I have mixed thoughts on that 6k Pucci analysis I made over a year ago now. On one hand I kind of like looking back at it because I feel like I've improved a lot with my writing but on the other... man I really don't like it anymore

what happened w the staff wrt “scortched earth”

ok so staff has a new page @/humans where they've got a post up listing several of the current moderators for the site, some of whom linked their own tumblr blogs. user @partyjockers made an original post like "so the new staff lineup explains why mods aren't blocking actual terfs huh" & then reblogged their own post with screenshots for evidence, one of the @/humans intro post, and one of the blog of one of those mods, "jas," @/jezzuminah. all publicly visible posts.

jas is a diehard hp fan, but people paid close attention to her artwork (her art tag is linked in a pinned post at the top of her blog). she's done a lot of dramione fanart, a lot of attack on titan fanart, and ship fanart of aged up preschoolers from spy x family. of note, she also put in her header, "opinions are my own," which is typical for ppl maintaining private social media accts linked to their real professional lives, as a way to ask for or demand a free pass to be inflammatory in some way w/o facing prof'nl. repercussions.

most of the commentary I saw at that point on @partyjockers's post was like, "lol that figures," bc it's not like any of that is especially shocking to see on tumblr; it's dime a dozen in fandom circles, but funny to confirm that "yeah the employees #on here are like that too, ugh, smh. 🙄"

within ONE DAY, staff had no only entirely shut down & seemingly permabanned @partyjockers, AND copyright striked the original screenshots so they get blanked out to error pictures if you try to repost them, they also did something they've never done before + which past staff have indicated was not doable within the tumblr framework: they scrubbed every trace of the post from the site. original post, gone. THOUSANDS of reblogs, all gone. even notifications from people interacting with reblogs of the post, wiped from the activity page. like beyond twitter, where if you delete a tweet, you can still see people's responses from THEIR pages, and you can still see QRTs even if you can't see what's been retweeted... every interaction w that post was gone. @partyjockers, gone. jas just toggled off the "view top posts" feature, locked her twitter & instagram, and deleted one piece of dramione fanart that people began reblogging after that overkill response.

and NOW the scrutiny is higher than ever before, because it's all fun & games and "my opinions are my own" until one person hurts your feelings (at WORK) by pointing & saying, "harry potter fan!" ...and, vitally, they also proved @partyjockers right. they've always been able to erase the entire footprint of violent fascists, people spreading explicit hate speech, literal nazis, revenge porn distributors, doxxers, bigots who run active harassment campaigns (incl some terfs!), ppl who share EXPLICIT csa materials, gore, etc.— even pages like @communismkills just got shadowbanned, and that was after a LONG TIME being a leaking sphincter on this site.

and tumblr staff have thus far ONLY ever unleashed this big gun ONCE in the whole history of the site, to my knowledge, as a tool to take down a page that wasn't even, like, a "whistleblower" for anything that serious, but who JUST SAID, "y'all don't ban terfs (true!) & y'all hire harry potter fans (also true!)," which apparently this new staff took sooooo personally & seriously & disparagingly (lol) that they nuked a random person's page from orbit over the "insult."

and we're currently on day 2, so I'm sure more will eventually unfold, but yeah, this scorched earth tactic is genuinely batshit hostility out of nowhere, over not even mild criticism but just a literal factual observation.

I get what you are saying about Flynn and whatnot, and I know this is gonna sound a lil deranged, but look, sometimes it's hard to trust critics whether professional or just popular in the fandom when in comes to their opinion on currently important creatives within the media, especially those with a larger social media presence because you get this sense of okay, isnt your opinion gonna be biased? like, much like how these people are gonna come in with already a pre-built bias agaisnt them because of so and so, so do you. wheter because you personally like the person or dislike the ones critizing them, perhaps because of the way they are going about it, etc. But either way, theres a bias, i'm not saying you should be some neutral unbiased arbiter or something and honestly theres no such thing as neutral but, surely you can say that there are real grieves and legit points in the midst of all that stuff?

Literally two posts down from this one there's another ask where I acknowledge one of the most common criticisms of Ian's writing and say that I agree with it sometimes. I don't know what else you want me to say. My post about Ian's obsessive hatedom didn't spend much time talking about more legitimate, level-headed criticisms of Ian's work because the people who go on Twitter and say shit like "I wish Ian Flynn would die" are not coming from a place of legitimate, level-headed criticism, they're coming from insane fandom echo chambers. Those are two different discussions

Shocker! I just found out that wrestling is actually chereographed? How? To me it looks like a real fight. How do you chereograph something like that? It is quite confusing. And I suppose wrestling isn't actually for combat then but mere performance art? Then how is ever listed as a sports competition when really it's all fake? That makes no sense. I wonder how many of these "champions" woulld be losing their fights if it was actually combat. Are they athletes or actors?

So, this is a lot of questions, and some of them are a little bit out of my range of expertise, so let's clear what I can.

Are professional wrestlers actors or athletes? Yes. It's both. They're actors in the sense that they're putting on a performance. They are playing characters. Perhaps the best way to view it is as a kind of serialized stage-play with mock combat. They're athletes in the same sense as any stunt actor.

One critical thing to understand about the matches is, these aren't competitors dueling it out, these are coworkers working together to stage a visually engaging piece of art. That you didn't realize that is a serious credit to their work.

I dislike using the term, “fake,” in regards to wrestling. It's not a competitive sport, that's true, but is live theater, and in that sense, simply calling it fake feels dismissive. This might sound weird, given the content, but these are very demanding roles. Playing a professional wrestler has a very strenuous physical component. It's not, “real violence,” but the same can be true of almost all of the media you consume. Including competitive sports like boxing or MMA.

I'm also slightly fond of professional wrestling in the abstract (even though I'm not a fan of watching it.) Modern film and TV have a very bad habit of forgetting about stunt performers. It's a very physically taxing, and even dangerous job, while the performers themselves are basically forgotten by the audience. Wrestling is the rare exception to that. You don't (generally) have stunt doubles, so the performers (or, at least their characters) get the limelight.

Now, it's important to understand, there's a lot of ad lib components to professional wrestling, especially when they get to the ring. While everything is going to be roughly outlined, there's a lot of times where the specific exchanges, and dialog, will just be the actors playing their characters for the camera.

The choreography is another mix of planned events and ad lib adjustment in the moment. Some stunts will be planned out in advance, while others will be executed in the moment. If you're curious about this, there are some pretty good documentaries on how this stuff is handled, but a big part is that the performers are playing up, and whiffing, the violence to put on a good show. There's a lot of tricks designed to help the performers. One of the popular submission holds (I forget which one off hand) is specifically designed to help the downed fighter. It is literally designed, so their “opponent,” can give then an opportunity to recover and catch their breath. It's also an opportunity for them to signal to the other performer if something has gone seriously wrong, and if they've been injured.

Asking which one would win in a, “real fight,” is a little like asking which of the stock clerks at your local supermarket would prevail in a battle royale; it's not the point, and it's not their job. Professional wrestlers are there to entertain you, they're there to put on a show. They are not there to hurt each other.

Competitive wrestling does exist as a sport, but it's very far removed from “Professional Wrestling.” If you want to look into that, you can certainly dig up videos. It's not especially popular, and hasn't been for over a century. Professional Wrestling evolved out of the competitive sport, and progressed into increasing levels spectacle to help offset dropping ticket sales. So, there is a clean line from the sport to the performance, but the modern incarnation is almost unrecognizable. This should answer the question of why it's often branded as a sport. It used to be one, and it keeps that label via its legacy, rather than what exists today.

-Starke

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I know I've made this argument myself many times, but I'm starting to think that we're moving in the wrong direction when we respond to critics of fanfic and pulp romance by saying stuff like "Dante's Inferno was fanfic!" or "Jane Austen was dismissed as silly romance!"

Like yeah, transformative works can be just as creative and deep as original fiction, and romance-centric stories can be literature in their own right, but also…. it's fucking okay to read stuff that isn't like that?

Controversial opinion, but if your idea of a good read is a series of <200 word short stories about characters from your favourite TV show trying to book a hotel room only to discover that (shocker) THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED!!! then that's honestly just as valid a recreational activity as reading Remains of the Day or The Brothers Karamazov.

Do the works have equal complexity or literary significance? No, probably not, but that doesn't actually matter if the question is "what to read in the evenings so I can destress before bed?" or "what to entertain myself with while on holiday?"

It's not like we treat other forms of media this way. No one feels the need to justify having a generic flower painting on the wall by comparing it to Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Nobody excuses playing pop songs in the car by pointing out that "Mozart was the Taylor Swift of his day!"

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people don't get snobbish about this stuff. People get snobbish about anything. But reading is really the only hobby where it seems common practice to validate this snobbery by insisting that actually your preferred form of fiction is literature after all.

We all get that there are people who are consumed by a deep passion for art, or music, or food, or whatever, and that many of these people enjoy spending a lot of time (sometimes in professional settings) analysing various works to determine which ones are the most complex and culturally significant.

That's fine, we wish them well and they're probably doing good work.

But we also get that there are other people who just want to watch popcorn films or listen to whatever's on the radio atm while eating oven pizza, and that's also completely fine. Those things aren't invalid just because you couldn't write an academic essay on them, they're fulfilling a completely different but equally important function in our lives!

As someone with a literal degree in this stuff, it's fine to just let reading be one of those background things that you do purely to relax and don't put any thought into. Literally nobody has the time or energy to become a connoisseur in every field, and the average person will run themselves into the ground if they try.

Bread and roses are important, yeah, but so are bubblegum and fairy lights. Not everything has to be either work or educational.

There was recently a video I saw explaining that the list that puts TSwift outside of the top 30 goes off of self-reported data only, and can not be considered a reliable indicator that her usage is going down, only that she is reporting it less

Hmm, so I looked into it and it's kind of unclear, because the website that The Tab used, My Climate Tracker...literally contradicts itself when they talk about their methods.

If you scroll down on the website's main page, it says this:

"The myclimate Carbon Tracker uses public domain flight trackers and social media posts from influencers and celebrities to list flights, collect emissions data and also post critical, direct queries on social media. The results are made visible in a large carbon ranking. "We only use data that celebrities themselves publish. When someone’s tagged in a picture drinking champagne in Las Vegas one day and then posts from Lloret de Mar the next, the myclimate Carbon Tracker springs into action. Our ‘service’ consists of an automated post on their Twitter or Instagram profile. This draws attention to the account’s CO₂ emissions and includes a link to our emissions calculator. There they find a critical look at their travel habits, as well as a suggestion that they donate to climate protection projects," says myclimate’s Head of Marketing Daniel Aregger."

The problem is that those two paragraphs say very different things!!! Because "public domain flight trackers," which are the main source for these things, are definitely not data the celebrities self-report! Which blatantly contradicts the first paragraph!

So do they use flight trackers, or don't they? And if so, how heavily do they weigh those??

Would love to hear from aviation nerds and hobbyists on what is more likely.

I am tentatively inclined to say that they probably mostly use flight trackers (which like. my understanding is that most or all of these include the departure and arrival location, so I'm not sure why the Instagram data is necessary anyway) and possibly added the paragraph about "We only use data that celebrities themselves publish" in response to the whole cease-and-desist thing. I say this partly because I'm not sure how else they could promise any degree of accuracy with their numbers, otherwise?

Would love a link to the video if you can find it. (Just changed my ask settings to allow media). And again, would love asks or comments from any aviation hobbyists and/or professionals with info about this!

Valid criticisms of AI, or at least the way it's used:

- Just like any tech that can automate work in the professional sector, AI can have alarming implications for workers, especially in the current economy, including independent workers in gig economies for whom we may have an even harder time demanding a support system

- The amount of incredibly personal content in training databases really solidifies how dire the situation is with datamining on the internet today and buying products built with this kind of extensive, unmitigated datamining is pretty questionable

- There are many, very easy ways to be a complete fucking asshole with AI, from forgery to spite fine-tunes to maliciously flooding commission markets where one outright shows disdain for the community outside of how much money they're willing to spend, and the corporate developers seem to be content to encourage that crowd

- Social media culture is already toxically obsessed with instant gratification and things that look polished and professional, and AI has the potential to play into that

Not valid criticisms of AI:

- "The training data is copyrighted" - any copyright framework that bars usage as transformative as AI training from qualifying as fair use would do FAR more harm to small-time artists than it would prevent; do you want to get sued for drawing a similar pose to a Disney poster because they suspect you may have referenced from it? Do you want to go back to the Anne Rice days with fanart and fanfiction? Because that's what tightening up restrictions against transformative work to that extent will open up.

- "It's literally just sampling, copy-pasting chunks of pieces that already exist in the training set" - it's literally not. This is just straight up misinformation.

- "It's not Real Art, it's uncreative, there's no such thing as a creative use for it" - way too subjective to keep presenting as a fact, what little of it is objective is demonstrably false (see the number of people using it as a meditation on data and history, and many disabled people using it to preserve their ability to create), and if you claim that something needs to meet a minimum standard of creativity to be Real Art then I can name a LOT of manual illustrations that don't qualify either

- "No one actually NEEDS it as an accessibility tool, look at this famous artist who painted with their feet and this one who painted with their mouth and this one who forced themself through miserable pain every day, if art isn't worth suffering that much to you then you don't DESERVE it and what do you mean there are people who can't even move THAT much" - holy inspiration porn, Batman!

- "Well then if you really well and truly CAN'T draw on your own at ALL, just commission people!" - ah, yes, because what disabled people famously always have in surplus is money, and what we famously love more than anything in the world is having to rely on other people for every aspect of our own self-expression

- "It's going to REPLACE REAL ART, all the physical media companies and art tablet makers are going to GO OUT OF BUSINESS because NO ONE WANTS THEIR PRODUCTS ANYMORE, NO one cares about ANYTHING in art but the end result except ME and the other REAL artists, AI is going to DESTROY SOCIETY, even KIDS are NEVER going to want to draw for REAL anymore, the ENTIRE CONCEPT is DYSTOPIAN and we need to BURN THE TECH TO THE GROUND TO SAVE SOCIETY, my ingroup and I are the ONLY people not too stupid and sheeplike to fall for this VIOLENT DESTRUCTION OF ALL THAT MAKES US HUMAN that will DEFINITELY succeed in destroying art FOREVER" - ....yeah sorry if I don't sound like I'm taking you seriously when at this point you're just buying into blatant trad RETVRN bullshit to validate your discomfort and it's horrifying, STOP THAT

𝓐𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓰𝔂 𝓸𝓫𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓿𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼 𝑰𝑰

[𝙽𝚘𝚝𝚎: 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕 𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚐𝚢]

Part 1

➺ 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀/𝗦𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻 1𝗛, how does it feel to be the backbone of a field trip? No cuz the way that they would prepare everything beforehand is admirable. Somewhere new? *memorizes the whole map to make sure we don't get lost 🗺️* Don't know where to eat? *does a whole FBI investigation on the best places to eat 🧐* Already discussed the exact time to meet at a spot? *arrives 2 hours early to explore the whole location 👀*

➺ 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗶𝗼/8𝗛 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀, Ik this has been said so many times before but srsly y'all would laugh at anything related to seggs/dark humour. I can literally draw two circles and a long rectangle in the middle on a piece of paper, show you my drawing and watch you crumble apart less than a minute. They also save random memes/pics related to seggs in their camera roll, I wonder what do y'all search history are like 👁️👄👁️ (I love y'all thou 🥰💕)

➺ 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿/4𝗛 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀, how does it feel to be the mother figure of the group? (yes again Ik this has been mentioned a lot) I would see y'all worrying about smtg all of the time if you went out with your friends and would carry a medium sized bag with everything inside it. Wet wipes? ✔︎ Band aid kit? ✔︎ Sewing kit? ✔︎ Extra clothing? ✔︎ Pens? ✔︎ (and the list goes on)

➺ 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 humour are so funny in a weird way. Idk how to explain, it's like I get your humour but I don't??? When you do explain to me it gets 10x funnier ngl. When they give you advice, you should listen their advice. Pisces are known to be the grandmother/grandfather of the water signs, their intuition are usually on point. Yes they can be delusional at times but developed pisces placements are wiser than ppl give credit for.

➺ 2𝗛 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘂𝗺𝘀/𝘁𝗮𝘂𝗿𝘂𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 are rlly serious about their food. My father has this placement and when the cooked fish was served to our table, he instantly saw that there's smtg wrong with it. He used a spoon to break it apart and found out that the fish was straight up frozen before it was cooked. Cuz usually you have to defrost it before cooking. If it wasn't for him my family wouldn't notice that there's smtg wrong with it. He would also take us to go to random restaurants and would critic their foods once the bill was settled.

➺ 𝗚𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 🤝 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴, I've seen this play out where they would talk to anyone or finish a whole book in a day instead of doing their assignments (coming from someone who also have 3H placements and gemini venus)

➺ 𝗟𝗲𝗼/5𝗛 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 🤝 𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘃 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗻𝘀/𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 5𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲. Not rlly surprised tbh as Leos are known for their childlike spirit. They might also keep their stuffed animals/toys from their childhood or display them in a shelf/case.

➺ 12𝗛 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘂𝗺𝘀 can be rlly private, again not a surprising thing but I just find it interesting of how SOME, not all of them, can be private to the point of telling their friends to block out their faces, not showing up on picture day or just hiding behind ppl, not being involved with social media platforms like twitter, instagram, tiktok etc. (Obviously depending on their other placements in their birth chart it manifests differently)

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵ ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧ - - - ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧ ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

Anyways that will be all that I have to say, thank you for whoever took the time to read this, remember I'm not a professional astrologer so don't take this personally!!!

🄼🄰🅂🅃🄴🅁🄻🄸🅂🅃

It just boggles the mind how petty someone can be over a fictional character that they created being popular. Thomas Astruc is ruining his own show and screwing over abuse victims all for a grudge against fans who prefer a character he doesn't. I don't condone hate-mobbing him like some people do on Twitter, but he really can't take any sort of criticism huh. How do you claim to have conferred with a child psychologist (I think) and still produce this literal abuse apologia. I genuinely don't understand.

I'm gonna say that Astruc taking any chance to use the narrative to dunk on Chloé and Adrien being evidence of him holding a grudge against their popularity is my personal interpretation of possible influences for their writing. I have inferred it from Astruc's very curt way of speaking to fans of these characters on twitter and the show's abysmal writing of them in ways that prop Marinette up on their backs. None of it has been proven true, but, when the coincidences keep piling up, at some point you're gonna stop believing it's a coincidence. At this point, he is most likely at least subconsciously bitter over Chloé and Adrien, if not consciously so.

Just like how the show's biases concerning abuse might be subconscious stuff going on in the crew's heads. I remember when @infinitysgrace and I used to have to reiterate again and again that Gabriel does love Adrien even if he abuses him, that's often the tragedy of parental abuse, when the fandom kept insisting that Gabriel abusing Adrien was evidence that he didn't really love him. The crew also seems to have a very limited view of what "counts" as child abuse. Apparently isolation, neglect, abandonment and consistently referring to your child by the wrong name don't count as abuse, because all the kids involved got to eat, didn't get beaten and are loved by the people harming them.

I agree that it's very obvious that Astruc can't handle criticism and that mobbing him or harassing him isn't the solution. Astruc has a right to act like an entitled jackass even publically online, just like any other creator or random person. I instantly side eye anyone trying to turn me against someone based on only the accusations that they're deleting negative comments and blocking people giving negative feedback. The fans might be entitled to their opinion, but they are not entitled to a creator's time and attention.

I'm also going to say that, just like I don't read highly personal vent fics, I'm not going to watch vent shows. I stopped paying any attention to Teen Titans Go after they started dedicating several episodes to mocking fans of the original TT cartoon (after their show piggybacked on the fame of said show by mimicking the character designs and using the same voice cast no less). I'm very much done with paying Thomas Astruc's increasingly inane ramblings any attention. It's pretty obvious that social media is influencing his creative process negatively but it's his right to engage with a space that affects him like that. None of us are his friends, family or doctor. It's none of our business what he does.

I haven't heard of the writers consulting any experts on anything dealing with the show, but I do know for a fact that Astruc tweeted a link to a fan's essay on Adrien that was written by someone claiming to be a child psychologist. Said fan praised Adrien's writing and then went on to praise the Sentipeople concept. Since I make it a habit to never actually be the one that starts shit, I never really engaged with their content and blocked them instead, so I can't remember the details of what they said about the psychological perspective on Sentipeople.

Still, I'm 80% sure this is the supposed expert. Regardless, even if this fan wrote essays with 100% accurate real life psychology, child psychology has no one size fits all approach. I, an ECEC professional, sure as hell didn't agree with anything they had to say about SentiAdrien before I blocked them, and that was before canon confirmed the theory in the worst possible way and screwed over abuse victims.

Just something I reflected on

The last 2–3 posts I've made have been extremely discouraging and upsetting, and I just wanted to reflect on why I'm so negative suddenly.

Below the cut:

Initially, when I watched the trailer for Kung Fu Panda 4, I was super excited. Sure, I saw Zhen and instantly felt off about her, but the rest was too good to be brought down by her. Though, as I went on Tumblr, I got onto the KFP4 tag to check out some fan art for the Chameleon, but was met with a barrage of negativity. I'm not blaming anyone, but it does affect opinions when there's genuinely good points.

This phenomenon has happened frequently, as I usually wish to see fan art and am met with critique that I end up reading (which is still entirely on me), which in turn makes me wonder if I really should like the media I consume.

The reflection I did today did aid me in coming to a proper conclusion about my stance:

I'll like what I damn please, even if it's literal shit. The jokes can be awful, the story can make little sense, the cinematography can be abysmal. I don't care. I watched through the entirety of The Untamed, for goodness’s sake. Yeah, maybe DreamWorks should do better, and yeah, perhaps it's stupid that they made some new character to take up screen time when we could've had the Furious Five. Yes, DreamWorks, do better, treat the furious five better, make a compelling movie twice in a row challenge impossible.

If I end up loving it based on the few good things in it? Then so be it! I like Hotel Transylvania 3. NO ONE likes Hotel Transylvania 3. But I do. So, people may be critics, but I'm genuinely tired of being a critic and I'm going to be a silly guy and go "ohh. animation prettyy omggg tai lung hiii tai lung wydd <33" even if the story isnt living up to the past movies. I watch movies, shows and consume books and media to feel, not to nitpick and be all professional. I watch stuff to have a good time. So if KFP4 sucks, I hope for it to be bad as an enjoyable time and not a waste of time.

Hello!

Hope you’re doing great today.

How do you become your best self- like operating in your full Potential? There’s a girl I know of who’s super popular on campus and she’s great: a model, may be doing pageants one day (I encouraged her), and is super smart. Recently on IG I saw she’s at Harvard Business school studying and she has a major in Political science.

I’m an English major - couldn’t attach myself to any legal studies because it wasn’t for me and I get insulted by family that I should be doing something other than English (they look down on the major).

So I find myself comparing myself to her because I am trying to do different clubs, and speak up and be all that I can be. But I’m not seeing anything changing for me.

I get over looked a lot, and it’s a new school for me (I’m a transfer student) so that’s added.

And I’m so lost.

I often looked down on my degree, I do believe I should be a speaker or go to galas and study things that holds influence. To be a woman of change but I don’t see that. I haven’t gotten any scholarships for holding events for clubs, nor do I get recognized.

I feel like I’m not doing enough and I feel inadequate in my abilities (I literally took a creative writing class with fifteen other poets for a special class and the Professor would constantly nit pick at my writing and say I have to revise - and the other students would be praised for their writing. And I actually thought I was a great poet til that happened. And he’s a poet himself, and well known so that hurt. And was embarrassing cause my peers weren’t helpful or encouraging either. They would just stare at me while he critiqued my work).

Not sure who I should be.

I’m not even good at the things I thought I was good at.

But when looking at my acquaintance- I see such great things going to happen for her in her future (all well deserved).

Hi love! You sound like you're doing great for someone in university, honestly. Most people, especially at that age, do not take the time or energy required to self-reflect and think critically about how they can improve/ thrive in their environment instead of blaming external circumstances for any obstacles they face. You sound very emotionally mature, which I'm sure will take you far. Having so much uncertainty and little support is so difficult, so know that your feelings are valid regarding why you feel uncertain and like you're losing time in this current moment.

While it is easier said than done, comparing yourself to others is a waste of the time and energy you can be spending on ideas, hobbies, and activities that make you happy/help you reach your goals. Please know that people putting you down for being an English major is very closed-minded. There are so many career paths you can pursue with an English degree (signed someone who almost did one, lol) – copywriting, PR, social media/content strategy & creation, UX & technical writing, broadcast journalism, reporter, editor, screenwriting, etc. Also, he is one poet – that is an opinion, not a general consensus. He might be a professional and have considerable skills under his belt, but that does not make his words gospel. Writing quality can be fairly subjective. However, the way he singled you out is awful – I would talk to an advisor about this unprofessional behavior.

The best things you can do in a situation like this are three-fold:

Focus on taking care of yourself. Block out what others, especially critics, think or say about any choices you're making that don't hurt anyone else. Try to establish some healthy routines (meals, walks, workouts, studying, skincare, reading, etc.) to feel more in control of your day-to-day life

Sit down and reflect on the activities that give you energy, what you're passionate about, and the goals that you would most like to achieve in the few years after university and the immediate ones while you're still on campus. For example, it sounds like you're interested in writing, public speaking, and fancy events. Find resources to get good at these skills and ways to get yourself in your desired work environment (internships, temp service work for special events, etc.) Maybe consider potential career paths like PR or speech writing. Consider creative outlets like making a podcast, TikTok, or Youtube videos.

Make it a priority to develop confidence in yourself and an unwavering sense of self-trust. I feel like an old lady saying this, but you're so young and have so much time to figure it out. Everyone has different histories, traumas, resources, and advantages/disadvantages in this life. Spending time ruminating over those of others and comparing notes is taking away the energy and creativity you need to pour into constructing your own life and identity.

Hope this helps xx

What the fuck IS with all the hate for matt? I don't get it, he's a perfectly serviceable dm. Is there context that I'm missing or is it just that he's not their fav? I've seen some similar tribalism from WBN fans toward Murph and NADDPOD. Why are people so animalistic about their favourite adults who play pretend professionally?

I first heard about it when the last season of d20 was announced (the ravening war) and matt was dming it. There was some twitter drama w a couple d20 fans who are specifically acoc fans that were worried that matt was going to ruin / not live up to the fan lore that their community had already created. It got taken out of context and it got rowdy from both sides and honestly like just got too far with people censoring matts name, bringing up his vest thing (he has said in an interview in the past that he struggles with body dysmorphia and his vests makes him feel more comfortable in his own skin)

Idk! The most legitimate reason ive found is issues with his world building when they did an arc in a south/southeast asian inspired setting, but as far as i know he did hire cultural consultants i think after that was brought up? Idk its hazy for me because it was so long ago if anyone knows the details of that lmk

The handful of bullshit reasons ive heard is he follows the rules too much/doesnt follow the rules enough, isnt funny, a boring storyteller, etc. Whenever they say i like brennan more than matt they usually talk more about how they dislike matt and less about what they think makes brennan good. Also fucking funny because none of these people are even beefing. Matt was literally JUST in Brennan's wedding!!! And so was Murph!!!! And like matt or not, hes the very reason why d20 even gets to exist and be successful because critical role opened the door for ttrpgs in mainstream media. Yeah. Its crazy how toxic fandoms can be

could you elaborate on the canon thing irt mythology? i don't disagree, i would just love to hear what you think

hello! just a preface before i get into it, i'm not in this field at all as a student or professional so i'd take my own words with a grain of salt. if im getting anything wrong please do let me know!!!

im linking two posts i think are relevant by:

@/thoodledoo and @/what-even-is-thiss

and let's get on! the problem with saying something is an 'original' is that more often than not, you're going to be wrong about that. i get it! there are a number of retellings i don't like either, which narrate stories i care little for, but consider that myth is often a reflection of society and culture. people then and now ascribe stories to phenomenons and events to make sense of the world. like,

persephone's tale gives a mythological reason to why we have the change of seasons. now, imagine i said "in the original myth, persephone was an unwilling captive".

one, what myth am i saying is the "origin"? hesiod, because he was one of (if not) the first to write it down? do you see the problem here? does 'original' just mean the first instance of recording?

and then, two, does it make every adaptation of persephone's myth that came after that something 'fake'? are you going to beef with ovid for changing your 'original myth'?

it's absolutely alright (and id say encouraged!) to critique adaptations and retellings. this, however, should be done with the understanding that changing a myth isn't the crucial factor here - it's how it affects and reflects on us in this time. an example,

your reaction to a medusa retelling could be less "but in the original she wasn't a victim of rape! this is taking away from her girlbossness!", because what is the original??, and more "how does her backstory, given to her by this author, affect her character and how [x group of people] are represented in media" (or something like that).

essentially, like any other literature, how does this one impact anyone and anything at all?

back to homer, a lot of the time (i find) when someone says something like 'originally odysseus was assaulted by calypso' is that they mean a very specific source of myth - i.e. the odyssey. oral myth tradition predates written work by centuries. just because homer (not even sure about this, actually) wrote it down first, does not mean he is your og!! the odysseus in homer's two works don't even sound like the same person!

like hi! i love homer! but let's not pretend he was mr "came up with every myth about the trojan war under the sun".

making very obvious my point here, my critic of a book, like say, the song of achilles, isnt that madeline miller failed to copy the iliad plot for plot. it's fine that she changed it! in fact, it's great! it's a myth! it changes with time anyway! my critic is that girl you made patroclus literally the boringest blandest boy ever good god, (only sort of joking)

tldr; there is no real mythological canon. clarify, make it clear and say 'in homer's iliad' or something if you need to. don't brush a story off just because it doesn't fit within the version of the myth you know. and don't cheapen your criticism by saying it isn't original.

You know, funnily enough, I actually can use the canonical enslavement of the clones as a point of criticism against the Jedi and senate and all other characters in Star Wars. And I do. Because the clones are literal, by-definition slaves. And it is a worthwhile point of criticism regardless of narrative framing because the heroes very literally and textually use slave labor to fight their fundamentally unjust war. Like it happens right on-screen, no ambiguity about it at all. And it doesn't matter that talking about it isn't how you "professionally analysis media" because I'm not getting paid to call George Lucas and Co. an insufferable hack, I do this for free and fun! For the joy of calling the creator of a slave army of brown men a cunt! And also yes I apply it to every single character in Star Wars and consider them all at least mildly evil for accepting the widespread evil of slavery to exist, nay, flourish unchecked, and that actually supports my analysis of Star Wars, to wit: age up the intended audience about 10 years and it's just Game of Thrones In Space. Everyone is shit, they all suck, there's no winning only widescale losing because the fights are literally never going to not be about stupid esoteric religious bullshit and maintaining the status quo in favor of the rich elite at the expense of the actual fucking people. Ta-da.

I've been radio silent for a little while and I want to talk about it.

Every scrap of my desire to finish queens has been destroyed. Not by burnout, not by a lack of ideas, not even by a lack of time to write.

By a comment.

Not someone cussing me out. Not someone being homophobic. Not even someone saying they just didn't like it.

This was unsolicited criticism- I do not ask for anyone to treat my fic with any sort of professional lens. I admit it has it's flaws. I'm perfectly aware of how many things I would change if I were to ever do a rewrite.

Tell me why this comment hurt more than any number of homophobic skrees I could have fended off. I'm older, I've been terminally online since before social media was even a thought in some douchey fratboy's head. I cut my teeth on quizilla kitten fics and independent sites hosting bizarre Inuyasha AUs. I have literally seen it all.

Honestly I'm not sure if I should even care anymore. Fine. You win. I'll never post another chapter so you don't have to ever read my shitty, shitty writing again.

I do not care anymore.

Yeah this reads like me passive-aggressively begging for attention but it's not. I'm just too tired to care anymore. I genuinely do not even want to continue anymore because of this.

Only gonna focus on my original content. Because then, I'll actually be asking for the critique.

With the risk of striking a nerve, and getting someone mad, and I've been terrified to say this cause I see Harry's fans praise him a lot for everything he does: I don't think that at the moment Harry is that good of an actor as some people claim him to be.

If Harry wants to continue acting I pray and hope to God he takes it seriously. His last two attempts were far from good (More like My Policeman, than his role in DWD was far from good). Don't Worry Darling was alright I guess but his performance compared to the others was lacking in some places. I bet Olivia's direction and badly written script also contributed in him not looking so great on screen. The woman chose controversy over quality and even released that stupid video where everyone criticized Harry's accent as a promo for people to talk about, even though I'm sure she knew he'd get made fun of. Everyone waits to see Harry's acting and then this is released as a first glimpse.🤦‍♀️ My Policeman was painful to get through to the end cause I could already see the headlines and essays on how he's not a good actor. Personally, I think both of these directors didn't care as much about the movies they were making in terms of quality (or if they did, then in my eyes as an audience member they failed), but rather its financial success and they just got Harry because well, Harry = money. (Yes, even My Policeman with that story I don't think was of great importance because similar stories have been told on screen already and in better ways. There was nothing revolutionary about it and it was boring)

I don't even know, does Harry take acting lessons? He has something in there, it just needs a lot of practice, and practicing on a movie set in a movie that's gonna come out for people to watch at the beginning of his acting career is not it. (I've seen some fans excuse him and say that he's new to acting and doesn't have much practice, but I don't think that should be excusable. If it was somebody else with no clout, they wouldn't have been hired and granted the permission to 'practice' their acting skills on a set where a lot of money are at stake. Instead, they would choose a better actor. The fact that he is Harry Styles plays a big role and he probably realizes it, but it didn't seem like he took it serious enough to where him being picked for a leading/co-leading role so early in his career would be justified. It looks bad and for his own good just throwing himself into this like that was the wrong professional move. On top of saying at Venice that he has no idea what he is doing when it comes to acting was screaming privilege and ignorance. He's not media trained as an actor) Because now it's going to be harder for him with 2 not well critically acclaimed movies under his belt. Eternals flopped too, so it's still a mystery if there's going to be a sequel...

It's just hard for me to watch him get ridiculed by people who are not his fans and are not perhaps as biased as his supporters to where they would be willing to gloss over the truth and pretend like he's perfect. If this was Taylor, she would've been shamed by her fans and they would let her know that it's not good. So, all that Harry can do no wrong talk is also getting a bit annoying.

I think with HS acting is that people had set very high expectations on him. So if he doesn’t deliver an Oscar worthy performance he failed. Do I think someone else could have played the roles better? Yes. But for literally his first acting gigs I thought he did very well. Do I think there is room for a lot of improvement? Yes. I think HS has a lot of potential when it comes to acting but he should start taking lessons if he wants to continue. I do think his performance in DWD was way better than My Policeman.