Booktokers will recommend the most brain dead, worse than wattpad, misogynist racist homophonic terf rhetoric filled “book” that’s 97% sex scenes and then look you in the eye and tell you they Refuse to read classic lit cause it’s “boring”

And like you actually didn’t have to tell me that I figured it out myself 

relic from my archives back when twitter was having a normal one

"it's not that deep" but consider that it really really is

I feel like we have truly forgotten that poetry is intellectual. That art is intellectual. I’m not saying that you need to write following a whole lot or rules — heck I freaking love Wild Nights by Emily Dickinson which is written in Free Verse — it simply shouldn’t be simple. Because we as humans — and our human mind, heart, soul and spirt — are not simple. We are complex. So our art should be complex. We shouldn’t try to simplify complex topics for marketability, we should be delighting in the actual nature of poetry which is that it is how our souls speak. At this point we truly must fight for the survival of poetry. Not just poems but poetry. Soul. Sublimity. Passion. Beauty. Romance. Love. Poetry. Because it is a war, and indeed the very casualty might be our hearts and souls.

Literally who cares abt like The Merit or Valor or whatever Of The Iliad tbh. If one YA book with softcore gay sex in it is enough to destroy the Western literary canon maybe it deserves it

someone reblogged that post about how it's good to care about exploring the unknown to further the body of human knowledge from me with something to the effect of 'don't care about the intellectualism bs but of course science is important' and boy was that an easy block

I’m gonna chew off my own toes if I see one more insane literature opinion on tiktok

@ everyone losing their shit about Jaskier being in Blood Origin because they can't see how that can happen without time travel (which they don't like). May I introduce you all to the concept of a framing narrative?

It's a (side) story used to portray the main story, such as us - the audience - "listening" to a storyteller telling us the story. One famous example is The Princess Bride where the framing story is a granddad (Peter Falk) telling the story The Princess Bride as a bedtime story to his grandson. The main story is several times interrupted by the framing narrative to interject commentary and aid the pacing.

The Witcher books use framing stories in several places too such as in Lady of the Lake.

Now time and world travel is also part of the Wiycher universe so it isn't impossible, but I'd say that it is much more likely that Jaskier's involvement is being part of a framing narrative for the main story and that it's that "frame" that's been expanded upon.

"Truly GOOD works don't have thriving fandoms because people aren't interested in fixing them, so what do they have to write fics/make art about."

Idk about you, but I don't write fic for properties I don't genuinely enjoy and think are, on some level, actually good.

I feel like the vast majority of the time that someone claims something I say is "terminally online" it's after stating something steeped deeply in critical theory that I learned either in a collegic environment, or, more recently, through reading academic papers.

"Terminally online" in theory is meant to call out the circulating echo chamber that develops when we exist on algorithmic platforms that sort us through our behavior into groups that have the exact same opinions as us, and yet I never hear it used in that way. I only ever hear the phrase used when someone doesn't want to put effort into understanding or believing what's being said, whether because the thing being said requires background information to fully understand, or because the background information is provided and thus requires some amount of effort to read and comprehend.

The phrase, in my experience, comes off as anti-intellectual and intentionally apathetic, and is, unfortunately, extremely effective at tearing down the ethos of the person saying the thing.

last opinion i will voice on this discourse because i am not well versed in the art of arguing online to an empty audience: the only thing worse than tiktok puriteens who call ‘touch grass’ ableist are tumblr users who try so hard to project the opposite vibe that they swing the pendulum all the way back to actually being ableist bullies who are two steps away from hurling the r slur at an autistic adult for watching a children’s show

‘if you’re over the age of 16 and you watch that stupid fucking blue dog cartoon you probably haven’t even graduated high school and you try to make poetic posts lmao’ now let’s dissect that slowly shall we. piece by piece. what does the notion that those who did not graduate high school are somehow inferior imply? how do you react to an intellectually disabled person posting about their interests and emotions online? are you normal about people with autism whose version of autism does not fit the sanitised, memeified select autistic traits that the internet has for whatever reason chosen to ‘accept’?

i don’t watch bluey. never in a million years would i be interested in anything remotely of the sort, it would bore me, i am not the target audience. but some people on here need to re-examine why adults peacefully enjoying non-“adult” content is so viscerally upsetting to them. why ‘ableism’ has become such a strawman these days. have you considered that perhaps your views on this could actually be ableist

Fucking hate when people are like “why does this phrase go so hard when it comes from a tumblr post!” or whatever. Because the people living and interacting and writing here are human beings. They are capable of thought. Do you think any and all slightly meaningful or deep sentences spawn spontaneously in poetry books or something??

People on tumblr who just make fun of fandom culture baffle me. It’s like willingly sitting in a clown car and then loudly declaring that you hate the sound of squeaky shoes.

On niceness, kindness, and the difference between them:

"In an era of “girls-supporting-girls” and “let-people-enjoy-things”, having distinct tastes or opinions is tantamount to social suicide. There is no room for good-spirited teasing or critique or gossip or even interpersonal dislike. As much as I despise the phrase, these things are human nature. We possess the human range of emotions, which includes being annoyed or petty or mean-spirited—to pretend anyone is above it is not only moralistic but biologically false. When we don’t like someone or something, we scavenge to find a political or moral reason to critique them, instead of owning up to our honest truth: sometimes, you just find someone annoying.

Our crisis of niceness is both insufferable and detrimental to our artistic output; the films, art, and music we make are expected to promote pleasantness and punish everything else. We don’t see culture as a vehicle for artistic expression, but instead for moral expression, and as such our capacity for connoisseurship is at an all-time low. A film can be visually uninspired, a song can be derivative, a book can be poorly written, but as long as it espouses some rhetoric of universal justice it will be lauded as “important”. This is boring. It is uninspiring. If you even critique the mechanisms of the culture industry and its monopolized outputs (Marvel Movies, Taylor Swift, etc), you are deemed at best a hater and at worst a misogynist/racist/classist/homophobe depending on the day and the detractor.

It is a vague and meaningless form of pleasantry and niceness that does little more than create social codes of conduct concerning our language and discourse. It is Redbubble “Treat People With Kindness” stickers on MacBook Airs, it is a mass produced t-shirt with a slogan like You Matter <3 sold as mental health awareness. It feels suffocating, a cloying Yankee Candle atmosphere that gives nothing of substance yet demands a smile and a quiet wave.

We have confused pleasantness with kindness. Pleasantness is plasticine and sanitized, florescent lights over pastel bulletin boards. Kindness is human, old hardwood floors and fresh fruit.

Kindness is bringing your neighbors a bowl of chili, or sitting quietly with the people you love to reflect in the morning. Both actions somehow sparked mass outrage online and the individuals who shared their moments of quiet kindness were either called privileged or evil or any of the -ists that internet commentors love to toss around… classist, ableist, et cetera. The people who attempted to bring some joy into their own lives and the lives of others were called ugly and annoying in hundreds and thousands of replies within the same cultural space that insists that it is materially violent to say that you don’t like K-Pop or Taika Waititi."

-meditations on meanness - charlie

this post was originally from @lantern-hill. they were getting unwarranted hate from swifties with no reading comprehension and understandably turned reblogs off on the original post.

essay from @wildsagebythemountaingoats

An earnest interrogation of our systems of knowledge reproduction is what I live for, as a disability advocate and student of decolonisation. But whenever I see someone griping about how inaccurate Wikipedia is, dollars to donuts they turn out to be either a right wing covid truther or a Tankie. I'm sorry that hard facts and other people's lived realities are inconvenient to your worldview boo. Here, have a lollipop. 😂

why r people clowning this guy Hes Right

Thoughts on Anti-Intellectualism?

I truly believe that we are in a terrible anti-intellectualism era that is slowly rotting our brains and forcing us to become mind-numbed zombies. People view others that value their time and intelligence as elitists but I disagree!

I obviously think that Tik Tok is the problem but what is your opinion? I will admit that even I spend huge chunks of time watching Family Guy episodes with Subway Surfers playing in the background but I AM TIRED!

Similarly with BookTok, these authors are producing toxic repetitive "romances" that subconsciously ruin our mindsets on relationships. Also, BookTok creators will attack wattpad/aot readers for reading trash, but if I'm being honest, I have read fanfics that are far better than whatever It Ends With Us is. I have seen arguments calling people "elitists" for not indulging in those books, but there is simply nothing elitist about not enjoying a main character that writes letters to Ellen Degeneres. Even After was not as ridiculous. (It is terribly ridiculous, I'm just trying to make a point).

What are your thoughts? Are we stooping down or have we always been like this? Are people just scumbag elitists trying to separate themselves from everyone else? I'm genuinely interested in what people have to say!