos. "there was never a Jane Goodall or Dian Fossey for bonobos." UHM NO? YOU JUST SAID THERE WAS???
[highlighting and writing over a picture of the page (32) since it's a library book and I can't write on it.]
She says Japanese researchers are responsible for all we know on Bonobos, but then starts talking about de Waal's zoo discoveries in detail, and they seem pretty minor compared to Kano's work with wild bonobos. She did point out that scientists don't take de waal's observations seriously because it's from a zoo, but she doesn't remedy that by telling us if it can be supported by Kano's work or not when compared. Kano is ignored. He does have one book available in English, so it's not like we can't ever learn about what he observed. you said western mainstream media don't want to listen to a man who only spoke Japanese??? UHM. You are too??? Why did you jump to de waal? If it's a book about bonobos, then please give Kano a little spotlight and tell about his research. (I actually want to read Kano's book now but I can't find a borrowable copy of it. It's a complicated long loop to get one. But it's possible T-T!!!!)
I very much dislike her tone in 'oh it's the Japanese that tell us about bonobo'. It is as if no one is actually researching them at all. They are 'foreign' so it doesn't count. Meanwhile, if it's a white person's discovery, it is humanity's. But if it's someone else theeennnn well we are not sure if it's actually real :/ Not until a white person observes this can we really put this into humanity's archive of knowledge. Otherwise, whatever they learnt is not very important or worth talking about.
I'm not gonna drop the book, because it does get me thinking about stuff and that's what I read books for. I guess it reminds me of University days, of how irritated I get when we are assigned a problematic reading to pick apart and present to class. I hope I'm not picking this apart too much 😭 I'm not sure if I'm enraged and reading too much into it. I might be totally wrong.
idk... I think I need to join an anthropology book club to have people to talk with about this. Only way for now is to share on the internet and maybe a discussion starts. Want to see what others think of this (especially if they read the book).
#anthropology#Bonobo Handshake#apes#bonobo#racism#reading#sorry I haven't posted are in a while. It's because.... I haven't drawn kdsjghsdkjgnsj#I do have a chimpanzee acrylic painting I'm working on slowly! but i've never worked with acrylic so it's just experiments#no sharing yet#and concept art for my story... that I am also not sharing yet.#well that's all. bye!
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i love you goncharov mythos, i love you innate human urge to make things up, i love you tumblr blorbos created By tumblr, i love you meta insight into current internet attitudes toward character archetypes that's inherent to this process of creation, i love you opportunity of witnessing yet another major event for very online people, and most of all i love you katya
#she sounds cool#goncharov#tbd#the more i think about it the more i realize that this is the single most interesting thing that's happened here since i made my account#like. sure nov 5th 2020 was wild but the goncharov renaissance developed completely independently of real world events#people aren't posting memes about geopolitical events anymore they're posting memes about a New Thing#with No real world equivalent and making up everything about it ON THE FLY#and it STILL retains some internal consistency because of the types of characters/traits that have grown into their popularity here#and i just think media studies people who write about the internet are having a fucking field day right now
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it's crazy to me that there are people out there who still think that media and fiction do not affect how people think at all
#like that whole 'does fiction affect reality?' debate is so stupid to me cuz it's like#i mean just think about it for a second. what is propaganda? what did jaws do for people's perceptions of sharks?#i think studying the effect that popular media and fiction has on people in real life is really interesting#and it's crazy to me that there are people on the internet who think that it genuinely doesn't#like umm shoutout vit sisler for his paper 'digital arabs' i just read it for my game studies class and it's super interesting#about like orientalization how western shooter games' usage of middle eastern/muslim stereotypes as enemies created both a negative -#- stereotype for people who arent in that group and how it negatively affects the mental health and self-image of the people who are#also shoutout stuart hall and richard dyer they're really cool people and also have some super interesting papers on how representation -#- in media affects people's IRL perceptions of certain groups#i know online this focus tends to lean on that whole shipping discussion but i think it's more worthwhile to look at it on a wider scale#because 'does fiction affect reality?' is not just a 'fandom ship war' discussion it's like. the basis for many fields of study#anyways umm#liza post#actually this is more like a#liza ramble#i love tumblr bc i can write a one sentence post and put my body paragraphs in the tags#it's really late and i am tired ‼️ i wish i could be more concise i just adore my game studies class and visual culture studies in general
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One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".
Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.
That's the TL;DR version of this post.
ANYWAY here is the long version
Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".
One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.
Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.
It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.
This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.
People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.
I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.
Anyway if you want to read more:
- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info
-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos
-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.
-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa
- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.
-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge
#Also I don't mean that you can always tell if someone is a transphobe or a TERF based on a couple of things they have said.#My point is that sometimes ok people can have very regressive ideas too.#This is not a call out post about how we should go around accusing anti-fujoshi people#todd in the shadows#hbomberguy#sarasade text#even I've got those “Fandom is mostly straight women fetishizing gay men” comments once and it begins to sound kind of passive-aggressive#when you're a bi woman. Lot of fandom stats at AO3 show that fandoms are montly bi women. who are these people calling straight exactly hmm#also straight women are completely ok leave them alone. I know I know Yes I'm so brave for saying this#cw: transphobia
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thinking about how many times i’ve wanted to bring in “low brow” sources in my academic writing, and how such a mode of critique is so fundamentally foreign to the institutions in which i’ve been embedded that i never even considered it a possibility. i once wrote about how beowulf echoes in tolkien’s fiction (primarily using the hobbit to argue that both narratives employ rings) back in high school, but that was an exception because my history teacher was a massive nerd, and tolkien was a well-respected medievalist so the topic didn’t seem far-fetched regardless. but that has very much been an exception for me. i know that film and media studies exploring television, genre fiction, even memes and fandom culture, that there are spheres dedicated to analyzing these “low brow” works of art and social phenomena. but as a comparatist and shakespearean, my area has always been relegated to quote-unquote “high brow,” despite my abiding interest in many “low brow” mediums and artworks.
ANYWAY. this preamble was all to say: how would you guys feel about participating in a zine where we would compile a bunch of essays each exploring a topic through comparing a piece of “high brow” art to “low brow” art? for example, if i expanded on my post using satan and sin in paradise lost to discuss akio and anthy’s roles in utena, or using 19/20th c. existentialist philosophy as a framework through which to discuss adventure time. you could also take a theoretical approach to an internet phenomenon, such as exploring character criticism from a fandom perspective. (these are all ideas for essays i would write if i had the time, so obviously these examples are just templates, not workable suggestions.) this would obviously take a long time to compile and there would be no fixed deadline (i have way too much on my plate at the moment for that anyway), this idea literally just came to me because i was thinking about how fun it could be to work on an online collaborative zine, and how the broader topic could best reflect the discourse of the internet as a collaborative and (ideally) egalitarian realm (for media as well as people). mutuals (or nonmutuals) who are interested, dm me with a description of what you want to write about, and i’ll get back to you with the logistics once i have more of a sense of whether or not this is actually going to happen, and if so, how.
#this is so spur of the moment lmfao i was just reading bao3bei4’s post about zines and was like hey. why not#I think some of you would be really amazing at this#and it wouldn’t have to be long it could be as long or as short as you needed#even just replying to this post to express initial interest#even if you don’t have an idea yet#and there’s no time pressure either#could be fun I think!!!!#o#100#high low zine
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being smart makes u prettier !!
If you’re somebody who’s not an active student rn, you’re on holiday, you want to become more smarter, looking for brain exercises before studying or you just want to be smarter without studying everyday this post is 4 u!!!!
READ!!!!!!!
This is crazy to me, the amount of people who don’t read is so high. You don’t even have to read a hard-copy book, just reading an article is literally enough to keep your brain exercising.
Some benefits i’ve noticed with reading consistently are my memory is literally boosted and my vocabulary is better. Though, i’ve only started reading every night like 2 months ago.
It does not need to be an educational or extensive literature book. Even some random book like an fantasy romance is gonna give you the same benefits.
Start writing whatever
This goes in pair with reading, but writing is literally the best brain exercise ever. Even if its journaling or some stupid short story, it all counts plus its really fun
One you begin writing, your mind just becomes less cluttered and you’re just less stressed. And its a perfect creative outlet for those who arent as artsy
Focus meditations
Before literally any task, whether its deep or shallow work but its still exerts your mental energy, do a focus meditation
Helped me become 10x productive and its so much easier to get into the flow of work
So important if you're an student or studying anything!!!
Download elevate!!
Its available on IOS but idk about androids
Basically it's an app where you can do three mental exercises each day, and it keeps track of your progress and gives you highlights after each session
It helps with mental maths, communication, eloquence and general writing!
Learning how to think on your own
It's crazy to me how much people rely on the internet. You do not need to scroll pinterest each time for outfit inspiration, searching up writing prompts each time you write or even ask the internet for personal advice
OR
When people are bored, so instead of just being bored they decide to consume a whole lot of content that is not nourishing the mind
Its definitely okay to do, but not always
So take a step back, and ask yourself, ‘could I really survive a day of doing tasks without once using any source of the internet?’ ‘is this media allowing my mind to flourish? Or is it killing it?’
Thinking by yourself is now such a valuable skill, if you don't have it, DEVELOP IT.
Randomly research everything
If u get curious about something don’t just let it float in your head, taking up mental space
Instead research it! Even the little things like an random flower, how are playgrounds manufactured, the history of beds or the most expensive pencil ever.
conservations are so easy 4 me now because i know a lot of random stuff that the usual person doesn't care about! It makes it so easy for you to stand out too
#just girly things#level up#pink pilates princess#girlcore#study#study tips#pink academia#pretty academia#academia#pink study#smart girls#becoming that girl#that girl#it girl#dream girl#pink pilates girl#pinterest girl#clean girl#girl blog#girlblogger#girlblogging#girlboss#green juice girl#just girlboss things#just girly posts#personal growth#personal development#studying aesthetic#self healing#high value woman
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❛❛ In which; Dottore as a streamer... ❜❜
✎ ❛❛ I'll have to admit, this character is quite... alluring.❜❜
Pairing(s): Streamer!Dottore x (kinda) Game-Character!GN!Reader (Mordern AU)
Genre/Format: N/A (headcanons)
Warning(s): wrote this at 6am without thinking straight so possible grammar mistakes and sentences that don't make sense
Notes: There really isn't much of x Reader here, sadly :( I might write more of this in the future but idk
I know i have requests to do but this idea came out of nowhere and it was too tempting to not write something for it— I've only written headcanon once so this is short. I have no idea if I'm doing this right 💀
Let's be real, this guy would probably stream live torture on the darkest part of the internet
BUT, let's just pretend in this AU he's not an evil doctor man <3
He is a tired university student who majors in biology and thrives to earn a position in the medical field
And that means becoming a coffee addict and endless nights of staying up late to study
Sleeping? What's that?
I can see him being so focused on his studies to the point where he doesn't interact with the internet much
If someone showed him a popular meme he wouldn't understand
Boomer
L
Due to how busy he is, he doesn't have the time to find a job
He lives off of the money his parents send him every month lol
That was until someone introduced him to the wonders of the internet…
One of his friends—Childe, told him something about a streaming platform and he should go check it out
And that night when he got home, he pulled his laptop out and searched for it
He also learnt that people can earn money streaming whatever
For instance, most of the people streams "let's plays"
He scrolled down a little and he found people streaming… questionable things, and he was baffled they get paid for it
So that means, he could stream anything he wants and he'd earn money from it, as long as he has a certain amount of viewers
Say less
And an account was made
This basically becomes his part-time job now
He usually streams to tutor struggling students and you best believe they were very thankful
He'll sometime do "study with me" streams too
As he takes his fifteen minutes breaks from studying, he'd talk to his viewers
And when I tell you this man has the driest humor ever—
That's what got his channel to grow
Viewers would clip his dry ass jokes and post them onto other social media platforms, which caused his view counts to blow up
As he got more and more popular, his viewers would beg him to do gaming streams
With how dry his humor is, they thought his commentary would be gold…
And they're absolutely correct, they get to see a different side of him too
Surgeon simulator is the very first game he was introduced to by his fans, to get him interested in gaming
Man's cursing every time when he accidentally drops something
"Now, we put this lung over— Shit."
Cue chat spamming the Kek emote
It's been months since he started to stream and things are going pretty well for him
He comes back home from his lectures today to find his Discord server is filled with loads of fans telling him to check a game out, mostly because of a certain character
The general chat is flooded with hundreds, and I mean hundreds of pictures of them
And Lo and Behold
It is you
The moment he first has his eyes on you, his jaw drops
God DAMN YOU LOOK FINE AS HELL
Not to mention that harness you have on you—
Ahem
Anyways
He doesn't even know who you are or what game you're from
But man he's head over heels for you already
The next time he starts his stream, the first thing he says is:
"Everyone was going crazy on Discord yesterday about a game character. And now my question is…
"Who are they and which game are they from?"
Babygirl took his first step into the world of simping <3
#genshin x reader#genshin impact x you#genshin x you#genshin x yn#dottore#genshin impact#dottore x reader#dottore x y/n#dottore x you#genshin dottore#il dottore#fatui#fatui harbingers x reader#fatui harbingers
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Ya know, something I hear a lot of Katsuki Stans claim is that supposedly antis don’t have jobs and that we have tons of free time. It’s something that the Stans would shout when I first started this blog and it was something many people told that person who exposed Dekacchan on Twitter. Now, it’s true that some people really have nothing else to do but hate, but most of the time, it’s not the case.
I’m going to start off with some lore about me. Despite what some of you think, I’m actually quite the busy person. I’m in charge of raising my puppy, and for those of you who have had one, as much as you love them, y’all can agree with me that it’s a lot of work.
“So what? That’s not a job…” some of you might say, and you’d be correct. However, I do have a job, and that job’s taking care of my grandmother. My grandmother’s turning 80. She not only has arthritis, but she’s also got pancreatic cancer. I’ve got to help her bathe, exercise, make food for her, etc. It is a job that I’m getting paid for. The times I’m on this blog is when she’s napping or on the days I have off (Saturdays and Sundays). That’s one of the few breaks I have. Sure, you can say I post a lot, but some of those responses sit in my drafts for like a day or so. This is one of those posts. There are also times where my responses are short, which takes little to no time to respond to. Combine taking care of my grandmother and my puppy and I’ve got quite the hectic schedule.
Oddly enough, you don’t hear these Stans telling their fellow Stans to get a job. Dekacchan’s on Twitter far more often than I am on this blog and she supposedly has a teaching job. If she can find the time to constantly post, then I don’t understand why the Stans try shitting on antis for having the time to run their accounts/blogs too.
In addition, some Stans wonder why people would create a blog/internet persona/etc. dedicated to hating a fictional character/piece of media, etc. Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but there’s three reasons why I created this blog. First off is to create a safe space for people who hate Katsuki to express themselves. If you say anything bad about Katsuki, chances are you’re going to get swarmed by his Stans, and I wanted to do something about that. This blog was the best thing I could think of. Secondly, it’s therapeutic. People write for therapy. It’s an easy and harmless way of processing your thoughts and venting them to likeminded people. Finally, it’s to help me gather my thoughts. See, I love superheroes and I wanna be a writer. MHA’s in my eyes a how to guide on how to fail at writing a superhero story so I study it, note what’s wrong, and come up with solutions in my head for if I ever wanna tackle similar themes in my stories. There’s a difference between shitting on something just cause and pointing out the immense flaws around a piece of work. I’m doing the latter.
Hopefully this helps with dispelling the idea that antis don’t have jobs or hate for no reason.
#anti katsuki bakugou#anti bakugo katsuki#anti bakugo#anti bakugou#mha critical#anti bakugou katsuki#bnha critical
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sorry to add to the #discourse about the werlyt stuff in ffxiv, and feel free to ignore this, but your posts just got me thinking about how the average western consumer of japanese media doesn't know how to spot signs of japanese nationalism in their fave game, movie, anime, etc. For example, I remember a couple of weeks ago on twitter someone said that Miyazaki's works feature prominent elements of japanese nationalism despite not necessarily being pro-war, and both the replies and QRTs were an absolute disaster. ffxiv is a liberal game, its politics are not exceptional; they just aren't (as) egregious
Considering the social locations of people who make a piece of media and how that location affects the way they write things, like politics, isn't an outlandish concept. But ffxiv fans always seem hyperdefensive about this and i cannot understand why
yeah for sure! imo people are getting better about it (don't think it even registered in most of the english-speaking side of the internet's heads that there was a pacific theater for a long time), with more eastern media being translated and gaining popularity that DOES legitimately have leftist authors, but you still have a ton of "how can this work have jp nationalist elements when they say War is Bad 🤨". feels like a lot of this is cause really anime/manga/games were so vaunted as the ultimate escape for americans (not exclusive) and now that people are gaining more of a political consciousness, there's this need for the things that are nostalgic and soothing for them to be "good" media without Problems. which is like. not the point man. though people have always studied and conversed about media trends and the influence of eras on the art created within them and there's always been a knee-jerk You're Being Crazy reaction to it (even though if it's a conversation they're not interested in right now, the people who have this reaction usually can always just...step out lol), I feel like it's just magnified by the way social media uhh does all that. and on top of it a lot of discourse is in bad faith, so sometimes not giving people the time of day DOES seem like the correct and safe option every time but it's like...some people apply it so broadly and blindly that it's basically anything that upsets me = wrong and bullshit.
And you're totally right about xiv LMFAOOO it feels like some people are compelled to do damage control for the game like it's personal. you'd assume that everyone is working off of the recognition that ffxiv is a mass market product and a feel-good fantasy and the writing may not even reflect the totality of a writer's beliefs, but rather what they believe is the median, liberal truth that they're willing to sell. sometimes in oddball places you can find hints of something more genuine but these are exceptions. & acting like it's proofed from this is suggesting that somehow final fantasy fourteen the mmo is interested in breaking any status quos and the whole of its creators have collectively managed to break apart from the time and history they exist in, when in truth it relies on it to guide its writing and business plan. i don't think this is a crazy controversial thing. it's a normal thing. & i cant really speak for how other people are talking about it, but i rarely suggest malevolence in my critiques of the shit I enjoy moreso than I'm saying Le Hegemony Has Arrived....something not even individual people can escape myself included much less a corporation....but the accusation is assumed anyway. What is the worst that can happen by acknowledging some stories and patterns in xiv's story have very liberal takes on topics in which liberalism understands and treats poorly? i dunno the answer to this one honestly I do not understand the fear
#also dont worry im the DISCOURSEKEEPER if you kill me it will cause a flood of light that will blockchain 9/10ths of the world#also enjoying werlyt or whatever doesn't make you a colonizerhead but leaping to defend it may.#like it's ok i'm not watching you play. nobody is watching.#UNTIL YOU COME ONLINE AND SAY SHIT ABOUT IT! THEN YOU'RE INI MYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY YARD (joke)
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Tools Tuesday - Image Descriptions
Apologies for the late posting, this week really got away from me!
Tools Tuesday is a weekly part of the Finish What You Started event where I share various resources I have found to help everyone complete their WIP. Have a resource you want to share? Send it in a message and I'll take a look!
What is an image description? Just as the title suggests, it's a description of a piece of visual media. Think of it like you're on the phone with your friend and you just saw a hilarious sign or cool thing in a store that they should absolutely know about, so you describe it to them over the phone. It is communicating visuals through words.
This is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart. Accessible posts make everyone in your community able to connect and share the joy of your fandom.
Creating image descriptions or alt text for your visual media (images, videos, gifs) helps a wide range of people: those with low vision, those who use screen readers, those who have issues interpreting visual media, those who have trouble reading text in pictures, those with bad internet, and many more. There's a huge audience who just doesn't get to understand or interact properly with your beautiful art without the interface of description!
Creating descriptions can also help you, the creator. You can communicate mood or subtle details that are important, shaping how your piece is interpreted. You can introduce new people to your beloved media, gaining a larger audience of appreciators. And you can even learn something about your own work. After all, by describing something, you study it more closely.
Not sure how to make an image description? No problem! There are lots of guides out there that go into detail!
The most important part is trying. An imperfect description is better than no description.
TL;DR: A basic description should have the media type (photograph, illustration, etc), the subject's name and short physical description, and a summary of the action. If there are any words, they should be transcribed exactly, or converted to plaintext but keep the wording the same. Start the description with an indicator (Start ID, etc) and finish with one as well (End ID, etc).
Links to guides that explain the process better than I can!
General guide for image descriptions by can-i-make-image-descriptions - Basic, easy to follow.
How to Create Image Descriptions by antimonarchy - More detailed with great examples.
Image description resources by kurapikas-dangly-earring, with additions by others - Further resources and tips.
Can't do them yourself, for whatever reason? I want to make my posts more accessible, but can't write IDs myself: a guide by anistarrose
I (the event runner) write a lot of image descriptions, so I'm happy to answer questions or direct you to resources if you need them!
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Hello olderthannetfic! I have a research question and I bet you/someone in your network might know - fanzines in other languages, pre-internet. Did they exist? In which languages? Were they preserved? Any leads at all would be super neat!
(Context: getting my PhD in fan studies, working on a paper for publication that dabbles in international fanfic)
--
An excellent question!
The people I know who research and preserve zines have made an attempt to add every old zine ever to Fanlore. If it isn't there, they likely don't know about it.
My sense, broadly, is that a lot of eras of fanfic zine really required a critical mass of people to cover the costs of printing. It seems unlikely that nobody made any not in English, but there was definitely a huge barrier to entry. (This is as compared to a punk zine or the like where somebody's hand drawing it and then going to the copy shop to make 10 copies.)
But even with that issue, pre-internet covers the rise of photocopiers, not just the era when everything was perfect bound. Surely, there's something...
(Obviously, there's Japan's doujinshi culture, which includes textual stories, not just comics, but I assume you don't mean that.)
One impediment is, of course, that oldschool zine culture was heavily in-person in addition to through the mail. The people I know may just never have had cause to know any fans outside of certain geographical areas. Also, a lot of aspects of "Media Fandom" came out of SF cons and both TV sci-fi and fanfic fandoms splitting off from that. I have no idea how much of that history was replicated elsewhere. If fic zines existed, they may have had a very different trajectory. Perhaps you'd find a canon-like gen story or two in a more general SF fandom news and opinion columns publication?
Surely, somebody was writing Winnetou hurt/comfort in her diary back in ye olden days, but were there zines?
I suppose I might start by investigating SF zines, non-fic fanzines with information or letters, Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and that kind of thing. The general state of amateur fannish publications in place X might give you a lead on whether there were also fic zines.
What say you, readers? What languages and decades do you think had fanfic zines? Where would you look?
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Hey 9wing!! Hello and I hope you're doing well <3
I've seen a couple of your posts mentioning this sort of sentiment and now I'm genuinely asking with curiosity; how would one think that Kaylor is a romantic love story?
No doubt, the songs are amazing masterpieces, the long-term perseverance is admirable and there are certainly many aspects of Kaylor that are poetic and remind me of the magic of 'soulmates,' whether that is practically real or not
However, even as a third party observer who has no stakes in this, I find it bleak and tiring sometimes
Constant backlash and scrutiny from the media, the people and most often your own fans; having to communicate in cryptic language; having to engage in unpleasant PR stunts; having to hide a central part of yourself just to survive in this world; not having the liberty to be yourself and love whomever you love loudly and proudly; being constantly misunderstood by a large fraction of the world; being loved but not seen; living in uncertainty about your own rights and freedom when the political climate's so unstable
I understand that life is not without problems and sometimes you have to do what you have to do with whatever choices are at your disposal. And these two will always have my support, and I make sure to respect my own mental health and step away from this site of the internet when things get too much
But how would one see the beauty in this? The light in the darkness? I would love to know and hear your and other's perspectives and what keeps you optimistic despite it all. Thank you and good day
i would love to hear from others!
i think that everyone will have their own definitions of beauty or romance, so i understand where you are coming from, and your impressions are valid for you!
for me, there are aspects of their story that i just cannot find in other places in the world, and it’s always been something that brings me opportunities reflect on my own life and life philosophy.
i think that there is something to be said for the amount of unconditional love that they show one another that appears when picking haven for one another at the risk of their reputations. i recognize that it probably doesn’t look that way for many people but from my perspective, it’s how i see it. there is something singularly authentic about it to me. as a enneagram type 9 (where my username comes from), i gravitate to the concept of holy love like a moth to a flame, and the dynamic of seeing taylor push her lovers away all her life and then meeting karlie and being inspired by karlie but still fighting doubt and ultimately trying to push her away only for karlie to vehemently refuse to leave is just.. something that really speaks to me. it sort of embodies the human struggle not just to give love but to accept love. i’m not sure if i’m explaining it well but there is so much depth to the love that she writes about in these albums, separate from the heavy external factors that have shaped their story.
but for me, those external factors only work to heighten my interest and appreciation for their journey. in my career i’ve done a lot of executive coaching work and study in leadership theory and i find the study of defining moments (sometimes called crucible moments) incredibly interesting and for taylor and karlie, at the top of their game, the stakes could not be higher and their navigation of everything is very interesting to me.
and i think that the struggle is a part of the beauty because i don’t always find easy things beautiful, and by that i don’t mean that pain is beauty in some voyeuristic way but that success after pain feels more spectacular than success without struggle.
if you are a fan of literature or philosophy, i would recommend the seminal work of junichiro tanizaki called “in praise of shadows” — there’s a fairly well known concept in japan called wabi-sabi which is the idea that true beauty is found in the transient and the fleeting. that a falling cherry blossom is more beautiful than a tree in full bloom, or that cracks in pottery ought be to celebrated (there a tradition in japan of fixing cracks in ceramics with gold called kintsugi). tanizaki’s writing is very formative to this concept and it’s something that has giving me a heightened appreciation for things with complication and age.
#kaylor ain’t for everyone but i think it’s got incredible depth that a lot of people can appreciate
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The thing is that with these two interviews, the whole goal of the journalists was to set Nick as a heartthrob and that's it. To them, there's no more depth than that. For this press tour, I've preferred to watch him talk instead because he can fully express everything. You can see how his mind works, the way he respects his craft (because he takes himself and his job seriously, as he should), and you can see his personality shine more: the nervous, anxious, charming guy who loves what he does and understands his characters to the core.
When it comes to these interviews, the tone was, "He's a pretty face with some gigs under his belt." For instance, the NYM interview had a lot of filler information that wasn't completely relevant to the conversation but was kept because the underlining topic was, "Well, he's transitioning from some small movies to bigger projects, and some of these movies are queer and he's not. Gee, I wonder!" This is not that different from the Hunger interview, but this one was more shameful because it went full-on disrespectful to RWRB and Nick.
I've read a couple of people asking why Nick or his publicist didn't edit the articles before publishing, and the short answer is that they can't. Journalists don't like when publicists or their clients ask for changes in their stories. If they do, it can cause problems between the journalist and the PR firm, and the relationship can even break. And publicists don't want that—they have more clients, and they need those platforms. Not even bigger A-list actors can do that without being considered "problematic." And, most importantly, they don't read the articles before publishing. They probably didn't know what was kept. They most likely found out like the rest of us. But everyone's focusing on the photoshoots, so maybe that's why there are not many people talking about these things, but there are.
I think the US press it's a mess; they love to feel better than the subject they're interviewing, and they don't shy away from disrespecting people, directly or indirectly. I also brought this up to one anon question (I'm the ☁️ anon), and this basically supports my theory that it doesn't matter if Nick's projects are doing well, if he's finally being acknowledged, they will see him as an Internet boyfriend. That's why the focus was on his personal life or anything else that was interesting or quirky, not really on the projects and the work behind his character study.
It's not Nick's or even his publicist's fault. I think it's the result of prioritizing social media discourse and language into a different medium instead of focusing on writing a profile or a story.
I'm late, but this is in regards to Nick's NY Magazine editorial and Hunger Magazine editorial.
And I mostly agree! I mean, I furiously picked apart the two articles with my Taiwanese RWRB friend, but from a bigger picture this explains it really well. Thank you.
And I really think that it's unfortunate that so often, either from the creator or the audience, people are more interested in social media discourse than anything else with actual value. It's not just the US press, it's kind of the whole world in general right now. I ranted my family about this and used what happened to Princess Catherine (Middleton, not Henry's mother) lately as an example, and I was... very passionate in the ramble.
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hey so you might wanna read this in full if you’ve been following me for a while
yknow. i’ve been holding off on confirming it until now but i’ve been reworking one of my past projects on here for… quite some time. like at least around 2 months. it’s what i’ve been mainly working on besides schoolwork whenever i go quiet for long periods of time for anyone curious
and when i mean reworking i mean like, almost completely reworking. aside from the character’s designs and personalities almost nothing is carried over from the original work, full disclosure
to be completely honest i was wracked with a lot of inner sadness and grief when i first made the initial parts of it earlier this year and it led to me always feeling the need to ramp up the stakes of it. idk why that was exactly. but it eventually led to me making something that was hard for me to continue making long term and something that’s extremely hard for me to look back on. i made it to cope with a personal tragedy, and when the tragedies in my life just stopped being so singular and kept piling up… i just couldn’t find it in me to make media that was so dire like that anymore. on top of that i made it during a period in my life where i was completely homeschooled so i had no social life outside of the people in my household and a very few select people online, all of which i am grateful for and who i love very much - but being secluded from any real world interaction like that, especially during such a bleak moment in my life messed me up kinda. all i had to do at that time was study and make stuff. and the stuff i was making wasn’t good for me, even though the stuff i was making for it was extremely high effort. i made entire songs. designed entire sprite sheets. did so much background design and spritework it’s not even funny. and even though it’s my most high effort project to date… i just can’t return to the mindset i made it in, not ever.
if you haven’t noticed i’ve been on a kick of making my works a lot more ‘silly and laid back’ lately, and frankly allowing myself to make things that are just unabashedly fun to make has made me fall in love with creating things again as redundant as that sounds. i was neglecting myself of the ability to create for any other reason than to purge something out of my head for so long that i forgot what making things for myself actually felt like, not the part of me that dreads going about my day but the part of me that wants to feel happy in spite of it all. i think allowing that side of myself to flourish has not only made me better, it’s made my art better. and now that i finally have that sort of inner peace when it comes to creating things i think i’m finally ready to return to that project, as different now as it may be than the project i initially showed to you all.
i know asking for understanding on the internet and especially as a content creator is a pointless task to some extent but i’m just going to warn you that you are not going to be getting a continuation of this project. this is a complete reboot. again, nothing much is going to get carried over except the characters and their designs themselves. but ultimately this is for the best. the story i’ve got this time around is one that’s really fun - at least it’s fun to write, and that’s all that counts - and it’s got a framing device that i personally find really appealing. it’s completely tonally different from the first iteration which is naturally going to turn people off, i know, but just know the story that i’m telling here is one that i take joy in telling. it’s one that i’m going to have a lot of fun with and i can’t wait to take you on for the ride if you so wish to get on it. it’s not gonna be coming for a little while longer, this is only to let you all know it’s even happening.
so, yeah.
that’s what’s been up with eptg LOL
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why clive is THE ‘tumblr sexyman’ of the professor layton fandom; a short thesis written at 5am.
“descole fits sexyman tropes more than clive does” no he doesn’t. look at my url. this is coming from someone with a long long background of once-ler fandom and sexyman studies (and terrorising the pl fandom with clive/once-ler ship art LOL). SO. im educated in this matter is what im saying. the once-ler, AKA the ORIGINAL tumblr sexyman, SHAPED an entire generation and put the term tumblr sexyman in the internet vernacular which also made this whole competition exist in the first place so you better show some RESPECT to that man’s name.
clive’s polarising personalities: outwardly charming and friendly (future luke), inwardly malicious and spiteful (clive). his story arc: his selfishness and delusion leading to irredeemable destruction followed by his commitment to atonement even if it meant his lifelong imprisonment. he’s even got a weird kind of father figure in his story who tries to save him from himself. and then how the fandom that sprouted up around him was a microcosmic version of the once-ler response: some skinny white villain in a suit who was barely even the main character of their own media, their SINGLE piece of media (not counting precious versions of the same story here re:the lorax), suddenly taking an internet collective by storm to a surprising degree and giving impetus to a fandom-wide legacy of fame and infamy for said character. you see this in the fandom response to clive even today in 2022. look in his tag; you will either get people passionately devoted to him or people who passionately hate him for the chaos he wrought upon a community and also the general annoyance of seeing his face everywhere unjustified for the amount of media he actually was present in. THAT’S the once-ler response.
descole, on the other hand, has been a largely well received character after his four media appearances. you either get people passionately devoted to him or people lukewarm on him. people don’t complain of fatigue and annoyance at seeing descole’s face everywhere, because his appearances in the entire prequel series justifies his popularity. yes, descole fits some of the aforementioned tropes mentioned: namely the polarised personality, the suit, the villainy, tragic backstory. but the term tumblr sexyman is not solely rooted in tropes; it is equal part trope and equal part fandom meta. the term itself was coined by not the fans, but the critics; those in response to the once-ler fandom who had grown fatigued by tumblr’s affinity towards the same flavour of charismatic villain in a suit. when you think of the phrase “i want that twink obliterated” and the people who genuinely mean it, which is the professor layton character that springs to mind first? it’s probably not descole.
a slight digression, but it’d also be wrong to write about the once-ler response without a mention of the absolute avalanche of once-ler OCs and askblogs that unexpectedly flooded out of that ONE kids’ movie. an entire fandom UNIVERSE was made from literal scraps (seriously have you seen the lorax 2012 the once-ler is barely fucking IN IT). these scraps AKA missing information about a character led fans to compensate by filling in the gaps which is what ended up birthing the infamous oncest ship - in its essence, a response to the largely unexplained and sudden jump from ‘nice once-ler’ to ‘bad once-ler’. this was what created a literal ‘once-ler fandom’ as opposed to ‘lorax fandom’. ANYWAY. this is a digression because neither clive nor descole had a ‘clive/descole fandom’ of their own (sadly) and selfcest was not a defining feature of their respective eras (thankfully). but that’s not why i raise this point. i do because THIS was the phenomenon that truly allowed the term ‘tumblr sexyman’ to come to fruition. it was a marker of not only just fatigue, but cringe.
CRINGE is an important and defining factor to what TRULY makes a tumblr sexyman, and those in the tags this past week dunking on clive for being embarrassing and wearing kneesocks and being ‘the sexyman of the past’ (AKA a teen girl’s crush) is only proving it. that thirst that brought about the once-ler fandom from literal scraps was created by the most important demographic in internet history: neurodivergent teenagers circa 2007-2014. THIS was the one demographic with the POWER to make the most unexpected characters and media popular with their sheer passion and creativity, and yet the characters and media loved by this era specifically became the first subjects of cringe culture. cringe culture itself is a topic for another day; why it matters here is that there is an unmistakable element of cringe today surrounding clive as a character most of all. there are far too many examples of this to count but see this post for one example. this one post is really important because OP really gets it; the insane fandom response to one unlikely character, the main era of his popularity (cited 2013), and a question of cringe from a 2022 fandom perspective - why DID he inspire such lust and loathing when he looks like that? it’s because the neurodivergent teenagers wished it so, and thus it came to be.
to most people, thanks to current tumblr’s over-categorisation of the term in an attempt to “cringe” at its past in a self-aware manner, “tumblr sexyman” has been watered down to mean “any character conventionally attractive and popular enough who sometimes skews towards the morally grey.” seriously, look at that sexypedia wiki, there are hundreds of these characters now. ANYONE qualifies if they had a sad backstory and had a reasonable fandom following. but this is only a cheap imitation of what the term really means. a majority of these characters haven’t actually earned what truly makes a “tumblr sexyman”, which ultimately boils down to the factors of tropes, unlikely fandom response, and their following notoriety based in cringe culture. in only a short time, we are forgetting the history. we’re forgetting where this phenomenon came from, WHO it came from, and how this essentially defined an entire era of the internet.
anyway im going to bed so what i’m saying is that voting clive represents and respects what the term “tumblr sexyman” really, actually means at its core and origin, because in the end, the character has earned it. descole on the other hand may very well be the ‘sexyman of the modern age’ - a cheap, watered down imitation only replicated by those who have forgotten their internet history.
#professor layton#clive dove#me: descole f*ckers write too many essays also me: writes an essay#anyway posting this because idgaf what the layton fandom thinks of me like yeah yeah im cringe#yeah im that one weirdo who draws clive/onceler shipart (feel free to enjoy btw)#but the tumblr sexyman is my academic area of expertise so. respect it <3
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Education in a Solarpunk World
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
~ Socrates
I'm very passionate about knowledge. I'm extremely curious and love to share everything and anything. As you might notice when scrolling though this blog, I love to deepdive into topics and pile and sort the informaton I find, both for me but also for others.
I'm also living in a western european country and my school system is terrible. So bad in fact, I gave up my wish to become an schoolteacher and followed another passion. There are other well articulated and better researched sources that go into the why our school sytem is this way.
I'll only talk about my vison to make it better.
The whole plan is creating an individualized curriculum for each student with a focus on creating citizens who are mentally-balanced, socially well-adjusted and know how to think, so the teaching would differ for each student.
My Solapunk version of education, has three pillars.
The first is free education. Free acess to the Institutions, but also the knowledge through libraries, free acess to the Internet, free acess to academic studies. Free acess reagardless of age. there is a minimum time you have to spend in education, but lifelong couriosity, learning and exchange is encouraged, even after you started doing your chosen daily labour in the community.
The second pillar is the fact that the concept of general knowledge is a construct by the society and state you live in. So let's completely revamp this. I strongly believe that general knowlede should be considered everything that helps you taking care of yourself when you don't have acces to the help of others. Examples out of my head are cooking, basic maintenance of your home/prosessions/garden, first aid, but also how to get and revaluate knowlede you need and don't have. That, and a basic understanding of numbers, reading and reading comprehension to evaluate what you are reading and be able to apply it to your life. To properly form arguments and comunicate in a non-vilolent way.
Thats the basic curriculum, the shell so to speak. It doesnt matter how you learn it, via games, from your parents or classes you take. You can't leave education untill you have proven to function in those in your way.
Ok, so the kids earn those skills in peer groups of around five or six people for as long as they need in their own pace, but what about, you know, everything else?
They get let loose.
There might be some age restriction on topics, but what I envison is pure interest and passion driven learning. There's no classes or grades, just develloping skills and knowledge.
Every day there are three or four discussion pannels or lectures to a weirdly specific topic, like the manuscrips of Timbuktu, the life and times of Ghandi or how to best craft a basket out of different plant fibres. And anyone who wants can submitt a topic, and if it interests you, you go, otherwise you stay and work on your linewight in your drawing or solve math problems. Depending on your learning style, there 're videos, audiobooks, texts and writings in differnt lengths in differnt formating from bullet points to tomes. There are workshops, and studygroups, games and media that cover every topic you possibly want to learn about. It doen't matter when you do it, it matters that you do it. If you are a night owl, you come at 9pm, if you only can focus for 30 min before having to switch the topic, you can, if you leave with 15 because you are sick of learning you can come back with 21 when you regrett dropping out. Time doesn't matter.
There is a third pillar which is the treatment of children as actual people. Up until I was 18 years and suddently an adult my no was never respected, unless I gave an essay on why I didn't want to. Simply because I was a child and my parents knew better- every adult knew better. Which I see everywhere, and people are wondering why consens is such a dificult concept to establish as we have to learn that No is adequate. No justifications, just a No.
So the learning Institute has scientists and social workers present, who are accessible as someone the students might go to for advice when needed with whatever neeed might come up: assist in finding resoures or give input and correction on fake news, or they may act as mediators in case-you know- kids being kids. Overall however, there is the understanding that children have a certain autonomity they can adjust themselves to give up or keep. Children are people and are treated as such.
The students keep a portfolio of their skills, both as a resource of knowlege and memento. Plus, after spending a specific minimum time depeding on how easy you learn the "general skills" you would be allowed to submitt this portfolio to a council of scientist chosen by you who will certify you for your chosen field of studies. You don't need to, but from my own experience having a ceritficate of your skills is damn sattisfying. And you can do it immediatly when you are free to or wait five more years because you don't feel ready. Again, the choice is yours.
Remember, you can stay as long as you want and even after shifting your focus away to the application of your skills in the community, you are free to participate in the discussions and give lectures. Everyone is allowed to give them, after all.
Scientists are conducting their reserach at specific research centres that are connected to the education centres and the students are allowed there after a certain age or reaching a level of knowlege deermined by the scentists working on the project.
There are questions up for debate of course, especially how we want to teach history, tackle the things we did to each other and the planet. My country is prized for how selfreflected we are but our political climate sugests otherwise so, it's still open.
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A small Linkspam on topic:
@safety-net-did muses about what should be considered general knowledge which inspired this post as well as @queerspacepunks contribution.
one of the many tumblr discussions on how children are a repressed class
another one on the same topic
a post of @missmentell on resources to learn basic life skills of adults
this reddit discussion on how to remember history.
~@acesolaris
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